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For the calendar year, Blizzard Entertainment had two top-10 PC games in North America and Europe.
Diablo III was the #1 best-selling PC game at retail, breaking PC game sales records with more than 12 million copies sold worldwide through December 31, 2012, and World of Warcraft®: Mists of Pandaria® was the #3 best-selling PC game at retail.
As of December 31, 2012, Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft remains the #1 subscription-based MMORPG, with more than 9.6 million subscribers.
Please read below and inform yourself before discussing WoW's subscription numbers
World of Warcraft’s Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.
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And over 11 million are dissapointed and vow to never buy a Blizzard product again.
Before ranting at me, I jest.
This looks like a job for....The Riviera Kid!
So Blizzard is fabricating numbers again...this shoe is as old as WoW is.
Any other news?
Why do you care about blizzard's money, it is not like you have any benefits out of their money progress. EA have even more money, want to talk about them maybe? Maybe you will feel better then by buying fifa 14.
People should stop supporting any companies, the game is the important point... atleast on this page.
WOW subscription numbers give a misrepresentation of how many people are truly currently playing due to the way Asian countries track their accounts. I figure about a 3rd of that number might be more accurate for actual current people logging in to play.
Concurrent players (total number of players logged in at any one time) is probably a little over a million, yes about a 3rd of that 9.6 million are pay monthly subscribers this is backed up by MOP sales of 2.7 million in the first week of release that has likey gone up to 3-3.5 million sales by now, also remember those that dont pay monthly also dont need to buy MOP so blizzrad does not need to sell 9.6million copies of MOP to justify their figures.
So we're to believe what... there are over 6 million active subscribers to WoW that didn't buy MoP yet still play, even though the latest content is walled off to them? Please allow me a smidge of skepticism here.
Oderint, dum metuant.
The problem with using xpac sales to judge the subs is problematic because of China. They don't sell the xpac, they get it for free and just buy time cards to access the game in internet cafes. Though now that I think of it I think it would be interesting to know if this works the same way for individuals in China not playing in Internet Cafes but rather in their own homes.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Want to bet millions will buy Heart of the Swarm, and the D3 expansion?
LOL .. so much hate.
D3 is still top 10 on xfire, and certainly way more people are playing it, than something like Eve. Want to be the expansion is going to sell millions?
as long as a game has that many haters, be sure it has even more fans.
you can't live by only having haters. prob is: those haters dont play games, they hate em - eg they have alot of time to spam forums.
players who DO LIKE GAMES actually play them, not as much time for trolling and making up useless stuff like you guys here,
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
In fact, 12M sales is good news. That means they know there is a large market for the expansion, and will invest in it.
You do realize online play doesnt mean being logged into xfire while you are solo farming act 3 inferno right? If that is your definition of online play I really feel sorry for you. Who uses xfire anymore anyway? It's like bragging about having a nice set of sneakers, no one cares about your shoes.
Every game they make will sell millions. That doesn't mean its worth playing or even a good product. I was one of the biggest Blizzard fanboys in the world back during D2 and WC2/3 days, but I feel like they have completely lost track of what made them great.
I will say this, despite my utter disappointment in Blizzard, if the D3 xpac looks good, I'll buy it if not just to get my money's worth out of the original. The D2 xpac greatly improved D2 imo, even though the original was pretty damn good too.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
No there are not 6 million who did not buy the expansions those 6 million got it free becuase of a different play model in that region, what I was trying to show was that western (well monthly sub) players still amount at several millions based on the number of expansion boxes sold.
And that is your opinion, but not mine. I found D3 is more fun than WOW, and D2. It is also highly rated.
If your definition of a "good" product is whether you like it .. well ... there are lots of disagreement.
The only fact is:
1) It sold 12M.
2) It has a good score on metacritics.
Everything else .. is what you like vs what i like.
I have a new player guild. There are a huge number of them who only have up to WOTLK ( vanilla now includes all expansions up to and including WOTLK). WOW has a huge amount of low-level content. You can easily level 6 characters from 1-60 and never do the same quest twice.
The other part is that WOW is the very definition of a casual game. You can log in for 30 minutes every few days and still make progress. I think people on sites like this ( ie, by definition we are very hardcore if we are posting on general MMO webstie) fail to realize how many really REALLY casual players play WOW.
But the fact is the descrepency between current subscribers and MOP sales is China. Probably half of the subscribers are from China, and only the internet cafes have to buy the expansion for each computer. So you may have 300 ´subscribers´ using a single internet cafe that bought 12 copies of MOP.
Ah, so there are/were some 3-odd million non-Chinese based subscribers.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Plus, no one says all the 9.6M players are all old timers with max level characters. A lot of people quit WOW because they play too long and it got boring. May be many are new comers and they don't need MOP yet.
They are different genres, why compare D3 to EvE, why not compare it to Fifa13 or CoD.
Go back and actually read his post.
Many people on this site have absolultely no grasp of reality.
Starcraft Expansion + D3 Expansion will each sell millions... probably 10's of millions combined.
And the next WoW expansion whenever and whatever that may be will sell millions more.
Blizzard isn't going anywhere.
It's not like they are EVER going to release a product and sell less than a few millions copies of it.
Seriously people...
Because Eve was touted as the big success here.
Let's compare it to other games. And i did say top 10 in xfire .. that is in comparison to all online games, right.
D3 is way ahead of FIFA 13 on xfire.
D3 is behind COD4, but ahead of COD BO2 (the newer COD) on xfire.
In terms of sales, BO2 sold 7.4M in its first month.
http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/black-ops-2-sales-down-14-percent-year-on-year-in-u-s/
I think D3 sold 6M in its first week, and 10M in its first 3 months. So i guess they are comparable.
So i guess D3, in terms of sales, and play-time, stacks up well with the best FPS franchise.