Wise decision. As the number gets lower and lower, people will be less interested in sticking around investing time into their characters. This will avoid the panic mode that would likely have occurred as the number got down to the million or so mark.
You think numbers matter more than people they know still in the game? Who gives a crap about your characters if the people you like being around are not there. If your premise was true then no one would play Eve.
What most of you don't know is that most of that number are players in Asia. China is typically 1 expansion behind the west because of the time it takes to censor the Chinese version. Blizzard stopped releasing breakdowns of subscriber numbers a long time ago. The last one I remember reading in 2009 said that 60% of its subscribers were in China and that 40% of all accounts didn't even have any expansions activated (ie, bank alts, recruit-a-friend mount alts, etc).
I wouldn't either it doesn't serve any purpose to the community other than providing troll food. People either play or don't play a game, I've never played a game based on how many other people are or are not playing.
I wouldn't either it doesn't serve any purpose to the community other than providing troll food. People either play or don't play a game, I've never played a game based on how many other people are or are not playing.
That's what Enron said when they were asked to clarify their internal financial situation.
I wouldn't either it doesn't serve any purpose to the community other than providing troll food. People either play or don't play a game, I've never played a game based on how many other people are or are not playing.
really? I thought i am the only one who does that (since I play solo).
Don't some here play games for "the community"? You can't have one without enough people, can you?
I wouldn't either it doesn't serve any purpose to the community other than providing troll food. People either play or don't play a game, I've never played a game based on how many other people are or are not playing.
really? I thought i am the only one who does that (since I play solo).
Don't some here play games for "the community"? You can't have one without enough people, can you?
It doesn't really take very many people to have a community.
"1. a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage."
I wouldn't either it doesn't serve any purpose to the community other than providing troll food. People either play or don't play a game, I've never played a game based on how many other people are or are not playing.
really? I thought i am the only one who does that (since I play solo).
Don't some here play games for "the community"? You can't have one without enough people, can you?
It doesn't really take very many people to have a community.
"1. a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage."
The key words are "any size".
including sizes less than 5 million, all the way down to zero. amiright?
I wouldn't either it doesn't serve any purpose to the community other than providing troll food. People either play or don't play a game, I've never played a game based on how many other people are or are not playing.
really? I thought i am the only one who does that (since I play solo).
Don't some here play games for "the community"? You can't have one without enough people, can you?
It doesn't really take very many people to have a community.
"1. a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage."
The key words are "any size".
including sizes less than 5 million, all the way down to zero. amiright?
Well...technically down to two, but I would say that "group" should reasonably suggest 10+ people. Needless to say 100+ people can definitely form a community.
There is nothing wrong with WoW. WoW's imitation is not on the game itself. WoW decline could and likely already has taken development money out of the genre. Now indie games are all that's left for MMORPG in the traditional sense.
Perfectly natural decision, with current sub number trends; no idea why people try to make big deal out of it.
Because people don't like it when you take information away from them that they once had. Information is power. That power used to be given to the people, but now Blizzard wants to hold it for themselves. The declining sub rate doesn't look nearly as bad as the decision to try to obfuscate the declining sub rate. Now it just looks like they have something they want to hide, and that makes it harder for people to trust them when Blizzard doesn't trust the people.
What most of you don't know is that most of that number are players in Asia. China is typically 1 expansion behind the west because of the time it takes to censor the Chinese version. Blizzard stopped releasing breakdowns of subscriber numbers a long time ago. The last one I remember reading in 2009 said that 60% of its subscribers were in China and that 40% of all accounts didn't even have any expansions activated (ie, bank alts, recruit-a-friend mount alts, etc).
WoD released worldwide; EU, US ... China everywhere. No future uptick from a WoD China release.
Perfectly natural decision, with current sub number trends; no idea why people try to make big deal out of it.
Because people don't like it when you take information away from them that they once had. Information is power. That power used to be given to the people, but now Blizzard wants to hold it for themselves. The declining sub rate doesn't look nearly as bad as the decision to try to obfuscate the declining sub rate. Now it just looks like they have something they want to hide, and that makes it harder for people to trust them when Blizzard doesn't trust the people.
Agree and agree.
If the sub number at the end of October was "about 5.5m" then being able to announce "around 5m" say at the end of the year would have been huge imo.
Subs lag activity - and many people are talking about servers being "dead" pointing to future sub drops. And longer term subscribers probably had 3 or 6 month subs; those cancellations would take a little while to kick in.
Perfectly natural decision, with current sub number trends; no idea why people try to make big deal out of it.
Yep Microsoft have decided to not give out any sales numbers for xbox 1 anymore too.
I think wow was the only mmo that gave out this kind of information and were punished for it, even though it has more subs than any other mmo that exists by a huge margin.
Perfectly natural decision, with current sub number trends; no idea why people try to make big deal out of it.
Because people don't like it when you take information away from them that they once had. Information is power. That power used to be given to the people, but now Blizzard wants to hold it for themselves. The declining sub rate doesn't look nearly as bad as the decision to try to obfuscate the declining sub rate. Now it just looks like they have something they want to hide, and that makes it harder for people to trust them when Blizzard doesn't trust the people.
