Wod was way too single player focused. People play this game to play with their friends and I had a lot less fun because everyone was off doing their own thing. In my original Wow raid group we would meet and have cookouts. I leveled up most of my characters to 60 with other players, not a lot of solo action at all
I have to agree that the expansion spike lasted much less than previous ones..
Originally posted by Nephaerius Despite all the doom and gloom here the best part is Blizzard is still ridiculously profitable. They're making more than expected off Hearthstone and increased player engagement as well as more off other titles than expected. D3 is up to over 30 million copies sold, etc. WoW subs were going to decline sooner or later. Company is still doing great.
Okay, but since I'm not an investor I don't really care too much about how their other games are doing. The board of directors can pat themselves on the back and hand out bonus checks to each other, but what will happen to WoW if the subscribers continue to leave in large numbers? I think that's the concern.
Well you might want to care about those other titles as they may determine the fate of WoW. If they happened to be profitable enough WoW servers could stay online forever. What will happen to WoW is the same thing that happens to any other game that's lived past its time. It's either shutdown or moved into maintenance mode. Things get old and they die. This is the natural order of life. Then we will finally get Warcraft 4 and/or a WoW sequel.
Regardless, 5.6 million subs is nothing to sneeze at ($850 million/month?). Especially considering, despite the claims otherwise in this thread, the majority of their sub losses were actually in the Asian market so this is a decrease perhaps due to more accurate reporting of sub numbers over time. WoW's not going any where any time soon.
What are you smoking? $850 million monthly hahaha?
God, WoW's yearly revenue was a little over $1 billion in their best years, this is by far their worst year.
Last year they had only $700million revenue, which was their by far the biggest low at that time.
Of course their East numbers are falling the most, when 70% of their playerbase is from the East anyway.
1.7mil players in the West paying $15 per month = $25.5 million per month
3.9mil players in the East paying $5 per month = 19.5 million per month
5.6mil players = 45 million per month
As Q3 end in September we'll start to see the realistic picture.
WoW's Token won't be new and the Patch 6.2 failed miserably.
I'm calling 3mil by the end of Q3 and only 1mil Subs in the West.
Originally posted by Nephaerius Despite all the doom and gloom here the best part is Blizzard is still ridiculously profitable. They're making more than expected off Hearthstone and increased player engagement as well as more off other titles than expected. D3 is up to over 30 million copies sold, etc. WoW subs were going to decline sooner or later. Company is still doing great.
Okay, but since I'm not an investor I don't really care too much about how their other games are doing. The board of directors can pat themselves on the back and hand out bonus checks to each other, but what will happen to WoW if the subscribers continue to leave in large numbers? I think that's the concern.
Well you might want to care about those other titles as they may determine the fate of WoW. If they happened to be profitable enough WoW servers could stay online forever. What will happen to WoW is the same thing that happens to any other game that's lived past its time. It's either shutdown or moved into maintenance mode. Things get old and they die. This is the natural order of life. Then we will finally get Warcraft 4 and/or a WoW sequel.
Regardless, 5.6 million subs is nothing to sneeze at ($850 million/month?). Especially considering, despite the claims otherwise in this thread, the majority of their sub losses were actually in the Asian market so this is a decrease perhaps due to more accurate reporting of sub numbers over time. WoW's not going any where any time soon.
What are you smoking? $850 million monthly hahaha?
God, WoW's yearly revenue was a little over $1 billion in their best years, this is by far their worst year.
Last year they had only $700million revenue, which was their by far the biggest low at that time.
Of course their East numbers are falling the most, when 70% of their playerbase is from the East anyway.
1.7mil players in the West paying $15 per month = $25.5 million per month
3.9mil players in the East paying $5 per month = 19.5 million per month
5.6mil players = 45 million per month
As Q3 end in September we'll start to see the realistic picture.
WoW's Token won't be new and the Patch 6.2 failed miserably.
I'm calling 3mil by the end of Q3 and only 1mil Subs in the West.
Need some figures to back up your guesswork, as there are no indications that i am aware of, that would substantiate your claims that most of WoW's subs are in Asia, or the rest of your figures come to think of it.
Originally posted by Nephaerius Despite all the doom and gloom here the best part is Blizzard is still ridiculously profitable. They're making more than expected off Hearthstone and increased player engagement as well as more off other titles than expected. D3 is up to over 30 million copies sold, etc. WoW subs were going to decline sooner or later. Company is still doing great.
Okay, but since I'm not an investor I don't really care too much about how their other games are doing. The board of directors can pat themselves on the back and hand out bonus checks to each other, but what will happen to WoW if the subscribers continue to leave in large numbers? I think that's the concern.
