What does that have to do with you thinking "most" (your word not mine) of WoW players play for ego instead of playing because they enjoy it?
Then why was so much emphasis put on "server firsts," practically as soon as WotLK came out, which, while still an issue, had never happened as quickly or to the same degree, prior to that?
Why, as soon as people started levelling towards 80, if they weren't at a given point by a given time, they were told to "get with the times," because of the degree to which other people were rushing?
Why was there so much noise in the forums about players arbitrarily deciding who had or had not "earned the right to experience the lore," where the Illidan scripted fight was concerned, at the end of TBC?
I'm not making stuff up. I'm saying things that you don't want to hear. There's a difference. I'm possibly also talking about people who, by some chance, you just happened to somehow avoid, but that doesn't mean that said people were a minority, or even if they were, that they were not vocal.
I don't know why more people were interested in server firsts around the time of WoTLK, but I'm guessing it had something to do with raiding being more accessible than it had been previously, and the population was larger than ever before. When a community of people are doing the same thing and success is measurable, competition occurs naturally. Competition is a part of being human. That doesn't mean most people were driven to play WoW because of their egos or because they had a character flaw. It's a hilariously arrogant assumption that most people who compete in PVE content do so because they lack self-worth or have a need to feed their ego. Out of eight million players, you think that the majority cares about any of that stuff?
In your first post you said that "most" players primarily care about ego stroking. In a later post, you said 5-10% based on 10 years of personal observation. Now you're bringing forum posting up when you already argued that very few players bother to post on forums. In any case, I'm done talking with you as you can't seem to consistently talk about any single point for more than a post. Have a good day.
Originally posted by maji Well, as was to be expected, there'd never be "the wow killer". Over time, the game would just bleed users. New players would be put off by the graphics, existing players would try out other games. Still, 7-8 million users is a number that other games would wish for (exist maybe DOTA 2 or something), especially subscription based games.
Time is the ultimate predator that kills everything human made, including WoW... and of course including the humans themself ;-)
Best post in this thread.
I feel like a lot of people who are so into video games the "no lifers" we call them have just been hit with a dose of reality. They've maybe spent so much time playing games they never realized how old they've gotten or how much of life is going by so quickly.
Once they see all this news about WoW losing millions of subscribers it causes them to panic because at one point WoW had what over 12 million people stable? And everyone playing felt like they had found the perfect place to live life. The entire "no life" phrase pretty much came from WoW addictions. There is a huge panic now because "omg teh best mmo is DYING" and there is nowhere else to go right now.
Sad truth is WoW is still the best place to go if you want to feel like you are playing a massive MMO and with so many people leaving in hordes and nowhere else to go people are just freaking out.
Video games die.
My favorite video game Phantasy Star Online for the Gamecube eventually had its servers shut down and it was pretty depressing all the people I met and knew on that game were gone. But in the end it was just a video game. It happens.
Who cares it was a great game in its prime, at least for what it was. I played up to patch 3.3 from Vanilla and personally think everything after BC was trash but even in its .. highly degraded and sad state, its still better than most of the trash out there, at least as far as themeparks go. I would even play it again it I were not so ...... dismayed by the hatchet job they did on the skill system. over simplistic, I think thats one of the reasons they are losing subs not that the game is old, they just kept placating the younger players and this is the end result.
What's ironic is that if ANY other MMO "fell" to WoW's current number of subs, it would be considered amazingly and unbelievably successful.
"EVE's only got 7.7 million active players now, doubt it will last much longer."
"A little less than 8 million people playing Darkfall now, better shut it down."
"Wakfu just announced they are barely over 7.5 million players. Definitely dying."
See how ridiculous these statements are? For a non-F2P game to have these kind of numbers its nothing but spectacular.
There in red lies the problem with how you are looking at the decline in WoW. You compare it to other MMOs, and as a company that looks for investors it could care less how well its doing compared to the next MMO they only care about how they are doing and if they can get investors.
Next the orange is you assuming that this thread is a doom and gloom thread instead of what it actually is. An analysis of a trend with a possible solution in this case to fix the trend.
Its pretty clear that WoW still makes a ton of money but that is relative to the company. For Blizzard it looks really terrible. Diablo 3 didn't keep enough peoples interest and probably isn't sustaining the amount of projected income they expected to make. Yes it still has 'many' people playing, but compared to how many boxes it sold its player retention is about 25%. Last I heard they had about 3 million different users a week. Out of 12 million boxes thats 25% which is pretty terrible for a game ment to retain more.
