Fun isn't it, people trash WoW with only 4 millions sales of an EXPANSION PACK. Most mmorpg companies aren't even getting close to so many sales on their game ever and can only dream of it. But yeah haters Wrath is a failure...sure sure.
actually i did too . i ve returned to wow for the lich king but i ve noticed theres a real lack of new players with this expansion . it may be because the lich king really only offers end game content which is great but offers little to entice new blood . warcraft in my opinion has proberbly peaked in terms of player numbers yet still they are opening new servers when theres still low population servers in europe which never seam to improve ... about time they started merging them .
Wow have already gotten most of the potential customers and almost all of them bought WOTLK.
You can't really expect the subs to go up as much as then TBC hit the shelves, now everybodys heard about Wow and the ones that havn't tried it are not intrested. Before TBC there were still people who didn't know much or anything about Wow... There is a lot more than 11,5 mil people that tried Wow one way or another.
It is not time for server merges yet, you don't know what the future will bring but maybe it was a misstake to open new servers before the old ones are filled, time will tell.
And it is off course very possible that the game have peaked, I do actually believe it have but you really never know, maybe Blizzard release a expansion with a graphical revamp in a year and the game will grow again, not likely but far from impossible.
Seems to me there is alot of divided opinion on WoW's success.
No one can deny that selling 4 million copies of an expansion is something for Blizzard and those playing WoW to be proud of, still means a lot of ppl want to carry on with the adventure, no matter how repeatable it becomes after 2 weeks of grinding.
However one thing our guild has noticed is that we have seen very few new players on Dragonmaw EU server, yes we've seen migrating players but thats about it, though oddly enough the amount of scammers trying to join guilds and steal items and gold has greatly increased these past few weeks, perhaps that also accounts for the boost in sales?
Though I tip my hat to Blizzards success, now do us all a favour and start getting some more new content out, ppl are already bored.
The bottom line is they have made a lot of money and a few people in the company are very rich. It's a success who cares. I played to 80, spent my 15 bucks for 30 days, got tired of easy mode and then quit the game. I guess now they only have 3999999 subs. Does it really matter? I think not. Just enjoy the ride. I'm actually getting more out of eve ATM and can't wait for the new diablo.
PS I guess it matters to the shareholders, if the company is infact public.
Originally posted by zymurgeist Originally posted by Horusra Oh the company is public and the stock had a nice little bump...not as big as the first months when WoW was originally released, but a nice bump.
When WoW was released Bizzaed was a minor company with four products. Activision Blizzard is the largest gaming conglomerate in the world. That the stock moved at all indicates what a huge profit potential litch king has. So far it seems to be living up to it's potential.
hmmmm...i think you really need to go back and re-learn Blizzards history. Here ill fix it for you. When WoW was released Blizzard has made a total of 26 games since 1991 (and YES they all DO count.)
Well Blizzard is just a part of a bigger company vivendi (back at WoW release Vivendi Universal was 12.3 billion Euros in debt). Blizzard profits basically pulled the company back from the edge. This is where the cash made from WoW went. In 2006 Vivendi Uniersal created a sub-division for the management of their games called vivendi SE (Sierra Entertainment). 2007 Vivendi SE became just Vivendi Games. 2008 Vivendi Games joins with Activision with Vivendi Universal hold 52% of the stock in ActivisonBlizzard.
I luckily bought stock way back in 2003. Has been a nice ride.
1. WOW is getting plenty of new players. Check out the amazon.com bestsellers list. WOW battlechest continues to be in the top 20 every month for the past 4 years. Even just the wow vanilla box continues to be in the top 50. Now check out Warhammer (out of top 100) and AOC ( out of top 100). That means that not only does WOW have a huge playerbase, but it is also getting the lion's share of every new MMORPG player.
2. The 4M number quoted was for the first month of wrath release. Now look at any top seller chart. Wrath is STILL the #1 or #2 game for western markets. That means that even AFTER it sold 4M copies, it continues to sell a ton of boxes. That 4M number could easily be 5M by now.
