This makes no sense what so ever to even have a thread like this because first of all World of Warcraft was boasting for so long that it had 12 million and to even say it is "up" 7.8 million goes against the fact that it lost at least 4 million. The only time a company can be up if they top their highest number of subs and this clearly does not top a boast of 12 million. Not impressed.
ANY game that is almost 10 years old and went back from leveling out (2nd-3rd quarter) to actually GAIN 200K extra subscriptions again is impressive.
Certainly by the fact almost everything else went de facto free to play.
Actually the rise in WoW subs is a slap in the face of all these GARBAGE games that needed to go free to play in order to survive...
These GARBAGE games hardly come up with any decent figures while a 10 year old makes 1 billion dollars per year on paid subscriptions ...
Go figure. Actually I think the game will level off at around 7 million subscriptions for the next few years with all that Hearthstone - movie - World of Dranei talk incoming.
The rest stand at 500K subs or free to play garbage stuff.
In other words: top this first before talking nonsense.
So does this bode well for the new crop of games or poorly?
I suppose you could argue either way, you could say see the sub model is viable therefore, wildstart, ESO will have a chance. You could also argue that these numbers are going up because people don't see what they are looking for on the horizon.
It bodes well. The pool of potential subscribers is much larger then amount of people that subscribe. F2P games generally tick you off - though I will admit that GW2 model is pretty good. They don't gate content by Pay and they are not pay to win. Most F2P games are. Famously in EQ they had a new quest that cost money - it was then that many old time players realized the game had gone pay to win. Pay to win games stink. Sub is the best model by far.
Just amazes me when I see posts like this. WoW will never again be the best. Just like Eve...will be determined by people that like it NOT subs. Some ppl will sub to anything that is popular. People are looking for something different...or haven't you noticed. That, by far, outweighs anything else.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
Originally posted by Mpfive Why do you care so much?:)
Question really is, why do you care so much?:)
This is a World of Warcraft forum, for World of Warcraft players to discuss World of Warcraft news.......and this is World of Warcraft news......not seeing why this is difficult to understand?
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
7.8 million but how many are Chinese? Their subscription model is very different than EU and NA, by the day rather than month.
...and does that make them worthless as players?
It really does annoy me when people make out that just because someone is from Asia and plays on a different model from the subscription format that we use in the West, that somehow makes them worth less than a monthly subscriber?!?
Someone could pay their £9/$15, log on for an hour or two a month only, or someone could play for hours on end every day but paying by the hour, is either of them worth less than the other as a subscriber to the game? Both have played the game within that month, logged on to their account and done something, but one pays one way, one pays another.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
7.8 million but how many are Chinese? Their subscription model is very different than EU and NA, by the day rather than month.
...and does that make them worthless as players?
It really does annoy me when people make out that just because someone is from Asia and plays on a different model from the subscription format that we use in the West, that somehow makes them worth less than a monthly subscriber?!?
Someone could pay their £9/$15, log on for an hour or two a month only, or someone could play for hours on end every day but paying by the hour, is either of them worth less than the other as a subscriber to the game? Both have played the game within that month, logged on to their account and done something, but one pays one way, one pays another.
yes they both play the game but the diffrence is that the chinese pay way less for it about 7-8 is cent per hour meaning they hafto play about 160-170 hours a month to pay about the same amout of money that us player do and ever more for the eu players and they still count as a subscriber even if they got time left on their account even if they havent played for a long time and if i remember correctly they dont have to buy the game and expansions either but still very impressive the amount of subs wow still have but there should clearly be a distinction on the chinese and eu/us subsciber numbers.
yes they both play the game but the diffrence is that the chinese pay way less for it about 7-8 is cent per hour meaning they hafto play about 160-170 hours a month to pay about the same amout of money that us player do and ever more for the eu players and they still count as a subscriber even if they got time left on their account even if they havent played for a long time and if i remember correctly they dont have to buy the game and expansions either but still very impressive the amount of subs wow still have but there should clearly be a distinction on the chinese and eu/us subsciber numbers.
That is the point though, they are disregarded as 'subscribers' because they pay less? Or do they? How are you making the comparison?
