Character Activity Stats, Poll, Trip to Blizzcon Contest, MMO Report

So around 33% of the 1M level 80 CHARACTERS of an unknown total sample size went from 80 to 85... /plainface :| :| :|

Nobody has any idea how many real people or accounts those 1M characters represent.

For all anyone knows, 100% of the accounts in the 1M characters sample size are still active, this could mean that the average person had 3 characters at level 80 and only bothered levelling one of them to 85. The content isn't beaten for the vast majority of players, so it isn't exactly time to saturate alts.

In short, these are meaningless numbers.


In early 2010 I had two level 80s. My main from beginning of wrath, and a main i switched to at the tail end of TOC to try out the new dungeon finder (when dps queues were instant) and raid ICC.

Now I have 4 level 85s.

The main reason for this is that i like the lack of burst in arenas and the rebalancing and shifting of emphasis on 3v3 (though 2 is terrible now with healer overpoweredness), it is possible to get games in easily in arenas every week... AND, it is ridiculously fast to level a character to 85 and not impossible to get pvp gear with a little bit of bg / arena grinding / tradeskills.



I'd love to take that same sample and know the number of unique accounts that had a charater at 80 back then that now have a character at 85. It is obviously more than ~33%

Ok so i am from Greece.My money is good enough for Curse but not good for joining their competitions or whatever?I will keep it in mind next renewal.

Over 40% people reading MMO champion is NOT playing WoW anymore. Nope, WoW is not dying at all.

Originally Posted by Turbodymoman

Over 40% people reading MMO champion is NOT playing WoW anymore. Nope, WoW is not dying at all.

But surely the enthusiasts, hardcore, and generally "informed" wow players don't mean anything ? They're only 5% of the population AT BEST. What could they ever do to effect wow's numbers?
/sarcasm

When the "real" gamers leave, the casuals (and money) follow. Can't wait for Diablo 3 to release and they instantly lose another 1-2mil simply from people waiting for *anything* else to play.

Originally Posted by Turbodymoman

Over 40% people reading MMO champion is NOT playing WoW anymore. Nope, WoW is not dying at all.

I think you mean "Over 40% of the people who bothered to vote on MMOC poll say they are not playing anymore". This is hardly an indication of anything. Blizzard posting actual figures showing a loss in player base is an indication of decline, but this isn't. Want to know an interesting little secret? Hate spreads like wildfire on the internet, land of dickwads, twats and douchebags posting 'anonymously'.

It's getting really out of hand lately. Take Dragon Age II, for example. A great game? No. A good game? Arguably. Guess what it has on metacritic? A 4.4. ...Yeah, a 4.4. I'd love to take all of those people aside and show them what a real 4.4 game is like. They'd probably weep.

Originally Posted by aikoyamamato

I think you mean "Over 40% of the people who bothered to vote on MMOC poll say they are not playing anymore". This is hardly an indication of anything. Blizzard posting actual figures showing a loss in player base is an indication of decline, but this isn't. Want to know an interesting little secret? Hate spreads like wildfire on the internet, land of dickwads, twats and douchebags posting 'anonymously'.

It's getting really out of hand lately. Take Dragon Age II, for example. A great game? No. A good game? Arguably. Guess what it has on metacritic? A 4.4. ...Yeah, a 4.4. I'd love to take all of those people aside and show them what a real 4.4 game is like. They'd probably weep.

Dragon Age II is indeed poop when comparing it to Dragon Age, and I guess that's what most reviewers did. But scores for games are informative in nature, you have to read the review and not just peek at the score - on the same note, A 4.4 for Dragon Age 2 doesn't mean it's on the same level as an XY Game with the same score. You can't compare WoW to Half-Life and so forth, especially not with scores.

Well when a game like the witcher 2, which has equal (if not better) dialogue + voice acting , equal combat mechanics (DA2 might edge it out a bit), a more adult game with dialogue representing "grey area" choices, and VASTLY superior graphics that then gets a lower score by several websites, in-explicitly, people start metacritic 1.0 bombing.

Blame the press for being bought out by the companies to give higher than deserved scores. DA2 should have gotten a "solid" 75-80%, but instead got numerous 90's (or equivalent). Then you have total bitches-to-the-industry like Kotaku, who purposely write their entire reviews in a positive tone (even when citing negatives), to completely confuse you. Their reviews read like the back of the box or a PR statement. Their old review system was also scoreless, but had a discernable "we liked this, we hated that" format to get a 'real' review.

TLDR: Industry has gone to shit, just like the movie industry, welcome to the dark ages of Video Games. Hopefully it'll only last 5 years instead of the 30+ it took movies to turn their act around.

great as always

Originally Posted by Digramma

Ok so i am from Greece.My money is good enough for Curse but not good for joining their competitions or whatever?I will keep it in mind next renewal.

It costs more to fly from Greece to Blizzcon than from New York to Blizzcon. As well, EU nations have different laws and regulations than the USA when it comes to contests. Plus, I don't recall any where in the product description for curse premium that listed contests as a feature of the product. So if you pay for Curse Premium because you think you're going to be entitled to enter a contest, then you were already making a poor and uninformed decision.

