ah, i remember when Blizzard was the little company that could. Just goes to show you that no matter how beloved you are, if you make it big, people will hate you.
I think thats what it really boils down to. People are mad that Blizzard made it big with WoW and put MMOs on the map which cause everyones favorite little niche genre to become exposed. Its the same thing that happens with big comic book movies, suddenly everyone is a Wolverine fan and the "real" X-men enthusiasts feel pissed off and proclaim it on the interwebs.
'only 30% of the playerbase get above level 10' - Blizz CEO
The exodus / player leaving has been around since vanilla but it has been countered by a larger number of new people playing till now. As far as I know, Cata did what it was intended to do which was to increase that '30%'. It didn't have that injection of new people as expected though which is why WoW subs have decreased.
Yeah, Blizzard ( apublicly traded company) is blatantly lying to stockholders, investors, and millions of people who invest in their company.
And you know this because a few of your freinds quit the game.
Get over it, man. Also, if 5-6 million people left WoW, they must have quit playing MMOs altogether because they didn't go any other game - no game has had a spike of 5m users.
This is like me saying "out of 10 of my friends, none of them eat at McDonalds. McDonalds is going out of business."
Technically this is true, but thats like saying after Rift's first month 'Rift is dying' because they have likely reached a high point in subs they will never see again. A 21 year old is technically dying because he will never be any younger than 21. Here is the truth: WoW is not in any danger of death, or life support, in a *very* long time.
Lets take a look at our old friend Everquest. EQ1 had a growth rate just like WoW, constantly growing over a span of 5 years. then two huge titles come out (EQ2 appealed far more to the EQ1 player than SWTOR or GW2 will to the WoW player for obvious reasons). BOOM big drop. 500k, rapidly falling to half that. then steady decline over the next 7 years to about 100k.
So 7 years after a sequel and a game that dwarfs all its competition like the sears tower dwarfs your house, EQ1 had lost 80% of its customers.
Now lets look at WoW. Well take the low end of the range and say 4 million US/EU customers (ignore the other regions for sake of direct comparison to EQ). 7 years from now, 80% less customers = 800k. WoW would *still* be the biggest US/EU game in the history of MMORPGs up until this point. Granted I think the newer games will eclipse that, but so far no game has had sustained subs of more than 500-600k.
And yes, just as there are tons of people who will never play anything but EQ, WoW is filled with these people.
WoW isnt going anywhere. Get used to it.
Oh and more history from EQ: WoW had a bad expansion that did not go ever well with its population. EQ had a disastrous one (GoD). however they recovered from it and the next one was actually quite popular. Just because cata was a let down doesnt mean WoW cant recover from it.
i agree adn as a wow player for 6 yrs i hope your right cata did suck though in many ways. i loved the revamped zones but hated the changes to pallies , tanks and healers with a passion.
The dungeons are a blast to run also but the changes they made especially holy power ewas a mistake holy power sucks arse and i still hate it .
that said the only people who know how many subs wow has or how they are figured is bizzard and they tell there investors that its 11 million i assume they add up money in asia and for every 15 dollars its a month sub but i could be wrong.
That said blizxzard investors make money and wow is easily popular if u dont think they have 11 million subs so what blizzard and most wow players couldnt care less what u think.
that said i believe it cause they sell over a million mounts and charity pets easily every time the sell one.
Even popular products, and special cases, like WoW have a product life-cycle. Everyone who is not suffering from the cognitive dissonance should know that the WoW player-base has declined in the US and Europe, aka the Western market. That does not mean that the total of worldwide subscriptions need to be down a lot. However, if you look at the game in more general terms (including more than just subcriptions), it is pretty clear that the game has reached a decline stage in the product life-cycle.
Blizzard is trying to affect this decline by doing solid business decisions, like expanding to new markets and perhaps also introducing a different payment model also for the Western market. There might be even sharper decline in subs, especially in the West, once both SW:TOR and GW2 launch, but that does not mean that Blizzard is out of options nor that they are ignorant of the fact.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Even popular products, and special cases, like WoW have a product life-cycle. Everyone who is not suffering from the cognitive dissonance should know that the WoW player-base has declined in the US and Europe, aka the Western market. That does not mean that the total of worldwide subscriptions need to be down a lot. However, if you look at the game in more general terms (including more than just subcriptions), it is pretty clear that the game has reached a decline stage in the product life-cycle.
Yes, there has been a decline in western subs. It has not been severe by any stretch and its *very* surprising that it took over 6 years for it to happen.
