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Has wow reached it's level cap for 11.5million?
coffee
Member Posts: 2,007
In Blizzardvision’s quarterly earnings call today, Blizzard’s CEO Mike Morhaime said that “11.5 million continued to play Warcraft, which is a significant increase from the same time last year.”
But 11.5 million is the same number of people who were playing the game in December, a month after the “Lich King” update launched.
WOTLK is yet to launch in china so I expect 1 more spike, with Starcraft2 beta due to start in a month or so and blizzcon in august which is sure to give details of the next wow expansion or maybe even the new MMO... its sure goona be a few interesting months for blizzard.
Comments
Yes, probably.
I played WoW for over a year and the only thing that makes me considering coming back though I deleted all my characters is that there is nothing better on the market.
Which is a travesty in itself.
When a new expansion comes out, you'd expect subscriptions to spike. And then they'd typically tail off over the next few months.
The fact that Warcraft has maintained it's audience is a significant achievement. Means they must have continued to recruit people to replace those who just came to look at the expansion.
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Nope. It is a reflection of a fundamental business principle:
You don't need to run faster than the bear, you only need to run faster than the person next to you.
The big reason WOW has stagnated at 11.5 million subscribers is that China has not gotten new content in a long long time. Over half of WOW's subscribers are in China, and they've been playing with Burning Crusuade endgame for 2 years now.
Also they only count china subscribers as players who have logged in during the past month. When you run out of content (like china did), it is very easy to not log in for at least a month. I am a pretty casual WOW player, and even I got bored for the 3-5 months before WotLK was launched.
When China gets wrath (june or july) expect another 1-2M 'spike' in subscribers as all those chinesse players log in. I'm almost ready to guess right now that the West is over 50% of the current 1.5M subscribers, since so many chinesse players have quit playing.
11.5M
And you are probably correct.
I haven't got a clue how big the game is over there.
The ecnomic downturn won't have helped to lure new subscribers.
I will just call "brainfart" on this one.
That or grammatical error.
all reports say entertainment was not hit hard at all by the economy especially not gaming. 50 cents a day for all day entertainment is cheap.
Growth has slowed but we will see if WoW has plateaued. It is getting to the point of there being few potential customers left.
BlizzCon will definitely have info on the patch 3.2 and what mystery raid it has but probably wont have anything on the next expansion.
If they do then the expansion will become the focal point and will overshadow everything else including StarCraft 2 which is their next product to market.
I dont expect anything on the next expansion until after SC2 is released.
Well, everyday a new WoW-player is born who has never heard of this game yet. Remember 5 years ago (when the game was released) a new player (now 13 years old) was 8 years old. And everyday there are millions of 12 year olds turning 13
I'm not saying this game is only for kids (I'm 28 and I loved WoW as recently as last year) but you get the point, there are millions (if not billions) of potential customers left in the world 
It is actually quite encouraging in a way as if i remember correctly there was a big rise in subs when BC was released followed by a steady drop off over the following 3-6 months. We are well in to that period with Wrath and it would seen there hasn't been that same level of drop off, so overall it sounds like a decent performance although a rise would of course been nicer.
I stand to be corrected on all of the above as i don't have figures to hand and i am moderately drunk as i post this
)
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Yeah, basically the game peaks right at the expansion.. it begins to climb a month before the expansion, then peaks nearl the expansions launch, hangs high for a few months, then gradually decreases.
The thing is.. While the US and EU probably are starting the slow slide down... China is about to get the big jump from the expansion.
Over half of WOW accounts are in China so even if the west is slowely decreasing as we get past the launch of Wrath, the big jump in China accounts will more than make up for that.
I believe that wow is getting on the edge now. My guild has cleared all the content there is in Stormreaver (EU)...and lots of our old guildies have gone away because this game is just too vanilla. Just few weeks after Wotlk we basically completed the "non bugged" content of the game. There is nothing that you can call "challenge" anymore...well arenas in some way but they suck after 30-50rounds like any other pvp bunny jump (+sticky targeting) game. The game was good but Blizzard is making it too vanilla. Anyways...i hope blizzard gives us hc raiding & world pvp without arenas /bg:s with the new game they are making. While waiting i'm off to Lotro/ Aoc /EvE like most of my old friends...least they offer some challenge.
