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How does Blizzard manage to have such a strong grasp on the Asian MMORPG player base?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
How does Blizzard manage to have such a strong grasp on the Asian MMORPG player base?
close to over a third of WoW's population comes from China.
Well what did Blizzard do that made the Chinese player base so vastly interested in WoW?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
More oppertunities for gold farmers/sellers?
I know they made it cheaper for the Chinese.
All mmos in the asian markets use a different payment model then people in the US or Europe. They pay for the time they play which indeed makes the games cheaper, but this is not something invented by Blizzard. It does surprise me that WoW is so popular in China. I have read recently that whereas western gamers like a challange, the Chinese players do not. They seek a very different sort of game. You might argue that games made in that part of the world are difficult becouse there is so much grinding, but grinding is not hard its just tedious. I simply think WoW has hit the sweetspot between challanging and casual, with just enough optional grinding that it satisfies the Chinese player.
They do seem to like a quest but are prepared to put in much more grind. Might this be a reflection of work ethos?
Strong grasp on the asian mmo market? Last time I heard there are alot more playing other asian mmo's.
WoW is nothing more then a dungeon grind now, so it fits exactly with what Chinese like. Also the only reason the Chinese were playing other games then WoW was lack of the expansions but they are now getting WotLK, so more will be going back. If your going by Asians in general, Koreans play Aion a lot more then WoW.
I very much doubt it. We aren't talking about work we are talking about leisure time. They are almost opposites. Closest thing this comes to reflecting is a higher tolerance for mind numing activities. Maybe you are onto something with the work ethos on second thoughts.
But there is a problem with your theory. A Older Gen of MMORPG players would argue that Older MMORPGs such as Everquest series had a larger grind than WoW does.
So if Grind was really such a big deal, than I am sure older MMO than WoW would have been vastly more populated than WoW in Asia, which they arent.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
O.P is very naive
I heard almost half of wow players worldwide come from China.
Last week they had finally access to litch king, months ago to the burning crusade. That means they were playing 4 years!!! vanila wow. Four years!!!!
Considering western mmos doesnt their "asian" cup of tea and the big success of games like aion, perfect world etc...
Quite strange Uh?
Not so much.
Lets see some wow in-game prices:
- Basic flyng mount : 250 gold.
- Double talents: 1000 gold at 40!!!
- Flying in cold weather: 1000 gold
- Epic flyng mount: 5000 gold
-etc..
- At level 80 you have gear that need to be fill with gems. Approx cost of each one: 300 gold. There are about 15 sockets.
And yes, if you are a veteran player you can achieve that goal. But if you are a newbie or a player that doesnt know any jeweller or doesnt have jewellery as profession, You cant live without buying some gold.. (at least if you want to play good)
- GS, you need good gear and gems if you want to be allowed to raid.
- Have you ever tried action houses in low population servers? some objects get rusty before sell. Trust me, you are not going to be rich in those servers.
- Considering the end game is fully reached now in about 2-3 months. It is imposible to have those huge amounts of gold.
Somebody can say: Well dont buy the epic mount, dont have double talents..... but thats not the point.
Point is most of chinese play wow for farming gold, yes its sad I know. But the worse thing is that blizzard is very , very happy with that.
Blizzard is making hundreds of milions each month thanks to the chino-farmers. They pay huge money each month to their accounts.
"It is the economy, stupid" I wonder if you know that famous quote.
I been in almost mmo on the market and never saw so many people buying in -game gold and considering it a normal behavior.
In wow you always know somebody who had bought gold or his/her friend had. And nobody feel guilty about.
Looks like if gold-buying is just part of the game.
Maybe they should put on achievements: "You have bought 10k of gold"
I think you're being to specific. They have a stranglehold on all the MMORPG player base.
Asia minus Japan for WoW...but actually WoW isn't the biggest online game in China at the moment so I would write they are not vastly interested.They did the same what achieved them the success on western markets?
China = lots of people = more customers?