3. Last January, WOW annunced 10M subscribers. Now it is announcing 11.5M.... and this despite the fact that 2 very heavily marketed games were released since then. WOW gained 1.5M subscribers, which is more than Warhammer and AOC have combined. Even if WOW had launched THIS YEAR, it would still be the #1 game.
Yeah sure I'm happy for them. They make the best non-first-person games and I've enjoyed every one since war2. Problem is now they've created the first totally useless class in pvp--my warrior. Thanks bastards. And no I'm not leveling a dk from 55 going thru all that old content. Hopefully by then they'll have fixed wars but not holding my breath. Waiting for diablo 3.
Real lack of new players LOl???? Have u even seen on the new pve servers, they are laoded with new players. jesus everywhere its new players. U think everyone has bought wrath yet? If your lvl 1-60 why would u need to buy warth yet? Scoffing at 4 million copies in 1 month? Tell me any other mmo that sells that many? Not everyone of the 11 million players is lvl 70 or 80 you know, so not everyone has to go rush out and buy the expansion. hell there playerbase is nealry 12 millionm Active players, yes ACTIVE and you mock blizzard? Get a grip please.
actually if you get your head out of your fanbois posterior you ll notice a lot of what blizzard says about its player base does nt add up . there is certainly not the influx of new player there was with the lich king . people are noticing it ingame . also there are low population servers that ar nt improving and never will so why not merge them with other servers that are in the same state . another thing i did nt mock (grow up)blizzard at all . i think the lich king is a great expansion far better than the burning crusade . but weather you like it or not the game peaked about two years ago ( in the west anyway the new russian servers may be a different matter ) my forcast for the coming year is that wow will lose between 1-3 million subs possibly more as boredom and ecconomic pressures bite .
You have no idea what you're talking about, so stop the retarded lies.
You're still talking about Europe, right? I'm Norwegian so I play on an EU server too. And I always try to keep up to date with recent news, and therefore I know a thing or two about how Blizzard handles server pops in Europe.
Blizzard doesn't open new servers when old servers have low populations. The last example I know of where we saw Blizzard taking care of old servers, was when players transferred to the new Russian servers. Russians have earlier gathered at specific servers, so Molten Core etc suddenly became low pop. Blizzard then opened free transfers from high pop servers to those.
Not long ago, Blizzard opened a new server, and offered free transfers from my server (Anachronos) and a few others. Which they wouldn't have done if there still was problems with low pops on old servers.
The problems you're claiming we're having in Europe, doesn't exist. But I guess you'll see me as a fanboy with my head up my ass just because I state this simple fact.
You're not just a troll, you're a completely clueless troll. If you still claim there are EU servers with so low pops that they should be merged, then tell which servers you're talking about, or stfu.
Btw, you claim the game peaked about two years ago. Two years ago WoW had under 8 mill subs, now they have 11.5. I may be a fanboy in your eyes, but that's better than being a pathetic liar.
I'm experiencing quite the opposite to these apparent population problems in Europe. When I first joined WoW last year January, I joined a server with a "Recommended" population level. I quite after a few months, came back two months later and the server was on "High" population. Since then I joined a load of mates on another server, this one with a "Low" population. It's now sitting on "High" as well.
When WoW was released Bizzaed was a minor company with four products. Activision Blizzard is the largest gaming conglomerate in the world. That the stock moved at all indicates what a huge profit potential litch king has. So far it seems to be living up to it's potential.
hmmmm...i think you really need to go back and re-learn Blizzards history. Here ill fix it for you. When WoW was released Blizzard has made a total of 26 games since 1991 (and YES they all DO count.)
They have come a long way and worked really hard to get where they are now..and they deserve all of what they have gotten. Congrats to Blizzard.
Counting DOS games as products in 2004 is just silly. When WoW released you could buy four products in the store. Three of them were in the bargain bin. Blizzard has three "universes" and it's been that way for a long time.
Just because they only had 4 products available in the store does NOT mean that all 26 of those previous games didn't help create the company Blizzard was the day they released WoW, many of those older games were classics in their genres. I'm no WoW fanboi (in fact, it's about the bottom of my personal popularity list of games that I do play-I only break it out for a few hours here and there on patch days and the like), but I'm willing to give Blizzard the credit they deserve for making a game that a lot of other people like.
