Mop - 2.7 million sold in first week

[dryankem]

If blizzard wasn't trying to drive people away... then why did they screw up so badly during cataclysm? Almost all the community was against removal of rating requirement on PvP gear... they did nothing about mmr abusers... they didn't even reset the ladders when it was blatantly clear that people who had 52 wins and 24 loses at 2800 rating were cheating... but no, blizzard doesn't do anything. How about that 4.3 huh? Gotta love running DS over and over and over and over and over and over... so where again did you think blizzard was trying?

How can you think Blizzard isn't trying? They may not be up to your standards but I'm sorry that you expect the game to be perfect. In cata they rebuilt everything from 1-60, added content for 80-85, added 2 races and generally had pretty decent balance for most class and races (at least in the raiding scene that every claims to be the most important thing in the world, next to world hunger). In MOP they added another continent, added content for 85-90, added a race that could go either horde or alliance, added monks, added scenarios, pet battles, and farmville. Oh let's toss in the fact that LFR was just added in a patch.

If you think it's so easy to do all that and keep 10m people happy then start your own game because instead of playing this one you could be on the next episode of cribs. Seriously think for a min. Blizzard takes some chances and makes mistakes but if you think it's easy and that they are lazy, you're clearly not grasping reality.

[Vervacious]

At the same time anyone who got bored/disillusioned/disappointed with WoW in general is thrown into the same sack with the aforementioned people and proclaimed a "WoW hater". This comes together with shitting on every single released MMO other than WoW using a primitive understanding of power value. Its same as if someone from say an USA would come forth and say something like "Lol, USA is much bigger from Switzerland and we have more people, more cash and more nukes. Switzerland is shit!". This continues for YEARS and is one of the reasons I am more and more moving myself away from WoW community. Dont get me wrong, there are trolls and idiots in any game. But the worst mix comes out when you take a troll and give him some sort of tools that "legitimates" his nonsense. "Wow biggest! Me play WoW! Your argument is invalid!". Honestly, if I ever would think of giving MoP a try, such thoughts are quickly shut down every time I enter this forum and read some of the posts.

If you are trying to move away from the WoW community, what exactly are you doing on a WoW forum? /confused

[mvaliz]

Where is the spin? They are saying exactly how it is.

The definition of editorial "spin" is by saying "exactly how it is" but in such a way to compare numbers/stats to imply something that it's not.

The spin is saying MoP is 2.7... Cata is 3.3 and Wrath is 2.8 - but downplaying the "one is for first-day, the other is for first week" concept. If they did an honest comparison - MoP's first-day sales would probably be significantly lower than any previous expansion, and disregards any further sales figures for Cata/Wrath/BC during the next 6 days for comparison.

I personally don't mind it in this case, because I feel comparing 1st day sales to 1st week is splitting hairs. :P

[Tharkkun]

I wasn't aware of that, but the subscribers numbers are also absent Chinese figures unless they are being extremely misleading in their sentence structure, which I won't put past them.

Either way, I don't suspect the remainder of the first week holds a candle to the first day and pre-order figures so I don't think the comparison of the numbers we have is as daft as some of you feel it is.

China doesn't have MOP so the subscription increase doesn't reflect the additional increase they will receive from China once MOP is released there. The 10 million number includes all subscriptions though.

China subscriptions don't pay a monthly fee. The average person pays about $8 a month compared to US for playtime because they pay per hour. It's like 4 or 6 cents per hour. But if they pay once during any period of the month they are counted as a subscriber.

[Trollhamaren]

WOW is not dead, but it will never be 12m "subscribers" again. (subscriber doesn't mean former WoW player, remember there's gold farmers, fake acounts, bots, and acounts that people buy to make RAF) Actual "MoP" players is 2.7m, and there's some new players coming that have just bought the game to try it and in the future will upgrade their game to MoP, by the end of the expansion could be 3 or 3.5million MoP players, counting the ones that normally left and the ones who join.

