Well everyone that I know that quit did not go to Rift at all. We quit because Cataclysm is not worth our money for the content of high level quests in it. And if you have leveled a lot of alts even though they redid the 1-60 quests it was almost impossible to get past the burnout of not enough community pitching in in the small guilds because WoW failed for the small guilds to level as fast as the big ones no matter how hard people worked. Also leveling an alt does hardly anything for the guild xp bat whasoever. They made it hard for low levels or people who are leveling an alt to feel like they were truly pitching anything in at all. From level 1-60 you are lucky to get 1-2 guild faction for each quest and you have to be honored to get teh cloak and so if you are just starting out unless have a max character you can't get the cloak due to the quests do not give enough faction for you to get honoered until you are almost grown past what makes it worth buying the heirloom gear for xp bonus. And on top of earning the guild faction to get it, it costs 1200 gold. Hmmm now that sounds like a real tasty reward that I worked my hind end off to get and then have to put out 1200 gold? Did not make a lot of sense to me to have to earn it and then pay and outragious price for it too.
In fact I tried a free weekend of Rift and could not get past the candy ore adn fake flowers. Ohter graphics were ok but I was not impressed by playing Night of the Living Dead in the starting area and then did a Rift after I got out of the beginning area nd was just not impressed at all. It did not even have what and console RPG did years ago for awesome fighting graphics or anything else.
So IMO I don't think the subscrition drops had anything to do with Rift or summer either one. A bunch of us just said this is pathetic for anyone who is not in a huge raiding guild or at least a guild that raids more than once a week.
Myself I could have gotten into a end game raiding guild however chose to quit instead because of how the people in the endgame guilds treat other players. Not well usually unless you in their eyes are perfect at everything you do lol. And I personally know 7 of those account holders who quit.
I think after so long people just get tired of not enough content for their money and how they get treated by the community as a whole. I know people who refuse to join any guild on WoW because of how they have been treated. And farming the same dungeons over and over to get gear and then you get your gear and a new contene patch comes out that makes it easier for everyone who did not play from teh beginning to gear up and then you have to go get new gear. There is NEVER and end to the gear grind on WoW that is another factor for burnout.
I think there's WAY...WAYYYYYY to many factors to say this is Rifts doing but it might have contributed a little. March, warm weather ((Beer on a terrasse with friends)), other platform titles came out. BETA of upcoming titles letting a few more peeps in or simply catching their curiosity enough to unsubscribe from WoW.
I myself, am playing Rift and enjoying it immensely. Although I haven't played WoW in like 4 years so I'm not part of the dip in numbers
________________________ "If RL was an MMO, I'd probably be getting laid more often..."
I'd be willing to bet that Rift has absolutely nothing to do with this drop. This is just from people burning through everythng fun to do in the expansion and letting their accounts go fallow again until the next one. Just like they always do. Or are you claiming every Wow player that also purchased Rift cancelled their wow account? Honestly Yamota out of all the people giving Rift more credit than is due, you are one of the biggest.
From the article:
"The month of March may also have just been a bad month to poll, as competition such as RIFTlaunched that month. Even if the majority of the players that left World of Warcraft for RIFTeventually find their way back, the damage has been done for the month of March."
So it did have some impact but apparently it was just temporary.
As for me giving Rift credit. LOL
I have been nothing but criticizing the game for being a soul less WoW clone. I have nothing but disdain for the game.
Oh trust me I know this. I just like having you repeat it so people can see it and take your posts with the grain of salt they deserve.
From the article as well:
"Cataclysm launched in early December, putting the end of March a good four months out. You can only expect players to consume the same content for so long, and four months is a pretty long time. If this were a single-player game and not an MMO, no developer could reasonably expect a player to consume the same content for four months"
So to sum up the writers opinon, he isn't sure. So could be six of one and half a dozen of the other. Funny though how you start trumping this "could be" as absolute fact. If that's the case then what this also means is that from Wow customers alone Rift garnered 600,000 subs. Combine that with the number of non-wow players and players who's first game is Rift and they just may have gotten the one million subscribers at launch that you claimed could in no way be possible.
Are you misstaken me with someone else?
Its entirely possible I am. That could have been someone like Rabenwolf I was thinking of.
And where did I say it is absolute fact? I simply qouted the article, draw whatever conclusion you like from that.
