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Have Blizzard Ruined WoW?
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You were comparing subscription increase rate during original WoW gameplay period (mid2005-beg 2007) ]From 0 to 10m] with the subscribtion increase rate during subsequent periods (2007-2011) ]From 10m to 12m]. To that you applied direct proportional math (vanilla period 1.5y +10m rate vs subsequent period 4.5y +2m, which made your fabulous brain to say that the after vanilla period should have 4.5y/1.5y x 10m [+30m rate], which in fact would be 40m subscribers now, you got it wrong even there.
You still think this is a proper idea how to manage your future estimates? You think a Blizzard manager now sits down, and calculates that, according to this rate we had in vanilla, we could have had 40m by the end of the year 2010? Now my analogy from the first post, gave you an exaggarated clue that it's not the way the things are done.
There's market depletion (yes that applies to subscribtion increase rate, once a person becomes your customer, (s)he can't become your customer again, which means -> the figure that particular customer represents will negatively affect your subscription increase rate to the future). Is that comprehensible for your fabulous brain?
Please stop explaining your own topic of box sales, and if you want to reply to me, do it properly this time, so far it was a child's talk.
REALITY CHECK
That is not true. Mike Morhaime who never answered to anyone before now has to answer to the guy Kotick put in charger over there. And if you really think Kotick is going to give Morhaime and crew a blank check I think you need to go read up on how even battle net got implemented around there.
i laugh when ppl say that WoW should go back to vanilla times...... all mmorpgs that actually have a good lore will keep evolving with years.... imagine WoW vanilla after 6 years without all these changes so far... everyone would be bored to death and quit and maybe that way Warhammer would have been the real WoW killer LOL....
i started playing WoW with TBC (never ever tried vanilla)... but according to many ppl, vanilla was very limited compared to what WoW is now...
ppl need to understand that mmos evolve... if they stop appealing to some ppl after some updates, then its time to move on.
Like I said earlier 1.4 billion dollars on a yearly basis is already "out of proportion" with anything else. EVE stands a far, far distant second with less than (but still respectable) 50 million/year.
I don't believe in a 30 million paying subs on a single platform (and certainly not 15 million active subs on the western front).
You have to look at it with a certain perspective: our time, PC platform, just one kind of gameplay, ...
You all hit a ceiling once and the "next record" will no doubt come from an online subscription based game that's multi platform and will offfer multiple kinds of gameplay/chat/"facebook type of game" (whatever that may be).
But I think Blizzard outperformed itself with WOW's yearly income.
Without the tweaks and changes, it would never have gone to this kind of success. Certainly not with keeping it to WOW vanilla.
...what does it matter : 5, 6, 10, 12 even 15 M subs: the final revenu is breathtaking for a gaming company on PC.
to OP:
not really, it just got old. Blizz did a good job for a long time with WoW and their following is testament to that, but like all things it just got too old, boring and outdated. time for Blizz to put all their incredible resources, talent and most of all experiance into something new, something groundbraking, something next generation.
WoW was great for a looooong time, but nothing is ever forever.
WoW is not dying until the rate of growth dies. As long as it is positive it is living. And, of course wow is going to eventually start to decline, have you ever heard of a product life cycle? Introduction, growth, maturitiy, decline.
Rift
"So, right, a subscriber can NEVER SUBSCRIBE AGAIN"
Hah entertaining, this is a perfect illustration of how your fabulous brain works.
I hoped it won't need further elaboration, but I was wrong.
Yes (s)he cannot subscribe again, because (s)he is already subscribed. How much IQ was needed for that?
A subscriber, that is already paying you monthly - improved your subscribtion increase rate already in the past, whenever (s)he first subscribed. Even if (s)he stays subscribed, (s)he will lower your subscription rate for your future financial figures (again, subscription rate is not the amount of subscribers, but it shows how much subscribers you gained or losed during the specific period of time -- exactly what you used in your initial argument, that wow should have 40 mil subscribers now).
For illustration.
After first month you have 10 subscribers. Which is +10 subscription rate from 0 to 10. During second month, you have 12 subscribers. (let's assume 8 people stayed, 2 left, 4 new came in), which means your subscribtion rate is during the second month +2. Even that you improved your revenue, your subscription rate dropped from 10 to 2. From this point of view, the initial 8 subscribers that stayed subscribed lowered your subscription rate when you compare the rates of the two periods.
