It's ALIVE!!! 7.4 MILLION SUBS

Arthasm

I wonder is there any other MMO that had 1 million subscribers for 1 year, every consecutive month...

Kaneth

Originally posted by TiamatRoar

I really shouldn't need to point this out, but it's a pretty blatant sign of success for WoW when WoW can only be determined to be a flop or failure when evaluated relative to itself.

 

ANY other MMO would kill to have 600k subs in the first place, let alone an ADDITIONAL 600k subs for the PRE-release of an expansion.

 

Not that the WoW haters care apparently.  Honestly, yes, WoW is losing subs over time.  Guess what, SO DOES EVERY MMO EVER.  Despite that, most MMOs are lucky to have jumps in subs like WoW does even when they're doing major updates.

 

For one thing, I've seen tons of MMOs have major updates or expansions.  Yet despite these expansions, none of them ever posted some big news item saying "HEY!  Our numbers rose THIS MUCH after we did this expansion!"

 

Yet WoW has a news post about it gaining a ton of subs just for the patch that PREPARES it for its next expansion.  I honestly can't think of any other MMO lately at all that was ever able to brag "YEA!  We had a huge increase in subs/players just becaues of a patch that's preparing our game for our next major content update!"

 

Yet people jump on it all the same and try to find ways to point out how bad WoW is doing.  Are they that insecure about their own MMOs or something?  Maybe they're just jealous that their own MMOs never get to publically say "Lookie at the huge playerbase increase we got from our latest content update!" or something

Your first sentence summed everything up in my mind. 

sportsfan

Originally posted by Yaevindusk

Originally posted by sportsfan

Originally posted by Yaevindusk

Originally posted by OhhPaigey

Originally posted by Nitth

 

---

Originally posted by OhhPaigey
The fact that they can "play" around with 600k+ subs on a game engine that's probably 15 years old, and a game that's 10 years old, that had 1% of the budget that some MMOs have now is enough said.

 

Whether or not you think the game is getting easier, or the game sucks, you have to respect the facts.

And you have to remember, those are just subs for the pre-patch for the expansion.

---

 

The engine not "15 years old", Its been patched frequently.
It does what it does because of design not because of an age constraint.

The game is 10 years old, the game was in development before that.

You're right that the engine can be patched, but old engines like that have clear constraints, and sure you can get around some of them, but it takes 10x as much work compared to a newer engine that these new games run on.

 

The developers confirmed back on Vanilla WoW's beta forums that WoW uses an enhanced version of the Warcraft III engine.  Today, it's likely unrecognizable when compared side by side -- despite it's original differences with it being "enhanced" -- but at it's core it's still the same engine that was patched and even further enhanced with each expansion.  That's the beauty of in-house engines that aren't outsourced -- the creators can do wonders to stretch it out.  Though it does come at a cost of development, research and exponentially increasing the time of development (there seemed to be major issues with WoD's beta which caused it to be pushed back some eight months off of the original goal). 

 

In that light, the base engine is more-so close to 20 years old as a whole.  We're talking even before the Geforce 4 era when it was being developed and going into beta (the engine) itself before that card was even released.  I still remember when they said that they were hoping to get 50,000 subscribers and people were saying it wouldn't even get five thousand.

I would like that people who have no clue about MMO's technical limits declare things out of a clear blue sky...stop posting really.

The Engine is adapted with every new expansion. And not only the engine.

Blizzard clearly explained how they - once again - upped the client server coms of WOW in WOD. Hard to believe but if you would actually Play the thing now, WOW's combat is even MORE responsive than before.

 

Incredible because normally when you up the vectors you loose steam in the execution of your movement. Not so with Blizzard.

They actually upped the avatar graphics and upped the responsiveness of the combat.

So I guess that's the difference between having an MMORPG that brings in 1 billion dollars a year and the ones that have 6 million revenue total as free to play...

the same happened with their old Legacy system of servers. These days realms are connected in REAL TIME without loading screens taking care of world populations and even Mutual economies.

In WOD they will introduce a technique where players enter instances in the open world WITHOUT even realising they are into an instance (all seamlessly AND across servers btw). it will allow them to have open world fights across servers in real time without loading screens...

The possibilities of this newer technique is endless as PvP open world balancing can be done now independant of individual server populations.

No log in changes needs, the player simply logs into HIS server and all the rest is done seamlessly without the player even realising if he is the real open world or an instance loaded into that open world.

So anyone saying that WOW is a 15 year old technical game is ... well politely put ... NOT prepared.

 

 

Curious.  All I said was that everything was -- at the start -- based on an Engine that was made many, many years ago.  No where did I actually say that it is the same engine (as any engine with a change is not the same engine).  In fact, I quite clearly said that if you put them side by side that they would not be recognizable at all.  That they have the expertise with their own engine to add new things with each new expansion.  In fact, what I did say is that the original Engine was an enhanced version of Warcraft III's Editor (something the devs themselves have said), and that is where the base or "core" came from to then further implement new "patches" as someone else mention -- a term used for clarity of the issue. 

 

If your reading comprehension decided to interpret something, then perhaps it's my fault for lack of articulation.  Perhaps for not going into the specifics.

 

Though I guess the game now would still exist if the engine it had when they were making the game didn't.  That is, the core, what was built off of and then improved upon.  New additions, technologies, etc. are irrelevant to technical fact.  This was what was being spoken of in response to what I quote, and not some off-the-side in-depth read.

 

Based on.

Original Core.

Today's Version.

6.0.2.19027(beta).

