(quote doesn't work as the thread is closed, but from here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...7#post25175527)
You are a funny person, Benjamin.
Unsubbed just yesterday and also cancelled my WoD pre-order.
I don't think you can reasonably say that the stabilisation in sub losses is due to MoP 'doing something right'. The game has lost almost two and a half million subs since MoP was released. I think the remaining 7 million or so are simply the core long term WoW fans who will continue to play the game no matter what.
This. Releasing something with such a huge playerbase is always important, especially when everyone that plays for 5 minutes a months for a handfull of cents is counted as a subscriber. If they release the next big thing in china and/or korea and everyone would flock to it, we might as well see very large fluctuations, which might have nothing to do with the games state here. Sadly they no longer split their numbers to show the actual affect on each of the markets, that would reduce alot of the guesswork.
Ofc it lost subs...watchutalkinbout?
You only rile up the people living to see the game fail. They are, as you can surely tell, frustrated enough already.
9 months of STABLE subscriptions for a 9.5 year old game with so called "no new content" update... that's a fact...
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That's what I Always stated: subscriptions - as such - have very little to do with in game content whatever you ALWAYS read on forums.
9 months of stable WOW subscriptions during a period with only one content patch shows that WOW doesn't exactly need new (Raid) content per se to keep subscriptions going.
So Blizzard must be doing something good during MoP.
What it is ?
1. Promoting the game through other tools outside the game: Have sales promotions to lure in newer players.
2. Launch Heartstone and make the brandname of "Warcraft" back on the front page of the news.
3. Launch that same game on a complete new (hot) platform (iPad) with a FREE to play mechanism so new markets can be touched for the "big" game.
4. Tease the fans with lvl 90's from scratch when pre ordering WOD.
Also my guess is that the general MMORPG market is changing again: the transition of subscription based (failed) games to free to play has come and GONE these days. That transition to FREE to play MMORPG's costed Blizzard a LOT of NEW players in the past: why would you pay a subscription if all these other MMO's are free to play .
In the meantime: those that are subbed now will stay with the Club as WoD is just a few weeks away from beta.
I think seriously that if WOD will strike a LOT of players will come back and with the NEW f2P Blizzard games introduced a LOT of new players will come in and see (certainly with the new free LvL 90 with WOD).
So yes, Blizzard's marketing was better than ever in MoP. No content applies only to latest Raids. LOTS of other options (pet battles/pvp/farmville) in MoP AND better marketing makes the difference.
Last edited by BenBos; 2014-05-08 at 10:36 AM.
You immediately shoot down intelligent arguments with personal attacks, with no evidence to back up where you are right, and I was wrong. This on top of you using the tired argument of $15 x 7.6 million subs = what Blizzard makes (this isn't true, because Blizzard doesn't make $15 per sub) lets your readers know where you stand in terms of knowledge.
That being said, I can explain for people with limited knowledge such as yourself:
lol pandas:
When Mists of Pandaria was announced, the Panda outrage was immense. Reception at Blizzcon was incredibly lukewarm, and it even led a visibly frustrated Chris Metzen to make an announcement that this expansion is real! "It's not a joke!". The resulting sales in the expansion were clear, MoP sales were the lowest of any expansion.
China:
Blizzard publicly stated in March of 2013 when 1.3 million subs were lost the majority of them were in the East (China).
Dailies, gating, grinding:
Blizzard has publicly admitted that they went overboard with the dailies, gating and grinding at the start of MoP. To remedy this they toned down the dailies in patch 5.3, and stated that Warlords will not be as reliant on dailies as they were in MoP. Additionally to address the gating of gear problem, they removed many rep requirements for Valor gear, and made it easier to gain rep in subsequent patches.
These are all facts. Blizzard only acts when there is a problem. The problem was addressed on the forums, in interviews, Twitter, etc... It also corresponded with the downward pointing sub graph.
There's my argument. Do you have a better one to counter this other than I'm "talking out of my ass"?
Nope.. What gives you this idea?