Well you might want to care about those other titles as they may determine the fate of WoW. If they happened to be profitable enough WoW servers could stay online forever. What will happen to WoW is the same thing that happens to any other game that's lived past its time. It's either shutdown or moved into maintenance mode. Things get old and they die. This is the natural order of life. Then we will finally get Warcraft 4 and/or a WoW sequel.
Regardless, 5.6 million subs is nothing to sneeze at ($850 million/month?). Especially considering, despite the claims otherwise in this thread, the majority of their sub losses were actually in the Asian market so this is a decrease perhaps due to more accurate reporting of sub numbers over time. WoW's not going any where any time soon.
What are you smoking? $850 million monthly hahaha?
God, WoW's yearly revenue was a little over $1 billion in their best years, this is by far their worst year.
Last year they had only $700million revenue, which was their by far the biggest low at that time.
Of course their East numbers are falling the most, when 70% of their playerbase is from the East anyway.
1.7mil players in the West paying $15 per month = $25.5 million per month
3.9mil players in the East paying $5 per month = 19.5 million per month
5.6mil players = 45 million per month
As Q3 end in September we'll start to see the realistic picture.
WoW's Token won't be new and the Patch 6.2 failed miserably.
I'm calling 3mil by the end of Q3 and only 1mil Subs in the West.
Need some figures to back up your guesswork, as there are no indications that i am aware of, that would substantiate your claims that most of WoW's subs are in Asia, or the rest of your figures come to think of it.
Well I guess you could always take the average Sub's count of MoP and calculate based on their report of 700mil revenue in 2014.
The game raked in billions of dollars over its run and they re-invested almost none of that back into it. This decline could have been prevented but I suspect now it is too late.
The curve isn't normal at all actually. WoD actually showed their biggest spike in the shortest amount of time. It then showed their biggest dropoff in the shortest amount of time. And directly after this graph, at 5.6 million, it drops off even more. 2015 hasn't been typical for WoW at all.
Originally posted by SedrynTyros
Normal for other MMOs perhaps, but not normal for WoW.
Well WoW is a mmo and the market tends to behave the same no matter who you are. Now what is abnormal is how big of a spike they had for WoD (it indicates they did oversell it in the marketing) the drop-off is just WoW finally falling inline with how the market usually behaves. WoW have been a abnomality.. the outlier that creates a catagory of it´s own. But since WotLK they have slowly lined up with the rest of the MMO market if you break it down. Sure they still have an insane amount of individual subs but % wise they are now more behaving like a normal MMO.
As i said in another thread WoW is in it´s sunset and will move towards that small but stable amount of subscriptions that i like to call "locals"... Now if that settle in at normal levels regarding to subs (this would be a massive drop of subs) or a % (around a quarted to a sixt of the peak subs)).. well time will tell.
Originally posted by lordoffiling The game raked in billions of dollars over its run and they re-invested almost none of that back into it. This decline could have been prevented but I suspect now it is too late.
I believe this is the root cause of the current state of affairs. They have the resources to completely overhaul the game but they unwisely choose not to do so. It's part of the foolish corporate mentality no doubt. Important decisions are being made based on graphs and charts without considering what it is that made Blizzard the industry titan in the first place.
i think we need a clarification on "re-invested" and how it relates to "heart"
Becuase... Expansion are not free to make afaik...
Originally posted by Nephaerius Despite all the doom and gloom here the best part is Blizzard is still ridiculously profitable. They're making more than expected off Hearthstone and increased player engagement as well as more off other titles than expected. D3 is up to over 30 million copies sold, etc. WoW subs were going to decline sooner or later. Company is still doing great.
Okay, but since I'm not an investor I don't really care too much about how their other games are doing. The board of directors can pat themselves on the back and hand out bonus checks to each other, but what will happen to WoW if the subscribers continue to leave in large numbers? I think that's the concern.
Well you might want to care about those other titles as they may determine the fate of WoW. If they happened to be profitable enough WoW servers could stay online forever. What will happen to WoW is the same thing that happens to any other game that's lived past its time. It's either shutdown or moved into maintenance mode. Things get old and they die. This is the natural order of life. Then we will finally get Warcraft 4 and/or a WoW sequel.
Regardless, 5.6 million subs is nothing to sneeze at ($850 million/month?). Especially considering, despite the claims otherwise in this thread, the majority of their sub losses were actually in the Asian market so this is a decrease perhaps due to more accurate reporting of sub numbers over time. WoW's not going any where any time soon.
What are you smoking? $850 million monthly hahaha?
God, WoW's yearly revenue was a little over $1 billion in their best years, this is by far their worst year.
Last year they had only $700million revenue, which was their by far the biggest low at that time.
Of course their East numbers are falling the most, when 70% of their playerbase is from the East anyway.
1.7mil players in the West paying $15 per month = $25.5 million per month
3.9mil players in the East paying $5 per month = 19.5 million per month
5.6mil players = 45 million per month
As Q3 end in September we'll start to see the realistic picture.
