Premium services and store pets, I guess. Kind of makes me want to vomit.
Interesting. I hadn't considered those. Yeah, they would run up the ticket average.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
No surprise, Cataclysm was a horrible expansion, it did nothing to satisfy any group of people, I mean just look at all the different parts of WoW:
1. Raiding: More difficult, but less chances to raid...bad for Hardcore Raiders and Casual Raiders.
2. Dungeons: 1/3 were remakes, this bores lore people. Bad progression for beginner dungeoners, this bores casuals. Not hard enough, the CC and hardness that existed early in the expansion were quickly nerfed, this bores Hardcores.
3. Crafting was a joke. Wow crafting was never highly important, but in Wrath the gear was a nice start for pvpers, dungeoners and raiders. Nowadays it's vastly worse. Also, there wasn't much fun stuff in the crafting (engineers).
4. Questing was made too easy and too linear for people that like questing. Most people that don't like it dungeon leveled (made overwhelmingly a better leveling tool, even for dps). This just made levelers bored. Yes the 1-60 were revamped (you go through it too fast), but 60-80 was the same, and 80-85 had zero variation at all.
5. Pet/Mount Collecting: A good chunk of the pets and mounts were remakes of old, boring collectors.
6. Events: Events didn't change (untill the end).
I could go on, but can anyone tell me one thing that was good for one set of people? Transmog and Darkmoon don't count, because they aren't out yet and didn't affect 90% of the expansion, basically...too little, too late.
"Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." - Eleanor Roosevelt "Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security." -Norman Vincent Peale
i bet a lot of other games wished they HAD 800k subscribers to start with lol...even if WoW dropped to 5 million that is a huge ass amount of people for such an old game
I think people are moving more over to F2P due to having to tighten belts.
I doubt this either, I dont think lotro or eq2x are getting a huge boost, and none of the other games are really going to get former p2pers.
A subscription MMO is one of the absolute cheapest forms of entertainment in existence. The economy isnt going to be the reason for a big drop in subs.
About 6 months before Cataclysm came out, I posted on the wow forums that this expansion was going to start the decline of the game, and everyone said I was crazy. I cancelled my account before the expansion came out, and I've played once since then when they sent me a free 7 days of game time. I'd probably play it for free every now and then but actually paying for it? No way.
Activision Publishing's CallofDuty: Black Ops has been the #1 best-selling title in dollars in aggregate across all platforms in the U.S. and Europe for each of the first three quarters of 2011.
No suprise there. There are a lot of factors though, as already mentioned by some posters, from real world economy to simply bad design choices. I suppose, though, it's about time, so that hopefully other developers notice the problems and start being more innovating rather than trying to copy the damn game.
Wonder how many were hunters like the wife and I who got our class changed 100% and told you'll like it.
We played from launch on but the constant class nerfs/reworks and gear grinds were insane. The hunter change did us in we had 4 level 80 hunters between us and blizzards "if you don't like it leave" attitude toward the changes (made not to improve hunters but to make the job of balancing mana using classes easier)
So we left found a guild in EQ2 and will never be back. shame too we left friends behind but changing somthing we'd worked on
for 4 years into somthing so diffrent showed us Blizzard didn't give a damm about our ideas of what our class was.
Sure we had alts to 80 Priest/warrior/druid but they were alts not MAINS. The rabid fan boi population shouting down anyone questioning the changes and the "talk to the hand" attitude of blizzard made the choice easy.
now EQ2 gets our money I'm probably going to try DCUO now that i can do so free and am looking froward to Mechwarrior
online in 2012 to try out.
Blizzard blew it and if they think kung-fu panda goes wow and plays misty for me is going to bring us back we all I and the misses can say to them is "don't wait up"
After observing how long the numbers hovered around the 11.5 million mark, I figured the king was going to begin it's inevitable descent in the not so distant future.
Where's Zorndorf when you need him dammit. He could use a nice hot cup of "told ya so" right about now.
Ah well, WoW has had a fucking hell of a run, and it should be interesting to see how slowly or quickly the population deflates. Considering some of the ancient relics of the genre that are still alive and kicking, my bet would be on the former.
"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
After observing how long the numbers hovered around the 11.5 million mark, I figured the king was going to begin it's inevitable descent in the not so distant future.