I don't doubt they sold 4 million copies, that is a great business success.
However number of sales is something McDonalds also prides itself in. Now McDonalds is also a great business success however I wouldn't touch one of its products with a ten foot pole. For me McDonalds is all about quantity with little to no quality. As an ex WoW player I cans ay that after TBC WoW became similar to McDonalds for me.
It is a personal opinion of course and it doesn't negate great financial success, however that great financial success doesn't equal a quality product.
I've played Diablo 2 and WoW thats about it from the Blizzards catalogue for me, the rpg Warcraft franchise just never got me going as at that time I was heavily into the Baldurs Gate series and I still haven't felt the need to go and play the single player Warcraft games to try to catch up on WoW's lore.
However saying that I am looking forward to their Diablo 3.
I don't doubt they sold 4 million copies, that is a great business success. However number of sales is something McDonalds also prides itself in. Now McDonalds is also a great business success however I wouldn't touch one of its products with a ten foot pole. For me McDonalds is all about quantity with little to no quality. As an ex WoW player I cans ay that after TBC WoW became similar to McDonalds for me. It is a personal opinion of course and it doesn't negate great financial success, however that great financial success doesn't equal a quality product. Of course it is all in the eye of the beholder.
There is a good reason you can't use the WOW=McDonald's analogy. It is called price. McDonalds sells hamburgers for a dollar, your average dinner will sell them for $4. McD's is cheaper and faster than other restaurans. Last time I checked, WOW, War, AOC and others all charged the exact same price. WOW isn't gettin it's subscribers because it is cheaper like McDonalds. McDonalds is more like Runescape.
4 million copies sold at $40 a pop . . . there are a number (most) MMO's that would love to have half that in active subs!
I personally know two people that just started WoW this month so they have an even larger investment than just the Wrath expansion.
Good, bad, indifferent no one can argue that WoW is not a success. It's a fun, casual game that does entertain which is what most people are wanting in a game. I'd love to see it or any MMO be more challenging and require thought/strategy to complete content instead of being so grindtastic.
To compare MMO's to another form of entertainment the movie industry - more people will go see a predicatable, formula following movie with a 'name' star, than a high quality foreign film that would is thought provoking. Go see Slumdog Millionaire for a great movie that will not have the box office success of the top 5 movies right now that are all regurgitated crap.
Hmm i heard WotLK was a failure from my guildies and well i dont care what 4 million retards think that suck at basically all the other HARDER mmorpgs. WoW is for noobs and you know it, thats why it is liked so much its easily to learn and easy to play also has shit graphics that can run on almost any computer. I hope yall have fun killing Red boars or whatever n this new expanison.
Currently Playing : Nothing.......... waiting for darkfall
>>Hmm i heard WotLK was a failure from my guildies and well i dont care what 4 million retards think that suck at basically all the other HARDER mmorpgs. WoW is for noobs and you know it, thats why it is liked so much its easily to learn and easy to play also has shit graphics that can run on almost any computer. I hope yall have fun killing Red boars or whatever n this new expanison.<<
Interesting your 'guildies' told you it was a fail - lol! So they're playing?
Well I'm glad you're so uber to be above the 4million 'tards that bought the game. If the only value a game can have is a hard learning curve and great graphics . . . Well it must be damn lonely out there in superior-land. You must be rolling Alfar right - ROFL!
As for me I'm going to continue having fun with WoW, EQ2 and Warhammer, instead of trolling forums insulting people out of sheer boredom.
How does this game keep getting more "subscribers?"
Most of my personal friends don't play it anymore, and when I left most of the 60 or so active players from my former raid guild no longer played, and that was pretty typical for a lot of payers that were very active pre-BC.
So who keeps subscribing to this game? People getting laid off? People who just discovered computers and gaming? Farmers?