WoW's Token won't be new and the Patch 6.2 failed miserably.
I'm calling 3mil by the end of Q3 and only 1mil Subs in the West.
My bad. Math error. I meant 85 million not 850. Regardless the company is not struggling at all despite the way you make it sound. Even if they drop to 3 million subs it wouldn't matter.
Actually, their revenues rose by over $100 million and their profits doubled from $45 to $93 million, plus digital revenues were up 27% to $600 million or something ridiculous, so it's very much in a good place. They've figured out a way to "make due" with what they have. I remember when they were hiring monetization experts years ago, so it's not like they didn't see this coming.
To be absolutely clear. Yes AB reported increased profits for their portfolio of games - not WoW. WoW's revenue was down; a lot - 40% or so. And by inference profit will to. And there is a huge chunk of negative deferred revenue reflecting - perhaps - 4M+ months of tokens still to be activated. Either way: even less money.
So - if you ran AB which games would you spend your money on. The dynamic new comers that are propelling profits forward. Or the aging war horse, still going but looking long in the tooth? To me everything that AB reported yesterday suggested that they were preparing investors for - life after WoW is to strong but certainly a WoW-lite future.
You're right. I mis-read. My bad.
As far as investment goes, I think that there is still some interesting data that needs to be filled in here. First of all, was the 10 million spike anomalous? Or can it be reproduced? Every expack since WOTLK has spiked 10M subs. Can they increase velocity to 1-year releases? Smaller Expacks at a faster pace? If so, does this ensure the longevity of the game? Or are people actually done?
Personally, I will most definitely buy the next expansion. Call me a sucker, whatever. I haven't played it in 5 months at this point and I'm quite content not playing it right now. However, how many people are in my boat? Who will go back year-over-year if given the chance, and what does that expack-to-expack drop-off curve look like?
Plus, there's always a matter of dropping the sub and going entirely F2P. While probably an absolute last resort, I think that the old dying warhorse still has some tricks, for sure.
You think? blizzards investment has been puss poor for many a year, and in 6 months sales have dropped by half a billion a year, with a disgruntled player base and a lot of good competition now thru are in serious trouble. Imagine if the company you worked for lost 50% revenue in 6 months. Now imagine what your shareholders will demand. Rock and hard place, they needed to start work on the wow reboot 5 years ago - they fecked that up royally.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Originally posted by Nephaerius Despite all the doom and gloom here the best part is Blizzard is still ridiculously profitable. They're making more than expected off Hearthstone and increased player engagement as well as more off other titles than expected. D3 is up to over 30 million copies sold, etc. WoW subs were going to decline sooner or later. Company is still doing great.
Okay, but since I'm not an investor I don't really care too much about how their other games are doing. The board of directors can pat themselves on the back and hand out bonus checks to each other, but what will happen to WoW if the subscribers continue to leave in large numbers? I think that's the concern.
Well you might want to care about those other titles as they may determine the fate of WoW. If they happened to be profitable enough WoW servers could stay online forever. What will happen to WoW is the same thing that happens to any other game that's lived past its time. It's either shutdown or moved into maintenance mode. Things get old and they die. This is the natural order of life. Then we will finally get Warcraft 4 and/or a WoW sequel.
Regardless, 5.6 million subs is nothing to sneeze at ($850 million/month?). Especially considering, despite the claims otherwise in this thread, the majority of their sub losses were actually in the Asian market so this is a decrease perhaps due to more accurate reporting of sub numbers over time. WoW's not going any where any time soon.
What are you smoking? $850 million monthly hahaha?
God, WoW's yearly revenue was a little over $1 billion in their best years, this is by far their worst year.
Last year they had only $700million revenue, which was their by far the biggest low at that time.
Of course their East numbers are falling the most, when 70% of their playerbase is from the East anyway.
1.7mil players in the West paying $15 per month = $25.5 million per month
3.9mil players in the East paying $5 per month = 19.5 million per month
5.6mil players = 45 million per month
As Q3 end in September we'll start to see the realistic picture.
WoW's Token won't be new and the Patch 6.2 failed miserably.
I'm calling 3mil by the end of Q3 and only 1mil Subs in the West.
My bad. Math error. I meant 85 million not 850. Regardless the company is not struggling at all despite the way you make it sound. Even if they drop to 3 million subs it wouldn't matter.
But it does matter, newer MMOs will begin to surpass WoW from now on, some might have already.
Last 3 expansion weren't good by BC and WOTLK standards, and the last 1 was a piece of garbage.
So how do you expect them to create better expansions from now on, when their revenue is at 1/3 of what it used to be during BC/WOTLK times?