If you compare regional national income per capita, a chinese player probably has to spend less than $2/month to compare to someone in the US or Europe spending $15/month to average out what he is spending on the game vs his income. But to me you don't need to go to those extremes as at the end of the day, they pay and they play, where is the difference other than the way that the payment is made?
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
"That is the point though, they are disregarded as 'subscribers' because they pay less? Or do they? How are you making the comparison?"
They should be disregarded absolutely. The idea of a subsciption is that people are willing to pay a set amount of money for access to the game - whether they play or not. The Chinese players aren't doing that. They are not subscribers.
It's just a ruse to up World of Warcrafts numbers and delight fanboys around the world. I would get a chuckle if say Wildstar offered their game for 1 cent an hour to the Chinese and promised a free coffee for every 10 hours played. Then Wildstar could claim more 'subscribers' then WoW. Of course all of them would be Chinese people in it for the coffee..
"That is the point though, they are disregarded as 'subscribers' because they pay less? Or do they? How are you making the comparison?"
They should be disregarded absolutely. The idea of a subsciption is that people are willing to pay a set amount of money for access to the game - whether they play or not. The Chinese players aren't doing that. They are not subscribers.
It's just a ruse to up World of Warcrafts numbers and delight fanboys around the world. I would get a chuckle if say Wildstar offered their game for 1 cent an hour to the Chinese and promised a free coffee for every 10 hours played. Then Wildstar could claim more 'subscribers' then WoW. Of course all of them would be Chinese people in it for the coffee..
Yep, you figured it out. It's all chinese coffee drinkers paying 1 cent an hour that make up all of WoW's subs. All their subs come from China and all their money comes from magic - that's right it just appears out of nowhere because all the subs are in China for almost no money.
"That is the point though, they are disregarded as 'subscribers' because they pay less? Or do they? How are you making the comparison?"
They should be disregarded absolutely. The idea of a subsciption is that people are willing to pay a set amount of money for access to the game - whether they play or not. The Chinese players aren't doing that. They are not subscribers.
It's just a ruse to up World of Warcrafts numbers and delight fanboys around the world. I would get a chuckle if say Wildstar offered their game for 1 cent an hour to the Chinese and promised a free coffee for every 10 hours played. Then Wildstar could claim more 'subscribers' then WoW. Of course all of them would be Chinese people in it for the coffee..
/facepalm
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
"Yep, you figured it out. It's all chinese coffee drinkers paying 1 cent an hour that make up all of WoW's subs. All their subs come from China and all their money comes from magic - that's right it just appears out of nowhere because all the subs are in China for almost no money."
It's around half their subcribers - as they published the numbers in 2010. Of course saying that WoW has 4.0 million US/NA subscribers is less impressive then throwing around the 8 million number - hence the phony numbers. They declare all of this in their statement BTW - the fact that they count these non-subs as subs.
"Yep, you figured it out. It's all chinese coffee drinkers paying 1 cent an hour that make up all of WoW's subs. All their subs come from China and all their money comes from magic - that's right it just appears out of nowhere because all the subs are in China for almost no money."
It's around half their subcribers - as they published the numbers in 2010. Of course saying that WoW has 4.0 million US/NA subscribers is less impressive then throwing around the 8 million number - hence the phony numbers. They declare all of this in their statement BTW - the fact that they count these non-subs as subs.
For a serious China player WoW is very expensive. The moment you play more than 2 hours per day in China, these guys pay more than a western player in view of their income.
Some Chinese guy calculated that if you played WoW 3+ hours a day, you would pay around 4 dollars per month, or (in view of local earnings) around 40 dollars(!) per month ...
So it is no surprise WoW lost mostly in China as almost all other games are free to play and so much cheaper to play.
These posts are so funny in that they don't account for local currency or official paying systems.
The few Chinese who play on Taiwan servers are paying the equivalent of 150 dollars (in view of their wages) on a monthly basis, so be informed next time around.
BtW: WoW still accounts for almost 1 billion dollars revenue per year. A proof the money is there and so are the worldwide players.
-----
tldr: 1 billion dollar revenue PER year, makes WoW the most successful single video game in history and the counter is far from stopping.