I do feel its premature to say that this is the start of the big decline, as it is just one bad expansion. If the next expansion blows people away (and Blizzard is capable of doing this), there is a VERY large pool of ex-WoW players that may just come back to see what the buzz is about.
That said, its likely that western subs have peaked, only because of swtor on the horizon (my stance on GW2 is the average WoW player doesnt know enough about it to care and its effect wont really happen til 2013 or 2014. If its good it will have a mor emdoest start than people think but will gradually build and build and build). Outside of the SWTOR relase month I dont think there will be any big declines though (and the swtor dropoff wont be nearly as big as some want to believe). It will just go from 4 million western subs gradually down, lower and lower, over a decade or more until it can actaully be considered 'dying'.
have to agree gw 2 wont affect wow sub base. u can play wow and gw2 easy. As gw 2 isnt a sub game. i think to many gw 2 fans tend to forget that fact.
they think gw2 will still tor players and vice versa when in fact i can sub to tor and buy gw2 play both and enjoy a change from star wars to fantasy mmo when i want.
gw 2 my be huge success the diffrence is i dont think it will affect sub games as i think alot of players will play either tor, gw2 or rift and gw 2 or even wow and gw2 as u can do that.
corporative report?are you guys serious?where were those report when obama had to unlock more then 2 billion to help them and we re still in the same mud we were in 2008 but with more dept the truth is an accountant is specificly hired to make the number say what the investor want to ear.dont sweat it wow is doing good (compared to other game)but america is moving on! lol for exemple they dont pull out player out of thin air lol.they have so many player their waiting line to play are huge(unless they corrected this not long ago!)american player isnt the majority of wow player simple truth!
corporative report?are you guys serious?where were those report when obama had to unlock more then 2 billion to help them and we re still in the same mud we were in 2008 but with more dept
the truth is an accountant is specificly hired to make the number say what the investor want to ear.dont sweat it wow is doing good (compared to other game)but america is moving on!
lol for exemple they dont pull out player out of thin air lol.they have so many player their waiting line to play are huge(unless they corrected this not long ago!)american player isnt the majority of wow player simple truth!
Accountants may not be telling the truth, but what they can tell is governed by law. At least they are not as totally baseless as the wild speculation thrown around here. If you have more faith in other numbers, good for you.
Whether WoW is doing good or not is hardly worth debating, if we adopt a comparative approach. If Blizzard is willing to trade the right to WoW for another game, I bet every game producer on earth will try to kill each other just to complete a deal with Blizzard.
It will just go from 4 million western subs gradually down, lower and lower, over a decade or more until it can actaully be considered 'dying'.
I don't think it will be gradually this time.
With AAA MMO's arriving like GW2, SWTOR, TSW, Arche Age, TERA, Firefall, and World of Darkness, all of these taken together, you'll have a larger amount of players that will drop off. A lot of MMO gamers, including WoW players, have merely been waiting for a good, fun allround MMO to arrive.
Just like you saw with EQ when EQ2 and WoW arrived, when EQ lost half of its player base in a fairly short time, I think a sortlike thing will happen with WoW when all those other MMO's arrive.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
It will just go from 4 million western subs gradually down, lower and lower, over a decade or more until it can actaully be considered 'dying'.
I don't think it will be gradually this time.
With AAA MMO's arriving like GW2, SWTOR, TSW, Arche Age, TERA, Firefall, and World of Darkness, all of these taken together, you'll have a larger amount of players that will drop off. A lot of MMO gamers, including WoW players, have merely been waiting for a good, fun allround MMO to arrive.
Just like you saw with EQ when EQ2 and WoW arrived, when EQ lost half of its player base in a fairly short time, I think a sortlike thing will happen with WoW when all those other MMO's arrive.
Yes it will eventually happen, next year if not this, the next again, if not next.
It will also mean good news for us, because we have one more game to choose. I left WoW for over a year, and never have another MMO just as "good" since.
We have seen WoW weathered many AAA titles, the market will keep throwing AAA to DDD titles at WoW until the kingdom falls apart. Point is, how many more failed AAAs before we see a sign of a rising new star?
will it happen before I am too old to play another title? ToR, GW2, yeah I remember WAR and AoC, FF 14. Wish we have better luck this next year.
For the love of Bob will you people please learn to read? WoW has Never had 11 million subs. NEVER. They have had as many as 12.5 million active paying accounts worldwide. A Corporation CANNOT lie about things like that in public statements. The CEO would go to jail. You have no idea how many active accounts they have beyond what they tell you.