And HotS didn't sell worth a mention like Blizzard likes to do. It sold 1.1 million in the first 48 hours but I just spent 20 mins looking for its sales to date and well, I couldn't find anything. Considering Blizzard 9 times out of 10 releases that kind of information tells you that it didn't do well to them. (if someone can prove me wrong ill be happy to admit defeart about how HotS sold)
What this hurts for Blizzard is their investors, not to mention as of current they have no new expansions or games coming out in the for seen future also hurting the chance investors will invest into them. The Hearth Stone TCG might get them some investors but I have not heard much about it since its announcement.
In blue is you answering your own question with your own made up quotes. Everything pertaining to loss of subscribers and subscriber/player numbers is all about the perspective of the company and what the company projected profits for the quarter are suppose to be.
Originally posted by simsalabim77 Only 8 million subs? Shit, may as well just close it down now. Only on this website is a game in trouble when it still has 8 million subs. Get a grip on reality and realize WoW is going to be around for a long time to come with or without you.
In WoW the game is scaled for 10+ million players. Other games are not. So when you want to play some BG, LFG or LFR if the game doesn't have 10+ million players, you're waiting +45 minutes to do those groups. There's not enough players to go around.
When factions boycott specific BGs, for example, it can take 3hrs to get a group. That's how bad it has become without the population.
At the height of WoW's popularity, when it had 12 million players, dungeon queues were almost instant. Had to clean bags before even grouping, or it'll be too late, queues were minutes. Same with BGs filled with people...not bots or 30 multiboxers. Trade chat was jumping with 24/7 ICC raids, even at 3am. Those guys on Oceanic could raid reasonably even.
WoW is a huge game. It has to have millions for it to operate even. Folks aren't understanding this, they're comparing WoW to games that's happy with 500k populations and scaled for that traffic (EvE's a great example, it's servers can't handle the load of 2k players in a zone. To get it to work for the big fleet PR, the devs have to be notified of which zone is going to have a fleet -- in advance -- to optimize it. They optimize it via reducing resources from other nodes, so folks are in 80% TiDi. Could you imagine WoW being operated with Ghostcrawler et al having to be awake at 3am to reroute server resources so X and Y and Z guilds can raid Origimarr???). The scale here the other games don't compare.
call the ambulance, WoW still has more players than all the failed sub based mmos turned f2p combined. Lame post is lame. I just read the title and had enough.
call the ambulance, WoW still has more players than all the failed sub based mmos turned f2p combined. Lame post is lame. I just read the title and had enough.
/facepalm
More players in long queues, because it doesn't have enough players to operate properly.
My sis couldn't complete LFR last night -- in all of 7.7 million players -- couldn't find 4 healers. Folks had to abandon the raid.
call the ambulance, WoW still has more players than all the failed sub based mmos turned f2p combined. Lame post is lame. I just read the title and had enough.
/facepalm
More players in long queues, because it doesn't have enough players to operate properly.
My sis couldn't complete LFR last night -- in all of 7.7 million players -- couldn't find 4 healers. Folks had to abandon the raid.
flawed match making systems dont reflect game population. When an Assassins Creed game launches a lot of people (a lot!) play the multiplayer and the shitty match making from Ubisoft is abysmal and rarely finds a match. WoW's match making could be better as well since they have a lot more people and cross server matching. I have the same issues you mention on both medium, high, and full servers.
While I loved wow for a long while, I just cannot stomach the endless questing now to bother leveling characters up to do what I really enjoy, the dungeons and raiding.
I resubbed at the start of panda and got a panda to northrend and my death knight to level 87... but after 2 to 3 weeks and almost 3 to 400 quests completed in pandaria and I still was not 90, then realizing I had to do these same exact quest lines on druid, shaman, warrior, warlock, paladin... and I was all ready bored to tears just on one character, because I dont care about the lore, or reading quest text or any of that stuff, I just want to group and do heroics.
I absolutely loved Lich King expansion, raided all the way through it. I quit during first week of Cataclysm though I did get several characters to max level (funny how I managed to get to 85 in deepholm on most of my characters yet in pandaria 3 or 4 zones in and still not even 88) in the first weeks during that expansion, that expansion it was not the endless questing, in fact that was quite painless.... what was painful was 3 hours trying to complete 1 dungeon... over and over and over. That caused me to leave the game the first time.
Pandaria dungeons seem better but I cannot put up with doing thousands of quests to get all my characters up to the point of being able to run heroics and raids.
I do not believe there is anything that can be done to make me buy another expansion. I just do not like the design idea that says you have to add endless grinds before you can actually do what you want to do.