Only a single game like GTA5 can reach that number (and ONLY in its first year), all the rest is at a fraction of that amount including LoL, Wildstar and all the rest of the free to play garbage.
They should be disregarded absolutely. The idea of a subsciption is that people are willing to pay a set amount of money for access to the game - whether they play or not. The Chinese players aren't doing that. They are not subscribers.
It's just a ruse to up World of Warcrafts numbers and delight fanboys around the world. I would get a chuckle if say Wildstar offered their game for 1 cent an hour to the Chinese and promised a free coffee for every 10 hours played. Then Wildstar could claim more 'subscribers' then WoW. Of course all of them would be Chinese people in it for the coffee..
That is funny as hell, did you not see yourself actually proving my point in trying to disprove that they are subscribers?
In case you don't see it, concentrate on the line "The idea of a subscription is that people are willing to pay a set amount of money for access to the game" is that not what the Asian players do? They may do it in a different way to us, but it is the same principal overall that they pay a set amount of money for a times access to the game, for us it is the £9/$15/month, for them by the hour, but it is still a set amount for a set amount of time accessing the game?!?!
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
They should be disregarded absolutely. The idea of a subsciption is that people are willing to pay a set amount of money for access to the game - whether they play or not. The Chinese players aren't doing that. They are not subscribers.
It's just a ruse to up World of Warcrafts numbers and delight fanboys around the world. I would get a chuckle if say Wildstar offered their game for 1 cent an hour to the Chinese and promised a free coffee for every 10 hours played. Then Wildstar could claim more 'subscribers' then WoW. Of course all of them would be Chinese people in it for the coffee..
That is funny as hell, did you not see yourself actually proving my point in trying to disprove that they are subscribers?
In case you don't see it, concentrate on the line "The idea of a subscription is that people are willing to pay a set amount of money for access to the game" is that not what the Asian players do? They may do it in a different way to us, but it is the same principal overall that they pay a set amount of money for a times access to the game, for us it is the £9/$15/month, for them by the hour, but it is still a set amount for a set amount of time accessing the game?!?!
As has been calculated... how many western players would be willing to pay 40 dollars a month to play WoW for 3 hours a day ?
On average Chinese players pay MORE in local value with a time card if they play hardcore.
The pay card system is terrible as every minute counts... So these guys are as much players as western ones who pay a monthly fee.
And to the argument of "they only need to log in for a few minutes per month to be counted". Yeah we all know that active WoW players only play for 3 minutes a week ...
Silly hating trolls: 1 billion dollars of yearly WoW revenue crit hits for 1000 between the eyes. If that hurts: grow up.
Just Activision Blizzard reporting to their shareholders. And the metric they are using is the same as they have used since way back - so its an apples with apples.
200k is a tiny number for WoW; OK better up than down but its pretty much noise. With churn the number of people who played in the quarter is probably 10M+. SOE once reported (5th EQ1 anniversary I think it was) that monthly churn in EQ1 was usually around 50%!!! Potentially brand new people every 2 months! Not how it works of course but still.
Asian players - just as valid. Many pay by time card as well. Lots of reports of late have suggested that both are down however as far as WoW is concerned.
Doesn't follow that new launches will be OK. Historic reasons why WoW (and Eve) became what they were and they don't have to change. Way of the future is B2P + DLC imo - e.g. Battlefield's premium membership .
Hmm if memory serves me they were over 10.5 million? I also saw where they joined a couple of servers this past week because of population?? But ya know I do believe wow is a lot better than ESO folks from what I have played in beta that's my opinion.
I think it's hilarious that everyone is waiting with baited breath, for more than 4 years now, for WoW to die.
You haters do know that, all they have to do, when the numbers get low, or when Project Titan is ready, is flip the F2P switch and their subscriber base will just skyrocket. From Vanilla to MoP, the sheer amount of content available is just crazy. And they will be more than capable to get by with their in-game cash shop which they are admittedly pushing a lot in the recent and upcoming patches.
This game will out-live most of the people waiting for it to die. Just saying...