[Awe]

If you are trying to move away from the WoW community, what exactly are you doing on a WoW forum? /confused

I dont know. I have some sort of stupid "White Knight" complex I guess. Friends on Teamspeak keeps telling me "stop going there and reading those posts, it makes your blood pressure raise.". But I keep doing that becouse I have that stupid feeling that I need to keep responding.

[Deleted]

So I am not a math wiz, but how do you get from 2.7mil to 10mil?

Step 1: Wait for the release in China.
Step 2: Wait for the people enjoying the free MoP content.
Step 3: Profit.

[Dasffion]

The definition of editorial "spin" is by saying "exactly how it is" but in such a way to compare numbers/stats to imply something that it's not.

The spin is saying MoP is 2.7... Cata is 3.3 and Wrath is 2.8 - but downplaying the "one is for first-day, the other is for first week" concept. If they did an honest comparison - MoP's first-day sales would probably be significantly lower than any previous expansion, and disregards any further sales figures for Cata/Wrath/BC during the next 6 days for comparison.

I personally don't mind it in this case, because I feel comparing 1st day sales to 1st week is splitting hairs. :P

Blizzard didn't do the comparison. They just said "We sold this many in this week" MMO-Champion put up the other numbers. You can read for yourself in the press release http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company...tml?id=6147208 where they don't say anything about any other expansion.

[DisposableHero]

I looked at the VG Chartz and Cata sold roughly 25% in the second week so if you use the 2.7 million as 5 quarters then you get about 2.16 million on launch day. That would put the total at about 24% which is the lowest uptake of all expansions.

That fair I suppose, I suspect the following is at play:

I think the pre-order sales were way down, and the first day sales were lower than that thanks to a significant segment of former players taking a wait and see approach before choosing if they wanted to resub or not. Initial reviews of MoP were quite positive so a large portion of this group has resubbed, and possibly a lot more soon if the reviews of the raiding content are generally positive. I think this led to a far less frontloaded figure for first day sales, and Blizzard decided to move the goalpost and give the first week figures instead, because they line up better with their expectations.

For this reason I'm much more interested to see how first month numbers stack up to previous expansions.

[Deleted]

You are currently aging... you can look at it as if you're just living or you can look at it as if you're dying. WoW is losing subs... dying is just another way of putting it... I'm not saying dead, because it's not... im using the verb... dying. It's in the action. I'm aware WoW can work with a couple million subs, but at the point you'd be lucky to get 5% of blizzards attention... when the subs drop that far down in that game, blizzard/activision will prioritize other projects over it.

First of all, on what exactly are you basing this claim that a WoW with "a couple million subs" would get "5%" of Blizzard's attention? That makes no sense whatsoever. The amount of content they've released hasn't in any way correlated with their subscription numbers. Quite the contrary, if you believe all the whining on the forums; we've gotten less content as time has gone by. Less content in Cataclysm than in earlier expansions even though it had the peak in subscriptions.

Secondly, if the measure of "dying" is losing subscriptions, then every single subscription-based game ever created thus far has been dying since day one, simply due to the undeniable fact that eventually every single one of them is going to be losing subscriptions, and furthermore, due to the, also undeniable, fact that eventually every single one of those games will be shut down. Forever.

[Deleted]

So I am not a math wiz, but how do you get from 2.7mil to 10mil?

Because not all global subscribers have MoP? Sigh.

[Gray_Matter]

Step 1: Wait for the release in China.

Did you pre-order MoP? You can say the same thing about China but the only way they can pre-order is to get game time in advance. While Blizzard have said that the numbers are pre launch in China, they will, without a doubt, include a large number of the Chinese subscribers who have "pre-ordered".

[vindicatorx]

You don't need to be psychic to see the patterns. Just need to have your eyes open.

or be logical as is with every game people lose interest specially when the game itself is already 8 years old.