Originally Posted by F-Minus

Dragon Age II is indeed poop when comparing it to Dragon Age, and I guess that's what most reviewers did. But scores for games are informative in nature, you have to read the review and not just peek at the score - on the same note, A 4.4 for Dragon Age 2 doesn't mean it's on the same level as an XY Game with the same score. You can't compare WoW to Half-Life and so forth, especially not with scores.

Perhaps not, but scales exist for a reason and people still go by them. Your average Joe going to metacritic isn't going to read through all of the reviews, he's going to go "4.4? what the shit" and move on to the next game although he could easily enjoy a game like DA2. My point really is that people need to think for themselves and not just go with the flow.

I quit WoW over a year ago, but I still like to come here and read the news. Recently I started posting on the SWTOR thread and a few others.

Originally Posted by jcf190

The title of the poll should have been: "Are you still playing WoW or have you quit, but are so addicted to the game that you have to browse WoW related forums and websites everyday pretending that you hate the game."

Fanoby tears, how lovely

I'm still not sure what to take away from the character percentages. Aside from Rogues and Death Knights the others seem statistiacally similar. For the roughly 40% of users that still visit the site I'm not too surprised. It would have been interesting to see what the percentages were this time frame in BC and WOTLK to compare it to. As for me, when I started raiding MMO-champion was highly recommended as a website where you can learn to raid or your class. It's almos second nature to visit the site 2 or 3 times a day to see the latest news. Even though I'm on Team "No" I still love the game and I can see me coming back to it at some point.

I come to the site for the off-topic forums mainly these days, following the SWTOR thread like many other people.

What's up with news being so slow these couple of days?

this poll sucks ... all the blizzard haters are gona vote "no" ... just because they can! even if they play wow they will vote no, just to show all the world how bad wow is ... yeah .. sure ... wow sucks ... all u guys keep coming here, because blizz ruined the game

Originally Posted by totmachor

this poll sucks ... all the blizzard haters are gona vote "no" ... just because they can! even if they play wow they will vote no, just to show all the world how bad wow is ... yeah .. sure ... wow sucks ... all u guys keep coming here, because blizz ruined the game

WoW will never be thought of as hated, nor will Blizz but Cata was a huge mistake and the beta testers warned them well before it was released, that this would happen. If they wanted the Vanilla/TBC style back, they should have gone all in. The weird hybrid of old school annoyances and WotLK easymode is just a mess. Combine that with trying to rebalance the classes after 5 years of careful tweking and you get that poll.

Originally Posted by totmachor

this poll sucks ... all the blizzard haters are gona vote "no" ... just because they can! even if they play wow they will vote no, just to show all the world how bad wow is ... yeah .. sure ... wow sucks ... all u guys keep coming here, because blizz ruined the game

Your comment makes no sense. People votïng "No" doesnt mean that they are blizzard haters.

In your logic, I can say the same thing - this poll sucks, all the blizzard fanboys are gonna vote "yes" just because they can! even if they dont play wow, they will still vote yes.

The sample size already decides that the poll is quite reliable and accurate. And why 60/40 is even surprising to you? It is not at all for me, and sounds very logic, judged by current status of WoW.

Originally Posted by Primernova

WoW will never be thought of as hated, nor will Blizz but Cata was a huge mistake and the beta testers warned them well before it was released, that this would happen. If they wanted the Vanilla/TBC style back, they should have gone all in. The weird hybrid of old school annoyances and WotLK easymode is just a mess. Combine that with trying to rebalance the classes after 5 years of careful tweking and you get that poll.

This is so VERY TRUE as the case. Blizzard totally F-ed up the classes. A couple of things and reasons are:

-PvP balance, at the end of WotLK, despite the content being horribly dull and the game just getting stale because of how quiet everything was prior to Cata, class balance was as close to perfect as it has ever been. To just totally go back on all that start changing things up like dispels. MS is just given to too damn many classes, but is also negligible, they needed to nerf Ms uptime not the amount (like 1-2 sec uptime as a debuff).

Class uniqueness- DKs, multiple tank specs, Blood viable as DPS was fun as hell, Warlock drains/drain mana was not homogenized and actually fun back then, hunters using mana but not being a caster class just get shifted in with rogues on how they are to play now, ret now is supposed to play more like a DK/arms warrior now instead of the defensive style it used to with good heals and sacred shield or whatever it was. Warriors self healing was on an upward trend through bloodthirst and other methods, then come Cata it gets nerfed to the ground, along with DK self heals (melee classes that don't have things like sprint or vanish to fall back on) and rogues get self heals like everybody else now but better.

-Players and class playstyles, they have relatively played all the same for the last 2 expansions of WoW, then come Cataclysm suddenly classes have got to play significantly different on many specs.

-Tweaking to things we were once used to, like AoEs, old healing style (to some extent) tanking in general, how a lot of spells (again particularly AoE) and numerous other player/group dynamics. It becomes overwhelming and for many players a lot of extra needless work to be done to learn how to play the class again.

"Poll: Are you still playing WoW?We've been working on the stats above for a few days and we're wondering, are you still playing WoW, or just reading MMO-Champion to know when to come back?"


Personally I'm only checking MMO for info on Diablo 3's beta and any news on it, wows over the hill and on the decline and I believe it will continue to do so.