Where's Zorndorf when you need him dammit. He could use a nice hot cup of "told ya so" right about now.
Ah well, WoW has had a fucking hell of a run, and it should be interesting to see how slowly or quickly the population deflates. Considering some of the ancient relics of the genre that are still alive and kicking, my bet would be on the former.
According to their financial statments, WoW only has about 8 million subscriptions left.
Ah well, WoW has had a fucking hell of a run, and it should be interesting to see how slowly or quickly the population deflates. Considering some of the ancient relics of the genre that are still alive and kicking, my bet would be on the former.
If it follows a typical MMO decline pattern, it's a long shallow slope that lasts at least a decade.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Im sure alot of the people that didnt like the idea of the pandas left.
I think the new xpac looks good though actually after talking it down for a bit. I think they did the right thing and even if they lose some of there playerbase the new direction there going in is one that is better.
I just think the numbers though of the playerbase really shouldnt be such a hot topic. Honestly there is new games coming out and have been out that could have used the support.
Good. This is what happens when you start tossing in MicroTransactions on top of a monthly fee. The nickel & diming is bs.
I would be willing to bet less than one half of a percent that left left because of that.
If your willing to bet then what is your proof?
Common sense. Its not like they just introduced the micro transactions. Its been well over a year since the sparkle pony and over 6 years since the MT gambling that is the WoW TCG (which is even more ridiculous than the MTs...at least you were gauranteed your stuff with the MTs)
I think this due to the mmorpg market being saturated now and games are only trading subs instead of attracting new players fresh to the genre.
If you take a look at the sub-estimations at mmodata.org you see a trend that, cumulatively, the total of all MMO-players does not rise since Q2/2009-2011.
I think we can safely assume, bare the release of a total game-changer IP that will bring in even more fresh players/subs, that the MMORPG market is now at its peak and saturated from a sales perspective. MMOs starting to loose players will now start to become a normal trend not really related to the quality of the game.
In the future devs and pubs will need to fight harder to retain their subs, its just how the market now works.
Comments
Interesting. I hadn't considered those. Yeah, they would run up the ticket average.
Uh, you guys realize that the increase in profit is for all of Activision-Blizzard, right?
Over 9 million Modern Warfare 3 pre-orders.
MW3 preorders
That would do it.
No surprise, Cataclysm was a horrible expansion, it did nothing to satisfy any group of people, I mean just look at all the different parts of WoW:
1. Raiding: More difficult, but less chances to raid...bad for Hardcore Raiders and Casual Raiders.
2. Dungeons: 1/3 were remakes, this bores lore people. Bad progression for beginner dungeoners, this bores casuals. Not hard enough, the CC and hardness that existed early in the expansion were quickly nerfed, this bores Hardcores.
3. Crafting was a joke. Wow crafting was never highly important, but in Wrath the gear was a nice start for pvpers, dungeoners and raiders. Nowadays it's vastly worse. Also, there wasn't much fun stuff in the crafting (engineers).
4. Questing was made too easy and too linear for people that like questing. Most people that don't like it dungeon leveled (made overwhelmingly a better leveling tool, even for dps). This just made levelers bored. Yes the 1-60 were revamped (you go through it too fast), but 60-80 was the same, and 80-85 had zero variation at all.
5. Pet/Mount Collecting: A good chunk of the pets and mounts were remakes of old, boring collectors.
6. Events: Events didn't change (untill the end).
I could go on, but can anyone tell me one thing that was good for one set of people? Transmog and Darkmoon don't count, because they aren't out yet and didn't affect 90% of the expansion, basically...too little, too late.
"Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security." -Norman Vincent Peale
i bet a lot of other games wished they HAD 800k subscribers to start with lol...even if WoW dropped to 5 million that is a huge ass amount of people for such an old game
I doubt this either, I dont think lotro or eq2x are getting a huge boost, and none of the other games are really going to get former p2pers.
A subscription MMO is one of the absolute cheapest forms of entertainment in existence. The economy isnt going to be the reason for a big drop in subs.
