I think the math is a little messed up on this. Please keep in mind that WoW is free from lvl 1 to 20. All those subscriptions are not bringing in cash. I would hardly consider these accounts a part of the demographic until they actually start paying cash.
The fact that Blizzard/Activision have admitted 800k accounts lost has to do with something regarding (semi?) truthful reporting. They HAVE to tell the public that they've lost accounts, but I also believe it's being spun to not look so bad. And as far as the Panda's go, I think they've really missed the mark. They'll get some people back, but if anything I think they'll lose more current subs. For one, Blizzard charges full box price like SOE used to do. Second, todays kids and young adults are really too cynical and jaded (thank you world leaders!) to take a game where they used to fight a lich king who murdered his father......and play kung fu panda. For the same reason that LEGO Universe failed, I think that this latest expac is a bad move on the devs part and will only go to show how disconnected Blizzard/Activision have become from their player base.
The way I look at it, you can a) Pay full box price and play tired old WoW with new Kung Fu Panda action or b) Pay full box price and start fresh with SWTOR or c) consider other games (there are MANY). Fact is WoW is showing its age and I think when this expac comes out, it'll knock people out of their stupor and made them reassess whether they want to chase new money after an old experience.
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!
Either that or they saw the writing on the wall at Blizzard and decided to rape the playerbase before it declined further? But yeah the cash shop being introduced is the sounding of the death knell.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
Age is age.people get tired and want to try new things along with a new feel.how many times on everquest 2 do I see people say they left wow because they wanted some different experience
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.
I think you'll see a whole bunch of players new to the MMO genre coming in for SWTOR (bioware fans, rpg fans, star wars fans). Myself for example
It can't be ruled out but I find its unlikely. There might be a new spike though, but I do not think that TOR will pull signigicant numbers (significant is 10% of the total active subs, atm ~2 million) of new players that are -retained- (playing longer than a few months).
If RPG players that do not like MMOs play TOR they will treat it as a SP game, if they are "converted" into long-time subs (in a marketing sense of sales or potential customers for the -whole MMO industry-) is another matter.
If those players will only play TOR for the IP, not the mmo-aspect, for example, they are not likely to play any other MMO and can safely be ignored since they are going to drop out of the TOR subs sooner or later after seeing all the content.
For WoW players its quite normal to try or in fact regularily play other MMOs. I personally come back to WoW once an expansion for 2 months untill I reach endgame and see all the new content. In between those times I play other MMOs.
Basic market analysis tells us that most people do not pay for multiple subs to multiple MMOs, at most someone is playing a P2P game like WoW and F2P games like maybe DDO or CO. This of course tends to inflate the sub-numbers in a global sense anyways.
I feel that GW2 has a much bigger chance of pulling more regular subs than TOR because its retention is pretty much guaranteed (its business model being B2P). I will most like play GW2 AND TSW for example, just because one is P2P and the other is a one-time investment (until expansion, but so are other MMOs).
But I think that its not likely for both games to inject significant "new life" into the subscription-growth. The only way to add significant subs to the market is to make a farmville-mmo, pulling the FB game-crowd to the MMO market.
Fear the day Zynga will actually make a fully-fledged MMO.
2. "The good news is that the company has whooped expectations by nearly tripling its profit for the quarter over this time last year. During this past quarter, Activision Blizzard raked in $627 million worth of sales, of which $148 million is pure profit. A majority of the revenue -- 62% -- comes from its digital sales." (from Massively)
Even when Blizzard fails, they still make Scrooge McDuck money. It's got to piss the competition with their "better mmos" off. It's as simple as 1, 2, 3.
thats not blizzard tripling profits -- thats ALL Activision games
Call of Duty is not Blizzard
Activision's Warcraft loses steam, Call of duty shines
Over half of sales ($427 million) were generated from digital channels, Edge reports. Call of Duty: Black Ops was the top-selling console game in the US and Europe for the nine months to the end of September, while consumers have now bought 20 million Black Ops map packs.
Activision also said it expects premium Call of Duty Elite subscribers to hit one million by the end of 2011, and confirmed a new Call of Duty game for 2012.