/Facepalm.
It's not power it's a useless marketing statistic. They will replace it with another useless marketing statistic. People will argue over the new statistic just the way they argued over the old statistic. It will resolve nothing of course, as it always has.
Information is very much power. It's what empowers people to make educated decisions. Generally speaking more information is always going to be better than less information.
Information is always pertinent to someone. There is no such thing as useless information; it's just up to the individual person to drown out the noise of information that doesn't assist them. To suggest that less information is better makes the assumption that nobody cares about or benefits from that information, which is patently false. I'm not going to defend the mindstate of leaving an MMO because of a declining playerbase, but that is an individual's prerogative. It isn't really my place to say that's not valid, and it's not Blizzard's place either.
Are these companies still required to post quarterly revenue per game? I know NCSoft does a really good job breaking down their quarterly revenue by product, which is really informative - in many cases more telling than subscriber numbers.
Listed companies are required to post revenue, and they most likely do it by product. So yeah we will still see how much wow is making but no idea how many subs.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Ugh This should be a standard Internet Forum form pre-fil.
Everyone uses these numbers to justify some agenda. Unless you are financially invested in Blizzard, what do you really care about?
So you play the game? Good! Then you can rest assured that WoW will be around for years to come and will retain one of the healthiest overall populations in the genre. (most likley)
Do you not play WoW? Good! this thread is of no use to you whatsoever.
You are trying to bring logic to the table. Please stop.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Are these companies still required to post quarterly revenue per game? I know NCSoft does a really good job breaking down their quarterly revenue by product, which is really informative - in many cases more telling than subscriber numbers.
Listed companies are required to post revenue, and they most likely do it by product. So yeah we will still see how much wow is making but no idea how many subs.
NCSoft do but I don't think they have to - - although fiscal rules do vary by country / region. Usually a company will only have to report a product's revenue if it forms a significant part of the revenue stream - to allow investors to make reasoned decisions about risk. So whether we see any future revenue reports for WoW will (I believe) depend on how well WoW does in Q4 vs. how well Activision Blizzard does.
Ugh This should be a standard Internet Forum form pre-fil.
Everyone uses these numbers to justify some agenda. Unless you are financially invested in Blizzard, what do you really care about?
So you play the game? Good! Then you can rest assured that WoW will be around for years to come and will retain one of the healthiest overall populations in the genre. (most likley)
Do you not play WoW? Good! this thread is of no use to you whatsoever.
You are trying to bring logic to the table. Please stop.
Single player game - sure.
People on the official forums want to know though - so subscribers by definition.
And when other posters ask why it matters their answer is along the lines of: my server is dead, without people it is not an mmo, I don't pay to play a single player game.
Comments
Yes! This means wow will be dead in 3 more years and we can finally have our genre back from the casuals and themeparkers.
Sure, themepark style traditional MMORPGs are probably declining ... but why would the genre go back to even older ideas?
Its an entirely different genre.
Heck, people like you want to call counterstrike an MMO.
China is typically 1 expansion behind the west because of the time it takes to censor the Chinese version.
Blizzard stopped releasing breakdowns of subscriber numbers a long time ago.
The last one I remember reading in 2009 said that 60% of its subscribers were in China and that 40% of all accounts didn't even have any expansions activated (ie, bank alts, recruit-a-friend mount alts, etc).
Don't some here play games for "the community"? You can't have one without enough people, can you?
It doesn't really take very many people to have a community.
"1. a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage."
The key words are "any size".
Well...technically down to two, but I would say that "group" should reasonably suggest 10+ people. Needless to say 100+ people can definitely form a community.
Because people don't like it when you take information away from them that they once had. Information is power. That power used to be given to the people, but now Blizzard wants to hold it for themselves. The declining sub rate doesn't look nearly as bad as the decision to try to obfuscate the declining sub rate. Now it just looks like they have something they want to hide, and that makes it harder for people to trust them when Blizzard doesn't trust the people.
Agree and agree.
If the sub number at the end of October was "about 5.5m" then being able to announce "around 5m" say at the end of the year would have been huge imo.
Subs lag activity - and many people are talking about servers being "dead" pointing to future sub drops. And longer term subscribers probably had 3 or 6 month subs; those cancellations would take a little while to kick in.
Yep Microsoft have decided to not give out any sales numbers for xbox 1 anymore too.
I think wow was the only mmo that gave out this kind of information and were punished for it, even though it has more subs than any other mmo that exists by a huge margin.
Information is very much power. It's what empowers people to make educated decisions. Generally speaking more information is always going to be better than less information.
Information is always pertinent to someone. There is no such thing as useless information; it's just up to the individual person to drown out the noise of information that doesn't assist them. To suggest that less information is better makes the assumption that nobody cares about or benefits from that information, which is patently false. I'm not going to defend the mindstate of leaving an MMO because of a declining playerbase, but that is an individual's prerogative. It isn't really my place to say that's not valid, and it's not Blizzard's place either.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
People on the official forums want to know though - so subscribers by definition.
And when other posters ask why it matters their answer is along the lines of: my server is dead, without people it is not an mmo, I don't pay to play a single player game.