When you are the leader of THE interaction genre (mmo), any loss of subscription base is bad. New recruits to the market will automatically assume your product is the best.
If someone wants to play a game because its guaranteed interactive with other people then WoW is the most logical choice. It naturally gobbles up newcomers. Subscription numbers is the greatest single metric of quality for interactive play.
I am not a fan of WoW. I suspect that as the population dwindles that intelligent people will increasingly divide up into games that actually suit their fancy instead of the juggernaut of the unwashed masses.
Im glad to see it fall because it means intelligent people will filter into other games which actually deserve a playerbase, whereas WoW does not. To me WoW deserves to have a male version of the Hello Kitty Demographic.
WoW reached a critical mass of population that basically stunted the growth of the rest of the industry.
And it enjoyed success I think is undeserved from a pure game design perspective. Business considerations like marketing and herd mentality of the consumer propelled it to victory.
One thing I cant quite grasp is telling a population/market about subscribers who speak a different language and play on servers you cant play on.
Begrudgingly I can wrap my mind around europian customers, since many of them speak broken english even if its not their first language...but there is no chance chinese subscribers can do anything to my playing experience. You can play on oceanic/europian if not in right zone.
Including asian foreigners in the sub #s is just padding their stats.
The RELEVENT #s are west only. What was WoW's peak numbers for North America and europe combined? What is it now? That is the population you could theoretically interact with.
I think if you plotted WoWs sub numbers over the past 10 years, for the west only, it would tell a different story than 10 mil ->9.4 mil. WoW has been and is rapidly receding for anyone who can read this.
Arguably ppl of different languages who have a method of communication can be considered a "community". But AFAIK, the asian market does not communicate with the western playerbase. They dont compete against each other for first kills and bragging rights, discuss the game, there is nothing.
They (asian wow players) might as well be on the other side of the universe having lived and died a billion years ago.
The whole point of releasing the sub #s is to say there are ppl online playing this game for you to interact with. Chinese subs are irrelevent for that purpose.
If they found a meaningful way around this then I would concede their "subscriptions" mattered.
I think asia is more herd mentality minded than the west, by a LOT. They have no freedom and community is a much more ingrained social value.
WoW's greatest strength is its critical mass of subscribers following the crowd. WoW's future is as an asian game. Blizzard was obviously smart enough to see this and capitalized on panda bears.
I am not a WoW fan by any means but these post are just pointless. People say every new MMO will be the "WoW killer".... well your messiah hasn't come nor will it until Blizz stops making content for the game or when "Titan" is released.
Well your out of your mind if you really belive wow has 9.6 mil subscribers. Most players are still in china and they have there a pay 2 play per hour system unlike here 15dollar /month.
Blizzard counts those accounts AS FULL SUBSCRIBERS. Now even if 1 played for like 15h and had quitted, he will be counted as subscriber!
Thats how they lie with theyr 9.6mil players. But fools gona believe everything because blizz need to stand with theyr game at the top. I know NOONE of my friends that still play WoW- NOONE. But im anyway in a high educated country- say you play mmos and people start to look down on you, because especially mmos degenerate. But thats another story.
Thats why I dont like to count the Asian markets when talking about WoW...To me the more important number is how many are subbing in NA/EU?......At some point WoW will probably be like the Lineage games where 95% of the playerbase is in Asia.
There is no way Blizzard has 9.6 million players paying $15 a month.
I really wish out of curiosities sake they would release the numbers without including the Chinese players who pay pennies for a couple of hours at a time.
And no, I am not hating, I am a current subscriber for about one more month.
They stated a majority of the lost subs ARE FROM CHINA.
Originally posted by zomard100 Are you happy now? Imagine only how rest of the games sucks with far less players
it all depends how many of those are on your server.
A MMO can be quite healthy when your own server is packed and the rest is empty. For example: EVE has like 150k players, (wild guess that there ar elike 50k original players and the rest alts lol), STILL they are all on 1 servercluster, not divided in servers with a 5k player limit, so that game is fail according to your statement, yet it feels 10000x more populated then any WOW server.
That statement of yours would be valid of those 10 million were all on your server.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Anyone has any links of other games that give you their North American ,Europe ,Asia subscriber numbers. Do they tell you how they calculate that number or even tell you how much each of their servers hold and how much heavy,very heavy full or medium stands for.