Panda says, this is only the beggining. Blizz will continue to lose subscriptions, especially after the panda thing launches. And there is TOR comming up with loads of pre-orders made already. While TOR is unlikely to become the MMO champion for years - it will sure be much more fun vs. pandas and will keep people bussy until the GW2 launch.
Hopefully this will spur Blizzard to step it up big time. This is unlikely to occur with MoP though as I'm sure they are way too deep into development.
It was clear that Cataclysm was going to be a subpar expansion. Giving us only 5 levels, spending most of their resources on updating the 1-60 world, changing heroics to be hour long nightmares in pugs. I never got to fight in a single Tol Barad battle due to my servers mismatched population. The guild leveling system was a good thing in my opinion, but just about everything else was uninspired.
MoP is following the same uninspired pattern of Cataclysm. Only 5 levels, nothing remotely interesting lore wise, and lots of time spent developing pet battle systems. I doubt they have addressed world pvp very well either.
My time in WoW started as a noob to the genre as a player. I watched friends play UO and EQ but never wanted to play them. I reached level cap soon after the hardcores and started doing instances, joined a raiding guild and got faction firsts in MC and BWL. After that I decided scheduling my life around a game was a thing of the past. I had done that in FPS games like Quake and Unreeal Tournament before WOW.
The only thing that interests me in WOWs future is the raid finder, but I'm not so excited about the fact it will only work for the most recent end game raid. If they could convert 5 mans to 6 mans, adding a dps slot it would help with the dungeon finding times as well. At this point, I want to be able to log in whenever I want and be able to progress my character without long waits. I doubt that's ever going to happen in WoW, which is why I'm excited about D3.
It can't be ruled out but I find its unlikely. There might be a new spike though, but I do not think that TOR will pull signigicant numbers (significant is 10% of the total active subs, atm ~2 million) of new players that are -retained- (playing longer than a few months).
You can't really dismiss the possibility either. Star Wars, Christmas...how many new players does that add up to?
But Bioware also doesn't have a b.net already running, ready to generate new MMO players by the millions, so no astonishing smash hit of surprising magnitude (like the Behemoth).
It's a word-of-mouth issue among the teens, I think. How "cool" the game is, and how talked about in the high school hallways. And that can go either way, inherently unpredictable.
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.
I am not really surprised, I still playing there but Im sure I will cancel too, is too many free mmorpgs offering new challenges and new engines, they are taking too long on the cata expansion, and ppl are doing the dungeons backwards to find some fun.
In addtion we have Diablo 3 comming. I haven't play wow for that long and Im quite bored alredy,also the nerfs and buffs make you give up easyly.
I certainly go for a free mmorpg where you buy items, or whatever they sell, instead pay monthly
We don't have a seasonal decomposition separating trend and seasonal components. We should have a sentence in there reading, "In contrast the loss was X% higher then expected..."
Someone mentioned that it was a 30% loss, if so I would expect a similar revenue loss but last I read, revenue hasn't declined by anything substantial that has been reported.
Losing 30% of your PAYING subscribers would incur a significant change in revenue.
All anyone needs to know is this:
1. WoW claims a loss of subs and is now down to 10.3 million.
2. "The good news is that the company has whooped expectations by nearly tripling its profit for the quarter over this time last year. During this past quarter, Activision Blizzard raked in $627 million worth of sales, of which $148 million is pure profit. A majority of the revenue -- 62% -- comes from its digital sales." (from Massively)
3. Blizzard/Activision stock is up 17% over the last year.
Even when Blizzard fails, they still make Scrooge McDuck money. It's got to piss the competition with their "better mmos" off. It's as simple as 1, 2, 3.
Still doesn't put in context againts their peers. I'd want to know how many their peers lostgained to put it in perspective.
Just the perfect time for Titan announcement at next year blizzcon and see ppl going back to WoW while they wait for it and then Titan peaks again at 10mil+ subs. The sad truth is no MMO out there will ever get these kind of subs not even close, I have yet to see an mmo running with 1mil users after their first month.