You quoted the part of the article that supported your opinion but not the other one. That takes the writers words of of context and I don't feel that is fair treatment as the writer expressed an opinion his results were inconclusive.
I believe that the dip was primarily caused by the release of Rift, as it is a very well done WoW clone and it was released in March, but seeing as Rift retainted less than half of its box sales those people will go back to somewhere. Most likely they went back to WoW hence why I think the conclusion of the article is correct.
Again we disagree here. I think most the people that Wow just lost are those that only returned for the expansion in the first place and now that they are done with it, they have gone inactive again. All the long time wow players I know continued to pay for both subscriptions. Unlike yourself, i personalIy don't feel Rift has had any impact on Wow at all because Wow is in a league all its own. Wow is Elvis (or the Beatles) of the MMO world, nothing will touch it save time and its own excesses.
As to whether Rift will manage to retain the bulk of its player base, I've always said we will have to wait and see. And so far I think its still too early to tell. And again I do not feel these Wow numbers give us any real insight one way or another.
the numbers involved are not exactly significant.. and.. i'd have to see where things are in 6 months time before i gave it any credence.. who knows.. maybe there have been a few converts.. but.. its far too early to tell.
I think some of you are missunderstanding what the article is saying. It merely says that Rift may have caused a small dip but that most of them have returned to WoW so in effect Rift had little to no permanent effect to WoW subscriber numbers. Which is the same for all WoW clones, like WAR etc.
It could be, but most likely whatever players have rejoined WoW for the latest expansion milked it for whatever it was worth (which wasn't much, especially if you were 80 at the time) and thus moved on at about that time. I too don't believe that Rift had touched the WoW playerbase at all. Rift probably gathered a crowd of already ex-WoW players that were looking what was in vanilla WoW and was lost with all these expansions. Whether they found what they were looking for is another story altogether.
its only 5%. 95% is still there. that's hardly news...all mmoss go up around new expansions then lose players after the 'fresh' smell wears off.
I'd say 5% loss is extremely extremely small.
more than likely that the drop in numbers is more 'seasonal' than caused by other MMO's.. as we move more into Summer, chances are the numbers will drop by another few percentage points..
As a former subscriber ive just been sent a 7 days free offer from Blizzard.
Sounds like numbers continue to slip. I still find Rift more enjoyable to WoW.
Me too. I got yet another 7 day trial from Blizzard. In mid December last year I got the 10 day Cata trial. Then later on in February I could retry the 10 day Cata trial (no idea why I can do it twice -_-) and now I got the 7 day trial again from Blizzard (I think thsi is the fifth time I am getting the 7 day trial over the years )
Anyways who cares about MMOs when Diablo 3, ME3, Skyrim and the new SC xpac are coming out this year!!!!! Can't wait for these
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
more than likely that the drop in numbers is more 'seasonal' than caused by other MMO's.. as we move more into Summer, chances are the numbers will drop by another few percentage points..
We'll see with next quarter if it's seasonal. Player activity figures in tools like XFire and Raptr don't show that much of a seasonal dip so far, none of the decrease that WoW was experiencing, and also WoW census didn't show much of a significant dip last year.
It could be that people are just getting tired of playing WoW after years of doing it, that doesn't sound that strange to me at all, but we'll see how the trend goes over the months.
What I found more interesting was that a lot of people had expected that CATA would at least give an additional boost to WoW's sub numbers, just like that with the WotLK release in China, the sub numbers peaked to 12 million. Some claimed that 'WoW 2' as some called CATA would easily boost sub numbers to past 13 million and maybe even 14 million.
Instead of an expected increase however, they reported a 600 million decrease in subs within the first few months after the latest expansion.
Originally posted by fivoroth
Anyways who cares about MMOs when Diablo 3, ME3, Skyrim and the new SC xpac are coming out this year!!!!! Can't wait for these
Skyrim will come out in November this year, but D3, ME3 and the new SC xpac won't be coming out this year, that has already been confirmed by the companies themselves. Sorry, I guess it'll be a busy first quarter next year
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
more than likely that the drop in numbers is more 'seasonal' than caused by other MMO's.. as we move more into Summer, chances are the numbers will drop by another few percentage points..
