Originally posted by Quingu they have arround 2.5 mill on NA and europe, rest is asia, thats why blizzard can brag about 9 millions, but look if we gonna compare with other asia mmo's the wow 9 millions is nothing there is mmo's in asia with over 20 million subscribers, anyway WOW decline on USA servers is huge.
I have not read all replies to this post as, to be honest, it would bore me to death, but this caught my eye!
I would like to know where your solid proof for this statement comes from and please don't tell me that it is from 'warcraftrealms' alone as we all know that the figures on there are rough at best and;
Rollie notes that WoWs active player counts are still higher than they were before TBCs release. As for why numbers are dropping now, he speculates, it is only natural. There is a very noticeable spike when The Burning Crusade came out As more and more people have gotten over the euphoria of the new content, they are settling back into their normal play routines, and thus the nightly averages are really correcting back to the norm.
Please note "higher than before TBC's release" and the use of the word 'Speculate.'
So basically it is not a 'dramatic' drop in overall players, it is a rest back to the norm after the spike of the expansion.
Yes, WoW will drop off eventually, it is only natural as new games are released and people find their niche within them, but as for an impending disaster, i will bow to the opinion of anyone that has some SOLID proof!
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
WoW decline will be 2009. At the moment, WoW still has a relatively high instake of new players, and the expansion will get those people tired of BC resubscribing. I don't think the decline will be very dramatic either, unless it gets quality opposition. (whether in West or Asia)
WoW is going to of course eventually get a decline in players because this was "THE GAME" for anybody who liked mmo's. It is going to decline because all of those hard core gamers will go to it and race up to max lvl with 5 + characters . They then get bored and then go to spread the word that WoW's endgame is crap. That is how wow gets its bad pub. and becuase some people flat out dont like it.
all they need is some content updates.......MAJOR ones.
Year to year (which is what the business world will look at) are up. They had more online in 10/2007, than 10/2006. If you look at that chart, the numbers peaked in 1/2007 (hmmm ... what happens in December?). They declined again the following months, but numbers are still ahead of year ago numbers.
Guess what will happen in January? Yup, they'll peak again. With places offering the game box for $4.99 on Black Friday, there will be plenty of copies under trees on 12/25.
Well I won't be leaving WoW anytime soon. It has been a great game that helped fill the void when Star Wars Galaxies committed suicide. Combined with EVE Online, I have my Fantasy/SciFi fix for years to come.
until new xpack blizzard will not be releasing new subscriptions numbers to hide how many players they are losing, Most wow players very tired of game and the poor updates since tbc they only got one or two free content updates that didn't bring nothing new same old same old.
Let's see. WoW could decline 90% and still have double the number of subscriptions of any other North American MMORPG currently in play, or that has ever been in play.
Some people just cannot seem to get past someone OTHER than themselves being successfull. Without their permission, of course.
Wow I think every single topic of discussion surrounding WoW is hilarious. Fans complain to get their classes buffed, quitters feel some sort of animosity towards the game because it got boring for them. Most people have played this game, and almost everyone that has enjoyed it at some point. A decline from 930,000 to 730,000 is that bad? I have played so many MMO's now and I still cycle around them as they become boring and 9/10 WoW servers are more populated than any other server on any other game except for EVE Online since the whole game is one server. I play a lot during off times and on EQ2 on one of the most popular servers there are times when I check the players in the level range of 40-Max and there are 4 people on. Do you know how depressing of a feeling that is from an MMO?? I canceled my account immediately. Don't think I didn't check all level ranges or didn't do enough research. It was really embarrassing for EQ2 honestly. FFXI has some good server numbers but they mix all nations/languages on their servers so that when it is our off time it is some other nations prime time. WoW right now is one of the only MMO's that has consistent high pop servers so that a player can really feel like they are participating in a MASSIVE online role playing game. Nothing new on the market has a product that can grow or let alone sustain a player base that can convince me that after investing so much time in an avatar there will still be enough people to play with to have a really great MASSIVE multiplayer experience. When I look at every game on the market my options are WoW, EVE, Korean Grind, or wait. This makes me very sad. However, even as I have always came and gone with WoW or EVE or any other games I never wish for any of these great MMO's to decline. As long as they prosper others will try to follow in their footsteps and there will always be a place to immerse yourself. It makes me sad that EQ2's population is as weak as it is because EQ2 has some potential. Hopefully WaR, AoC, maybe a new Elder Scrolls MMO, or the new Square Enix MMO will take their time, learn from the mistakes of 99% of all MMO games that have been released in a ridiculously embarrassing state and make the next great thing.