[Dasffion]

Did you pre-order MoP? You can say the same thing about China but the only way they can pre-order is to get game time in advance. While Blizzard have said that the numbers are pre launch in China, they will, without a doubt, include a large number of the Chinese subscribers who have "pre-ordered".

As was explained earlier, it doesn't count as a subscription unless they log in. We have no way of knowing how many people "pre-ordered" in China and logged in or not. You could say that a lot did but I could say that they waited until the 2nd.

[Thetruth1400]

Well, I made $50 thanks to these sad numbers. I had a friend bet me that they would have another record breaking expansion, so I gladly took that bet.

Glad I did. 2.7 million sold in the first week is an extremely sad showing considering they were selling close to if not more copies on day one on every previous expansion.

It pains me to say, as I enjoyed WoW, that while it isn't dying, it's a shell of it's former glory. I hope these sales numbers, while impressive in terms of MMO, are a wake up call to Blizzard that they need to step up their game a lot to become as quality and entertaining as they used to be.

[peterpan007]

WoTLK had a 12million subscriber base and 3.3 million purchased the upgrade

Cata had 9million subscriber base and 2.7 million purchased the upgrade

Considering Cata had less subscribers percentage wise it upgraded nearly the same.

[mvaliz]

Weekly figures
TBC: 2.4M Day 1 sales + ???Day 2 Sales + ???Day 3 Sales + ???Day 4 sales + ???Day 5 sales + ???Day 6 sales + ???Day 7 sales = ???
WotLK: 2.8M Day 1 sales + ???Day 2 Sales + ???Day 3 Sales + ???Day 4 sales + ???Day 5 sales + ???Day 6 sales + ???Day 7 sales = ???
Cata: 3.3M Day 1 sales + ???Day 2 Sales + ???Day 3 Sales + ???Day 4 sales + ???Day 5 sales + ???Day 6 sales + ???Day 7 sales =???
MoP: ???Day 1 sales + ???Day 2 Sales + ???Day 3 Sales + ???Day 4 sales + ???Day 5 sales + ???Day 6 sales + ???Day 7 sales = 2.7M


For future record:
The Burning Crusade - 3.5M First Month
Wrath of the Lich King - 4M First Month
Cataclysm - 4.7M First Month
Pandaria - ??? First Month

[Rukentuts]

WoTLK had a 12million subscriber base and 3.3 million purchased the upgrade

Cata had 9million subscriber base and 2.7 million purchased the upgrade

Considering Cata had less subscribers percentage wise it upgraded nearly the same.

That's hardly the same. It's about a 20% drop in sales over a 7x longer span of time.

[Darsithis]

Weekly figures
TBC: 2.4M Day 1 sales + ???Day 2 Sales + ???Day 3 Sales + ???Day 4 sales + ???Day 5 sales + ???Day 6 sales + ???Day 7 sales = ???
WotLK: 2.8M Day 1 sales + ???Day 2 Sales + ???Day 3 Sales + ???Day 4 sales + ???Day 5 sales + ???Day 6 sales + ???Day 7 sales = ???
Cata: 3.3M Day 1 sales + ???Day 2 Sales + ???Day 3 Sales + ???Day 4 sales + ???Day 5 sales + ???Day 6 sales + ???Day 7 sales =???
MoP: ???Day 1 sales + ???Day 2 Sales + ???Day 3 Sales + ???Day 4 sales + ???Day 5 sales + ???Day 6 sales + ???Day 7 sales = 2.7M


For future record:
The Burning Crusade - 3.5M First Month
Wrath of the Lich King - 4M First Month
Cataclysm - 4.7M First Month
Pandaria - ??? First Month

Probably the most sense so far. Give it some time. Not only is the total number relative to total subscribers (Cata started with far more than MoP did), but wait for the first month to see how it worked out.

[Orange Joe]

A 20-25% drop in sales in a sample time of 700% the usual sample time is good news?

I still don't see any spin isn't that what they said? Did they not tell you it was after a week?