They've never stopped tracking their data in detail, and never will do that. Just because they don't tell you every 3 - 6 month why and where, doesn't mean they don't know.
The big subscriptions crash is almost exclusively from Asia. The market in Asia changed dramatically, the customer behavior in Asia is totally different to ours, and it resulted in WoW being not even in the top 10 MMO's in that market.
Certainly there was also some loss in the Western market, but that is rather almost negligible. Almost.....
Since those 5 mio subs lost in Asia translate into revenue not made.
WOW isn't bad...... MoP isn't bad... All these closet analyzes are pointless.
Blizzard simply lost the Asian market due to market change, and on top of it slowly drains subs due to aging.
"The pen is mightier than the sword.. and considerably easier to write with."
Wow, facepalm.
Turns a factual comment about subscriptions based on region into something about race, really...
Interestly enough, the Asian mmo market is vastly more important than the Western market, in terms of play time and such, but western mmo's never crack it, even WoW has only been mildly successful in Asia.
I wonder what the actual differences are these days, out of those 7m, I'd wager 1m are EU, and 1.5 US, rest Asia, at a wild guess, so since people treat it as two different games almost, you could, if you were so inclined, say WoW had 2.5m players, and is also why 7m doesn't equal 7m x 8.99 etc etc.
Also, the peak of all MMO's was 2009, interestingly enough, the game world has vastly shifted in a lightning fast speed.
Last edited by Toiran; 2014-05-08 at 11:04 AM.
The strategic handling of MoP was the worst handling of any expansion to date....
The daily galore in the beginning was certainly gone too far.
They also tried to keep the content fresh, which bites them in the ass now. There was no need to release all these content patches in the first year of the expansion at such high pace, if - in the end - they run out of content. Aside from the always whining jerks, probably no one would have complained if the early patches were delayed by one to two month.. They've had won between 3 - 5 month of time, which pretty much translates into exactly the time where over saturation and utter boredom kicks in for most. There's a difference of a last content patch duration of 11 - 12 month, and 6 - 7 month.
So yes, there is some room for valid criticism regarding decision making. Whoever is or was in charge for that, made very very bad choices.
"The pen is mightier than the sword.. and considerably easier to write with."
The problem with these graphs is that they don't actually have enough data points to show the real behavior and model it accordingly, because the only reference is the quarterly report. Subs obviously didn't miraculously go up at the end of DS, they continued to plummet and then spiked with MoP release. Likewise, the recent uptrend probably didn't stop when it was announced, more likely it continued for a while and then fell off more recently.
Something more like this (now with trend lines and local minimum!):
OMG 13:37 - Then Jesus said to His disciples, "Cleave unto me, and I shall grant to thee the blessing of eternal salvation."
And His disciples said unto Him, "Can we get Kings instead?"
See, that wasn't so hard to actually develop the argument, was it? Although your repeated jabs at someone's intelligence are uncalled for. You are not superior to anyone here. If anyone used personal attacks, it was you, so don't you turn the mirror to me now and make yourself the victim.
I will agree with the dailies and China arguments. The lolpandas, I won't. I won't deny that there are people who quit over this. But this outrage over an expansion has happened with every expansion so far. "LOL Space Goats and pretty elves, LOL 25 man raids, LOL Naxxramas again, LOL Death Knights, LOL multiple raid difficulties, LOL remaking the old world, LOL pandas and Asia, LOL time travel and more orcs, LOL garrisons and ability pruning". You might not remember how bad it was, but it happened as well.
Again, you may very well have good arguments, and you do. But cut your personal attacks. That's rude and quite uncalled for.
I already had the argument. I normally don't explain it in detail for uneducated fools who speak about subjects they know little about and/or are too lazy to look up info for themselves. I started to beat down your character when you questioned me with ridiculousness (talking out your ass, $15x7.6, blah blah). I do realize that this is an internet forum full of morons, however in real life, no one questions me, people look to me for the answer, look up to me, trust me. To have dipshits on a video game forum question me, is insulting.
I unfortunately waste too much time on these forums. I see that 99% of what is written here is absolute drivel. It's not hard to come to a conclusion, that yes I am superior to someone who thinks "ppl" is a word.