How many people actually play WOW get to max level and delete the char just to do the quests again... what is the goal in an MMO? It has always been get to max level and start running dungeons and such, then raid. Maybe if they did an expansion with no level increase and just gear level requirement dungeons, or just add other ways to advance you character without having to endlessly grind stupid quests.
Personally I am kind of looking forward to trying out EQN, I loved EQ1, and now a world with no levels at all, just abilities that you can quest for and gear as well sounds great... options, sandbox, no hand holding get what you want and then do what you want without being required to kill 20 rabbits endlessly just to get to the point where you can actually join the real game (end game). It really does sound good to me right now.
Maybe I am just lazy, but its my time and my money, I just dont feel like running on a hamster wheel after an end level that constantly gets pushed further down the road from to prevent you from progressing for a few weeks per character so they can filch a bit more money in subscriptions.
call the ambulance, WoW still has more players than all the failed sub based mmos turned f2p combined. Lame post is lame. I just read the title and had enough.
/facepalm
More players in long queues, because it doesn't have enough players to operate properly.
My sis couldn't complete LFR last night -- in all of 7.7 million players -- couldn't find 4 healers. Folks had to abandon the raid.
flawed match making systems dont reflect game population. When an Assassins Creed game launches a lot of people (a lot!) play the multiplayer and the shitty match making from Ubisoft is abysmal and rarely finds a match. WoW's match making could be better as well since they have a lot more people and cross server matching. I have the same issues you mention on both medium, high, and full servers.
^ THIS is what is wrong with the trinity ppl...yet we all want it back....right?
You can't stay the king of the hill forever. Wow had an amazing run, and it's now slowly going downhill. I'm sure most games would love 8 million subscribers though.
call the ambulance, WoW still has more players than all the failed sub based mmos turned f2p combined. Lame post is lame. I just read the title and had enough.
/facepalm
More players in long queues, because it doesn't have enough players to operate properly.
My sis couldn't complete LFR last night -- in all of 7.7 million players -- couldn't find 4 healers. Folks had to abandon the raid.
flawed match making systems dont reflect game population. When an Assassins Creed game launches a lot of people (a lot!) play the multiplayer and the shitty match making from Ubisoft is abysmal and rarely finds a match. WoW's match making could be better as well since they have a lot more people and cross server matching. I have the same issues you mention on both medium, high, and full servers.
If there's not enough players to match make to begin with, that's the issue.
You can time this when there's a push (like the BG boycotting, that drove AV queue times to 3hrs).
Match making has to have the players in queue to even match.
^ THIS is what is wrong with the trinity ppl...yet we all want it back....right?
Trinity is fine. Game design and mechanics are not.
Blizzard went too far promoting a model that doesn't work well in 2011+. That tunnel vision is what's holding the game back, not the trinity play style itself.
call the ambulance, WoW still has more players than all the failed sub based mmos turned f2p combined. Lame post is lame. I just read the title and had enough.
/facepalm
More players in long queues, because it doesn't have enough players to operate properly.
My sis couldn't complete LFR last night -- in all of 7.7 million players -- couldn't find 4 healers. Folks had to abandon the raid.
flawed match making systems dont reflect game population. When an Assassins Creed game launches a lot of people (a lot!) play the multiplayer and the shitty match making from Ubisoft is abysmal and rarely finds a match. WoW's match making could be better as well since they have a lot more people and cross server matching. I have the same issues you mention on both medium, high, and full servers.
If there's not enough players to match make to begin with, that's the issue.
You can time this when there's a push (like the BG boycotting, that drove AV queue times to 3hrs).
Match making has to have the players in queue to even match.
I wonder ... when was the last time ... you have been playing WoW ? .... Mid 2006 ?
You see cross server BG's have been in since late 2006, cross server dungeons since early 2009 and ...
cross server open world play with open seamless worlds populated from different servers - without loading screens - are implemented in patch 5.4 right now .... WITH mutual raiding, AH's and Guild recruiting.
So your arguments are really nothing short of a laugh these days for an active WoW player...
Sorry m8 but you are 1 to 6 years late...
Typical MMORPG general talk : running behind everything in the NEWS department.
After patch 5.4 WoW is independant of single realm play (for the AH's, the Guild play , the Raids and open world play) ...so your ideas run behind: you should update your OS.
Oh and one more thing: the connection of these related realms is in auto mode. no one has to do anything: not the players, not even Blizzard: they simply link the realms and the system regroups everything as if they all belong to one giant realm.
I'd put the number of subs significantly lower. The numbers ACTUALLY active in the EU and US zone is most likely a fraction of that. Just go and look how many dead servers there are. Even before I quit (a month before MoP, along with my entire guild) it was hard to put a raid together on the busiest server in Europe.