Actually, those numbers are a few months old. I agree that they can't just lie about such things, they are a publicly traded company after all, but there co8uld have been more losses since those numbers were reported.
For the love of Bob will you people please learn to read? WoW has Never had 11 million subs. NEVER. They have had as many as 12.5 million active paying accounts worldwide. A Corporation CANNOT lie about things like that in public statements. The CEO would go to jail. You have no idea how many active accounts they have beyond what they tell you.
Actually, those numbers are a few months old. I agree that they can't just lie about such things, they are a publicly traded company after all, but there co8uld have been more losses since those numbers were reported.
Blizzard's latest figures, using the same definition, was 11million. It could by all likely be still sliding, the rate of which no one knows until Blizzard make another annoucement.
Trouble is, Blizzard tend to pick a favourite moment to report, so we are having the dots on each peak, with no idea on where the line drops to, hence never know how bad each drop was. Lucky for them, in the past each height was higher than the past, so what is the next height going to be is anyone's guess.
For the love of Bob will you people please learn to read? WoW has Never had 11 million subs. NEVER. They have had as many as 12.5 million active paying accounts worldwide. A Corporation CANNOT lie about things like that in public statements. The CEO would go to jail. You have no idea how many active accounts they have beyond what they tell you.
Actually, those numbers are a few months old. I agree that they can't just lie about such things, they are a publicly traded company after all, but there co8uld have been more losses since those numbers were reported.
Blizzard's latest figures, using the same definition, was 11million. It could by all likely be still sliding, the rate of which no one knows until Blizzard make another annoucement.
Trouble is, Blizzard tend to pick a favourite moment to report, so we are having the dots on each peak, with no idea on where the line drops to, hence never know how bad each drop was. Lucky for them, in the past each height was higher than the past, so what is the next height going to be is anyone's guess.
But what the CEO failed to tell you was that if a chinese dude logged in and was charged $0.50 (They pay per the hour in China), they consider that to be an "Active Account". So while he's not lying, he's certainly not telling the truth, either.
Blizzard's latest figures, using the same definition, was 11million. It could by all likely be still sliding, the rate of which no one knows until Blizzard make another annoucement.
Trouble is, Blizzard tend to pick a favourite moment to report, so we are having the dots on each peak, with no idea on where the line drops to, hence never know how bad each drop was. Lucky for them, in the past each height was higher than the past, so what is the next height going to be is anyone's guess.
Yeah, but that was 6 months ago, and it had dropped half a million the 6 months before that so 10,5 is a good guess.
But it would be interesting to know how much the average player actually pay since the Chinese players pay by the hour. Of course then there is the cash shop making some Western players paying even more....
For the love of Bob will you people please learn to read? WoW has Never had 11 million subs. NEVER. They have had as many as 12.5 million active paying accounts worldwide. A Corporation CANNOT lie about things like that in public statements. The CEO would go to jail. You have no idea how many active accounts they have beyond what they tell you.
Actually, those numbers are a few months old. I agree that they can't just lie about such things, they are a publicly traded company after all, but there co8uld have been more losses since those numbers were reported.
Blizzard's latest figures, using the same definition, was 11million. It could by all likely be still sliding, the rate of which no one knows until Blizzard make another annoucement.
Trouble is, Blizzard tend to pick a favourite moment to report, so we are having the dots on each peak, with no idea on where the line drops to, hence never know how bad each drop was. Lucky for them, in the past each height was higher than the past, so what is the next height going to be is anyone's guess.
But what the CEO failed to tell you was that if a chinese dude logged in and was charged $0.50 (They pay per the hour in China), they consider that to be an "Active Account". So while he's not lying, he's certainly not telling the truth, either.
It is a matter of definition, and consistent definition allows more comparability over time than paddling the definition every time. They have an announced definition of paid subscription and they stick to it, that is honesty. They never pretend to tell you the figures represent a human being or what not.
Now some in China pay $0.5 for his account, another could have paid $50 per months using services. We do not know. They do not intend to disclose that much, so we can only speculate.
All I know is China is getting rich, iPhones are being swallowed whole by the Chinese youth, and a $15 monthly fee is going to be peanuts to the richer portion of the youth, which counts millions. The potential market for games in China is by leaps and bounds larger than US, which is a dying, poor and saturated market. Last time I read bank reports, online business in China is growing at 100+% a year.