The sooner everyone realizes that most of WoW players dont like MMOs but like Blizzard games the sooner you will let go of this obsession in wanting WoW to fail, when WoW declines completely those ppl are not going to play other MMOs they are going back to single player games and leave the genre altogether and the genre will go back to being a mess with half complete bugged products.
Quoted article states 12M subscriptions have declined 14.2% to 10.3M. That's almost 1 of 6 customers. For any business, that's an astoundingly negative referendum on your company's product and direction.
But I have complete faith that the lure of a cute, cuddly, stuffed-animal race will bring back all those customers and more.
Anyone running an Excuse-o-meter for Morhaime? I think Q1 was "normal ebb and flow and they always come back". Q2 was "normal, seasonal fluctuations". Q3 is now "too quick consumption of content"
So we have huge drop of subscriptions, an executive going through a series of excuses, and f$&@ing pandas.
Payed for Cata expantion like 75$ then 15$ months, done all in 2 weeks, found I've payed for nothing as Cata offered me just new looking world, boring skill and endless wait for join party.
Without portals world became longuer to explore beside Cata added nothing to do....
I sure left but in hope they will do somethig better to come back, But Fu-Panda looks even more awful and I'll not pay again 75$ for small content pack, they charge too much and fail...
Better play LOTRO for free or 1 of 2 months subs then be bored at WoW IMO
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises. Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
Maybe they should nerf even a little more druids. I'm sure they will be happy with even lower subs. Otherwise Cata killed my casual interest in engame ... but I was fine with Cata as expansion, impressiver work, love every bit (despite being too linear).
I think the math is a little messed up on this. Please keep in mind that WoW is free from lvl 1 to 20. All those subscriptions are not bringing in cash. I would hardly consider these accounts a part of the demographic until they actually start paying cash.
It can't be ruled out but I find its unlikely. There might be a new spike though, but I do not think that TOR will pull signigicant numbers (significant is 10% of the total active subs, atm ~2 million) of new players that are -retained- (playing longer than a few months).
You can't really dismiss the possibility either. Star Wars, Christmas...how many new players does that add up to?
But Bioware also doesn't have a b.net already running, ready to generate new MMO players by the millions, so no astonishing smash hit of surprising magnitude (like the Behemoth).
It's a word-of-mouth issue among the teens, I think. How "cool" the game is, and how talked about in the high school hallways. And that can go either way, inherently unpredictable.
Thats why I specifically separated -sales- from -subs- both are not equivalent to what i try to say.
Of course I cant rule out the possibility, but TOR is unlikely to have a high retention rate (aka the ~2 million) in the sense of those people being really "new players" that will go out there and at some point buy other MMOs (else it doesnt really matter how many boxes you sold).
I am predicting a huge success for TOR in the sense of box-sales but a quickly declining and low retention rate. I might correct my estimate that i think TOR will sell around 3-4 million copies worldwide, but these copies are not immediately subs to be counted as "growth" of the industry.
IMHO we already are past milking the MMO market because the brands are established and are just trading players atm.
Just like theres only so many people playing FPS games, there are only so many people willing to play MMORPGs. What you would need is a game like Halo was for FSP on console, just for the MMO industry, but that already happened, and its called WoW.
WoW was the game-changer in 2005 that opened the market to a wider audience, the next step that significantly opens the market for MMORPGs would need to be something equally massive in the sense of metrics. Looking at GW2 and TOR neither game can deliver these.
The only untapped market left is the casuals that are sitting on facebook OR the casuals sitting on consoles.
Edit: When I'm talking about retention rate I am not talking specifically TOR subs over 2 or 12 months, I'm talking about the people comming into the MMO-fold for the first time and going
"Hey, I didn't know MMORPGs are fun!!"
Quasi a conversion mechanic like there was with WoW where before MMOs were sort of seen as tedious, and needed significant investment of time to play where WoW made it "casual". Or with Halo where shooters on console were pretty much a niche-market due to their mechanics and controls.
Originally posted by Alalala For any business, that's an astoundingly negative referendum on your company's product and direction.
Not true.
For any mmo (not any business), that is a totally different thing. Losing 1/6 people is nothing in terms of the mmo genre, lol. Even a game like APB if it lost 1 out of 6 players, that's nothing substantial.