There is no other way but down for WoW from here on, and judging from how fast they are falling it won't take long anymore. Movie won't hype anyone, out of the 100+ mil players that tried WoW only 5mil apparently bother with it, Barely 5%.
^^ as sedry says, they could announce wow reboot now and will be ready in 5 years and millions would be happy. For now the fulture seems to be 2 weeks new expansion. Followed by 11-18 months of same old shit repeated year after year.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Originally posted by Nephaerius Despite all the doom and gloom here the best part is Blizzard is still ridiculously profitable. They're making more than expected off Hearthstone and increased player engagement as well as more off other titles than expected. D3 is up to over 30 million copies sold, etc. WoW subs were going to decline sooner or later. Company is still doing great.
Okay, but since I'm not an investor I don't really care too much about how their other games are doing. The board of directors can pat themselves on the back and hand out bonus checks to each other, but what will happen to WoW if the subscribers continue to leave in large numbers? I think that's the concern.
Well you might want to care about those other titles as they may determine the fate of WoW. If they happened to be profitable enough WoW servers could stay online forever. What will happen to WoW is the same thing that happens to any other game that's lived past its time. It's either shutdown or moved into maintenance mode. Things get old and they die. This is the natural order of life. Then we will finally get Warcraft 4 and/or a WoW sequel.
Regardless, 5.6 million subs is nothing to sneeze at ($850 million/month?). Especially considering, despite the claims otherwise in this thread, the majority of their sub losses were actually in the Asian market so this is a decrease perhaps due to more accurate reporting of sub numbers over time. WoW's not going any where any time soon.
What are you smoking? $850 million monthly hahaha?
God, WoW's yearly revenue was a little over $1 billion in their best years, this is by far their worst year.
Last year they had only $700million revenue, which was their by far the biggest low at that time.
Of course their East numbers are falling the most, when 70% of their playerbase is from the East anyway.
1.7mil players in the West paying $15 per month = $25.5 million per month
3.9mil players in the East paying $5 per month = 19.5 million per month
5.6mil players = 45 million per month
As Q3 end in September we'll start to see the realistic picture.
WoW's Token won't be new and the Patch 6.2 failed miserably.
I'm calling 3mil by the end of Q3 and only 1mil Subs in the West.
My bad. Math error. I meant 85 million not 850. Regardless the company is not struggling at all despite the way you make it sound. Even if they drop to 3 million subs it wouldn't matter.
But it does matter, newer MMOs will begin to surpass WoW from now on, some might have already.
Last 3 expansion weren't good by BC and WOTLK standards, and the last 1 was a piece of garbage.
So how do you expect them to create better expansions from now on, when their revenue is at 1/3 of what it used to be during BC/WOTLK times?
There is no other way but down for WoW from here on, and judging from how fast they are falling it won't take long anymore. Movie won't hype anyone, out of the 100+ mil players that tried WoW only 5mil apparently bother with it, Barely 5%.
WoW to this date still only mmo with high amount of numbers, will be a rare mmo to get so many players to hit around wow numbers as right now there to many mmo in the markets they can throw all the expansion they like but they only going keep a % of the player base on playing for so long as new game comes out people jump right in to that and leave wow behind until the next expansion.
My point here is that if they wanted to they could spend 300 million dollars and rebuild the whole freakin thing, which would almost certainly breath new life into the game. They have reasons why they don't do this and if I had to guess those reasons have to do with dollar signs in the expense column of a spreadsheet. Such an investment would no doubt pay for itself a dozen times over, but they probably won't do it.
Ofc it partially have to do with $$ because it is a massive investment over several years during which the game would see no new content at all.
But it also ties in to the insane uproar that happens when you do things like that, the loyal customerbase might abandon the game if they do not like the change (SWG NGE) or and there is no guarantee that you bring in new people. (CoH:GR)
But trust me if they could say for sure that it could pay for it self several times over.. they would do it. My guess is that they think it is the very opposite.
Wod was way too single player focused. People play this game to play with their friends and I had a lot less fun because everyone was off doing their own thing. In my original Wow raid group we would meet and have cookouts. I leveled up most of my characters to 60 with other players, not a lot of solo action at all
I have to agree that the expansion spike lasted much less than previous ones..
I hear you, those were the days! Met alot of great people back then. A word was still worth something, people were helpful and even when somebody unknown to me offered to mine a certain amount of ores for my blacksmith, that guy actually came up with the mats 3-4 days later and got his gold.
But looking at the community as it is today, i'm glad the game offers that much solo content and i dont have to deal with the screaming 12yr old idiots.
My point here is that if they wanted to they could spend 300 million dollars and rebuild the whole freakin thing, which would almost certainly breath new life into the game. They have reasons why they don't do this and if I had to guess those reasons have to do with dollar signs in the expense column of a spreadsheet. Such an investment would no doubt pay for itself a dozen times over, but they probably won't do it.