I have to say that even people I know that quit come back and start playing in a few months. They quit again and come back again As for new players. Everyday probably 10k+ people that did not have the intelligence, money, equipment, or age suddenly find themselves with the choice of what game are they going to start playing. This is the philosophy of the car dealership, everyday a new driver is born and they will need a first car.
I think any expansion in WoW would have been a success at this point......A high percent of their playerbase was stuck at 70 so it didnt matter if the expansion was "Wrath of the WImp King" people were gonna buy it.......As a beta tester of the game I still ahve no clue why people stick with this game for very long.......After playing EQ and some other games for years WOW is just too easy and boring really to commit to for the long haul...... I guess all we can read from WoW is that this is what the majority wants and that is why so many companies are trying to copy it....... I never dreamed when I started in 2000 with all the hardcore players that a game like WOW would be king someday....... I see a game like WOW as entertainment but not really a challenging game......Maybe that is what the masses are after nowadays.
Given the numbers, your conclusion isn't really very insightful. It is pretty much established what WoW players will respond too.
That said, EQ has nothing in common with WoW from what I can see. There still seem to be a few quality games out there that don't follow warcraft's design, and they are successful, as long as you count success by 100K rather than 10 Mill.
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Just because they only had 4 products available in the store does NOT mean that all 26 of those previous games didn't help create the company Blizzard was the day they released WoW, many of those older games were classics in their genres. I'm no WoW fanboi (in fact, it's about the bottom of my personal popularity list of games that I do play-I only break it out for a few hours here and there on patch days and the like), but I'm willing to give Blizzard the credit they deserve for making a game that a lot of other people like.
None of which contridicts "When WoW was released Bizzard was a minor company with four products." Which is not only what I said it's true.
A minor company? Seriously? So, having two of the best selling games in history in their genre, as well as being the best selling games in the year they were released and literally setting a Guinness World Record for the fastest selling game in history long before anyone in the public had even heard of World of Warcraft:
Diablo II was a runaway success for Blizzard. The game has achieved an overall score of 88 on Metacritic.[5] Gamespy awarded the game an 86 out of 100,[1] IGN awarded the game an 8.3 out of 10,[6] and Gamespot awarded the game an 8.5 out of 10[7] along with earning the 2000 runner-up Reader's Choice Award for role-playing game of the year.[8] It was awarded a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records 2000 edition for being the fastest selling computer game ever sold, with more than 1 million units sold in the first two weeks of availability.[9] Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade has since surpassed Diablo II's record to become fastest-selling computer game ever at the time of its release, according to Blizzard.[10] As of August 29, 2001, Diablo II has sold 4 million copies worldwide.[11] The game has received the "Computer Game of the Year", "Computer Role Playing Game of the Year", and "Game of the Year" awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences at the 2001 Interactive Achievement Awards.[11]
StarCraft was released internationally on 31 March 1998 and became the best-selling PC game for that year, selling over 1.5 million copies worldwide.[72] In the next decade, StarCraft sold over 9.5 million copies across the globe, with 4.5 million of these being sold in South Korea.[73] Since the initial release of StarCraft, Blizzard Entertainment reported that its Battle.net online multiplayer service grew by 800 percent.[74] StarCraft remains one of the most popular online games in the world.[75][76]
For fun, let's add in the runaway success of Battle.net:
According to Blizzard's claims, Battle.net is the largest online gaming network in the neighborhood. Blizzard claims "millions of active users" on Battle.net, and that they are the leaders of online gaming, noting that "even Xbox Live is not even close".[3] By November 1997 they had 22 million games played, 1.25 million different users, and that they averaged 3,500 new users each day.[4] By April 1999, it was reported that Battle.net had 2.3 million active users, and more than 50,000 concurrent users.[5] By September 2002, their active user count had jumped to 11 million.[6] By September 2004, their active user count was up to nearly 12 million, spending more than 2.1 million hours online each day, and they had an average of 200,000 concurrent users, with a peak concurrent user count of 400,000.[7] )
Note that all of the above information is based on statistics that were in place before WoW was released, in fact, many of them are before WoW was even announced. Please tell me how, in any version of reality includes comptuer gaming as an industry, ANY of the above information adds up to Blizzard being a minor company before the release of WoW. As I said before, I'm no Blizzard fanboi by any stretch of the imagination-I spent a week or two playing Diablo back in the day and have put maybe 72 hours over the last two years into WoW, but c'mon, saying there were some minor player before WoW was released is just ludicrous.