Now having over 10 million customers is the key. Most mmos don't seem to keep players over one year's time and struggle to hit 300k so this is still a pretty remarkable thing.
Given that Blizzard still has to release in the giant market called China (and no one else is even close to doing that), I think a lot of these worries are pretty baseless in nature.
I hope they are moving on to some wow clone. Im kinder sad about WoW losing subs because I don't need people from that community in my mmo's (Really mean that, no trolling). I dont care if my game have 1 or 150 servers because there is a limit on players to enter anyway. Sure the company don't make as much money but they will listen and do better to keep the costumers.
Originally posted by Fessor111 Im kinder sad about WoW losing subs because I don't need people from that community in my mmo's (Really mean that, no trolling).
Just checked the mmos you play:
1. FFXI. Definitely no chance of a major ex-WoW player invasion.
2. Darkfall. This game isn't in danger of anyone invading it, much less WoW players.
Now having over 10 million customers is the key. Most mmos don't seem to keep players over one year's time and struggle to hit 300k so this is still a pretty remarkable thing.
Now losing the argumentum ad numerum power of Big Numbers of Subs in Other Countries is going to put a hurt in the standard forum arguments, though.
It'll actually be refreshing after the last eight years.
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.
Comments
I think the math is a little messed up on this. Please keep in mind that WoW is free from lvl 1 to 20. All those subscriptions are not bringing in cash. I would hardly consider these accounts a part of the demographic until they actually start paying cash.
The fact that Blizzard/Activision have admitted 800k accounts lost has to do with something regarding (semi?) truthful reporting. They HAVE to tell the public that they've lost accounts, but I also believe it's being spun to not look so bad. And as far as the Panda's go, I think they've really missed the mark. They'll get some people back, but if anything I think they'll lose more current subs. For one, Blizzard charges full box price like SOE used to do. Second, todays kids and young adults are really too cynical and jaded (thank you world leaders!) to take a game where they used to fight a lich king who murdered his father......and play kung fu panda. For the same reason that LEGO Universe failed, I think that this latest expac is a bad move on the devs part and will only go to show how disconnected Blizzard/Activision have become from their player base.
The way I look at it, you can a) Pay full box price and play tired old WoW with new Kung Fu Panda action or b) Pay full box price and start fresh with SWTOR or c) consider other games (there are MANY). Fact is WoW is showing its age and I think when this expac comes out, it'll knock people out of their stupor and made them reassess whether they want to chase new money after an old experience.
Just my thoughts.
Either that or they saw the writing on the wall at Blizzard and decided to rape the playerbase before it declined further? But yeah the cash shop being introduced is the sounding of the death knell.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
It can't be ruled out but I find its unlikely. There might be a new spike though, but I do not think that TOR will pull signigicant numbers (significant is 10% of the total active subs, atm ~2 million) of new players that are -retained- (playing longer than a few months).
If RPG players that do not like MMOs play TOR they will treat it as a SP game, if they are "converted" into long-time subs (in a marketing sense of sales or potential customers for the -whole MMO industry-) is another matter.
If those players will only play TOR for the IP, not the mmo-aspect, for example, they are not likely to play any other MMO and can safely be ignored since they are going to drop out of the TOR subs sooner or later after seeing all the content.
For WoW players its quite normal to try or in fact regularily play other MMOs. I personally come back to WoW once an expansion for 2 months untill I reach endgame and see all the new content. In between those times I play other MMOs.
Basic market analysis tells us that most people do not pay for multiple subs to multiple MMOs, at most someone is playing a P2P game like WoW and F2P games like maybe DDO or CO. This of course tends to inflate the sub-numbers in a global sense anyways.
I feel that GW2 has a much bigger chance of pulling more regular subs than TOR because its retention is pretty much guaranteed (its business model being B2P). I will most like play GW2 AND TSW for example, just because one is P2P and the other is a one-time investment (until expansion, but so are other MMOs).
But I think that its not likely for both games to inject significant "new life" into the subscription-growth. The only way to add significant subs to the market is to make a farmville-mmo, pulling the FB game-crowd to the MMO market.