Ofc it partially have to do with $$ because it is a massive investment over several years during which the game would see no new content at all.
But it also ties in to the insane uproar that happens when you do things like that, the loyal customerbase might abandon the game if they do not like the change (SWG NGE) or and there is no guarantee that you bring in new people. (CoH:GR)
But trust me if they could say for sure that it could pay for it self several times over.. they would do it. My guess is that they think it is the very opposite.
Thats the problem isnt it, they dont want to ensure they provide q
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
My point here is that if they wanted to they could spend 300 million dollars and rebuild the whole freakin thing, which would almost certainly breath new life into the game. They have reasons why they don't do this and if I had to guess those reasons have to do with dollar signs in the expense column of a spreadsheet. Such an investment would no doubt pay for itself a dozen times over, but they probably won't do it.
Ofc it partially have to do with $$ because it is a massive investment over several years during which the game would see no new content at all.
But it also ties in to the insane uproar that happens when you do things like that, the loyal customerbase might abandon the game if they do not like the change (SWG NGE) or and there is no guarantee that you bring in new people. (CoH:GR)
But trust me if they could say for sure that it could pay for it self several times over.. they would do it. My guess is that they think it is the very opposite.
That's the problem isnt it, they don't want to delight their customers, or exceed expectations or invest heavily to ensure the happiness of their customer base. They want to do just enough to maximise profits over all. This is probably how it went:
Option 1, give them expansions, its worked up to now, its low cost, massive profits. If we need to change things in the future we will cross that bridge when we come to it (ignoring fact a new/reboot mmorpg takes 5 years plus to evolve)
Option 2, Invest heavily, be market leader in innovation, size of content release and Quality. Profit margins are lower but we ensure a long term future by being the best money can buy.
I cant imagine any dev team worth their salt that would go for option 1, so whats going on eh.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
My point here is that if they wanted to they could spend 300 million dollars and rebuild the whole freakin thing, which would almost certainly breath new life into the game. They have reasons why they don't do this and if I had to guess those reasons have to do with dollar signs in the expense column of a spreadsheet. Such an investment would no doubt pay for itself a dozen times over, but they probably won't do it.
Ofc it partially have to do with $$ because it is a massive investment over several years during which the game would see no new content at all.
But it also ties in to the insane uproar that happens when you do things like that, the loyal customerbase might abandon the game if they do not like the change (SWG NGE) or and there is no guarantee that you bring in new people. (CoH:GR)
But trust me if they could say for sure that it could pay for it self several times over.. they would do it. My guess is that they think it is the very opposite.
That's the problem isnt it, they don't want to delight their customers, or exceed expectations or invest heavily to ensure the happiness of their customer base. They want to do just enough to maximise profits over all. This is probably how it went:
Option 1, give them expansions, its worked up to now, its low cost, massive profits. If we need to change things in the future we will cross that bridge when we come to it (ignoring fact a new/reboot mmorpg takes 5 years plus to evolve)
Option 2, Invest heavily, be market leader in innovation, size of content release and Quality. Profit margins are lower but we ensure a long term future by being the best money can buy.
I cant imagine any dev team worth their salt that would go for option 1, so whats going on eh.
Why would they invest in an 11 year old game? This is not how any industry works. You make a new product and invest in that. WoW's time has come and gone. It's going to steadily decline in subs and Blizzard is probably fine with that. The fact that people think that they should sink 300 million dollars into an 11 year old platform rather than sinking that money into making a new game is ludicrous.
Blizzard already has chosen option number 2. However, smartly, they realized that you don't bring innovation with an 11 year old product. You bring it with games like HotS that in less than a month beat out Smite or you do it with WoW 2.0. By the same token you also don't put out a new MMO when you've got 5.6 million subscribers to your current one as this will simply cannibalize your player base.
My point here is that if they wanted to they could spend 300 million dollars and rebuild the whole freakin thing, which would almost certainly breath new life into the game. They have reasons why they don't do this and if I had to guess those reasons have to do with dollar signs in the expense column of a spreadsheet. Such an investment would no doubt pay for itself a dozen times over, but they probably won't do it.
Ofc it partially have to do with $$ because it is a massive investment over several years during which the game would see no new content at all.
But it also ties in to the insane uproar that happens when you do things like that, the loyal customerbase might abandon the game if they do not like the change (SWG NGE) or and there is no guarantee that you bring in new people. (CoH:GR)
But trust me if they could say for sure that it could pay for it self several times over.. they would do it. My guess is that they think it is the very opposite.