 

However, not separating -- or perhaps going into speculation with the problems they've been having with beta -- while speaking of this may have been a cause for misinterpretation.  This could have further been exasperated by terminology without caveats (I.E. stating a technical fact without making it obvious or reiterating that looking at two things now will yield a different vision).  Though regardless, I would suggest reading things twice over and looking at the context before posting with information to scenarios that exist only in your head.  I shall endeavor to do the same, as well as articulate better or make said context more clear to people.

As long as you realise that client server coms are often far more important for an MMORPG than a basic engine.

Oddly enough most other MMO's failed big time in this respect.

reeereee

I resubbed because I thought the new character models would be awesome...  boy was that a mistake.

Kuinn

Originally posted by OhhPaigey

What is innovative that they haven't done besides changing the entire game? Innovation is cool and all, but we can see how well "innovative" design got us from GW2, Wildstar and ESO. Let's also remember that when the game released, it was the most innovative game on the market, that's why it still makes over 90 million dollars a month (and that's on the extreme low end). So if you really want to bring up innovation, bring it up about every single game studio, other than Blizzard, because all of their innovative projects in the past 10 years have been, and I'll be blunt, failures, as long as you're talking about subscriptions and a playerbase, anyways.

Originally posted by OhhPaigey

Originally posted by Kuinn

 blah blah

Actually WoW had 8 million subscribers less than 1 year (still during vanilla, no expansions) after it's release. What game can launch and have 8 million subscribers nowadays? And then have the game grow by another 4 million subscribers over 5 years? That's literally unheard of, sure, now you might overhype a game that's B2P and sell a few million copies up front, but the game is DOA a month later and is forced to transition into F2P, or cut it's developers down majorly. And I can't even think of a game that's released, that had such big numbers at the start, and then seen them steadily grow during the following years, now it's the complete opposite.

My point was, when the game released, during it's peak, its budget was probably near the Destiny teams coffee expenses. And still managed to become 500x more successful.

It's easy to say all that about WoW, and bring other games that "failed" on the table, but it's not that simple because WoW was basically the first mmorpg that even brought mmorpgs on the radar of people. Today, when you release a game, there's endless amount of competition, that was not the case back then, most of the competition was unknown for people who started with WoW, and Blizzard had a large fanbase to begin with and not just some unknown studio like it usually is.

 

Not to mention WoW being the first commercially extremely successful mmorpg, and the forefather game for perhaps most mmorpg players of today. It's a big advantage simply for viral marketing purposes for new players even today. I've heard countless times people saying that they are not interested in some new game because of time spent on their "main" game, or all their friends being there, or the community they belong to. WoW has tremendous "home turf" advantage on this regard against many games.

 

I think it's best I repeat at this point, that everyone knows of WoW's success, and I'm not trying to undermine anything that WoW or Blizzard has done, it's just the bigger picture is not so simple as some statistics. The reason I personally went back to WoW many times after I "quit" during Wotlk, was because my place in the guild, community, and the feeling that I'm tossing away so much progress.

 

It IS a good game for what it tries to be, very good actually, but it also launched at perfect time and brought mmorpgs into hands of millions of players that had not even considered such games before, and I think that has a lot to do with WoW's success even today. It's still the biggest sub based mmorpg, and the success story of all times of mmorpgs, but I also think there's so much more reasons to this besides "omg it's so amazing game!".

 

Anyway, garrisons. Looking forward to. Standing by for some reviews :] Might be a time for me to bolster those sub numbers solely on this feature if it's any good.

daltanious

Originally posted by tawess

Would not read to much in to it. 

Population always peeks before an expansion.

 Only time will tell how big the churn will be

Sure they peek, and also sure they drop. Valid for any game, even for F2P crap. I just hope they did not commit to many mistakes this time. Hate no flying, at least for top level whould be learnable. Sure, less programming, but much less fun. Then terrible dumbing down even more with removal of so many spells (no problem with joining few of them that were usable anyway only in 1 combination), zillion of simplifications, then why they care if I want frost bomb with my fire build? They have removed a lot of variations. Now you are frost mage with few spells and just button mash them. Same for fire or arcane. Some classes fortunately were not hit in such terrible maner. To much of bad to mention all here. Wondering how much dumbing is still possible at all, was sure we were at bottom already before expansion.

Well so far with any expansion we have adapted, they did much more good changes/choices then bad. This time however I'm not really sure. I have leveled up with great joy all my 21 alts for both horde and alliance, only 1 remain in Wotlk area .... I already doubt I will get to 100 with all of them.

Besides now i.e. Wotlk 5mans are hard as they should be, but Pandarias are just a mess, c'mon main bosses going down in seconds??? SECONDS??? Stopped to play at all end game in form of 5man with all my 90 alts, but will continue with those still in Wotlk, where fun is now. Regular PVE is ok.

Herzy

Peak is a topmost point.

A peek is a glance or a quick look.

Pique is to upset or excite someone.

Edli

Originally posted by Herzy

Peak is a topmost point.

A peek is a glance or a quick look.

Pique is to upset or excite someone.

You forgot Pick

English language can be so retarded at times. 

Herzy

Originally posted by Edli

Originally posted by Herzy

Peak is a topmost point.

A peek is a glance or a quick look.

Pique is to upset or excite someone.

You forgot Pick

English language can be so retarded at times. 

Pick is not a homonym of the three mentioned.

Edli

Originally posted by Herzy

Pick is not a homonym of the three mentioned.

It sure as hell sounds the same to me, to someone which english language is not the mother language.