Blizzard's latest figures, using the same definition, was 11million. It could by all likely be still sliding, the rate of which no one knows until Blizzard make another annoucement.
Trouble is, Blizzard tend to pick a favourite moment to report, so we are having the dots on each peak, with no idea on where the line drops to, hence never know how bad each drop was. Lucky for them, in the past each height was higher than the past, so what is the next height going to be is anyone's guess.
Yeah, but that was 6 months ago, and it had dropped half a million the 6 months before that so 10,5 is a good guess.
But it would be interesting to know how much the average player actually pay since the Chinese players pay by the hour. Of course then there is the cash shop making some Western players paying even more....
Agree that is why I say I am in the black until the next Blizzard annoucement. Anyone's guess is as good as mine, so I won't pretend to know more than anyone else.
I don't know how many subs WoW has but I just had to address one point. There are people on this thread claiming that a public company cannot lie on in statements or the CEO would go to jail. You guys are living in a fantasy world even more unbelievable than Wow. Some examples:
1) Bernie Madoff ran the largest ponzi scheme ever for over a decade. He was never caught or even questioned even though he was reported to the SEC. He actually turned himself in.
2) All of the major banks in the US and Europe committed ongoing mortage fraud for years that crated a huge housing bubble. The collapse of the bubble decimated the world economy and the CEOs walked away with hundreds of millions in stolen money.
3) The banking system in the US is insolvent. To prevent this from becoming known, Congress ordered the FASB (accounting regulators) to allow banks to lie about the value of their assets. Specifically, the bad mortgages they hold are still being counted as good.
4) In 2008, the CEO of Bear Stearns appeared on CNBC and stated that his firm was just fine and had adequate capital. The firm collapsed the next day causing a multi month crash in the stock market.
Corruption is so endemic in the US financial sector that the government allowed the banks to collapse the economy.
Either some people have been living under a rock or perhaps, they are completely naive.
With all this going on, do you really believe that the government is going to go after a game company that lies on it's quarterly statements? If you do, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.
I don't know how many subs WoW has but I just had to address one point. There are people on this thread claiming that a public company cannot lie on in statements or the CEO would go to jail. You guys are living in a fantasy world even more unbelievable than Wow. Some examples:
1) Bernie Madoff ran the largest ponzi scheme ever for over a decade. He was never caught or even questioned even though he was reported to the SEC. He actually turned himself in.
2) All of the major banks in the US and Europe committed ongoing mortage fraud for years that crated a huge housing bubble. The collapse of the bubble decimated the world economy and the CEOs walked away with hundreds of millions in stolen money.
3) The banking system in the US is insolvent. To prevent this from becoming known, Congress ordered the FASB (accounting regulators) to allow banks to lie about the value of their assets. Specifically, the bad mortgages they hold are still being counted as good.
4) In 2008, the CEO of Bear Stearns appeared on CNBC and stated that his firm was just fine and had adequate capital. The firm collapsed the next day causing a multi month crash in the stock market.
Corruption is so endemic in the US financial sector that the government allowed the banks to collapse the economy.
Either some people have been living under a rock or perhaps, they are completely naive.
With all this going on, do you really believe that the government is going to go after a game company that lies on it's quarterly statements? If you do, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.
"Everybody lie". G House¨
Yeah, it is possible to lie but it is a lot harder to hide if you loose a lot of income than how many players you have.
I don't think Blizzard is actually lying though. I could see them manipulating the numbers by counting active trial accounts as active accounts (not that I say they do, just that I can imagine it) or something similar but they are very careful about their reputation and if some former employee would leak that they really lie it would hurt them.
Trouble is, Blizzard tend to pick a favourite moment to report, so we are having the dots on each peak, with no idea on where the line drops to, hence never know how bad each drop was. Lucky for them, in the past each height was higher than the past, so what is the next height going to be is anyone's guess.
They picked the end of each quarter so far this year. Not exactly favorite moments. Im sure Blizzard would have loved for the firelands release to be the report point, because they likely got back the 300k they lost q2 for that. How many of those stayed? stay tuned tforthe q3 report.
It will just go from 4 million western subs gradually down, lower and lower, over a decade or more until it can actaully be considered 'dying'.
I don't think it will be gradually this time.
With AAA MMO's arriving like GW2, SWTOR, TSW, Arche Age, TERA, Firefall, and World of Darkness, all of these taken together, you'll have a larger amount of players that will drop off. A lot of MMO gamers, including WoW players, have merely been waiting for a good, fun allround MMO to arrive.