Blizzard has always inflated their stats. The vast majority of "subscribers" are in Asia, but they aren't really subscribers since in Asia they use a pay-as-you-play credit system. So technically an Asian account is "active" as long as it has more than 0 credit, even if it's not been used in ages.
I'd put the number of subs significantly lower. The numbers ACTUALLY active in the EU and US zone is most likely fraction of that. Just go and look how many dead servers there are...
Blizzard has always inflated their stats. The vast majority of "subscribers" are in Asia, but they aren't really subscribers since in Asia they use a pay-as-you-play credit system. So technically an Asian account is "active" as long as it has more than 0 credit, even if it's not been used in ages.
You don't read do you? "The number of World of Warcraft monthly subscribers has dropped to 7.7 million," Do I need to point out the keys words? The argument you used has no meaning.
It is actually a good thing,gamer's need to start supporting other developer's as Wow is big time over rated and definitely old gen tech that never pushed the genre at all.If people support the lowest end tech ,there will be no push by developers to advance this genre,look at recent Wildstar and even EQN is not pushing any envelopes at least on graphics.
I can't speak for anyone else,but i want my game worlds to come alive and just look more realistic,i do not want to ever again see the kind of textures Blizzard used in Wow,just an awful effort.Tree bark that is a plain brown color with a few lines scribbled through it is not the effort of an expert artist.
So yes we need the gamer's to get out and see other games,they will soon realize that Wow is nothing special and definitely not the kind of effort Blizzard is capable of.ANY developer can make instances and low end graphic/textures,even Indie devs,so Blizzard needs to step up in a LARGE way if they are to ever again warrant that much support.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I wonder ... when was the last time ... you have been playing WoW ? .... Mid 2006 ?You see cross server BG's have been in since late 2006, cross server dungeons since early 2009 and ...cross server open world play with open seamless worlds populated from different servers - without loading screens - are implemented in patch 5.4 right now .... WITH mutual raiding, AH's and Guild recruiting.So your arguments are really nothing short of a laugh these days for an active WoW player...
I'd say since 2009, and even currently, wouldn't you?
I wonder ... when was the last time ... you have been playing WoW ? .... Mid 2006 ?You see cross server BG's have been in since late 2006, cross server dungeons since early 2009 and ...cross server open world play with open seamless worlds populated from different servers - without loading screens - are implemented in patch 5.4 right now .... WITH mutual raiding, AH's and Guild recruiting.So your arguments are really nothing short of a laugh these days for an active WoW player...
I'd say since 2009, and even currently, wouldn't you?
Anymore wrong assumptions?
Then stop insulting my intelligence by stating WOW "suffers" from 7.7 million players.
EVERYTHING is cross server these days. >From BG's to dungeons to Raids.
"After patch 5.4 WoW is independant of single realm play (for the AH's, the Guild play , the Raids and open world play) ...so your ideas run behind: "
The fact even the open world of Azeroth is now cross server and structured within patch 5.4 WOW will be populated from 50K players to 50.000.000 players.
As it is independant of single realm play and pops. And the virtual Realm will act as if it was one Realm.
Launch 5.4: Sep 10th.
A date to be remembered as it will make WOW independant of single realm play through virtual realms (or whatever the term they are using).
All seamless of course and the players won't even notice a thing.
It is actually a good thing,gamer's need to start supporting other developer's as Wow is big time over rated and definitely old gen tech that never pushed the genre at all.If people support the lowest end tech ,there will be no push by developers to advance this genre,look at recent Wildstar and even EQN is not pushing any envelopes at least on graphics.
I can't speak for anyone else,but i want my game worlds to come alive and just look more realistic,i do not want to ever again see the kind of textures Blizzard used in Wow,just an awful effort.Tree bark that is a plain brown color with a few lines scribbled through it is not the effort of an expert artist.
So yes we need the gamer's to get out and see other games,they will soon realize that Wow is nothing special and definitely not the kind of effort Blizzard is capable of.ANY developer can make instances and low end graphic/textures,even Indie devs,so Blizzard needs to step up in a LARGE way if they are to ever again warrant that much support.
Another dude who didn't enter Azeroth in the last 6 years.
I found his earlier posts about "meeting 2 players" ever in the open world of Azeroth very amusing.
Since players are complaining all day long they find too MANY players these days around their grinding grounds...
Perhaps these kind of posters should UPDATE their WOW hater Hard Disks before posting.
As it is quite frankly amusing to read these posts of frustration by uninformed Blizzard trashers.