We'll see with next quarter if it's seasonal. Player activity figures in tools like XFire and Raptr don't show that much of a seasonal dip so far, none of the decrease that WoW was experiencing, and also WoW census didn't show much of a significant dip last year.
It could be that people are just getting tired of playing WoW after years of doing it, that doesn't sound that strange to me at all, but we'll see how the trend goes over the months.
What I found more interesting was that a lot of people had expected that CATA would at least give an additional boost to WoW's sub numbers, just like that with the WotLK release in China, the sub numbers peaked to 12 million. Some claimed that 'WoW 2' as some called CATA would easily boost sub numbers to past 13 million and maybe even 14 million.
Instead of an expected increase however, they reported a 600 million decrease in subs within the first few months after the latest expansion.
well 600k isnt that much.. though i thought it was amusing when people were recently saying they didnt think WoW even had 7 million players.. 5 million short of actual numbers.. but.. regardless.. the kinds of figures being mentioned.. might be game destroying for other MMO's.. but for WoW its just a minor 'blip' .. and probably less than they were expecting.
well 600k isnt that much.. though i thought it was amusing when people were recently saying they didnt think WoW even had 7 million players.. 5 million short of actual numbers.. but.. regardless.. the kinds of figures being mentioned.. might be game destroying for other MMO's.. but for WoW its just a minor 'blip' .. and probably less than they were expecting.
Well, I myself am curious about how large the US and EU number of subs are, because I think the decrease in those subs has been larger but been compensated by the increase in Chinese subs; but I guess we'll never know the exact figures of those.
Personally, I think it would be good if WoW dropped several more millions of subs. Not because I'd wish empty servers on WoW players or wish that WoW starts to fail, but because in my eyes it's a healthier situation for the MMO market, the feverishly high sub numbers has done some weird things with players' and MMO companies' expectations, besides that, a too dominant monopoly is never good whatever the field of business, so the same applies to the MMO market.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Considering the time of year it is. Students are taking their finals. I know mine devoted 100% of her off time to studying for her 5 finals. Now she just moved back into the house for summer.
So most students are taking finals, graduating, moving and what not 600k is nothing. Show me 2 or 3 million and then I will go wow.
I'd be willing to bet that Rift has absolutely nothing to do with this drop. This is just from people burning through everythng fun to do in the expansion and letting their accounts go fallow again until the next one. Just like they always do. Or are you claiming every Wow player that also purchased Rift cancelled their wow account? Honestly Yamota out of all the people giving Rift more credit than is due, you are one of the biggest.
This ^
I'm one of those people infact, burned through the content of Cataclysm in about 6 weeks, got bored, cancelled account until next major content patch hits and then will give it another go.
Quite interesting that Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, has stated that the subscription numbers fluctuate depending on how fast people burn through the content, so guess Blizzard are keeping an eye on cancellation reasons.
I'd be willing to bet that Rift has absolutely nothing to do with this drop. This is just from people burning through everythng fun to do in the expansion and letting their accounts go fallow again until the next one. Just like they always do. Or are you claiming every Wow player that also purchased Rift cancelled their wow account? Honestly Yamota out of all the people giving Rift more credit than is due, you are one of the biggest.
This ^
I'm one of those people infact, burned through the content of Cataclysm in about 6 weeks, got bored, cancelled account until next major content patch hits and then will give it another go.
Quite interesting that Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, has stated that the subscription numbers fluctuate depending on how fast people burn through the content, so guess Blizzard are keeping an eye on cancellation reasons.
Rift has been interesting as well as being a fun change. The issue was really lack of cataclysm content thou. Not to mention some of the extremely annoying changes (cloth drops wtf). WoW is in a period of undevelopment and Rift managed to take advantage of it.
Btw, the numbers released are active subs at the end of March. The next quarter will show the actual post Cataclysm drop off due to multi month subs.
Lol i quit WoW after 2 hours of lvl 85. Cataclysm was a huge let down.
Nothing new at all. All new areas except Vashjir sucked. The two new BGs are new sucky versions of WSG and AB. Talent trees are made for retards. Every class is just simply the same as the other classes on the same role.
Firing a blue ball of fire or a glue of purple shadow aint different at all, please.
The two new races was a let down. I would love goblins if they kept the old voice and lookings. Now they look like drunken stuffs with ugly voices. Worgens were fine, but i gotta say that draenei males are better.