They're obviously a MUCH bigger company than they were then, but by the computer gaming industry's standards, they were already a run-away success before the first server opened. The only other companies that were even in the same stratosphere at the time would be iD, Valve and Maxis (well, and Cyan Worlds with the Myst franchise, I suppose, but adventure gaming was essentially dead when WoW dropped in 2004).
I honestly think it's safe to say that a large part of the reason WoW was such a success at release was because of Blizzard's previous successes.
Comments
ROFL.
But i do agree with you 100%
Wow have already gotten most of the potential customers and almost all of them bought WOTLK.
You can't really expect the subs to go up as much as then TBC hit the shelves, now everybodys heard about Wow and the ones that havn't tried it are not intrested. Before TBC there were still people who didn't know much or anything about Wow... There is a lot more than 11,5 mil people that tried Wow one way or another.
It is not time for server merges yet, you don't know what the future will bring but maybe it was a misstake to open new servers before the old ones are filled, time will tell.
And it is off course very possible that the game have peaked, I do actually believe it have but you really never know, maybe Blizzard release a expansion with a graphical revamp in a year and the game will grow again, not likely but far from impossible.
Seems to me there is alot of divided opinion on WoW's success.
No one can deny that selling 4 million copies of an expansion is something for Blizzard and those playing WoW to be proud of, still means a lot of ppl want to carry on with the adventure, no matter how repeatable it becomes after 2 weeks of grinding.
However one thing our guild has noticed is that we have seen very few new players on Dragonmaw EU server, yes we've seen migrating players but thats about it, though oddly enough the amount of scammers trying to join guilds and steal items and gold has greatly increased these past few weeks, perhaps that also accounts for the boost in sales?
Though I tip my hat to Blizzards success, now do us all a favour and start getting some more new content out, ppl are already bored.
The bottom line is they have made a lot of money and a few people in the company are very rich. It's a success who cares. I played to 80, spent my 15 bucks for 30 days, got tired of easy mode and then quit the game. I guess now they only have 3999999 subs. Does it really matter? I think not. Just enjoy the ride. I'm actually getting more out of eve ATM and can't wait for the new diablo.
PS I guess it matters to the shareholders, if the company is infact public.
Oh the company is public and the stock had a nice little bump...not as big as the first months when WoW was originally released, but a nice bump.
When WoW was released Bizzaed was a minor company with four products. Activision Blizzard is the largest gaming conglomerate in the world. That the stock moved at all indicates what a huge profit potential litch king has. So far it seems to be living up to it's potential.
hmmmm...i think you really need to go back and re-learn Blizzards history. Here ill fix it for you. When WoW was released Blizzard has made a total of 26 games since 1991 (and YES they all DO count.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment
They have come a long way and worked really hard to get where they are now..and they deserve all of what they have gotten. Congrats to Blizzard.
Well Blizzard is just a part of a bigger company vivendi (back at WoW release Vivendi Universal was 12.3 billion Euros in debt). Blizzard profits basically pulled the company back from the edge. This is where the cash made from WoW went. In 2006 Vivendi Uniersal created a sub-division for the management of their games called vivendi SE (Sierra Entertainment). 2007 Vivendi SE became just Vivendi Games. 2008 Vivendi Games joins with Activision with Vivendi Universal hold 52% of the stock in ActivisonBlizzard.
I luckily bought stock way back in 2003. Has been a nice ride.
Just so many errors in this thread
1. WOW is getting plenty of new players. Check out the amazon.com bestsellers list. WOW battlechest continues to be in the top 20 every month for the past 4 years. Even just the wow vanilla box continues to be in the top 50. Now check out Warhammer (out of top 100) and AOC ( out of top 100). That means that not only does WOW have a huge playerbase, but it is also getting the lion's share of every new MMORPG player.