I wonder ... when was the last time ... you have been playing WoW ? .... Mid 2006 ?You see cross server BG's have been in since late 2006, cross server dungeons since early 2009 and ...cross server open world play with open seamless worlds populated from different servers - without loading screens - are implemented in patch 5.4 right now .... WITH mutual raiding, AH's and Guild recruiting.So your arguments are really nothing short of a laugh these days for an active WoW player...
I'd say since 2009, and even currently, wouldn't you?
Anymore wrong assumptions?
Then stop insulting my intelligence by stating WOW "suffers" from 7.7 million players.
EVERYTHING is cross server these days. >From BG's to dungeons to Raids.
"After patch 5.4 WoW is independant of single realm play (for the AH's, the Guild play , the Raids and open world play) ...so your ideas run behind: "
The fact even the open world of Azeroth is now cross server and structured within patch 5.4 WOW will be populated from 50K players to 50.000.000 players.
As it is independant of single realm play and pops. And the virtual Realm will act as if it was one Realm.
Launch 5.4: Sep 10th.
A date to be remembered as it will make WOW independant of single realm play through virtual realms (or whatever the term they are using).
All seamless of course and the players won't even notice a thing.
The interesting thing is that Guilds will also be able to recruit 'cross server' i can see it revitalising the game to a degree, though i don't think there will be all that many returning players, it will make existing players better able to group/dungeon/raid etc. I would be interested in hearing the evidence supporting claims that the majority of WoW subs are in China etc though, as there has been a fair number of claims also that the Asian playerbase etc has also been the one with the most signficant losses in terms of player numbers, due to them being not that impressed with the whole panda thing and that the majority of the playerbase is currently America's(NA+S)/EU.
It is actually a good thing,gamer's need to start supporting other developer's as Wow is big time over rated and definitely old gen tech that never pushed the genre at all.If people support the lowest end tech ,there will be no push by developers to advance this genre,look at recent Wildstar and even EQN is not pushing any envelopes at least on graphics.
I can't speak for anyone else,but i want my game worlds to come alive and just look more realistic,i do not want to ever again see the kind of textures Blizzard used in Wow,just an awful effort.Tree bark that is a plain brown color with a few lines scribbled through it is not the effort of an expert artist.
So yes we need the gamer's to get out and see other games,they will soon realize that Wow is nothing special and definitely not the kind of effort Blizzard is capable of.ANY developer can make instances and low end graphic/textures,even Indie devs,so Blizzard needs to step up in a LARGE way if they are to ever again warrant that much support.
Another dude who didn't enter Azeroth in the last 6 years.
I found his earlier posts about "meeting 2 players" ever in the open world of Azeroth very amusing.
Since players are complaining all day long they find too MANY players these days around their grinding grounds...
Perhaps these kind of posters should UPDATE their WOW hater Hard Disks before posting.
As it is quite frankly amusing to read these posts of frustration by uninformed Blizzard trashers.
While the graphics have improved 'a bit' they could stand a lot of further improvement, the game does have some of the most dated graphics, so improving the games Graphics would be a good thing, i know that if a game released tomorrow with WoW's graphics, i wouldnt be interested in it, which is probably why i have so little interest now in games like EQN and Wildstar
I wonder ... when was the last time ... you have been playing WoW ? .... Mid 2006 ?You see cross server BG's have been in since late 2006, cross server dungeons since early 2009 and ...cross server open world play with open seamless worlds populated from different servers - without loading screens - are implemented in patch 5.4 right now .... WITH mutual raiding, AH's and Guild recruiting.So your arguments are really nothing short of a laugh these days for an active WoW player...
I'd say since 2009, and even currently, wouldn't you?
Anymore wrong assumptions?
Then stop insulting my intelligence by stating WOW "suffers" from 7.7 million players.
EVERYTHING is cross server these days. >From BG's to dungeons to Raids.
"After patch 5.4 WoW is independant of single realm play (for the AH's, the Guild play , the Raids and open world play) ...so your ideas run behind: "
The fact even the open world of Azeroth is now cross server and structured within patch 5.4 WOW will be populated from 50K players to 50.000.000 players.
As it is independant of single realm play and pops. And the virtual Realm will act as if it was one Realm.
Launch 5.4: Sep 10th.
A date to be remembered as it will make WOW independant of single realm play through virtual realms (or whatever the term they are using).
All seamless of course and the players won't even notice a thing.
The interesting thing is that Guilds will also be able to recruit 'cross server' i can see it revitalising the game to a degree, though i don't think there will be all that many returning players, it will make existing players better able to group/dungeon/raid etc. I would be interested in hearing the evidence supporting claims that the majority of WoW subs are in China etc though, as there has been a fair number of claims also that the Asian playerbase etc has also been the one with the most signficant losses in terms of player numbers, due to them being not that impressed with the whole panda thing and that the majority of the playerbase is currently America's(NA+S)/EU.