So whats the reason i quit? Lol, haters gonna hate. Im below casual. Im not addicted. GW is now a much better choice for my gamestyle.
Im not surprised many are quiting. It will go down like this if Blizzard wont release a good major content patch that makes the zones much fun and give us more content.
I thought Cataclysm was going to be awesome, but i gotta say that WOTLK was hella lotta better. I know some of you diehard WoW fans disagrees. I still enjoy other Blizzards games. Just like diablo 2 i have quit WoW because its boring. Warcraft 3 and Starcraft are still played.
Lol, reading thru this post makes me look like a typical whiner. Im sorry, i was just going to put out my reason why i quit for now. I hope they make the game less kiddy, then im going back again. Seriously, the talent trees are just sad.
Considering the time of year it is. Students are taking their finals. I know mine devoted 100% of her off time to studying for her 5 finals. Now she just moved back into the house for summer.
So most students are taking finals, graduating, moving and what not 600k is nothing. Show me 2 or 3 million and then I will go wow.
I understand that mmo subs decrease this time of year, but 600K is almost double what the number two P2P Western mmorpg has for it's total subs. That's not "nothing".
Does Blizzard typically announce such losses every year around this time? No, they don't. This is much more significant than some you are willing to accept.
I've maintained for a long time (and I'm not alone) that WoW's population would begin it's inevitable descent several months after the launch of Cataclysm. Here were are, a little over five months post launch, and it's starting to happen. However, I have also said that WoW's descent was not something that would occur very rapidly. I believe WoW will wear it's crown for quite some time, and it will be many years before it dwindles into history.
With respect to WoW's growth, I'd say the party is over.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Quite interesting that Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, has stated that the subscription numbers fluctuate depending on how fast people burn through the content, so guess Blizzard are keeping an eye on cancellation reasons.
According to a statement from Blizzard on Eurogamer, patch 4.1 will not contain Firelands and the associated raid content. Lead producer J. Allen Brack cited the fact that players hadn't sufficiently progressed through the current tier of raid content as the reason for this decision. Eurogamer provides the quote: "We feel like the player base isn't really ready for the next raid yet," [Brack] said. "And that led to some changes where Firelands is now actually going to be in 4.2."
almost sounds like double speak,
CEO claims people are burning thru content, Lead producer claims players are not progressing fast enough
They may been looking at how quickly the average person went from 80-85. People who took launch day off from work/school were 85 within 24 hours or less. It wasn't difficult to be raid ready within a week or two playing hardcore.
Looks like a lot of people think 600k players is "nothing". Lets put it in perspective a bit. 600k * $15/mo = $9 mil per month! $9,000,000 / mo * 12 mo / yr = $108,000,000 per year. Yeah, that's over $100 million per year.
If I were an investor or significant shareholder, I would be concerned by a loss of over $100 million in annual revenue.
Considering the time of year it is. Students are taking their finals. I know mine devoted 100% of her off time to studying for her 5 finals. Now she just moved back into the house for summer.
So most students are taking finals, graduating, moving and what not 600k is nothing. Show me 2 or 3 million and then I will go wow.
I understand that mmo subs decrease this time of year, but 600K is almost double what the number two P2P Western mmorpg has for it's total subs. That's not "nothing".
Does Blizzard typically announce such losses every year around this time? No, they don't. This is much more significant than some you are willing to accept.
I've maintained for a long time (and I'm not alone) that WoW's population would begin it's inevitable descent several months after the launch of Cataclysm. Here were are, a little over five months post launch, and it's starting to happen. However, I have also said that WoW's descent was not something that would occur very rapidly. I believe WoW will wear it's crown for quite some time, and it will be many years before it dwindles into history.
With respect to WoW's growth, I'd say the party is over.
I agree. I was stoked when Cata came out . . . then I played it and instantly realized that it was WoW's swan song. Cata was terrible. Some heavy hitters are coming out 2011/2012 and I'm pretty sure we'll see bigger drops in WoW's base.
Quite interesting that Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, has stated that the subscription numbers fluctuate depending on how fast people burn through the content, so guess Blizzard are keeping an eye on cancellation reasons.