Not really. You cant expect the first game of a genre to breakthrough into the mainstream to at the same time penetrate all global markets. WoW came out at a better time and had a much bigger (arguably) dev behind it. Also while I am not sure what the Chinese players philosophy is concerning their PCs. Do they have PCs that are just good enough or do they build rigs. WoWs main competitor at the time was EQ2 a graphics beast and a system hog so WoW a game that at the time was not the prettiest had a better chance to succeed and it did. If EQ2 also went with accesibility instead of graphical prowess today EQ2 might have millions of players online.
And I agree with that, but we are not talking about westerns players, we are talking about ASIAN.
Once thing is they have the recipe of succes in the western world, but in japan, Korea, china.... things work very different.
One good example we have it in AION, the game is a HUGE succes in Korea, what about EU and USA, well we all know by now....
They have an absolutely different approach in mmos. And in life too.
In Korea they eat dogs, but they will never eat a bunny cos for them is a cute pet.
Tera the next asian big hit will be "westernizate" to make it more playable to our western tastes.
In youtube you can find a lot of videos showing chino-farmers on duty.
I never heard before the word Russian-farmers or polish-farmers, mexican-farmers or spanish-farmers.
I am not sayng that ALL chinese players are gold farmers OFC but a HUGE % of them really are.
China has growth a lot this last years but the majority of its population is still very humble. It is not Japan or Korea where everybody has a computer and a console.
They have a lot of chinese and korean games for free, a lot!!!!
So why they should play a 5-year old game that cost them money and is by far the opposite of their cultural traditions?
It is another work for them, simply as that.
Some of the biggest games in the world are Asian. And you've probably never heard of them.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Whilst it may appear to us that Blizzard is huge in China, it really isnt that big when you look at the numbers.
According to a report in 2009, there are 338 million internet users in China. Compare that to the 2009 population of the USA (308 million in total). Thats 30 million MORE internet users than there are PEOPLE in the US.
Online gaming is hugely popular in China - But if 7 million of them may play WoW, but thats only 2.07% of the online population playing it. There are many online games there, ones that have never been published in the Western world, which are far more popular than WoW, although Wow is one of the most popular Western MMO's. But then not a huge a number have been ported to Chinese, mainly due to the Chinese restrictions on what can be in a game.
I have worked for a company who looked into trying to make an MMO in china - and they make them QUICK. Over here you have a typical 5 year development cycle - over there, they can knock out a new game in less than a year, and only need 0.5% of the net population to play it for it to be a success and make a lot of money. The big games in china who have 10% of the net population dwarf anything Blizzard can do over here.
"When people don't know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way they want them to be filled in. They are almost always disappointed." - Will Wright
It's not that they "grasp" the "Asian market." It's that they invested in publishing and offering their game in China. Most Western titles don't.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
A good game is a good game no matter where its released.
What have you been drinking...... If anything Asians play mostly other MMOs and not WoW.
Exactly. Someone suggested that if they liked grind. . they would be playing older MMOs. . except they are not published there. Blizzard had to get permission from the government to do it and they had to jump through a lot to get WoTLK out there (due to the nature of the content).
They decided to persue a large market because they could afford to fail. . they didn't.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
There are a lot of people in China and Wow is far from the largest there. 8 million people is nothing so if you'll get a game in there you can earn a lot of money.
Only the gods know how many people play perfect world there, but it is a lot more than the number that play Wow.
And Chinese people seems to like grind, and Wow have plenty of that.
There are like 160 million MMO gamers in China, and WoW has 5 million of them.
That is 155 million that play other MMOs.
Blizzard has no hold there.
have you seen the Asian grinders they play? a paperclip is more fun than most of them. and who said Blizzard has a strong grip on the Asains?
Isn't WoW something like 9th or 10th most popular in Korea? I know that Aion, and both Lineage games have more players than WoW does. Anyway, Asia is more than just China.
Koreans love Starcraft, so much so, that during the early development of WoW, Blizzard started courting them with special presentations and tester invite that US players didn't get. The architecture of the Night Elves was designed as a hat-tip to the Asian fanbase. Why do you think the Night Elves offer little things like Kimchi?
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
What is interesting is that Starcraft is still the 2nd most popular game in Korea (after Aion). In the top 10 list of games played in Korea a couple weeks ago Starcraft 2 wasn't listed there. I wonder how well it is being received. WoW was number 9 on the list I believe.