2. The 4M number quoted was for the first month of wrath release. Now look at any top seller chart. Wrath is STILL the #1 or #2 game for western markets. That means that even AFTER it sold 4M copies, it continues to sell a ton of boxes. That 4M number could easily be 5M by now.
3. Last January, WOW annunced 10M subscribers. Now it is announcing 11.5M.... and this despite the fact that 2 very heavily marketed games were released since then. WOW gained 1.5M subscribers, which is more than Warhammer and AOC have combined. Even if WOW had launched THIS YEAR, it would still be the #1 game.
Yeah sure I'm happy for them. They make the best non-first-person games and I've enjoyed every one since war2. Problem is now they've created the first totally useless class in pvp--my warrior. Thanks bastards. And no I'm not leveling a dk from 55 going thru all that old content. Hopefully by then they'll have fixed wars but not holding my breath. Waiting for diablo 3.
actually if you get your head out of your fanbois posterior you ll notice a lot of what blizzard says about its player base does nt add up . there is certainly not the influx of new player there was with the lich king . people are noticing it ingame . also there are low population servers that ar nt improving and never will so why not merge them with other servers that are in the same state . another thing i did nt mock (grow up)blizzard at all . i think the lich king is a great expansion far better than the burning crusade . but weather you like it or not the game peaked about two years ago ( in the west anyway the new russian servers may be a different matter ) my forcast for the coming year is that wow will lose between 1-3 million subs possibly more as boredom and ecconomic pressures bite .
You have no idea what you're talking about, so stop the retarded lies.
You're still talking about Europe, right? I'm Norwegian so I play on an EU server too. And I always try to keep up to date with recent news, and therefore I know a thing or two about how Blizzard handles server pops in Europe.
Blizzard doesn't open new servers when old servers have low populations. The last example I know of where we saw Blizzard taking care of old servers, was when players transferred to the new Russian servers. Russians have earlier gathered at specific servers, so Molten Core etc suddenly became low pop. Blizzard then opened free transfers from high pop servers to those.
Not long ago, Blizzard opened a new server, and offered free transfers from my server (Anachronos) and a few others. Which they wouldn't have done if there still was problems with low pops on old servers.
The problems you're claiming we're having in Europe, doesn't exist. But I guess you'll see me as a fanboy with my head up my ass just because I state this simple fact.
You're not just a troll, you're a completely clueless troll. If you still claim there are EU servers with so low pops that they should be merged, then tell which servers you're talking about, or stfu.
Btw, you claim the game peaked about two years ago. Two years ago WoW had under 8 mill subs, now they have 11.5. I may be a fanboy in your eyes, but that's better than being a pathetic liar.
I'm experiencing quite the opposite to these apparent population problems in Europe. When I first joined WoW last year January, I joined a server with a "Recommended" population level. I quite after a few months, came back two months later and the server was on "High" population. Since then I joined a load of mates on another server, this one with a "Low" population. It's now sitting on "High" as well.
hmmmm...i think you really need to go back and re-learn Blizzards history. Here ill fix it for you. When WoW was released Blizzard has made a total of 26 games since 1991 (and YES they all DO count.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment
They have come a long way and worked really hard to get where they are now..and they deserve all of what they have gotten. Congrats to Blizzard.
Counting DOS games as products in 2004 is just silly. When WoW released you could buy four products in the store. Three of them were in the bargain bin. Blizzard has three "universes" and it's been that way for a long time.
Just because they only had 4 products available in the store does NOT mean that all 26 of those previous games didn't help create the company Blizzard was the day they released WoW, many of those older games were classics in their genres. I'm no WoW fanboi (in fact, it's about the bottom of my personal popularity list of games that I do play-I only break it out for a few hours here and there on patch days and the like), but I'm willing to give Blizzard the credit they deserve for making a game that a lot of other people like.
I don't doubt they sold 4 million copies, that is a great business success.
However number of sales is something McDonalds also prides itself in. Now McDonalds is also a great business success however I wouldn't touch one of its products with a ten foot pole. For me McDonalds is all about quantity with little to no quality. As an ex WoW player I cans ay that after TBC WoW became similar to McDonalds for me.