I think a raise in this game means a few things. Other games failed somehow recently. Another is maybe recent patches were actually good. Very small number of it is I bet pre expansion rushing. When you have this many subs they will make a big deal of swings no matter which way it rolls.
"In case you don't see it, concentrate on the line "The idea of a subscription is that people are willing to pay a set amount of money for access to the game" is that not what the Asian players do? They may do it in a different way to us, but it is the same principal overall that they pay a set amount of money for a times access to the game, for us it is the £9/$15/month, for them by the hour, but it is still a set amount for a set amount of time accessing the game?!?!"
Its not the same at all.
You pay per hour in China so the more you play the more you pay. A subscription means you get unlimited access for a fixed amount. The only thing that is common is that they are both paying for the game. But an hourly rental is not a subscription. The big difference is that you can go months without playing and you will pay nothing. Not so for a WoW subscriber.
So no. You are wrong. Its not the same at all. And hourly players should not count. If you went and bought a massage for an hour - would you consider your self a subscriber to a massage service? Of course not.
Comments
ANY game that is almost 10 years old and went back from leveling out (2nd-3rd quarter) to actually GAIN 200K extra subscriptions again is impressive.
Certainly by the fact almost everything else went de facto free to play.
Actually the rise in WoW subs is a slap in the face of all these GARBAGE games that needed to go free to play in order to survive...
These GARBAGE games hardly come up with any decent figures while a 10 year old makes 1 billion dollars per year on paid subscriptions ...
Go figure. Actually I think the game will level off at around 7 million subscriptions for the next few years with all that Hearthstone - movie - World of Dranei talk incoming.
The rest stand at 500K subs or free to play garbage stuff.
In other words: top this first before talking nonsense.
So does this bode well for the new crop of games or poorly?
I suppose you could argue either way, you could say see the sub model is viable therefore, wildstart, ESO will have a chance. You could also argue that these numbers are going up because people don't see what they are looking for on the horizon.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
Question really is, why do you care so much?:)
This is a World of Warcraft forum, for World of Warcraft players to discuss World of Warcraft news.......and this is World of Warcraft news......not seeing why this is difficult to understand?
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
...and does that make them worthless as players?
It really does annoy me when people make out that just because someone is from Asia and plays on a different model from the subscription format that we use in the West, that somehow makes them worth less than a monthly subscriber?!?
Someone could pay their £9/$15, log on for an hour or two a month only, or someone could play for hours on end every day but paying by the hour, is either of them worth less than the other as a subscriber to the game? Both have played the game within that month, logged on to their account and done something, but one pays one way, one pays another.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
yes they both play the game but the diffrence is that the chinese pay way less for it about 7-8 is cent per hour meaning they hafto play about 160-170 hours a month to pay about the same amout of money that us player do and ever more for the eu players and they still count as a subscriber even if they got time left on their account even if they havent played for a long time and if i remember correctly they dont have to buy the game and expansions either but still very impressive the amount of subs wow still have but there should clearly be a distinction on the chinese and eu/us subsciber numbers.
That is the point though, they are disregarded as 'subscribers' because they pay less? Or do they? How are you making the comparison?
If you compare regional national income per capita, a chinese player probably has to spend less than $2/month to compare to someone in the US or Europe spending $15/month to average out what he is spending on the game vs his income. But to me you don't need to go to those extremes as at the end of the day, they pay and they play, where is the difference other than the way that the payment is made?
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I raged a lot about wow it was my first mmo I never levelled far.
never say never I bought it again the whole game and mists of panderia for 30$
good price now I got something to play till ESO.
"That is the point though, they are disregarded as 'subscribers' because they pay less? Or do they? How are you making the comparison?"
They should be disregarded absolutely. The idea of a subsciption is that people are willing to pay a set amount of money for access to the game - whether they play or not. The Chinese players aren't doing that. They are not subscribers.
It's just a ruse to up World of Warcrafts numbers and delight fanboys around the world. I would get a chuckle if say Wildstar offered their game for 1 cent an hour to the Chinese and promised a free coffee for every 10 hours played. Then Wildstar could claim more 'subscribers' then WoW. Of course all of them would be Chinese people in it for the coffee..