The China "problem" is very simple.
WOW players in China play by the MINUTE on time cards (like our cell phones).
Try imagining YOU playing WOW with a time card: 4 minutes to enter a BG, 8 minutes to form a nice Raid group in your Guild, ...
Get the picture? Now enter the Chinese copycat garbage that is ... free to play...
As a matter of fact, it is a miracle WOW has still a few million of addicted players left with F2P going standard in China.
The above is also the reason WOW includes now in game shops as BattleNet is not set up as such in China (other operator).
So China will adapt to a form of F2P while the west will stay on subscriptions.
Another dude who didn't enter Azeroth in the last 6 years.
Let's see your Armory. Anyone can read patch notes, and considering you don't know how the queue system operates, it's nice to verify your "credentials".
Comments
I don't know why more people were interested in server firsts around the time of WoTLK, but I'm guessing it had something to do with raiding being more accessible than it had been previously, and the population was larger than ever before. When a community of people are doing the same thing and success is measurable, competition occurs naturally. Competition is a part of being human. That doesn't mean most people were driven to play WoW because of their egos or because they had a character flaw. It's a hilariously arrogant assumption that most people who compete in PVE content do so because they lack self-worth or have a need to feed their ego. Out of eight million players, you think that the majority cares about any of that stuff?
In your first post you said that "most" players primarily care about ego stroking. In a later post, you said 5-10% based on 10 years of personal observation. Now you're bringing forum posting up when you already argued that very few players bother to post on forums. In any case, I'm done talking with you as you can't seem to consistently talk about any single point for more than a post. Have a good day.
Best post in this thread.
I feel like a lot of people who are so into video games the "no lifers" we call them have just been hit with a dose of reality. They've maybe spent so much time playing games they never realized how old they've gotten or how much of life is going by so quickly.
Once they see all this news about WoW losing millions of subscribers it causes them to panic because at one point WoW had what over 12 million people stable? And everyone playing felt like they had found the perfect place to live life. The entire "no life" phrase pretty much came from WoW addictions. There is a huge panic now because "omg teh best mmo is DYING" and there is nowhere else to go right now.
Sad truth is WoW is still the best place to go if you want to feel like you are playing a massive MMO and with so many people leaving in hordes and nowhere else to go people are just freaking out.
Video games die.
My favorite video game Phantasy Star Online for the Gamecube eventually had its servers shut down and it was pretty depressing all the people I met and knew on that game were gone. But in the end it was just a video game. It happens.
There in red lies the problem with how you are looking at the decline in WoW. You compare it to other MMOs, and as a company that looks for investors it could care less how well its doing compared to the next MMO they only care about how they are doing and if they can get investors.
Next the orange is you assuming that this thread is a doom and gloom thread instead of what it actually is. An analysis of a trend with a possible solution in this case to fix the trend.
Its pretty clear that WoW still makes a ton of money but that is relative to the company. For Blizzard it looks really terrible. Diablo 3 didn't keep enough peoples interest and probably isn't sustaining the amount of projected income they expected to make. Yes it still has 'many' people playing, but compared to how many boxes it sold its player retention is about 25%. Last I heard they had about 3 million different users a week. Out of 12 million boxes thats 25% which is pretty terrible for a game ment to retain more.
And HotS didn't sell worth a mention like Blizzard likes to do. It sold 1.1 million in the first 48 hours but I just spent 20 mins looking for its sales to date and well, I couldn't find anything. Considering Blizzard 9 times out of 10 releases that kind of information tells you that it didn't do well to them. (if someone can prove me wrong ill be happy to admit defeart about how HotS sold)
What this hurts for Blizzard is their investors, not to mention as of current they have no new expansions or games coming out in the for seen future also hurting the chance investors will invest into them. The Hearth Stone TCG might get them some investors but I have not heard much about it since its announcement.
In blue is you answering your own question with your own made up quotes. Everything pertaining to loss of subscribers and subscriber/player numbers is all about the perspective of the company and what the company projected profits for the quarter are suppose to be.
In WoW the game is scaled for 10+ million players. Other games are not. So when you want to play some BG, LFG or LFR if the game doesn't have 10+ million players, you're waiting +45 minutes to do those groups. There's not enough players to go around.
When factions boycott specific BGs, for example, it can take 3hrs to get a group. That's how bad it has become without the population.