I remember each expansion announcement vividly. The complaints up until MoP were mild. I mean mild. Not until MoP did Blizzard have to actually go on the defensive after announcing their expansion. lolpandas is/was real.
I agree with the above remark. LOL on a forum has ZERO significance for subscriptions.
But actually the STABLE number of subscriptions in the last 9 months shows that dailies hardly had an impact, just like those boys yelling "no content" on forums.
Blizzard made a lot of other playing options available in MoP. People do forget that. Things like the farming and Pet Battles DID NOT exist in previous expansions and combined with great marketing it is a FACT people stayed subscribed MORE in the latter 9 months than in the first 9 months of MoP.
Everything points to a stable subscription base right now.
People who are still subscribed stay in and the few leaving are countered by new recruits during these last 9 months.
Those are facts as the subscription number stayed the same over this period. Free to play MMO's were countered successfully over this last year.
Last edited by BenBos; 2014-05-08 at 11:27 AM.
I don't think anyone's saying they are, however they do break the Subs x $15 = Money rule that most people try and use and they do make up a good percentage of the subs (or at least did when they used to break them out) so them suddenly getting a new expansion while the rest got ICC for nearly a year will have some effect on the numbers.
And it's not that much speculation, this is a quote from Mike Morhaime
"Historically we have seen usage decline towards the end of an expansion cycle. We saw a similar drop in subscribers in the months before Cataclysm, followed by a substantial return of players around the Cataclysm launch."
However if you look at the reported sub numbers from that time...
Q4 2009 - 11.5 (ICC)
Q1 2010 - 11.5
Q2 2010 - 11.5 (Ruby Sanctum)
Q3 2010 - 12 (WOTLK In China)
Q4 2010 - 12 (Cata Launch)
They don't really move.
Again for the people using sub numbers for or against blizzard, they still mean nothing without any context.
Last edited by mmocd3e258d247; 2014-05-08 at 11:40 AM.
What if am subbed but i play like 5 hours per week coz i want that hc mount but game itself is alredy boring as ****.
Blizzard pushed hard to get people in this quarter, and release of a big patch last quarter kept players then.
Hardly a surprise unless you were expecting some sort of constant linear decrease.
Next quarter it will hit them very very hard. I'd be shocked to see less than 500k leave unless they find a way to bring people in
Uh. And here I was thinking I never used "ppl". Strange.
Neither did I ever mention "$15x7.6". You seem to think I'm the first person who replied to you, and you seem to be under the impression that I'm here defending Blizzard and the game, and going against things that have happened. I'm not. Two different people. Your first argument, however, was "talking out of your ass". You seem to expect people to know what you're arguing about when your initial description is no different from the regurgitated drivel the so-called "haters" spew. If you had explained it like you just did, I would have never even replied to you in the first place.I already had the argument. I normally don't explain it in detail for uneducated fools who speak about subjects they know little about and/or are too lazy to look up info for themselves. I started to beat down your character when you questioned me with ridiculousness (talking out your ass, $15x7.6, blah blah).
Are you for real? I'm gonna state this once, and it'll be my last reply to you. You are no one. Just like me, and all those, as you like to call it, "dipshits on an internet forum". You find it insulting that people question you when you only developed your argument on your latest post? And you don't find it insulting that you keep refering to people as dipshits and intellectually challenged compared to you? Something tells me you're either trolling my ass, or you're the most self centered, excuse me for borrowing your word, dipshit on the face of this forum.I do realize that this is an internet forum full of morons, however in real life, no one questions me, people look to me for the answer, look up to me, trust me. To have dipshits on a video game forum question me, is insulting.
But you know what? I'm done. You enjoy your superiority complex. You developed your argument, and I replied to it, and that's where it ends. You chose to keep being an ass instead of being cordial. Maybe one day you'll have a rude awakening in that precious real life of yours.
Seriously, we shouldn't be talking this aggressively about this shit. Why people choose to act like this is a freaking mystery to me.