Yep, you figured it out. It's all chinese coffee drinkers paying 1 cent an hour that make up all of WoW's subs. All their subs come from China and all their money comes from magic - that's right it just appears out of nowhere because all the subs are in China for almost no money.
/facepalm
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
"Yep, you figured it out. It's all chinese coffee drinkers paying 1 cent an hour that make up all of WoW's subs. All their subs come from China and all their money comes from magic - that's right it just appears out of nowhere because all the subs are in China for almost no money."
It's around half their subcribers - as they published the numbers in 2010. Of course saying that WoW has 4.0 million US/NA subscribers is less impressive then throwing around the 8 million number - hence the phony numbers. They declare all of this in their statement BTW - the fact that they count these non-subs as subs.
For a serious China player WoW is very expensive. The moment you play more than 2 hours per day in China, these guys pay more than a western player in view of their income.
Some Chinese guy calculated that if you played WoW 3+ hours a day, you would pay around 4 dollars per month, or (in view of local earnings) around 40 dollars(!) per month ...
So it is no surprise WoW lost mostly in China as almost all other games are free to play and so much cheaper to play.
These posts are so funny in that they don't account for local currency or official paying systems.
The few Chinese who play on Taiwan servers are paying the equivalent of 150 dollars (in view of their wages) on a monthly basis, so be informed next time around.
BtW: WoW still accounts for almost 1 billion dollars revenue per year. A proof the money is there and so are the worldwide players.
-----
tldr: 1 billion dollar revenue PER year, makes WoW the most successful single video game in history and the counter is far from stopping.
Only a single game like GTA5 can reach that number (and ONLY in its first year), all the rest is at a fraction of that amount including LoL, Wildstar and all the rest of the free to play garbage.
That is funny as hell, did you not see yourself actually proving my point in trying to disprove that they are subscribers?
In case you don't see it, concentrate on the line "The idea of a subscription is that people are willing to pay a set amount of money for access to the game" is that not what the Asian players do? They may do it in a different way to us, but it is the same principal overall that they pay a set amount of money for a times access to the game, for us it is the £9/$15/month, for them by the hour, but it is still a set amount for a set amount of time accessing the game?!?!
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
As has been calculated... how many western players would be willing to pay 40 dollars a month to play WoW for 3 hours a day ?
On average Chinese players pay MORE in local value with a time card if they play hardcore.
The pay card system is terrible as every minute counts... So these guys are as much players as western ones who pay a monthly fee.
And to the argument of "they only need to log in for a few minutes per month to be counted". Yeah we all know that active WoW players only play for 3 minutes a week ...
Silly hating trolls: 1 billion dollars of yearly WoW revenue crit hits for 1000 between the eyes. If that hurts: grow up.
I think it's hilarious that everyone is waiting with baited breath, for more than 4 years now, for WoW to die.
You haters do know that, all they have to do, when the numbers get low, or when Project Titan is ready, is flip the F2P switch and their subscriber base will just skyrocket. From Vanilla to MoP, the sheer amount of content available is just crazy. And they will be more than capable to get by with their in-game cash shop which they are admittedly pushing a lot in the recent and upcoming patches.
This game will out-live most of the people waiting for it to die. Just saying...
This 7.8m must be a fake number, this is a marketing move from Blizzard to get attention back.
Who knows how many of these accounts are bots...
"In case you don't see it, concentrate on the line "The idea of a subscription is that people are willing to pay a set amount of money for access to the game" is that not what the Asian players do? They may do it in a different way to us, but it is the same principal overall that they pay a set amount of money for a times access to the game, for us it is the £9/$15/month, for them by the hour, but it is still a set amount for a set amount of time accessing the game?!?!"
Its not the same at all.
You pay per hour in China so the more you play the more you pay. A subscription means you get unlimited access for a fixed amount. The only thing that is common is that they are both paying for the game. But an hourly rental is not a subscription. The big difference is that you can go months without playing and you will pay nothing. Not so for a WoW subscriber.
So no. You are wrong. Its not the same at all. And hourly players should not count. If you went and bought a massage for an hour - would you consider your self a subscriber to a massage service? Of course not.