It is a personal opinion of course and it doesn't negate great financial success, however that great financial success doesn't equal a quality product.
Of course it is all in the eye of the beholder.
I've played Diablo 2 and WoW thats about it from the Blizzards catalogue for me, the rpg Warcraft franchise just never got me going as at that time I was heavily into the Baldurs Gate series and I still haven't felt the need to go and play the single player Warcraft games to try to catch up on WoW's lore.
However saying that I am looking forward to their Diablo 3.
There is a good reason you can't use the WOW=McDonald's analogy. It is called price. McDonalds sells hamburgers for a dollar, your average dinner will sell them for $4. McD's is cheaper and faster than other restaurans. Last time I checked, WOW, War, AOC and others all charged the exact same price. WOW isn't gettin it's subscribers because it is cheaper like McDonalds. McDonalds is more like Runescape.
4 million copies sold at $40 a pop . . . there are a number (most) MMO's that would love to have half that in active subs!
I personally know two people that just started WoW this month so they have an even larger investment than just the Wrath expansion.
Good, bad, indifferent no one can argue that WoW is not a success. It's a fun, casual game that does entertain which is what most people are wanting in a game. I'd love to see it or any MMO be more challenging and require thought/strategy to complete content instead of being so grindtastic.
To compare MMO's to another form of entertainment the movie industry - more people will go see a predicatable, formula following movie with a 'name' star, than a high quality foreign film that would is thought provoking. Go see Slumdog Millionaire for a great movie that will not have the box office success of the top 5 movies right now that are all regurgitated crap.
Proud member of Hammerfist Clan Gaming Community.
Currently playing: RIFT, EQ2, WoW, LoTRO
Retired: Warhammer, AoC, EQ
Waiting: SWToR & GW2
Hmm i heard WotLK was a failure from my guildies and well i dont care what 4 million retards think that suck at basically all the other HARDER mmorpgs. WoW is for noobs and you know it, thats why it is liked so much its easily to learn and easy to play also has shit graphics that can run on almost any computer. I hope yall have fun killing Red boars or whatever n this new expanison.
Currently Playing : Nothing.......... waiting for darkfall
Proud member of Hammerfist Clan Gaming Community.
Currently playing: RIFT, EQ2, WoW, LoTRO
Retired: Warhammer, AoC, EQ
Waiting: SWToR & GW2
How does this game keep getting more "subscribers?"
Most of my personal friends don't play it anymore, and when I left most of the 60 or so active players from my former raid guild no longer played, and that was pretty typical for a lot of payers that were very active pre-BC.
So who keeps subscribing to this game? People getting laid off? People who just discovered computers and gaming? Farmers?
Inquiring minds want to know...
I have to say that even people I know that quit come back and start playing in a few months. They quit again and come back again As for new players. Everyday probably 10k+ people that did not have the intelligence, money, equipment, or age suddenly find themselves with the choice of what game are they going to start playing. This is the philosophy of the car dealership, everyday a new driver is born and they will need a first car.
I think any expansion in WoW would have been a success at this point......A high percent of their playerbase was stuck at 70 so it didnt matter if the expansion was "Wrath of the WImp King" people were gonna buy it.......As a beta tester of the game I still ahve no clue why people stick with this game for very long.......After playing EQ and some other games for years WOW is just too easy and boring really to commit to for the long haul...... I guess all we can read from WoW is that this is what the majority wants and that is why so many companies are trying to copy it....... I never dreamed when I started in 2000 with all the hardcore players that a game like WOW would be king someday....... I see a game like WOW as entertainment but not really a challenging game......Maybe that is what the masses are after nowadays.
Given the numbers, your conclusion isn't really very insightful. It is pretty much established what WoW players will respond too.
That said, EQ has nothing in common with WoW from what I can see. There still seem to be a few quality games out there that don't follow warcraft's design, and they are successful, as long as you count success by 100K rather than 10 Mill.
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
None of which contridicts "When WoW was released Bizzard was a minor company with four products." Which is not only what I said it's true.