That's the problem isnt it, they don't want to delight their customers, or exceed expectations or invest heavily to ensure the happiness of their customer base. They want to do just enough to maximise profits over all. This is probably how it went:
Option 1, give them expansions, its worked up to now, its low cost, massive profits. If we need to change things in the future we will cross that bridge when we come to it (ignoring fact a new/reboot mmorpg takes 5 years plus to evolve)
Option 2, Invest heavily, be market leader in innovation, size of content release and Quality. Profit margins are lower but we ensure a long term future by being the best money can buy.
I cant imagine any dev team worth their salt that would go for option 1, so whats going on eh.
Why would they invest in an 11 year old game? This is not how any industry works. You make a new product and invest in that. WoW's time has come and gone. It's going to steadily decline in subs and Blizzard is probably fine with that. The fact that people think that they should sink 300 million dollars into an 11 year old platform rather than sinking that money into making a new game is ludicrous.
Blizzard already has chosen option number 2. However, smartly, they realized that you don't bring innovation with an 11 year old product. You bring it with games like HotS that in less than a month beat out Smite or you do it with WoW 2.0. By the same token you also don't put out a new MMO when you've got 5.6 million subscribers to your current one as this will simply cannibalize your player base.
+1
Some people just don't get it lol.
Blizzard is a business and Wow is a buisness that is still pulling immense profits. The Wow haters who blame WOW for other devs mistakes in not bringing new and fun mmos to the game need to get over it.
Blame the devs of these other company's for not being on there game.
As old as Wow is it will always make profit. Players who still enjoy the title will buy the expansions & as much game time needed to finish those updates. If people stick around longer great if not that's ok too.
As for me I played for about six years since launch and all I regret is not preordering the original Wow collector's edition. It's the only one that got away. I still have the last three CE waiting for me if I decide to go back but as more time passes it looks less likely.
Even now I rarely log on my free account anymore but I've always loved holidays in Wow so there's a possibility I may jump in for that (especially Brewfest) or the Darkmoon Faire which is also pretty special.
As for my old toons well they had a good run & with Blizzard announcing unused character names will be recycled for new players I say go for it. Eleven years later for a lot of us means life has changed for better or worse but for Blizzard to still have almost six million active subs that's just pretty awesome.
The fact that some people are suggesting that blizzard invest 300m in wow is absolutely hilarious. these Kind of people should never be allowed to make any business decisions as they clearly are terrible at it. Wow is a cash cow at this point. And we all know what we do with cash cows don't we? That product has been in the maturity stage for a while with limited prospects of growth. It has now entered the decline stage. You don't invest 300m in such a product. There product manga meant 101 for you.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Originally posted by lordoffiling The game raked in billions of dollars over its run and they re-invested almost none of that back into it. This decline could have been prevented but I suspect now it is too late.
I believe this is the root cause of the current state of affairs. They have the resources to completely overhaul the game but they unwisely choose not to do so. It's part of the foolish corporate mentality no doubt. Important decisions are being made based on graphs and charts without considering what it is that made Blizzard the industry titan in the first place.
Bullshit blizzard invested a lot in wow, saying otherwise is just blind hate. It's true recently they have decided to invest a lot less but what do you expect, it's an eleven year old game.
foolish corporate mentality cause you probably have no idea how businesses work.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Originally posted by Nephaerius Despite all the doom and gloom here the best part is Blizzard is still ridiculously profitable. They're making more than expected off Hearthstone and increased player engagement as well as more off other titles than expected. D3 is up to over 30 million copies sold, etc. WoW subs were going to decline sooner or later. Company is still doing great.
Okay, but since I'm not an investor I don't really care too much about how their other games are doing. The board of directors can pat themselves on the back and hand out bonus checks to each other, but what will happen to WoW if the subscribers continue to leave in large numbers? I think that's the concern.
Well you might want to care about those other titles as they may determine the fate of WoW. If they happened to be profitable enough WoW servers could stay online forever. What will happen to WoW is the same thing that happens to any other game that's lived past its time. It's either shutdown or moved into maintenance mode. Things get old and they die. This is the natural order of life. Then we will finally get Warcraft 4 and/or a WoW sequel.
Regardless, 5.6 million subs is nothing to sneeze at ($850 million/month?). Especially considering, despite the claims otherwise in this thread, the majority of their sub losses were actually in the Asian market so this is a decrease perhaps due to more accurate reporting of sub numbers over time. WoW's not going any where any time soon.
What are you smoking? $850 million monthly hahaha?
God, WoW's yearly revenue was a little over $1 billion in their best years, this is by far their worst year.
Last year they had only $700million revenue, which was their by far the biggest low at that time.
Of course their East numbers are falling the most, when 70% of their playerbase is from the East anyway.
1.7mil players in the West paying $15 per month = $25.5 million per month
3.9mil players in the East paying $5 per month = 19.5 million per month
5.6mil players = 45 million per month
As Q3 end in September we'll start to see the realistic picture.
WoW's Token won't be new and the Patch 6.2 failed miserably.