WOW has been successful beyond anyone's imagination while not providing world PVP, eliminating HC raiding and making the content more vanilla and less challenging with each release.
Do you really think they'll vary much from the formula that made them successful in WOW in their next game?
Not the way to bet I'm thinking.
But I do suspect people are becoming bored more quickly after each new content release and quitting at a faster rater.
Still not a huge issue for them to worry about as long as they retain the bulk of their playerbase.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I think Blizz is aware of players coming when the x-pac is release than drop off after a few months. That's why we see they are trying to make contents more and more avaliable to more and more players. But obviously not enough. They must come out with ideas to take away the grind... ( dont ask me i dont know how...)
And they may be already using LK and beyond, about 2 more x-pac i think, to find out/ to test, how to capture subs and letting them stay longer, in preparation of their next MMO.
So i think the next x-pac will be quite critical to them, not only in testing the market further, but also to tie players to WoW despite the release of SC2.
So will 11.5mil be their cap? I really dont think so....
RIP Orc Choppa
I think so but I'm sure that when the new WOW expansion hits Blizzard will tell us that WOW has reached 14+ mill too.
Just love how people make broad generalisations with little thought.
People still think "Asia" means China. There are WoW subscribers in Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc.
People still think the raiding is "easy mode". No guild has beaten Algalon, not even Ensidia(best guild in the world). Not even the 10 man version. Also, only Ensidia has unlocked the 25 man version of Algalon. If WoW is soooo easy then why are even the top guilds having trouble with Ulduar.
Activison Blizzard's financial report has WoW at quarterly net revenue of over $300 million so I dont think WoW is in any trouble.
They are bugging as far as i know and can't really call things hard if there is 1-2 out of 20 raids that has challenge BECAUSE game is not working like it should be in there....so talking about generalisationing...look at the mirror.
And i do liked wow when it was something else than clone craft
Zorndorf - Ensidia unlocked 25 man Algalon on May 1. On May 11 they got the 10 man Glory of the Ulduar Raider achievement which is defeat every boss in a hard way(except Algalon of course).
didleridoo - Im guessing English is not your primary language. Your post is almost unintelligible. Also, continue not playing WoW.
Yep you are right about that...english is not my native tongue. ...and i'm not planning to return anytime soon in wow.
Your sad comments about spelling confirms me that you must be from texas and a member of" cousin stays with cousin" family. ..take a break and go out some day and maybe ....just maybe you aren't so bitter little nerd anymore.
Yep you are right about that...english is not my native tongue. ...and i'm not planning to return anytime soon in wow.
Your sad comments about spelling confirms me that you must be from texas and a member of" cousin stays with cousin" family. ..take a break and go out some day and maybe ....just maybe you aren't so bitter little nerd anymore.
Your sad comments all together confirm the fact that a lot of people would refer to you as.... "a f*cking moron."
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Yep you are right about that...english is not my native tongue. ...and i'm not planning to return anytime soon in wow.
Your sad comments about spelling confirms me that you must be from texas and a member of" cousin stays with cousin" family. ..take a break and go out some day and maybe ....just maybe you aren't so bitter little nerd anymore.
Your sad comments all together confirm the fact that a lot of people would refer to you as.... "a f*cking moron."
Oooh a strong *f" word...sad is that i can see a foam floading from your mouth when someone is bashing that "perfect" wow world
I am going to say... no. DAoC, Lineage II, Guild Wars, WAR just to name a few. World of Warcraft is not the best, maybe once upon a time, but it's more of a social fanfare with boring raids and boring PvP.
I am going to say... no. DAoC, Lineage II, Guild Wars, WAR just to name a few. World of Warcraft is not the best, maybe once upon a time, but it's more of a social fanfare with boring raids and boring PvP.
Ok your view vs that of 11.5million. All equally valid.
Actually those games quote are not bad. Many WoWers also play other games. I love DAoC, more than WoW, but DAoC already died. GW is great, but again, my zeal has faded. Same for WAR, L2 too much grinding.
I keep coming back to WoW when I have idle time. Nothing else out there can keep me coming back.