On Everquest 2 it sounds like you were playing on the European servers, not the 'popular ones'. You can barely even get into Lucan Dlere or Antonia Bayle they are that populated. They had to add another server just to handle the strain on AB. I play on Befallen and Najena and both those servers have had over 50 people in each tier every time ive checked. Max tier always has over a hundred (which is the max search number). Keep in mind that anonymous players dont show up, and lots of guilds run around anon since they dont need to look for groups.
After the expansion its been well overloaded, the first zone for 70-80 had 4-8 instances running for the whole first week, even now its still got 3... and a lot of characters can fit in one zone. Ive never had any trouble finding a group or a raid to do stuff, perhaps you should try another server.
I'm sorry but EQ2 population might appear to be good on 1 or 2 of their servers but they don't perform server merges because... I guess they don't want to show how low their pop is? I love world pvp so I was playing on pvp servers, but like I said don't think I didn't make chars on other servers. I also said I play during the day. EQ2 has far less players than you might think and they do well at masking it. Do some serious research and it will dissapoint you.
WoW is a great game no matter how you cut it. It will be around for many many years. There is really nothing on the horizon right now that is gonna kill it. Look how popular WoW was.. Did it kill Dark Ages of Camelot or EQ1 or SWG? No it didn't. They all offer something that consumers like. Obviously WoW does also. It is going to always be around.. Do you know why? Because it is fun, polished, casual and hardcore friendly, pve and pvp friendly, and easy enough for new gamers.
Do you know why that is a great thing? Because the MMO industry will slowly begin to get hit hard if they release games this dumbed down or easy because people always want more. WoW brought in millions to the industry and taught them the ropes.. Now developers can take games to the next level and people can transition over. Everyone says it ruined the industry by dumbing it down but that is false. It is like saying teaching a kid the alphabet instead of college level grammar is dumbing down education. There was a huge market untapped out there and WoW brought them in. It is like elementary school for all these people. Now we can introduce them to middle school, and eventually high school. God forbid, they may make it to college.
Everything about WoW has been a success and it has been good all around for everyone. It has raised the bar for a releasable polished MMO. If you release less you will fail to pull players away. It has taught a ton of people the ropes, and now new ideas and philosophies can be implemented without alienating newcomers. It has provided all of us with a great many hours of entertainment. Most of all it put MMO's in the limelight and has spawned many promising companies to develop MMO's.
I don't care if anyone else said this already, but half of the people who play the game either don't care about, dont use, or don't know about the addon they use for the cencus, so its extremely innacurate.
I don't care if anyone else said this already, but half of the people who play the game either don't care about, dont use, or don't know about the addon they use for the cencus, so its extremely innacurate.
Actually it's more like 99% that don't use it. There was a time when people cared what the census numbers said, but not anymore. The people playing now fall mostly into 1 of 3 classes.
1) Long time vets. Been playing since launch or soon after and still play.
2) New to the game. Either they want to find out what the big deal is or have never played a pay for play game and are giving it a try or perhaps someone bought them a copy as a gift or something.
3) Resubscribed. Played the game and grew tired of it and quit, but after a while away realized there was nothing else that they liked better and came back or perhaps came back because friends still play.
You'll notice that none of the above people are playing because it's new. A ton of people played initially just because it was the new MMO on the block. That would include most all of the hardcore MMO players. Those people have long since left the game for one reason or another or they now fall into 1 of the 3 categories above. For the most part the people in the game now are there because they enjoy it and they couldn't care less what the census says. I don't know anyone who plays today that even looks at that census information. The only ones who still look at it are those that don't play the game and look to the census for signs that's it's dieing because no one has to look at it to know it's a huge success.