I'm calling 3mil by the end of Q3 and only 1mil Subs in the West.
My bad. Math error. I meant 85 million not 850. Regardless the company is not struggling at all despite the way you make it sound. Even if they drop to 3 million subs it wouldn't matter.
He's just a troll pulling random numbers. We have no idea what the split is between the subs and we also don't know exactly how much people in the East are paying.
but yeah blizzard are definitely not struggling, wow is still making lots of money and they have other games which make them money.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Originally posted by Bladestrom You think? blizzards investment has been puss poor for many a year, and in 6 months sales have dropped by half a billion a year, with a disgruntled player base and a lot of good competition now thru are in serious trouble. Imagine if the company you worked for lost 50% revenue in 6 months. Now imagine what your shareholders will demand. Rock and hard place, they needed to start work on the wow reboot 5 years ago - they fecked that up royally.
What the hell are you smoking. Where did you see that blizzard revenue fell by 50%? Wow is not the only game blizzard have and revenue for the company has certainly not fell by 50%.
If I was their shareholder I would like them to diversify and make games in different industries. I would definitely not like them to rely on one revenue stream in one segment. Add to that that particular segmentt - mmos - is not particularly profitable and I would be happy with blizzards move towards games like hots, hearthstone and overwatch.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
It is an eleven year old game With low investment. your defending this by attacking players who suggest they should invest more, e.g 300 million over 5 years to replace their 11 year old game for their customer base that pays 1 billion a year. Thats about 5% of the revenue. Well done your attitude is why blizzard feels they can get away with this, and why you get selfies and garrisons in 2015.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Comments
Wod was way too single player focused. People play this game to play with their friends and I had a lot less fun because everyone was off doing their own thing. In my original Wow raid group we would meet and have cookouts. I leveled up most of my characters to 60 with other players, not a lot of solo action at all
I have to agree that the expansion spike lasted much less than previous ones..
What are you smoking? $850 million monthly hahaha?
God, WoW's yearly revenue was a little over $1 billion in their best years, this is by far their worst year.
Last year they had only $700million revenue, which was their by far the biggest low at that time.
Of course their East numbers are falling the most, when 70% of their playerbase is from the East anyway.
1.7mil players in the West paying $15 per month = $25.5 million per month
3.9mil players in the East paying $5 per month = 19.5 million per month
5.6mil players = 45 million per month
As Q3 end in September we'll start to see the realistic picture.
WoW's Token won't be new and the Patch 6.2 failed miserably.
I'm calling 3mil by the end of Q3 and only 1mil Subs in the West.
Need some figures to back up your guesswork, as there are no indications that i am aware of, that would substantiate your claims that most of WoW's subs are in Asia, or the rest of your figures come to think of it.
Well I guess you could always take the average Sub's count of MoP and calculate based on their report of 700mil revenue in 2014.
Well WoW is a mmo and the market tends to behave the same no matter who you are. Now what is abnormal is how big of a spike they had for WoD (it indicates they did oversell it in the marketing) the drop-off is just WoW finally falling inline with how the market usually behaves. WoW have been a abnomality.. the outlier that creates a catagory of it´s own. But since WotLK they have slowly lined up with the rest of the MMO market if you break it down. Sure they still have an insane amount of individual subs but % wise they are now more behaving like a normal MMO.
As i said in another thread WoW is in it´s sunset and will move towards that small but stable amount of subscriptions that i like to call "locals"... Now if that settle in at normal levels regarding to subs (this would be a massive drop of subs) or a % (around a quarted to a sixt of the peak subs)).. well time will tell.
This have been a good conversation
i think we need a clarification on "re-invested" and how it relates to "heart"
Becuase... Expansion are not free to make afaik...
This have been a good conversation
My bad. Math error. I meant 85 million not 850. Regardless the company is not struggling at all despite the way you make it sound. Even if they drop to 3 million subs it wouldn't matter.Steam: Neph
You're right. I mis-read. My bad.
As far as investment goes, I think that there is still some interesting data that needs to be filled in here. First of all, was the 10 million spike anomalous? Or can it be reproduced? Every expack since WOTLK has spiked 10M subs. Can they increase velocity to 1-year releases? Smaller Expacks at a faster pace? If so, does this ensure the longevity of the game? Or are people actually done?
Personally, I will most definitely buy the next expansion. Call me a sucker, whatever. I haven't played it in 5 months at this point and I'm quite content not playing it right now. However, how many people are in my boat? Who will go back year-over-year if given the chance, and what does that expack-to-expack drop-off curve look like?
Plus, there's always a matter of dropping the sub and going entirely F2P. While probably an absolute last resort, I think that the old dying warhorse still has some tricks, for sure.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
But it does matter, newer MMOs will begin to surpass WoW from now on, some might have already.