At the height of WoW's popularity, when it had 12 million players, dungeon queues were almost instant. Had to clean bags before even grouping, or it'll be too late, queues were
minutes. Same with BGs filled with people...not bots or 30 multiboxers. Trade chat was jumping with 24/7 ICC raids, even at 3am. Those guys on Oceanic could raid reasonably even.
WoW is a huge game. It has to have millions for it to operate even. Folks aren't understanding this, they're comparing WoW to games that's happy with 500k populations and scaled for that traffic (EvE's a great example, it's servers can't handle the load of 2k players in a zone. To get it to work for the big fleet PR, the devs have to be notified of which zone is going to have a fleet -- in advance -- to optimize it. They optimize it via reducing resources from other nodes, so folks are in 80% TiDi. Could you imagine WoW being operated with Ghostcrawler et al having to be awake at 3am to reroute server resources so X and Y and Z guilds can raid Origimarr???). The scale here the other games don't compare.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
call the ambulance, WoW still has more players than all the failed sub based mmos turned f2p combined. Lame post is lame. I just read the title and had enough.
/facepalm
More players in long queues, because it doesn't have enough players to operate properly.
My sis couldn't complete LFR last night -- in all of 7.7 million players -- couldn't find 4 healers. Folks had to abandon the raid.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
flawed match making systems dont reflect game population. When an Assassins Creed game launches a lot of people (a lot!) play the multiplayer and the shitty match making from Ubisoft is abysmal and rarely finds a match. WoW's match making could be better as well since they have a lot more people and cross server matching. I have the same issues you mention on both medium, high, and full servers.
While I loved wow for a long while, I just cannot stomach the endless questing now to bother leveling characters up to do what I really enjoy, the dungeons and raiding.
I resubbed at the start of panda and got a panda to northrend and my death knight to level 87... but after 2 to 3 weeks and almost 3 to 400 quests completed in pandaria and I still was not 90, then realizing I had to do these same exact quest lines on druid, shaman, warrior, warlock, paladin... and I was all ready bored to tears just on one character, because I dont care about the lore, or reading quest text or any of that stuff, I just want to group and do heroics.
I absolutely loved Lich King expansion, raided all the way through it. I quit during first week of Cataclysm though I did get several characters to max level (funny how I managed to get to 85 in deepholm on most of my characters yet in pandaria 3 or 4 zones in and still not even 88) in the first weeks during that expansion, that expansion it was not the endless questing, in fact that was quite painless.... what was painful was 3 hours trying to complete 1 dungeon... over and over and over. That caused me to leave the game the first time.
Pandaria dungeons seem better but I cannot put up with doing thousands of quests to get all my characters up to the point of being able to run heroics and raids.
I do not believe there is anything that can be done to make me buy another expansion. I just do not like the design idea that says you have to add endless grinds before you can actually do what you want to do.
How many people actually play WOW get to max level and delete the char just to do the quests again... what is the goal in an MMO? It has always been get to max level and start running dungeons and such, then raid. Maybe if they did an expansion with no level increase and just gear level requirement dungeons, or just add other ways to advance you character without having to endlessly grind stupid quests.
Personally I am kind of looking forward to trying out EQN, I loved EQ1, and now a world with no levels at all, just abilities that you can quest for and gear as well sounds great... options, sandbox, no hand holding get what you want and then do what you want without being required to kill 20 rabbits endlessly just to get to the point where you can actually join the real game (end game). It really does sound good to me right now.
Maybe I am just lazy, but its my time and my money, I just dont feel like running on a hamster wheel after an end level that constantly gets pushed further down the road from to prevent you from progressing for a few weeks per character so they can filch a bit more money in subscriptions.
This is kinda akin to those posts you see by Leftist telling us all FOX NEWS is dead!
Wow will have another expansion or two and remain relevant for 5-10 more years...WoW is far far from dead or dying its just old.
They can do nothing to Wow from this point on and it will remain relevant and successful for years and years.
^ THIS is what is wrong with the trinity ppl...yet we all want it back....right?
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
If there's not enough players to match make to begin with, that's the issue.
You can time this when there's a push (like the BG boycotting, that drove AV queue times to 3hrs).
Match making has to have the players in queue to even match.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
Trinity is fine. Game design and mechanics are not.
Blizzard went too far promoting a model that doesn't work well in 2011+. That tunnel vision is what's holding the game back, not the trinity play style itself.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
I wonder ... when was the last time ... you have been playing WoW ? .... Mid 2006 ?
You see cross server BG's have been in since late 2006, cross server dungeons since early 2009 and ...
cross server open world play with open seamless worlds populated from different servers - without loading screens - are implemented in patch 5.4 right now .... WITH mutual raiding, AH's and Guild recruiting.
So your arguments are really nothing short of a laugh these days for an active WoW player...