-Azure Prower
http://www.youtube.com/AzurePrower
About 6 months before Cataclysm came out, I posted on the wow forums that this expansion was going to start the decline of the game, and everyone said I was crazy. I cancelled my account before the expansion came out, and I've played once since then when they sent me a free 7 days of game time. I'd probably play it for free every now and then but actually paying for it? No way.
the triple profits is regarding all games of Activision -- not just blizzard
http://www.rttnews.com/Content/TopStories.aspx?Node=B1&Id=1755791
Activision Publishing's Call of Duty: Black Ops has been the #1 best-selling title in dollars in aggregate across all platforms in the U.S. and Europe for each of the first three quarters of 2011.
EQ2 fan sites
No suprise there. There are a lot of factors though, as already mentioned by some posters, from real world economy to simply bad design choices. I suppose, though, it's about time, so that hopefully other developers notice the problems and start being more innovating rather than trying to copy the damn game.
Wonder how many were hunters like the wife and I who got our class changed 100% and told you'll like it.
We played from launch on but the constant class nerfs/reworks and gear grinds were insane. The hunter change did us in we had 4 level 80 hunters between us and blizzards "if you don't like it leave" attitude toward the changes (made not to improve hunters but to make the job of balancing mana using classes easier)
So we left found a guild in EQ2 and will never be back. shame too we left friends behind but changing somthing we'd worked on
for 4 years into somthing so diffrent showed us Blizzard didn't give a damm about our ideas of what our class was.
Sure we had alts to 80 Priest/warrior/druid but they were alts not MAINS. The rabid fan boi population shouting down anyone questioning the changes and the "talk to the hand" attitude of blizzard made the choice easy.
now EQ2 gets our money I'm probably going to try DCUO now that i can do so free and am looking froward to Mechwarrior
online in 2012 to try out.
Blizzard blew it and if they think kung-fu panda goes wow and plays misty for me is going to bring us back we all I and the misses can say to them is "don't wait up"
WoW is almost 8 years old. Did it occur to anyone that the game is ancient and like all other games, people will eventually move on?
The article seems to dramatic. even if they had 1 million subscribers it would still be great for an 8 year old game.
After observing how long the numbers hovered around the 11.5 million mark, I figured the king was going to begin it's inevitable descent in the not so distant future.
Where's Zorndorf when you need him dammit. He could use a nice hot cup of "told ya so" right about now.
Ah well, WoW has had a fucking hell of a run, and it should be interesting to see how slowly or quickly the population deflates. Considering some of the ancient relics of the genre that are still alive and kicking, my bet would be on the former.
"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
Good. This is what happens when you start tossing in MicroTransactions on top of a monthly fee. The nickel & diming is bs.
But don't worry, bros! the Panda will win back those customers!
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/4534636#4534636
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
According to their financial statments, WoW only has about 8 million subscriptions left.
Yep. Nero fiddles while Rome burns.
I would be willing to bet less than one half of a percent that left left because of that.
If your willing to bet then what is your proof?
If it follows a typical MMO decline pattern, it's a long shallow slope that lasts at least a decade.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Im sure alot of the people that didnt like the idea of the pandas left.
I think the new xpac looks good though actually after talking it down for a bit. I think they did the right thing and even if they lose some of there playerbase the new direction there going in is one that is better.
I just think the numbers though of the playerbase really shouldnt be such a hot topic. Honestly there is new games coming out and have been out that could have used the support.
I could just see Trion's office now
'WoW down another 800k, guess people really dont like that style of endgame. Its a good thing we didnt use that as our model....oh wait...uh oh'
Common sense. Its not like they just introduced the micro transactions. Its been well over a year since the sparkle pony and over 6 years since the MT gambling that is the WoW TCG (which is even more ridiculous than the MTs...at least you were gauranteed your stuff with the MTs)
I think this due to the mmorpg market being saturated now and games are only trading subs instead of attracting new players fresh to the genre.
If you take a look at the sub-estimations at mmodata.org you see a trend that, cumulatively, the total of all MMO-players does not rise since Q2/2009-2011.
I think we can safely assume, bare the release of a total game-changer IP that will bring in even more fresh players/subs, that the MMORPG market is now at its peak and saturated from a sales perspective. MMOs starting to loose players will now start to become a normal trend not really related to the quality of the game.
In the future devs and pubs will need to fight harder to retain their subs, its just how the market now works.