And there's one big thing that people don't take into consideration when looking at the census numbers. The census is a measurement of how many players are online at one time (when the census is taken) and since that number is falling they assume that means fewer subscribers, but that's not necessarily true. Since Blizzard keeps announcing more subscribers people assume they are lieing, but the most likely case in my opinion is that the current subscribers just play a lot less often than the subscribers who played in the past. When the game was new, I played every single minute I had the chance, now I play only sporadically. So the chances that I will be online when someone takes the census are a lot lower now than when I played all the time. That doesn't mean I've quit the game, I just don't play as often. So it's not a direct indicator of subsciption numbers, just concurrent users. What it should really keep track of is total accounts that sign in over a period of time (say a month) for a particular server. But there's no way for it to know that information. Only Blizzard knows that information.
according to last graphic from february to september player activity on NA and EURO servers went down from 900.000 to 700.000 thats a 200k decline wich means more then 500k or even more players cancel their accounts. thats why the blizzard silence . www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity.htm
How come that graph show almost 9million primetime players?
according to last graphic from february to september player activity on NA and EURO servers went down from 900.000 to 700.000 thats a 200k decline wich means more then 500k or even more players cancel their accounts. thats why the blizzard silence . www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity.htm
How come that graph show almost 9million primetime players?
Is that a typo?
That's 900 thousand. 5 zeroes, not 6. And that's only Europe and US which has about 2 million active subscribers.
according to last graphic from february to september player activity on NA and EURO servers went down from 900.000 to 700.000 thats a 200k decline wich means more then 500k or even more players cancel their accounts. thats why the blizzard silence . www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity.htm
How come that graph show almost 9million primetime players?
Is that a typo?
That's 900 thousand. 5 zeroes, not 6. And that's only Europe and US which has about 2 million active subscribers.
FFS I counted the zeros just to be shure I read it right
Even if half a million quit, it's not much of a decline to WOW. Wow will actually start to decline during spring when Warhammer and Age of Conan are released. Both those games is the first big time competion WOW has ever faced in the fantasy genre.
I was happily surprised how far and bug free WH is already (but I just played it 10 mins on D3 however). AoC has a bit of more work coming but I'm already hooked on it, the gameplay is better than in any game I ever played. 2009 will probably be the year for GW2, Arena net and Jeff strains first MMO (He were the first lead programmer on WOW and the only one on Warcraft 3, one of the best in the business).
Wow will lose players to those games because right now there isn't much competion. Blizzard will be forced to restructure the game a lot and add more content. They will also have to buff up the graphic a lot. If Blizzard spend some of the kazillion money they gotten they can still be the leading game in a few years but eventually every great game declines.
My guess would be a million players by 2010 unless they make a really big change and then 100K by 2015 but don't underestimated Blizzard. Of course they might eventually be forced to stop charging monthly if they want new players, GW2 will be free and that might put a new standard. That and new content could give them even more players that they already have.
My worst fear is that most of the brilliant programmers of blizzard has quit and they might become another EA, the 3 next coming games tare just follow ups off old games which in fact is really bad, becoming to big killed of many companys. Even EA made great game once.
according to last graphic from february to september player activity on NA and EURO servers went down from 900.000 to 700.000 thats a 200k decline wich means more then 500k or even more players cancel their accounts. thats why the blizzard silence . www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity.htm
How come that graph show almost 9million primetime players?
Is that a typo?
That's 900 thousand. 5 zeroes, not 6. And that's only Europe and US which has about 2 million active subscribers.
FFS I counted the zeros just to be shure I read it right
You counted the zeroes after the 9 or after the 1 above it? The 9 has 5 zeroes following it. The 1 has 6, for 1 million. You didn't read it right, it's not a typo. It is correct.
who the fuck cares if he is losing subscribers.play or dont.what are you trying to achieve? or you are just one more wow hater,so "finally wow is going down".....god damn..there are too many wow hate threads and wow going down threads..who gives a shit
lol blizzard says they have 9.3 mill now, so why half of US servers are empty?
You're comparing a fact ("9.3 millions") with a personal and undoubtedly biased assumption ("half of the US servers are empty"). Reason doesn't work in such mysterious ways.