According to a statement from Blizzard on Eurogamer, patch 4.1 will not contain Firelands and the associated raid content. Lead producer J. Allen Brack cited the fact that players hadn't sufficiently progressed through the current tier of raid content as the reason for this decision. Eurogamer provides the quote: "We feel like the player base isn't really ready for the next raid yet," [Brack] said. "And that led to some changes where Firelands is now actually going to be in 4.2."
almost sounds like double speak,
CEO claims people are burning thru content, Lead producer claims players are not progressing fast enough
People are burning through non-raid content. Raid content can take a while to finish for the average player. The problem for Blizzard is when the players decide not to do raids at all and instead quit.Wehn peopel are burned out on raid content, they are not going to keep subscribing if you are primarily adding more raiding stuff.
I guess that is the small dent that Rift could do to the aging MMORPG. Lets see what GW 2, SW:TOR and TERA can do. I cant imagine it will be much more.
I have to admit I laughed really hard when I read this, and it is not because I want WoW to die so do not attack me. The reason why I laughed is a few months ago some WoW fans were saying that it had reach 14 to 15 million subscribers, despite evidence to the contrary. Well I guess with this news today a few hundred Blizzard angels died a horrible agonizing death for that huge lie their fan base was telling.
(For those wondering what a Blizzard Angel is read on; if you ever watch it’s a wonder life they say in it every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings. My theory is that every time a WoW zealot defends and tries to convert others to believe that Blizzard and WoW are the gods of gaming and without them gaming would die, these actions give a Blizzard angel their wings. So Zealotry equals bell ringing in my theory, and a zealot telling a falsehood that is uncovered equals the demise of Blizzard Angels. Well like I said it is only a theory. )
Comments
Well everyone that I know that quit did not go to Rift at all. We quit because Cataclysm is not worth our money for the content of high level quests in it. And if you have leveled a lot of alts even though they redid the 1-60 quests it was almost impossible to get past the burnout of not enough community pitching in in the small guilds because WoW failed for the small guilds to level as fast as the big ones no matter how hard people worked. Also leveling an alt does hardly anything for the guild xp bat whasoever. They made it hard for low levels or people who are leveling an alt to feel like they were truly pitching anything in at all. From level 1-60 you are lucky to get 1-2 guild faction for each quest and you have to be honored to get teh cloak and so if you are just starting out unless have a max character you can't get the cloak due to the quests do not give enough faction for you to get honoered until you are almost grown past what makes it worth buying the heirloom gear for xp bonus. And on top of earning the guild faction to get it, it costs 1200 gold. Hmmm now that sounds like a real tasty reward that I worked my hind end off to get and then have to put out 1200 gold? Did not make a lot of sense to me to have to earn it and then pay and outragious price for it too.
In fact I tried a free weekend of Rift and could not get past the candy ore adn fake flowers. Ohter graphics were ok but I was not impressed by playing Night of the Living Dead in the starting area and then did a Rift after I got out of the beginning area nd was just not impressed at all. It did not even have what and console RPG did years ago for awesome fighting graphics or anything else.
So IMO I don't think the subscrition drops had anything to do with Rift or summer either one. A bunch of us just said this is pathetic for anyone who is not in a huge raiding guild or at least a guild that raids more than once a week.
Myself I could have gotten into a end game raiding guild however chose to quit instead because of how the people in the endgame guilds treat other players. Not well usually unless you in their eyes are perfect at everything you do lol. And I personally know 7 of those account holders who quit.
I think after so long people just get tired of not enough content for their money and how they get treated by the community as a whole. I know people who refuse to join any guild on WoW because of how they have been treated. And farming the same dungeons over and over to get gear and then you get your gear and a new contene patch comes out that makes it easier for everyone who did not play from teh beginning to gear up and then you have to go get new gear. There is NEVER and end to the gear grind on WoW that is another factor for burnout.
For those interested in D3 and SC2 the full transcript of the call http://seekingalpha.com/article/268912-activision-blizzard-s-ceo-discusses-q1-2011-results-earnings-call-transcript detailed that D3 will begin public beta testing Q3 and there will be a big press event for the next SC2 expansion at the end of this month. schweeeeeet!
I think there's WAY...WAYYYYYY to many factors to say this is Rifts doing but it might have contributed a little. March, warm weather ((Beer on a terrasse with friends)), other platform titles came out. BETA of upcoming titles letting a few more peeps in or simply catching their curiosity enough to unsubscribe from WoW.