If you cannot come up with any why are you coming down on WoW who actually report their figures as opposed to saying so many boxes sold and then shuts up about their actual subs. Their shareholders will not take too kindly to be lied too either so whatever lies that Blizzard makes up is quite easily disproven if any complaint is made .You think their profits are imaginary too by any chance ?
I am always quite taken aback when publically listed companies whose profits and reports can be easily read by all of you seem to be hiding more than those companies that are not obliged to make it public. How is it more transparent when they company does not reveal any mumbers aside from the initial box sales ?
Anyone has any links of other games that give you their North American ,Europe ,Asia subscriber numbers. Do they tell you how they calculate that number or even tell you how much each of their servers hold and how much heavy,very heavy full or medium stands for.
ncsoft used to for Lineage,Lineage 2, City of Heroes
Ncsoft used to give sub counts by region by quarter for a 2 year period
WOW has not commented on their East West ratio in the last 5 years
Of course they won't they don't want to be seen as a failure here in America where trends actually affect memberships, if they start to show they are losing subs then they'll actually lose more. It's part of a strange sociological complex system that is the mmorpg membership cloud.
Well your out of your mind if you really belive wow has 9.6 mil subscribers. Most players are still in china and they have there a pay 2 play per hour system unlike here 15dollar /month.
Blizzard counts those accounts AS FULL SUBSCRIBERS. Now even if 1 played for like 15h and had quitted, he will be counted as subscriber!
Thats how they lie with theyr 9.6mil players. But fools gona believe everything because blizz need to stand with theyr game at the top. I know NOONE of my friends that still play WoW- NOONE. But im anyway in a high educated country- say you play mmos and people start to look down on you, because especially mmos degenerate. But thats another story.
Thats why I dont like to count the Asian markets when talking about WoW...To me the more important number is how many are subbing in NA/EU?......At some point WoW will probably be like the Lineage games where 95% of the playerbase is in Asia.
9.6 million subscribers and yet they needed to introduce cross realm zoning to make the world feel more alive and populated.
Something doesn't quite add up.
Blizz has always, shall we say, taken liberties with their subscriber numbers.
I wonder if it's anything like the 1.7 concurrent members we kept hearing about with SWTOR? LOL
It depends on who you wish to believe.
Do you believe Blizzard, who must publicly report to the SEC, it's Board of Directors and stockholders. After the numbers are audited by one of the top CPA firms in the world.
Well your out of your mind if you really belive wow has 9.6 mil subscribers. Most players are still in china and they have there a pay 2 play per hour system unlike here 15dollar /month.
Blizzard counts those accounts AS FULL SUBSCRIBERS. Now even if 1 played for like 15h and had quitted, he will be counted as subscriber!
Thats how they lie with theyr 9.6mil players. But fools gona believe everything because blizz need to stand with theyr game at the top. I know NOONE of my friends that still play WoW- NOONE. But im anyway in a high educated country- say you play mmos and people start to look down on you, because especially mmos degenerate. But thats another story.
Fun fact: The top rated PvE guild throughout Cataclysm and so far in MoP has been Paragon - a Finnish only guild.
Comments
When you are the leader of THE interaction genre (mmo), any loss of subscription base is bad. New recruits to the market will automatically assume your product is the best.
If someone wants to play a game because its guaranteed interactive with other people then WoW is the most logical choice. It naturally gobbles up newcomers. Subscription numbers is the greatest single metric of quality for interactive play.
I am not a fan of WoW. I suspect that as the population dwindles that intelligent people will increasingly divide up into games that actually suit their fancy instead of the juggernaut of the unwashed masses.
Im glad to see it fall because it means intelligent people will filter into other games which actually deserve a playerbase, whereas WoW does not. To me WoW deserves to have a male version of the Hello Kitty Demographic.
WoW reached a critical mass of population that basically stunted the growth of the rest of the industry.
And it enjoyed success I think is undeserved from a pure game design perspective. Business considerations like marketing and herd mentality of the consumer propelled it to victory.
One thing I cant quite grasp is telling a population/market about subscribers who speak a different language and play on servers you cant play on.
Begrudgingly I can wrap my mind around europian customers, since many of them speak broken english even if its not their first language...but there is no chance chinese subscribers can do anything to my playing experience. You can play on oceanic/europian if not in right zone.
Including asian foreigners in the sub #s is just padding their stats.
The RELEVENT #s are west only. What was WoW's peak numbers for North America and europe combined? What is it now? That is the population you could theoretically interact with.