Originally posted by Quingu
they have arround 2.5 mill on NA and europe, rest is asia, thats why blizzard can brag about 9 millions
Can you provide a source for this? I'm a sucker for (factual) numbers.
Its not going anywhere. There is not enough quality and uniqueness out atm to split off any main section of the player base from their current characters. WoW and AoC will draw from its pool but nothing really big in comparison to its numbers.
Something has to come out just as polished and catering to everyone like wow is for it to happen not a niche. It will also have to have some unique (useing this word loosely) twists and flavor WoW can't offer or will be hard for it to offer. To pull a big portion. WoW caters to everyone (symplystically.. not sure if thats a real word, but I like the sound of it).
erm... just gonna take a stab in the dark... but i think the new expansion will be WoW's killer. adding a new class is going to mess up the balance of classes, imo. they will probably be too powerful and people will most likely start to leave. PvP is such a huge part of WoW, and a large reason that many continue to play. It might just throw all that crap off... or i could be completely wrong and WoW will gain 9 million more members :
If class balance was a problem, people would have already left. The classes will never be balanced. They just take turns being on top. People bitch like they do in every other class-based MMO, but they'll continue playing. It could be a problem if it's way more powerful than ANY other class. I doubt they'll be that dumb though. At worst I think they may kick ass early on until people learn how to counter them and Blizzard brings them in line. As long as there are one or two classes that can own them, they'll fit in with the rest of the lineup.
MMOs Played: EQ 1&2, DAoC, SWG, Planetside, WoW, GW, CoX, DDO, EVE, Vanguard, TR Playing: WAR Awaiting 40k Online and wishing for Battletech Online
Comments
I have not read all replies to this post as, to be honest, it would bore me to death, but this caught my eye!
I would like to know where your solid proof for this statement comes from and please don't tell me that it is from 'warcraftrealms' alone as we all know that the figures on there are rough at best and;
Rollie notes that WoWs active player counts are still higher than they were before TBCs release. As for why numbers are dropping now, he speculates, it is only natural. There is a very noticeable spike when The Burning Crusade came out As more and more people have gotten over the euphoria of the new content, they are settling back into their normal play routines, and thus the nightly averages are really correcting back to the norm.
Please note "higher than before TBC's release" and the use of the word 'Speculate.'
So basically it is not a 'dramatic' drop in overall players, it is a rest back to the norm after the spike of the expansion.
Yes, WoW will drop off eventually, it is only natural as new games are released and people find their niche within them, but as for an impending disaster, i will bow to the opinion of anyone that has some SOLID proof!
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
WoW decline will be 2009. At the moment, WoW still has a relatively high instake of new players, and the expansion will get those people tired of BC resubscribing. I don't think the decline will be very dramatic either, unless it gets quality opposition. (whether in West or Asia)
WoW is going to of course eventually get a decline in players because this was "THE GAME" for anybody who liked mmo's. It is going to decline because all of those hard core gamers will go to it and race up to max lvl with 5 + characters . They then get bored and then go to spread the word that WoW's endgame is crap. That is how wow gets its bad pub. and becuase some people flat out dont like it.
all they need is some content updates.......MAJOR ones.
Currently Playing: Guild Wars.
Played:Guild Wars, Dungeon Runners, WoW, WC3, Starcraft, RuneScape, Wurm.
wow already dead, all blizzard trying to do now is making more money with xpacks.
So, when asked to justify the decline figures that you have been quoting, this is the best you can come up with?
Well, i am blown away, i must give up playing wow now based on those cold hard facts (<<< that was sarcasm, in case you were wondering)!
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
People may believe that it is declining but look at the number of people still playing?? Wont be going out soon.
Guess what will happen in January? Yup, they'll peak again. With places offering the game box for $4.99 on Black Friday, there will be plenty of copies under trees on 12/25.
Well I won't be leaving WoW anytime soon. It has been a great game that helped fill the void when Star Wars Galaxies committed suicide. Combined with EVE Online, I have my Fantasy/SciFi fix for years to come.
Have a great day.
Some people just cannot seem to get past someone OTHER than themselves being successfull. Without their permission, of course.