I myself, am playing Rift and enjoying it immensely. Although I haven't played WoW in like 4 years so I'm not part of the dip in numbers
________________________
"If RL was an MMO, I'd probably be getting laid more often..."
the numbers involved are not exactly significant.. and.. i'd have to see where things are in 6 months time before i gave it any credence.. who knows.. maybe there have been a few converts.. but.. its far too early to tell.
I think some of you are missunderstanding what the article is saying. It merely says that Rift may have caused a small dip but that most of them have returned to WoW so in effect Rift had little to no permanent effect to WoW subscriber numbers. Which is the same for all WoW clones, like WAR etc.
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It could be, but most likely whatever players have rejoined WoW for the latest expansion milked it for whatever it was worth (which wasn't much, especially if you were 80 at the time) and thus moved on at about that time. I too don't believe that Rift had touched the WoW playerbase at all. Rift probably gathered a crowd of already ex-WoW players that were looking what was in vanilla WoW and was lost with all these expansions. Whether they found what they were looking for is another story altogether.
As a former subscriber ive just been sent a 7 days free offer from Blizzard.
Sounds like numbers continue to slip. I still find Rift more enjoyable to WoW.
more than likely that the drop in numbers is more 'seasonal' than caused by other MMO's.. as we move more into Summer, chances are the numbers will drop by another few percentage points..
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
We'll see with next quarter if it's seasonal. Player activity figures in tools like XFire and Raptr don't show that much of a seasonal dip so far, none of the decrease that WoW was experiencing, and also WoW census didn't show much of a significant dip last year.
It could be that people are just getting tired of playing WoW after years of doing it, that doesn't sound that strange to me at all, but we'll see how the trend goes over the months.
What I found more interesting was that a lot of people had expected that CATA would at least give an additional boost to WoW's sub numbers, just like that with the WotLK release in China, the sub numbers peaked to 12 million. Some claimed that 'WoW 2' as some called CATA would easily boost sub numbers to past 13 million and maybe even 14 million.
Instead of an expected increase however, they reported a 600 million decrease in subs within the first few months after the latest expansion.
Skyrim will come out in November this year, but D3, ME3 and the new SC xpac won't be coming out this year, that has already been confirmed by the companies themselves. Sorry, I guess it'll be a busy first quarter next year
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
well 600k isnt that much.. though i thought it was amusing when people were recently saying they didnt think WoW even had 7 million players.. 5 million short of actual numbers.. but.. regardless.. the kinds of figures being mentioned.. might be game destroying for other MMO's.. but for WoW its just a minor 'blip' .. and probably less than they were expecting.
Well, I myself am curious about how large the US and EU number of subs are, because I think the decrease in those subs has been larger but been compensated by the increase in Chinese subs; but I guess we'll never know the exact figures of those.
Personally, I think it would be good if WoW dropped several more millions of subs. Not because I'd wish empty servers on WoW players or wish that WoW starts to fail, but because in my eyes it's a healthier situation for the MMO market, the feverishly high sub numbers has done some weird things with players' and MMO companies' expectations, besides that, a too dominant monopoly is never good whatever the field of business, so the same applies to the MMO market.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Considering the time of year it is. Students are taking their finals. I know mine devoted 100% of her off time to studying for her 5 finals. Now she just moved back into the house for summer.
So most students are taking finals, graduating, moving and what not 600k is nothing. Show me 2 or 3 million and then I will go wow.
This ^
I'm one of those people infact, burned through the content of Cataclysm in about 6 weeks, got bored, cancelled account until next major content patch hits and then will give it another go.
Quite interesting that Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, has stated that the subscription numbers fluctuate depending on how fast people burn through the content, so guess Blizzard are keeping an eye on cancellation reasons.
http://www.curse.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-news/956087.aspx
Rift has been interesting as well as being a fun change. The issue was really lack of cataclysm content thou. Not to mention some of the extremely annoying changes (cloth drops wtf). WoW is in a period of undevelopment and Rift managed to take advantage of it.
Btw, the numbers released are active subs at the end of March. The next quarter will show the actual post Cataclysm drop off due to multi month subs.
I have cancelled my WoW account.
LOL
Lol i quit WoW after 2 hours of lvl 85. Cataclysm was a huge let down.