Sorry m8 but you are 1 to 6 years late...
Typical MMORPG general talk : running behind everything in the NEWS department.
After patch 5.4 WoW is independant of single realm play (for the AH's, the Guild play , the Raids and open world play) ...so your ideas run behind: you should update your OS.
Oh and one more thing: the connection of these related realms is in auto mode. no one has to do anything: not the players, not even Blizzard: they simply link the realms and the system regroups everything as if they all belong to one giant realm.
I'd put the number of subs significantly lower. The numbers ACTUALLY active in the EU and US zone is most likely a fraction of that. Just go and look how many dead servers there are. Even before I quit (a month before MoP, along with my entire guild) it was hard to put a raid together on the busiest server in Europe.
Blizzard has always inflated their stats. The vast majority of "subscribers" are in Asia, but they aren't really subscribers since in Asia they use a pay-as-you-play credit system. So technically an Asian account is "active" as long as it has more than 0 credit, even if it's not been used in ages.
Star Citizen – The Extinction Level Event
4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.
http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/
Enjoy and know the truth always comes to light!
It is actually a good thing,gamer's need to start supporting other developer's as Wow is big time over rated and definitely old gen tech that never pushed the genre at all.If people support the lowest end tech ,there will be no push by developers to advance this genre,look at recent Wildstar and even EQN is not pushing any envelopes at least on graphics.
I can't speak for anyone else,but i want my game worlds to come alive and just look more realistic,i do not want to ever again see the kind of textures Blizzard used in Wow,just an awful effort.Tree bark that is a plain brown color with a few lines scribbled through it is not the effort of an expert artist.
So yes we need the gamer's to get out and see other games,they will soon realize that Wow is nothing special and definitely not the kind of effort Blizzard is capable of.ANY developer can make instances and low end graphic/textures,even Indie devs,so Blizzard needs to step up in a LARGE way if they are to ever again warrant that much support.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I'd say since 2009, and even currently, wouldn't you?
Anymore wrong assumptions?
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
Then stop insulting my intelligence by stating WOW "suffers" from 7.7 million players.
EVERYTHING is cross server these days. >From BG's to dungeons to Raids.
"After patch 5.4 WoW is independant of single realm play (for the AH's, the Guild play , the Raids and open world play) ...so your ideas run behind:
"
The fact even the open world of Azeroth is now cross server and structured within patch 5.4 WOW will be populated from 50K players to 50.000.000 players.
As it is independant of single realm play and pops. And the virtual Realm will act as if it was one Realm.
Launch 5.4: Sep 10th.
A date to be remembered as it will make WOW independant of single realm play through virtual realms (or whatever the term they are using).
All seamless of course and the players won't even notice a thing.
Another dude who didn't enter Azeroth in the last 6 years.
I found his earlier posts about "meeting 2 players" ever in the open world of Azeroth very amusing.
Since players are complaining all day long they find too MANY players these days around their grinding grounds...
Perhaps these kind of posters should UPDATE their WOW hater Hard Disks before posting.
As it is quite frankly amusing to read these posts of frustration by uninformed Blizzard trashers.
The interesting thing is that Guilds will also be able to recruit 'cross server' i can see it revitalising the game to a degree, though i don't think there will be all that many returning players, it will make existing players better able to group/dungeon/raid etc. I would be interested in hearing the evidence supporting claims that the majority of WoW subs are in China etc though, as there has been a fair number of claims also that the Asian playerbase etc has also been the one with the most signficant losses in terms of player numbers, due to them being not that impressed with the whole panda thing and that the majority of the playerbase is currently America's(NA+S)/EU.
While the graphics have improved 'a bit' they could stand a lot of further improvement, the game does have some of the most dated graphics, so improving the games Graphics would be a good thing, i know that if a game released tomorrow with WoW's graphics, i wouldnt be interested in it, which is probably why i have so little interest now in games like EQN and Wildstar
The China "problem" is very simple.
WOW players in China play by the MINUTE on time cards (like our cell phones).
Try imagining YOU playing WOW with a time card: 4 minutes to enter a BG, 8 minutes to form a nice Raid group in your Guild, ...
Get the picture? Now enter the Chinese copycat garbage that is ... free to play...
As a matter of fact, it is a miracle WOW has still a few million of addicted players left with F2P going standard in China.
The above is also the reason WOW includes now in game shops as BattleNet is not set up as such in China (other operator).
So China will adapt to a form of F2P while the west will stay on subscriptions.
Let's see your Armory. Anyone can read patch notes, and considering you don't know how the queue system operates, it's nice to verify your "credentials".
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.