After the expansion its been well overloaded, the first zone for 70-80 had 4-8 instances running for the whole first week, even now its still got 3... and a lot of characters can fit in one zone. Ive never had any trouble finding a group or a raid to do stuff, perhaps you should try another server.
You know, I've always wondered,
do you get a complimentary Doomsayer Bell (TM) with that attitude or do you have to buy it on the side?
Played so far: 9Dragons, AO, AC, AC2, CoX, DAoC, DF, DnL, DR, DDO, Ent, EvE, EQ, EQ2, FoMK, FFO, Fury, GW, HG:L, HZ, L1, L2, M59, MU, NC1, NC2, PS, PT, R:O, RF:O, RYL, Ryzom, SL, SB, SW:G, TR, TCoS, MX:O, UO, VG, WAR, WoW...
It all sucked.
I'm sorry but EQ2 population might appear to be good on 1 or 2 of their servers but they don't perform server merges because... I guess they don't want to show how low their pop is? I love world pvp so I was playing on pvp servers, but like I said don't think I didn't make chars on other servers. I also said I play during the day. EQ2 has far less players than you might think and they do well at masking it. Do some serious research and it will dissapoint you.
WoW is a great game no matter how you cut it. It will be around for many many years. There is really nothing on the horizon right now that is gonna kill it. Look how popular WoW was.. Did it kill Dark Ages of Camelot or EQ1 or SWG? No it didn't. They all offer something that consumers like. Obviously WoW does also. It is going to always be around.. Do you know why? Because it is fun, polished, casual and hardcore friendly, pve and pvp friendly, and easy enough for new gamers.
Do you know why that is a great thing? Because the MMO industry will slowly begin to get hit hard if they release games this dumbed down or easy because people always want more. WoW brought in millions to the industry and taught them the ropes.. Now developers can take games to the next level and people can transition over. Everyone says it ruined the industry by dumbing it down but that is false. It is like saying teaching a kid the alphabet instead of college level grammar is dumbing down education. There was a huge market untapped out there and WoW brought them in. It is like elementary school for all these people. Now we can introduce them to middle school, and eventually high school. God forbid, they may make it to college.
Everything about WoW has been a success and it has been good all around for everyone. It has raised the bar for a releasable polished MMO. If you release less you will fail to pull players away. It has taught a ton of people the ropes, and now new ideas and philosophies can be implemented without alienating newcomers. It has provided all of us with a great many hours of entertainment. Most of all it put MMO's in the limelight and has spawned many promising companies to develop MMO's.
I don't care if anyone else said this already, but half of the people who play the game either don't care about, dont use, or don't know about the addon they use for the cencus, so its extremely innacurate.
1) Long time vets. Been playing since launch or soon after and still play.
2) New to the game. Either they want to find out what the big deal is or have never played a pay for play game and are giving it a try or perhaps someone bought them a copy as a gift or something.
3) Resubscribed. Played the game and grew tired of it and quit, but after a while away realized there was nothing else that they liked better and came back or perhaps came back because friends still play.
You'll notice that none of the above people are playing because it's new. A ton of people played initially just because it was the new MMO on the block. That would include most all of the hardcore MMO players. Those people have long since left the game for one reason or another or they now fall into 1 of the 3 categories above. For the most part the people in the game now are there because they enjoy it and they couldn't care less what the census says. I don't know anyone who plays today that even looks at that census information. The only ones who still look at it are those that don't play the game and look to the census for signs that's it's dieing because no one has to look at it to know it's a huge success.
And there's one big thing that people don't take into consideration when looking at the census numbers. The census is a measurement of how many players are online at one time (when the census is taken) and since that number is falling they assume that means fewer subscribers, but that's not necessarily true. Since Blizzard keeps announcing more subscribers people assume they are lieing, but the most likely case in my opinion is that the current subscribers just play a lot less often than the subscribers who played in the past. When the game was new, I played every single minute I had the chance, now I play only sporadically. So the chances that I will be online when someone takes the census are a lot lower now than when I played all the time. That doesn't mean I've quit the game, I just don't play as often. So it's not a direct indicator of subsciption numbers, just concurrent users. What it should really keep track of is total accounts that sign in over a period of time (say a month) for a particular server. But there's no way for it to know that information. Only Blizzard knows that information.