Fear the day Zynga will actually make a fully-fledged MMO.
Whoopsie.
thats not blizzard tripling profits -- thats ALL Activision games
Call of Duty is not Blizzard
Activision's Warcraft loses steam, Call of duty shines
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/09/us-activisionblizzard-idUSTRE7A77GP20111109
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/325540/activision-profits-almost-triple-in-q3/
Over half of sales ($427 million) were generated from digital channels, Edge reports. Call of Duty: Black Ops was the top-selling console game in the US and Europe for the nine months to the end of September, while consumers have now bought 20 million Black Ops map packs.
Activision also said it expects premium Call of Duty Elite subscribers to hit one million by the end of 2011, and confirmed a new Call of Duty game for 2012.
EQ2 fan sites
Panda says, this is only the beggining. Blizz will continue to lose subscriptions, especially after the panda thing launches. And there is TOR comming up with loads of pre-orders made already. While TOR is unlikely to become the MMO champion for years - it will sure be much more fun vs. pandas and will keep people bussy until the GW2 launch.
agreed
Hopefully this will spur Blizzard to step it up big time. This is unlikely to occur with MoP though as I'm sure they are way too deep into development.
It was clear that Cataclysm was going to be a subpar expansion. Giving us only 5 levels, spending most of their resources on updating the 1-60 world, changing heroics to be hour long nightmares in pugs. I never got to fight in a single Tol Barad battle due to my servers mismatched population. The guild leveling system was a good thing in my opinion, but just about everything else was uninspired.
MoP is following the same uninspired pattern of Cataclysm. Only 5 levels, nothing remotely interesting lore wise, and lots of time spent developing pet battle systems. I doubt they have addressed world pvp very well either.
My time in WoW started as a noob to the genre as a player. I watched friends play UO and EQ but never wanted to play them. I reached level cap soon after the hardcores and started doing instances, joined a raiding guild and got faction firsts in MC and BWL. After that I decided scheduling my life around a game was a thing of the past. I had done that in FPS games like Quake and Unreeal Tournament before WOW.
The only thing that interests me in WOWs future is the raid finder, but I'm not so excited about the fact it will only work for the most recent end game raid. If they could convert 5 mans to 6 mans, adding a dps slot it would help with the dungeon finding times as well. At this point, I want to be able to log in whenever I want and be able to progress my character without long waits. I doubt that's ever going to happen in WoW, which is why I'm excited about D3.
You can't really dismiss the possibility either. Star Wars, Christmas...how many new players does that add up to?
But Bioware also doesn't have a b.net already running, ready to generate new MMO players by the millions, so no astonishing smash hit of surprising magnitude (like the Behemoth).
It's a word-of-mouth issue among the teens, I think. How "cool" the game is, and how talked about in the high school hallways. And that can go either way, inherently unpredictable.
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.
I am not really surprised, I still playing there but Im sure I will cancel too, is too many free mmorpgs offering new challenges and new engines, they are taking too long on the cata expansion, and ppl are doing the dungeons backwards to find some fun.
In addtion we have Diablo 3 comming. I haven't play wow for that long and Im quite bored alredy,also the nerfs and buffs make you give up easyly.
I certainly go for a free mmorpg where you buy items, or whatever they sell, instead pay monthly
__MMORPG__
Still doesn't put in context againts their peers. I'd want to know how many their peers lostgained to put it in perspective.
Just the perfect time for Titan announcement at next year blizzcon and see ppl going back to WoW while they wait for it and then Titan peaks again at 10mil+ subs. The sad truth is no MMO out there will ever get these kind of subs not even close, I have yet to see an mmo running with 1mil users after their first month.
The sooner everyone realizes that most of WoW players dont like MMOs but like Blizzard games the sooner you will let go of this obsession in wanting WoW to fail, when WoW declines completely those ppl are not going to play other MMOs they are going back to single player games and leave the genre altogether and the genre will go back to being a mess with half complete bugged products.
nonsence... if they do not develop new things the numbers go down even faster.
Quoted article states 12M subscriptions have declined 14.2% to 10.3M. That's almost 1 of 6 customers. For any business, that's an astoundingly negative referendum on your company's product and direction.