Just like you saw with EQ when EQ2 and WoW arrived, when EQ lost half of its player base in a fairly short time, I think a sortlike thing will happen with WoW when all those other MMO's arrive.
None of those games will have a sequel effect like EQ2 did. for as many customers as WoW had, its likely EQ1 lost as many customers to EQ2 as it did to WoW. Most EQ players aboslutely hated WoW.
Those games will pool from Ex WoW players more than current WoW players. And Rift could be decimated, but that depends on if Trion's planned changes improve the games retnention rate or not.
Those games will pool from Ex WoW players more than current WoW players. And Rift could be decimated, but that depends on if Trion's planned changes improve the games retnention rate or not.
I think you're grossly overestimating the disinterest of WoW gamers in other MMO's, but we'll see when those MMO's come out and the months after that. Until then, any speculation can be valid since that's all they are, speculations and guesses.
Originally posted by teakbois
Originally posted by LisXia
Trouble is, Blizzard tend to pick a favourite moment to report, so we are having the dots on each peak, with no idea on where the line drops to, hence never know how bad each drop was. Lucky for them, in the past each height was higher than the past, so what is the next height going to be is anyone's guess.
They picked the end of each quarter so far this year. Not exactly favorite moments. Im sure Blizzard would have loved for the firelands release to be the report point, because they likely got back the 300k they lost q2 for that. How many of those stayed? stay tuned tforthe q3 report.
Actually, there are a number of activity monitoring tools that can give some indication of trends regarding WoW activity. I doubt that it's only at the most negative moments that Blizzard's figures are reported, just as I doubt that it's only at the peaks that WoW's quarterly figures are reported.
Originally posted by LydarSynn
Either some people have been living under a rock or perhaps, they are completely naive.
With all this going on, do you really believe that the government is going to go after a game company that lies on it's quarterly statements? If you do, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.
I think what people are trying to say is that if some corporations have embezzled stuff and outright committed fraud, that doesn't mean that all corporations are doing it. Just like if some politicians are proven corrupt or bang their secretary or commit adultery all the time, it doesn't mean that all politicians are corrupt and fucking everything wearing a skirt and cheating on their wife all the time.
Just concluding that Blizzard is lying for the simple reason that people don't like their figures is the easy way out and lazy logic.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Those games will pool from Ex WoW players more than current WoW players. And Rift could be decimated, but that depends on if Trion's planned changes improve the games retnention rate or not.
I think you're grossly overestimating the disinterest of WoW gamers in other MMO's, but we'll see when those MMO's come out and the months after that. Until then, any speculation can be valid since that's all they are, speculations and guesses.
There is clearly some interest in SWTOR, but GW2? Not so much. Most WoW players have never heard of TERA or TSW or Arche Age. Because they dont go to sites like this.
Also, its 95% chance right now an expansion hits by end of Q2 next year (its been planned for a while now for q2, and if anything the cata backlash has got them to spin the wheels faster). Blizzcon will surely give the details. If it looks like the game will break out of its stagnant state then people will be much less inclined to try something new
Originally posted by teakbois
Originally posted by LisXia
Trouble is, Blizzard tend to pick a favourite moment to report, so we are having the dots on each peak, with no idea on where the line drops to, hence never know how bad each drop was. Lucky for them, in the past each height was higher than the past, so what is the next height going to be is anyone's guess.
They picked the end of each quarter so far this year. Not exactly favorite moments. Im sure Blizzard would have loved for the firelands release to be the report point, because they likely got back the 300k they lost q2 for that. How many of those stayed? stay tuned tforthe q3 report.
Actually, there are a number of activity monitoring tools that can give some indication of trends regarding WoW activity. I doubt that it's only at the most negative moments that Blizzard's figures are reported, just as I doubt that it's only at the peaks that WoW's quarterly figures are reported.
Im just saying what we know of WoW's sales numbers arent on the fly 'lets post numbers now' reports. They are the quarterly reports that are put out.
There arent any accurate tools to gauge trends that I know of. Ive seen people use xfire numbers and such like that, but when its an EXTREME minority of the population using it its worthless. We know the full picture though, WoW was constant growth up until wotlk, it leveled out some during wrath, slight increase, and Cata was a dud and paying customers have decreased by about 8% since then. this is form the numbers we have been given, and Blizzard is honest enough about the negative numbers that there is little reason to doubt them (they have publicly stated that more people are ex-WoW players than current WoW pkayers for example)
Comments
ah, i remember when Blizzard was the little company that could. Just goes to show you that no matter how beloved you are, if you make it big, people will hate you.