What you said is, by using direct proportional math logic, from a business perspective, the estimated amount of players after one year shall be 120 (by retaining +10 subscription increase rate every month), which is simply absurd. The estimations are not that simple, it's not based solely on a direct proportional math. My dog could give a better estimate, and it's not even a question of logic, this is so trivial. Market depletion, again market depletion is what stops you from maintaing your subscription rate for a longer period of time - I said it clearly in my exaggarated first post in this thread, that they should have milion bilion subscribers (clearly more than any market segment you could think of) if you wouldn't take market depletion into account.
Please go on, and give me a single example of a game that did not losed its subscription rate after its initial period. And hell think twice before you write anything, a game can increase the amount of subscribers and still decrease its subscription rate and vice versa. (In case, the game had 100k subs, losed 10k last month, but only 5k this month dropping to 95k - game losed total amount of subscribers, but increased the subscription rate from the previous period from -10k to -5k). And please I beg you, stop talking about box sales, as they have nothing to do about it.
REALITY CHECK
Change nothing and let the gaming experience grow stale or change it and keep it fresh, hmmm......
Did you really try to type as much as possible to make yourself seem smart?
Look, I'll put it simply:-
Market depletion - Irrelevant. Only relevant to max subscribers, box sales and total people that have played the game. The market is simply how many people will buy the box. If people buy the box and then don't like the game, that has NOTHING to do with market depletion.
Look at it this way: You have a pool. There are 100,000 people in this pool. 99% of these people get out of the pool, try the whole "outside water" thing and then 66% total of the people that were in the pool decide they don't like the "outside water" thing. That is market depletion. You have no more people that are willing to try being outside the pool, therefore your market for people who want to be outside the pool is empty.
Now imagine the circumstances of the "outside pool" thing changed massively every once in awhile, and some people left and entered the pool whether or not they liked they changes. They are still capable of entering and exiting the pool AS THEY WILL and they will effect the rate of growth and figures on how many people are joining or leaving the pool.
There is no way to say that the market is depleted in this case, because changes effect how much of the market enters or exits the pool. If the active subscription graph was actually a graph of "How many people, total, have exited the pool by this point in time" then there would be market depletion. It's not. It's a graph of "How many people are leaving and entering the pool over time".
Subscribers subscribing - Irrelevant. The simple fact those people haven't left or joined is enough to hold up the subscription rate. They are factors simply due to the fact that they don't change anything. They have the potential to quit, and the fact they're not quitting is what makes them a factor. WoW, however, has an ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE turnover rate. Almost every person I met in the game had been around since TBC / WotLK.
I admit, a graph of "people leaving versus new people joining up" would be more useful, but we work with what we have.
The simple fact that the game isn't growing considerably in terms of subscribers should tell you it's stagnating. Ask most people and they will tell you stories of entire guilds quitting because of changes, of empty friend lists etc etc. This is because old players are quitting whilst new players are joining up.
Going back to my pool example: Imagine if there was a group of people who stayed outside this pool despite the changes. They do not effect the rate of people leaving or entering the pool except through the act of not entering the pool again. AND THIS IS ENOUGH. They are not signing up again but they are positively effecting the rate of subscribers joining up since they are at 0. If they quit, they would move it to -1. A person joining up effects it to +1.
Do you understand? (I doubt you'll get it, but whatever.)
Let's use WoW as an example, now.
In a given month, there are:-
30 new subscribers. (ns)
50 subscribers staying. (s)
20 subscribers leaving. (ls)
Those 30 ns affect the subscribers joining rate by +30. Those 50 s affect the subscribers joining rate by +/- 0. Those 20 ls affect the subscribers joining rate by -20. This brings it up to a total rate of growth of +10.
Now, what if those 50 s had decided to join the ls? Then we'd have +30 and -70. Which would bring the total rate of growth to -40. By the simple action of NOT QUITTING, those people have changed the subscription rate by +50.
Do you understand?
Chess has been going for centuries and that hasn't grown stale.
Look at Starcraft, too.
I do understand what you mean, though. I think Blizzard should've made changes that didn't result in the gameplay experience being distorted in a way that makes it near unrecognisable.
Chess and Starcraft are really not good comparisons. PPL dont have the same expectations from RTS and board games. With MMOs you expect exploration, new experiences, and ever increasing reasons to play after you reach endgame.
I self identify as a monkey.
How do you kill that which has no life? How do you ruin that which was never good to begin with?
Pretty much what I think and it's a bit funny to read all those whiny posts saying how much WoW changed since the Vanilla. It was always quest ridden theme park with zones connected by narrow paths - and with very little things to do outside of the typical end-game gear grind.
REALITY CHECK
This thread is just going in circles. If you'd like to discuss sales and subscriptions, or the effects of Blizzard on WoW, please do so in open topics or in a less baiting thread. Locking this up.
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