I think if you plotted WoWs sub numbers over the past 10 years, for the west only, it would tell a different story than 10 mil ->9.4 mil. WoW has been and is rapidly receding for anyone who can read this.
Arguably ppl of different languages who have a method of communication can be considered a "community". But AFAIK, the asian market does not communicate with the western playerbase. They dont compete against each other for first kills and bragging rights, discuss the game, there is nothing.
They (asian wow players) might as well be on the other side of the universe having lived and died a billion years ago.
The whole point of releasing the sub #s is to say there are ppl online playing this game for you to interact with. Chinese subs are irrelevent for that purpose.
If they found a meaningful way around this then I would concede their "subscriptions" mattered.
I think asia is more herd mentality minded than the west, by a LOT. They have no freedom and community is a much more ingrained social value.
WoW's greatest strength is its critical mass of subscribers following the crowd. WoW's future is as an asian game. Blizzard was obviously smart enough to see this and capitalized on panda bears.
Im sorry...what now? What fell? Did I miss something?
If WoW = fallen, god help Rift/GW2/EVE/Every other MMO out there lol
Thats why I dont like to count the Asian markets when talking about WoW...To me the more important number is how many are subbing in NA/EU?......At some point WoW will probably be like the Lineage games where 95% of the playerbase is in Asia.
They stated a majority of the lost subs ARE FROM CHINA.
SOURCE
From two days ago.
So yeah, what ever you are implying, no.
it all depends how many of those are on your server.
A MMO can be quite healthy when your own server is packed and the rest is empty.
For example: EVE has like 150k players, (wild guess that there ar elike 50k original players and the rest alts lol), STILL they are all on 1 servercluster, not divided in servers with a 5k player limit, so that game is fail according to your statement, yet it feels 10000x more populated then any WOW server.
That statement of yours would be valid of those 10 million were all on your server.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Sure, WoW has 9.6m players - and I have 9.6m in each of my bank accounts, honest.
Name an 8 year old game with more than 1 million current subscribers....
yeah that's noone, WoW has 9.6x that :P Sounds like it's doing okay if you ask me.
9.6 million subscribers and yet they needed to introduce cross realm zoning to make the world feel more alive and populated.
Something doesn't quite add up.
Blizz has always, shall we say, taken liberties with their subscriber numbers.
I guess you had better report the fraud to the SEC. They'd be interested in what facts you have to substantiate your allogations.
I could care less. I am one of those so-called 9.6 million.
Just stating the obvious, Blizz takes liberties with the numbers.
QFT, after all companies just love to pay even more tax, and paying tax on imaginary earnings would be pretty stupid after all
Anyone has any links of other games that give you their North American ,Europe ,Asia subscriber numbers. Do they tell you how they calculate that number or even tell you how much each of their servers hold and how much heavy,very heavy full or medium stands for.
If you cannot come up with any why are you coming down on WoW who actually report their figures as opposed to saying so many boxes sold and then shuts up about their actual subs. Their shareholders will not take too kindly to be lied too either so whatever lies that Blizzard makes up is quite easily disproven if any complaint is made .You think their profits are imaginary too by any chance ?
I am always quite taken aback when publically listed companies whose profits and reports can be easily read by all of you seem to be hiding more than those companies that are not obliged to make it public. How is it more transparent when they company does not reveal any mumbers aside from the initial box sales ?
ncsoft used to for Lineage,Lineage 2, City of Heroes
Ncsoft used to give sub counts by region by quarter for a 2 year period
http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/02/21/q4-2007-ncsoft-s-subscription-numbers-and-tabula-rasa-s-financial/
but they stopped giving sub breakdowns when Tabula Rasa bombed
WOW has not commented on their East West ratio in the last 5 years
EQ2 fan sites
Of course they won't they don't want to be seen as a failure here in America where trends actually affect memberships, if they start to show they are losing subs then they'll actually lose more. It's part of a strange sociological complex system that is the mmorpg membership cloud.
It must almost be that way now
I wonder if it's anything like the 1.7 concurrent members we kept hearing about with SWTOR? LOL
It depends on who you wish to believe.
Do you believe Blizzard, who must publicly report to the SEC, it's Board of Directors and stockholders. After the numbers are audited by one of the top CPA firms in the world.
Or do you believe Ghern, the forum guy.
Fun fact: The top rated PvE guild throughout Cataclysm and so far in MoP has been Paragon - a Finnish only guild.