Last 3 expansion weren't good by BC and WOTLK standards, and the last 1 was a piece of garbage.
So how do you expect them to create better expansions from now on, when their revenue is at 1/3 of what it used to be during BC/WOTLK times?
There is no other way but down for WoW from here on, and judging from how fast they are falling it won't take long anymore. Movie won't hype anyone, out of the 100+ mil players that tried WoW only 5mil apparently bother with it, Barely 5%.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
WoW to this date still only mmo with high amount of numbers, will be a rare mmo to get so many players to hit around wow numbers as right now there to many mmo in the markets they can throw all the expansion they like but they only going keep a % of the player base on playing for so long as new game comes out people jump right in to that and leave wow behind until the next expansion.
Ofc it partially have to do with $$ because it is a massive investment over several years during which the game would see no new content at all.
But it also ties in to the insane uproar that happens when you do things like that, the loyal customerbase might abandon the game if they do not like the change (SWG NGE) or and there is no guarantee that you bring in new people. (CoH:GR)
But trust me if they could say for sure that it could pay for it self several times over.. they would do it. My guess is that they think it is the very opposite.
This have been a good conversation
I hear you, those were the days! Met alot of great people back then. A word was still worth something, people were helpful and even when somebody unknown to me offered to mine a certain amount of ores for my blacksmith, that guy actually came up with the mats 3-4 days later and got his gold.
But looking at the community as it is today, i'm glad the game offers that much solo content and i dont have to deal with the screaming 12yr old idiots.
Thats the problem isnt it, they dont want to ensure they provide q
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
That's the problem isnt it, they don't want to delight their customers, or exceed expectations or invest heavily to ensure the happiness of their customer base. They want to do just enough to maximise profits over all. This is probably how it went:
Option 1, give them expansions, its worked up to now, its low cost, massive profits. If we need to change things in the future we will cross that bridge when we come to it (ignoring fact a new/reboot mmorpg takes 5 years plus to evolve)
Option 2, Invest heavily, be market leader in innovation, size of content release and Quality. Profit margins are lower but we ensure a long term future by being the best money can buy.
I cant imagine any dev team worth their salt that would go for option 1, so whats going on eh.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Why would they invest in an 11 year old game? This is not how any industry works. You make a new product and invest in that. WoW's time has come and gone. It's going to steadily decline in subs and Blizzard is probably fine with that. The fact that people think that they should sink 300 million dollars into an 11 year old platform rather than sinking that money into making a new game is ludicrous.
Blizzard already has chosen option number 2. However, smartly, they realized that you don't bring innovation with an 11 year old product. You bring it with games like HotS that in less than a month beat out Smite or you do it with WoW 2.0. By the same token you also don't put out a new MMO when you've got 5.6 million subscribers to your current one as this will simply cannibalize your player base.
Steam: Neph
+1
Some people just don't get it lol.
Blizzard is a business and Wow is a buisness that is still pulling immense profits. The Wow haters who blame WOW for other devs mistakes in not bringing new and fun mmos to the game need to get over it.
Blame the devs of these other company's for not being on there game.
As for me I played for about six years since launch and all I regret is not preordering the original Wow collector's edition. It's the only one that got away. I still have the last three CE waiting for me if I decide to go back but as more time passes it looks less likely.
Even now I rarely log on my free account anymore but I've always loved holidays in Wow so there's a possibility I may jump in for that (especially Brewfest) or the Darkmoon Faire which is also pretty special.
As for my old toons well they had a good run & with Blizzard announcing unused character names will be recycled for new players I say go for it. Eleven years later for a lot of us means life has changed for better or worse but for Blizzard to still have almost six million active subs that's just pretty awesome.
Wow is a cash cow at this point. And we all know what we do with cash cows don't we? That product has been in the maturity stage for a while with limited prospects of growth. It has now entered the decline stage. You don't invest 300m in such a product.
There product manga meant 101 for you.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Bullshit blizzard invested a lot in wow, saying otherwise is just blind hate. It's true recently they have decided to invest a lot less but what do you expect, it's an eleven year old game.
foolish corporate mentality cause you probably have no idea how businesses work.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
He's just a troll pulling random numbers. We have no idea what the split is between the subs and we also don't know exactly how much people in the East are paying.
but yeah blizzard are definitely not struggling, wow is still making lots of money and they have other games which make them money.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
What the hell are you smoking. Where did you see that blizzard revenue fell by 50%? Wow is not the only game blizzard have and revenue for the company has certainly not fell by 50%.
If I was their shareholder I would like them to diversify and make games in different industries. I would definitely not like them to rely on one revenue stream in one segment. Add to that that particular segmentt - mmos - is not particularly profitable and I would be happy with blizzards move towards games like hots, hearthstone and overwatch.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D