A minor company? Seriously? So, having two of the best selling games in history in their genre, as well as being the best selling games in the year they were released and literally setting a Guinness World Record for the fastest selling game in history long before anyone in the public had even heard of World of Warcraft:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games#Top_PC_sellers_by_genre
Top PC sellers by genre
* Adventure – Myst (6 million)[213]
* Computer role-playing – Diablo II (4 million)[216]
* First-person shooter – Half-Life (9.3 million,[20][21] may include PS2 version)
* Real-time strategy – StarCraft (9.5 million, may include StarCraft: Brood War)[212]
* Simulation – The Sims (16 million shipped)[206]
* Third-person shooter - Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (2 million)[232]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_II
Diablo II was a runaway success for Blizzard. The game has achieved an overall score of 88 on Metacritic.[5] Gamespy awarded the game an 86 out of 100,[1] IGN awarded the game an 8.3 out of 10,[6] and Gamespot awarded the game an 8.5 out of 10[7] along with earning the 2000 runner-up Reader's Choice Award for role-playing game of the year.[8] It was awarded a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records 2000 edition for being the fastest selling computer game ever sold, with more than 1 million units sold in the first two weeks of availability.[9] Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade has since surpassed Diablo II's record to become fastest-selling computer game ever at the time of its release, according to Blizzard.[10] As of August 29, 2001, Diablo II has sold 4 million copies worldwide.[11] The game has received the "Computer Game of the Year", "Computer Role Playing Game of the Year", and "Game of the Year" awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences at the 2001 Interactive Achievement Awards.[11]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft
StarCraft was released internationally on 31 March 1998 and became the best-selling PC game for that year, selling over 1.5 million copies worldwide.[72] In the next decade, StarCraft sold over 9.5 million copies across the globe, with 4.5 million of these being sold in South Korea.[73] Since the initial release of StarCraft, Blizzard Entertainment reported that its Battle.net online multiplayer service grew by 800 percent.[74] StarCraft remains one of the most popular online games in the world.[75][76]
For fun, let's add in the runaway success of Battle.net:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle.net
According to Blizzard's claims, Battle.net is the largest online gaming network in the neighborhood. Blizzard claims "millions of active users" on Battle.net, and that they are the leaders of online gaming, noting that "even Xbox Live is not even close".[3] By November 1997 they had 22 million games played, 1.25 million different users, and that they averaged 3,500 new users each day.[4] By April 1999, it was reported that Battle.net had 2.3 million active users, and more than 50,000 concurrent users.[5] By September 2002, their active user count had jumped to 11 million.[6] By September 2004, their active user count was up to nearly 12 million, spending more than 2.1 million hours online each day, and they had an average of 200,000 concurrent users, with a peak concurrent user count of 400,000.[7] )
Note that all of the above information is based on statistics that were in place before WoW was released, in fact, many of them are before WoW was even announced. Please tell me how, in any version of reality includes comptuer gaming as an industry, ANY of the above information adds up to Blizzard being a minor company before the release of WoW. As I said before, I'm no Blizzard fanboi by any stretch of the imagination-I spent a week or two playing Diablo back in the day and have put maybe 72 hours over the last two years into WoW, but c'mon, saying there were some minor player before WoW was released is just ludicrous.
They're obviously a MUCH bigger company than they were then, but by the computer gaming industry's standards, they were already a run-away success before the first server opened. The only other companies that were even in the same stratosphere at the time would be iD, Valve and Maxis (well, and Cyan Worlds with the Myst franchise, I suppose, but adventure gaming was essentially dead when WoW dropped in 2004).
I honestly think it's safe to say that a large part of the reason WoW was such a success at release was because of Blizzard's previous successes.
Owned
@ Horusra Some fresh blood heard from friends /have playing friends probably but wow is bundled with vga cards at some huge countries ,you know
www.gamedaily.com/games/world-of-warcraft/pc/game-news/amd-to-bundle-blizzard-games-with-ati-radeon-cards/2475/21033/
That sounds like smart marketing then. Especially if this is their first graphics card to allow them to play games.