I think thats what it really boils down to. People are mad that Blizzard made it big with WoW and put MMOs on the map which cause everyones favorite little niche genre to become exposed. Its the same thing that happens with big comic book movies, suddenly everyone is a Wolverine fan and the "real" X-men enthusiasts feel pissed off and proclaim it on the interwebs.
thats a misquote -- heres the real quote
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.174642-Only-30-Percent-of-WoW-Players-Get-Past-Level-10?page=1
"Currently, only about 30 percent of our trial players make it past this (level 10) threshold."
EQ2 fan sites
Yeah, Blizzard ( apublicly traded company) is blatantly lying to stockholders, investors, and millions of people who invest in their company.
And you know this because a few of your freinds quit the game.
Get over it, man. Also, if 5-6 million people left WoW, they must have quit playing MMOs altogether because they didn't go any other game - no game has had a spike of 5m users.
This is like me saying "out of 10 of my friends, none of them eat at McDonalds. McDonalds is going out of business."
'WoW is dying'
Technically this is true, but thats like saying after Rift's first month 'Rift is dying' because they have likely reached a high point in subs they will never see again. A 21 year old is technically dying because he will never be any younger than 21. Here is the truth: WoW is not in any danger of death, or life support, in a *very* long time.
Lets take a look at our old friend Everquest. EQ1 had a growth rate just like WoW, constantly growing over a span of 5 years. then two huge titles come out (EQ2 appealed far more to the EQ1 player than SWTOR or GW2 will to the WoW player for obvious reasons). BOOM big drop. 500k, rapidly falling to half that. then steady decline over the next 7 years to about 100k.
So 7 years after a sequel and a game that dwarfs all its competition like the sears tower dwarfs your house, EQ1 had lost 80% of its customers.
Now lets look at WoW. Well take the low end of the range and say 4 million US/EU customers (ignore the other regions for sake of direct comparison to EQ). 7 years from now, 80% less customers = 800k. WoW would *still* be the biggest US/EU game in the history of MMORPGs up until this point. Granted I think the newer games will eclipse that, but so far no game has had sustained subs of more than 500-600k.
And yes, just as there are tons of people who will never play anything but EQ, WoW is filled with these people.
WoW isnt going anywhere. Get used to it.
Oh and more history from EQ: WoW had a bad expansion that did not go ever well with its population. EQ had a disastrous one (GoD). however they recovered from it and the next one was actually quite popular. Just because cata was a let down doesnt mean WoW cant recover from it.
i agree adn as a wow player for 6 yrs i hope your right cata did suck though in many ways. i loved the revamped zones but hated the changes to pallies , tanks and healers with a passion.
The dungeons are a blast to run also but the changes they made especially holy power ewas a mistake holy power sucks arse and i still hate it .
that said the only people who know how many subs wow has or how they are figured is bizzard and they tell there investors that its 11 million i assume they add up money in asia and for every 15 dollars its a month sub but i could be wrong.
That said blizxzard investors make money and wow is easily popular if u dont think they have 11 million subs so what blizzard and most wow players couldnt care less what u think.
that said i believe it cause they sell over a million mounts and charity pets easily every time the sell one.
Even popular products, and special cases, like WoW have a product life-cycle. Everyone who is not suffering from the cognitive dissonance should know that the WoW player-base has declined in the US and Europe, aka the Western market. That does not mean that the total of worldwide subscriptions need to be down a lot. However, if you look at the game in more general terms (including more than just subcriptions), it is pretty clear that the game has reached a decline stage in the product life-cycle.
Blizzard is trying to affect this decline by doing solid business decisions, like expanding to new markets and perhaps also introducing a different payment model also for the Western market. There might be even sharper decline in subs, especially in the West, once both SW:TOR and GW2 launch, but that does not mean that Blizzard is out of options nor that they are ignorant of the fact.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Yes, there has been a decline in western subs. It has not been severe by any stretch and its *very* surprising that it took over 6 years for it to happen.
I do feel its premature to say that this is the start of the big decline, as it is just one bad expansion. If the next expansion blows people away (and Blizzard is capable of doing this), there is a VERY large pool of ex-WoW players that may just come back to see what the buzz is about.