How come that graph show almost 9million primetime players?
Is that a typo?
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
How come that graph show almost 9million primetime players?
Is that a typo?
That's 900 thousand. 5 zeroes, not 6. And that's only Europe and US which has about 2 million active subscribers.
How come that graph show almost 9million primetime players?
Is that a typo?
That's 900 thousand. 5 zeroes, not 6. And that's only Europe and US which has about 2 million active subscribers.
FFS I counted the zeros just to be shure I read it right
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
Even if half a million quit, it's not much of a decline to WOW. Wow will actually start to decline during spring when Warhammer and Age of Conan are released. Both those games is the first big time competion WOW has ever faced in the fantasy genre.
I was happily surprised how far and bug free WH is already (but I just played it 10 mins on D3 however). AoC has a bit of more work coming but I'm already hooked on it, the gameplay is better than in any game I ever played. 2009 will probably be the year for GW2, Arena net and Jeff strains first MMO (He were the first lead programmer on WOW and the only one on Warcraft 3, one of the best in the business).
Wow will lose players to those games because right now there isn't much competion. Blizzard will be forced to restructure the game a lot and add more content. They will also have to buff up the graphic a lot. If Blizzard spend some of the kazillion money they gotten they can still be the leading game in a few years but eventually every great game declines.
My guess would be a million players by 2010 unless they make a really big change and then 100K by 2015 but don't underestimated Blizzard. Of course they might eventually be forced to stop charging monthly if they want new players, GW2 will be free and that might put a new standard. That and new content could give them even more players that they already have.
My worst fear is that most of the brilliant programmers of blizzard has quit and they might become another EA, the 3 next coming games tare just follow ups off old games which in fact is really bad, becoming to big killed of many companys. Even EA made great game once.
How come that graph show almost 9million primetime players?
Is that a typo?
That's 900 thousand. 5 zeroes, not 6. And that's only Europe and US which has about 2 million active subscribers.
FFS I counted the zeros just to be shure I read it right
You counted the zeroes after the 9 or after the 1 above it? The 9 has 5 zeroes following it. The 1 has 6, for 1 million. You didn't read it right, it's not a typo. It is correct.
who the fuck cares if he is losing subscribers.play or dont.what are you trying to achieve? or you are just one more wow hater,so "finally wow is going down".....god damn..there are too many wow hate threads and wow going down threads..who gives a shit
make up whatever conspiracy theories you want to
but one only needs to take a look at Press Releases for 2007 to see that you are wrong
www.blizzard.com/press/
EQ2 fan sites
https://forums.wow-europe.com/
https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/ You're comparing a fact ("9.3 millions") with a personal and undoubtedly biased assumption ("half of the US servers are empty"). Reason doesn't work in such mysterious ways.
Can you provide a source for this? I'm a sucker for (factual) numbers.
I refer to my previous post in this thread.
even if wow is losing members its gaining about the same ammount back.. wow wont die for a very long time
Its not going anywhere. There is not enough quality and uniqueness out atm to split off any main section of the player base from their current characters. WoW and AoC will draw from its pool but nothing really big in comparison to its numbers.
Something has to come out just as polished and catering to everyone like wow is for it to happen not a niche. It will also have to have some unique (useing this word loosely) twists and flavor WoW can't offer or will be hard for it to offer. To pull a big portion. WoW caters to everyone (symplystically.. not sure if thats a real word, but I like the sound of it).
If class balance was a problem, people would have already left. The classes will never be balanced. They just take turns being on top. People bitch like they do in every other class-based MMO, but they'll continue playing. It could be a problem if it's way more powerful than ANY other class. I doubt they'll be that dumb though. At worst I think they may kick ass early on until people learn how to counter them and Blizzard brings them in line. As long as there are one or two classes that can own them, they'll fit in with the rest of the lineup.
MMOs Played: EQ 1&2, DAoC, SWG, Planetside, WoW, GW, CoX, DDO, EVE, Vanguard, TR
Playing: WAR
Awaiting 40k Online and wishing for Battletech Online