Nothing new at all. All new areas except Vashjir sucked. The two new BGs are new sucky versions of WSG and AB. Talent trees are made for retards. Every class is just simply the same as the other classes on the same role.
Firing a blue ball of fire or a glue of purple shadow aint different at all, please.
The two new races was a let down. I would love goblins if they kept the old voice and lookings. Now they look like drunken stuffs with ugly voices. Worgens were fine, but i gotta say that draenei males are better.
So whats the reason i quit? Lol, haters gonna hate. Im below casual. Im not addicted. GW is now a much better choice for my gamestyle.
Im not surprised many are quiting. It will go down like this if Blizzard wont release a good major content patch that makes the zones much fun and give us more content.
I thought Cataclysm was going to be awesome, but i gotta say that WOTLK was hella lotta better. I know some of you diehard WoW fans disagrees. I still enjoy other Blizzards games. Just like diablo 2 i have quit WoW because its boring. Warcraft 3 and Starcraft are still played.
Lol, reading thru this post makes me look like a typical whiner. Im sorry, i was just going to put out my reason why i quit for now. I hope they make the game less kiddy, then im going back again. Seriously, the talent trees are just sad.
Yawn
I understand that mmo subs decrease this time of year, but 600K is almost double what the number two P2P Western mmorpg has for it's total subs. That's not "nothing".
Does Blizzard typically announce such losses every year around this time? No, they don't. This is much more significant than some you are willing to accept.
I've maintained for a long time (and I'm not alone) that WoW's population would begin it's inevitable descent several months after the launch of Cataclysm. Here were are, a little over five months post launch, and it's starting to happen. However, I have also said that WoW's descent was not something that would occur very rapidly. I believe WoW will wear it's crown for quite some time, and it will be many years before it dwindles into history.
With respect to WoW's growth, I'd say the party is over.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
I agree that what you say make sense but also consider this
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/03/03/patch-4-1-will-not-contain-firelands-raid-content/
According to a statement from Blizzard on Eurogamer, patch 4.1 will not contain Firelands and the associated raid content. Lead producer J. Allen Brack cited the fact that players hadn't sufficiently progressed through the current tier of raid content as the reason for this decision. Eurogamer provides the quote: "We feel like the player base isn't really ready for the next raid yet," [Brack] said. "And that led to some changes where Firelands is now actually going to be in 4.2."
almost sounds like double speak,
CEO claims people are burning thru content, Lead producer claims players are not progressing fast enough
EQ2 fan sites
They may been looking at how quickly the average person went from 80-85. People who took launch day off from work/school were 85 within 24 hours or less. It wasn't difficult to be raid ready within a week or two playing hardcore.
Looks like a lot of people think 600k players is "nothing". Lets put it in perspective a bit. 600k * $15/mo = $9 mil per month! $9,000,000 / mo * 12 mo / yr = $108,000,000 per year. Yeah, that's over $100 million per year.
If I were an investor or significant shareholder, I would be concerned by a loss of over $100 million in annual revenue.
I agree. I was stoked when Cata came out . . . then I played it and instantly realized that it was WoW's swan song. Cata was terrible. Some heavy hitters are coming out 2011/2012 and I'm pretty sure we'll see bigger drops in WoW's base.
I think many of those subscribers are taking a break and waiting for SW:TOR and GW2.
People are burning through non-raid content. Raid content can take a while to finish for the average player. The problem for Blizzard is when the players decide not to do raids at all and instead quit.Wehn peopel are burned out on raid content, they are not going to keep subscribing if you are primarily adding more raiding stuff.
I have to admit I laughed really hard when I read this, and it is not because I want WoW to die so do not attack me. The reason why I laughed is a few months ago some WoW fans were saying that it had reach 14 to 15 million subscribers, despite evidence to the contrary. Well I guess with this news today a few hundred Blizzard angels died a horrible agonizing death for that huge lie their fan base was telling.
(For those wondering what a Blizzard Angel is read on; if you ever watch it’s a wonder life they say in it every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings. My theory is that every time a WoW zealot defends and tries to convert others to believe that Blizzard and WoW are the gods of gaming and without them gaming would die, these actions give a Blizzard angel their wings. So Zealotry equals bell ringing in my theory, and a zealot telling a falsehood that is uncovered equals the demise of Blizzard Angels. Well like I said it is only a theory. )