That said, its likely that western subs have peaked, only because of swtor on the horizon (my stance on GW2 is the average WoW player doesnt know enough about it to care and its effect wont really happen til 2013 or 2014. If its good it will have a mor emdoest start than people think but will gradually build and build and build). Outside of the SWTOR relase month I dont think there will be any big declines though (and the swtor dropoff wont be nearly as big as some want to believe). It will just go from 4 million western subs gradually down, lower and lower, over a decade or more until it can actaully be considered 'dying'.
have to agree gw 2 wont affect wow sub base. u can play wow and gw2 easy. As gw 2 isnt a sub game. i think to many gw 2 fans tend to forget that fact.
they think gw2 will still tor players and vice versa when in fact i can sub to tor and buy gw2 play both and enjoy a change from star wars to fantasy mmo when i want.
gw 2 my be huge success the diffrence is i dont think it will affect sub games as i think alot of players will play either tor, gw2 or rift and gw 2 or even wow and gw2 as u can do that.
corporative report?are you guys serious?where were those report when obama had to unlock more then 2 billion to help them and we re still in the same mud we were in 2008 but with more dept
the truth is an accountant is specificly hired to make the number say what the investor want to ear.dont sweat it wow is doing good (compared to other game)but america is moving on!
lol for exemple they dont pull out player out of thin air lol.they have so many player their waiting line to play are huge(unless they corrected this not long ago!)american player isnt the majority of wow player simple truth!
Accountants may not be telling the truth, but what they can tell is governed by law. At least they are not as totally baseless as the wild speculation thrown around here. If you have more faith in other numbers, good for you.
Whether WoW is doing good or not is hardly worth debating, if we adopt a comparative approach. If Blizzard is willing to trade the right to WoW for another game, I bet every game producer on earth will try to kill each other just to complete a deal with Blizzard.
I don't think it will be gradually this time.
With AAA MMO's arriving like GW2, SWTOR, TSW, Arche Age, TERA, Firefall, and World of Darkness, all of these taken together, you'll have a larger amount of players that will drop off. A lot of MMO gamers, including WoW players, have merely been waiting for a good, fun allround MMO to arrive.
Just like you saw with EQ when EQ2 and WoW arrived, when EQ lost half of its player base in a fairly short time, I think a sortlike thing will happen with WoW when all those other MMO's arrive.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Yes it will eventually happen, next year if not this, the next again, if not next.
It will also mean good news for us, because we have one more game to choose. I left WoW for over a year, and never have another MMO just as "good" since.
We have seen WoW weathered many AAA titles, the market will keep throwing AAA to DDD titles at WoW until the kingdom falls apart. Point is, how many more failed AAAs before we see a sign of a rising new star?
will it happen before I am too old to play another title? ToR, GW2, yeah I remember WAR and AoC, FF 14. Wish we have better luck this next year.
Actually, those numbers are a few months old. I agree that they can't just lie about such things, they are a publicly traded company after all, but there co8uld have been more losses since those numbers were reported.
Blizzard's latest figures, using the same definition, was 11million. It could by all likely be still sliding, the rate of which no one knows until Blizzard make another annoucement.
Trouble is, Blizzard tend to pick a favourite moment to report, so we are having the dots on each peak, with no idea on where the line drops to, hence never know how bad each drop was. Lucky for them, in the past each height was higher than the past, so what is the next height going to be is anyone's guess.
hmm lets see successful business running a mmorpg thats widely regarded as the most popular and well known in the world
vs
random internet teenager telling us they are all lying about their profits.
/wave
{mod edit}
Quit overmoderating to the point of stupdity......
Actually, those numbers are a few months old. I agree that they can't just lie about such things, they are a publicly traded company after all, but there co8uld have been more losses since those numbers were reported.
Blizzard's latest figures, using the same definition, was 11million. It could by all likely be still sliding, the rate of which no one knows until Blizzard make another annoucement.
Trouble is, Blizzard tend to pick a favourite moment to report, so we are having the dots on each peak, with no idea on where the line drops to, hence never know how bad each drop was. Lucky for them, in the past each height was higher than the past, so what is the next height going to be is anyone's guess.
But what the CEO failed to tell you was that if a chinese dude logged in and was charged $0.50 (They pay per the hour in China), they consider that to be an "Active Account". So while he's not lying, he's certainly not telling the truth, either.Yeah, but that was 6 months ago, and it had dropped half a million the 6 months before that so 10,5 is a good guess.
But it would be interesting to know how much the average player actually pay since the Chinese players pay by the hour. Of course then there is the cash shop making some Western players paying even more....