But I have complete faith that the lure of a cute, cuddly, stuffed-animal race will bring back all those customers and more.
Anyone running an Excuse-o-meter for Morhaime? I think Q1 was "normal ebb and flow and they always come back". Q2 was "normal, seasonal fluctuations". Q3 is now "too quick consumption of content"
So we have huge drop of subscriptions, an executive going through a series of excuses, and f$&@ing pandas.
Ok, sounds good.
I think those people left as they didn't like that my paladin can fart holy light.
Payed for Cata expantion like 75$ then 15$ months, done all in 2 weeks, found I've payed for nothing as Cata offered me just new looking world, boring skill and endless wait for join party.
Without portals world became longuer to explore beside Cata added nothing to do....
I sure left but in hope they will do somethig better to come back, But Fu-Panda looks even more awful and I'll not pay again 75$ for small content pack, they charge too much and fail...
Better play LOTRO for free or 1 of 2 months subs then be bored at WoW IMO
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
Maybe they should nerf even a little more druids. I'm sure they will be happy with even lower subs. Otherwise Cata killed my casual interest in engame ... but I was fine with Cata as expansion, impressiver work, love every bit (despite being too linear).
Blizzard doesnt count these as subs...
Thats why I specifically separated -sales- from -subs- both are not equivalent to what i try to say.
Of course I cant rule out the possibility, but TOR is unlikely to have a high retention rate (aka the ~2 million) in the sense of those people being really "new players" that will go out there and at some point buy other MMOs (else it doesnt really matter how many boxes you sold).
I am predicting a huge success for TOR in the sense of box-sales but a quickly declining and low retention rate. I might correct my estimate that i think TOR will sell around 3-4 million copies worldwide, but these copies are not immediately subs to be counted as "growth" of the industry.
IMHO we already are past milking the MMO market because the brands are established and are just trading players atm.
Just like theres only so many people playing FPS games, there are only so many people willing to play MMORPGs. What you would need is a game like Halo was for FSP on console, just for the MMO industry, but that already happened, and its called WoW.
WoW was the game-changer in 2005 that opened the market to a wider audience, the next step that significantly opens the market for MMORPGs would need to be something equally massive in the sense of metrics. Looking at GW2 and TOR neither game can deliver these.
The only untapped market left is the casuals that are sitting on facebook OR the casuals sitting on consoles.
Edit: When I'm talking about retention rate I am not talking specifically TOR subs over 2 or 12 months, I'm talking about the people comming into the MMO-fold for the first time and going
"Hey, I didn't know MMORPGs are fun!!"
Quasi a conversion mechanic like there was with WoW where before MMOs were sort of seen as tedious, and needed significant investment of time to play where WoW made it "casual". Or with Halo where shooters on console were pretty much a niche-market due to their mechanics and controls.
For any mmo (not any business), that is a totally different thing. Losing 1/6 people is nothing in terms of the mmo genre, lol. Even a game like APB if it lost 1 out of 6 players, that's nothing substantial.
Now having over 10 million customers is the key. Most mmos don't seem to keep players over one year's time and struggle to hit 300k so this is still a pretty remarkable thing.
Given that Blizzard still has to release in the giant market called China (and no one else is even close to doing that), I think a lot of these worries are pretty baseless in nature.
"TO MICHAEL!"
I hope they are moving on to some wow clone. Im kinder sad about WoW losing subs because I don't need people from that community in my mmo's (Really mean that, no trolling). I dont care if my game have 1 or 150 servers because there is a limit on players to enter anyway. Sure the company don't make as much money but they will listen and do better to keep the costumers.
Zoos the Slacker
1. FFXI. Definitely no chance of a major ex-WoW player invasion.
2. Darkfall. This game isn't in danger of anyone invading it, much less WoW players.
3. EQ1. Nope. Same as Darkfall.
I think you're pretty safe.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Now losing the argumentum ad numerum power of Big Numbers of Subs in Other Countries is going to put a hurt in the standard forum arguments, though.
It'll actually be refreshing after the last eight years.
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.