It is a matter of definition, and consistent definition allows more comparability over time than paddling the definition every time. They have an announced definition of paid subscription and they stick to it, that is honesty. They never pretend to tell you the figures represent a human being or what not.
Now some in China pay $0.5 for his account, another could have paid $50 per months using services. We do not know. They do not intend to disclose that much, so we can only speculate.
All I know is China is getting rich, iPhones are being swallowed whole by the Chinese youth, and a $15 monthly fee is going to be peanuts to the richer portion of the youth, which counts millions. The potential market for games in China is by leaps and bounds larger than US, which is a dying, poor and saturated market. Last time I read bank reports, online business in China is growing at 100+% a year.
Agree that is why I say I am in the black until the next Blizzard annoucement. Anyone's guess is as good as mine, so I won't pretend to know more than anyone else.
I don't know how many subs WoW has but I just had to address one point. There are people on this thread claiming that a public company cannot lie on in statements or the CEO would go to jail. You guys are living in a fantasy world even more unbelievable than Wow. Some examples:
1) Bernie Madoff ran the largest ponzi scheme ever for over a decade. He was never caught or even questioned even though he was reported to the SEC. He actually turned himself in.
2) All of the major banks in the US and Europe committed ongoing mortage fraud for years that crated a huge housing bubble. The collapse of the bubble decimated the world economy and the CEOs walked away with hundreds of millions in stolen money.
3) The banking system in the US is insolvent. To prevent this from becoming known, Congress ordered the FASB (accounting regulators) to allow banks to lie about the value of their assets. Specifically, the bad mortgages they hold are still being counted as good.
4) In 2008, the CEO of Bear Stearns appeared on CNBC and stated that his firm was just fine and had adequate capital. The firm collapsed the next day causing a multi month crash in the stock market.
Corruption is so endemic in the US financial sector that the government allowed the banks to collapse the economy.
Either some people have been living under a rock or perhaps, they are completely naive.
With all this going on, do you really believe that the government is going to go after a game company that lies on it's quarterly statements? If you do, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.
"Everybody lie". G House¨
Yeah, it is possible to lie but it is a lot harder to hide if you loose a lot of income than how many players you have.
I don't think Blizzard is actually lying though. I could see them manipulating the numbers by counting active trial accounts as active accounts (not that I say they do, just that I can imagine it) or something similar but they are very careful about their reputation and if some former employee would leak that they really lie it would hurt them.
They picked the end of each quarter so far this year. Not exactly favorite moments. Im sure Blizzard would have loved for the firelands release to be the report point, because they likely got back the 300k they lost q2 for that. How many of those stayed? stay tuned tforthe q3 report.
None of those games will have a sequel effect like EQ2 did. for as many customers as WoW had, its likely EQ1 lost as many customers to EQ2 as it did to WoW. Most EQ players aboslutely hated WoW.
Those games will pool from Ex WoW players more than current WoW players. And Rift could be decimated, but that depends on if Trion's planned changes improve the games retnention rate or not.
I think you're grossly overestimating the disinterest of WoW gamers in other MMO's, but we'll see when those MMO's come out and the months after that. Until then, any speculation can be valid since that's all they are, speculations and guesses.
Actually, there are a number of activity monitoring tools that can give some indication of trends regarding WoW activity. I doubt that it's only at the most negative moments that Blizzard's figures are reported, just as I doubt that it's only at the peaks that WoW's quarterly figures are reported.
I think what people are trying to say is that if some corporations have embezzled stuff and outright committed fraud, that doesn't mean that all corporations are doing it. Just like if some politicians are proven corrupt or bang their secretary or commit adultery all the time, it doesn't mean that all politicians are corrupt and fucking everything wearing a skirt and cheating on their wife all the time.
Just concluding that Blizzard is lying for the simple reason that people don't like their figures is the easy way out and lazy logic.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Im just saying what we know of WoW's sales numbers arent on the fly 'lets post numbers now' reports. They are the quarterly reports that are put out.
There arent any accurate tools to gauge trends that I know of. Ive seen people use xfire numbers and such like that, but when its an EXTREME minority of the population using it its worthless. We know the full picture though, WoW was constant growth up until wotlk, it leveled out some during wrath, slight increase, and Cata was a dud and paying customers have decreased by about 8% since then. this is form the numbers we have been given, and Blizzard is honest enough about the negative numbers that there is little reason to doubt them (they have publicly stated that more people are ex-WoW players than current WoW pkayers for example)