Down to 7,599,999.
I just unsubscribed until 6.0/WoD due to guild fatigue.
Impressive that they only lost around 200k people. I wish I could see the numbers between now and right before the release of WoD.
Down to 7,599,999.
I just unsubscribed until 6.0/WoD due to guild fatigue.
Impressive that they only lost around 200k people. I wish I could see the numbers between now and right before the release of WoD.
That's not relevant at all. If people like a game, they like it, regardless of how much they pay for it. It's like saying people that pay less for a concert ticket aren't important. It's not about total revenue, it's about how many people play to determine how popular a game is.
If Wow had 7.6 million people paying only 1 dollar to play would it be less popular?
Have you played any recently released games (not by Blizzard)?
HDR has been around for nearly 10 years, the exaggerated look for early games are long gone.
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I said nothing about how much they pay. Just their "commitment" to paying in a consistent basis.
"Internet Game Rooms" probably charge by the hour - hence Blizzard has to use the "log in during the last 30 day" metric. In theory you could pop in for 30 mins of BG then never touch the game for the rest of the month and still be considered a subscriber - assuming the previously mentioned assumptions about how game rooms operate holds.
Internet game room user IMHO does have quite the same "weight" as a monthly subscriber. But that's just the way I personally see it.
Last edited by SodiumChloride; 2014-05-08 at 04:51 AM.
I was referring more to the technical aspects than the artistic aspects. WoW can look "beautiful" in the sense that it has cartoony vibrant colors and enough lighting capability to set up at least some kind of atmosphere. Even Trine looks beautiful in that sense, and that game is a 2.5D side-scroller:
But WoW engine hit it's limits years ago in terms of technical aspects and fine detail....and ultimately it's the little things that make the world. The big ones for me are armor designs and view distance. Every now and then I check the MMO-C frontpage to check on what the new tiers look like, and at this point EVERYTHING looks utterly the same to me like it's been recycled a million times. Putting fine detail onto equipment seems to be impossible with the current engine. Also it's about time they increased the view distance to at least double what it currently is, to make the world feel truly huge and epic.
But an already-great game can always benefit from more detailed visuals. PC gaming is on a whole new level compared to the era when WoW took off but the engine isn't making the most of the hardware available.
WoW Character: Wintel - Frostmourne (OCE)
Gaming rig: i7 7700K, GTX 1080 Ti, 16GB DDR4, BenQ 144hz 1440p
Signature art courtesy of Blitzkatze
Yes of course, why wouldn't I be playing non-Blizzard games? I still stand by that a lot of games don't use it correctly. If my eyes are straining because of all the improper over-use of HDR (This always happens), I turn it off. Valve somehow still is able to make me not hate their subtle use of it, but a lot of games aren't subtle at all. All personal, I notice it while others may not even give two shits.
I think the problem might be your monitor rather than the game ... >.>
Using IPS LCDs? That's what I play on, pretty darn good, and it's not even a super expensive one - it's from DELL. /shrug For me over saturated colours cause eye strain, the reason I hate OLED screens. Accuracy + decent calibration >>>> "pop"
Also name a good with bad HDR.
A good game with bad HDR I assume? Well, if you want my personal view on it all.
Most, again. Trion Worlds Games, Guild Wars 2, any Unreal Engine 3 / UDK and soon to be Unreal 4, most source converted games (Even the new Titanfall), Elder Scrolls Online (It seems to be HDR, not typical 2004 BLOOOOM), Shadow Warrior (New one), Serious Sam 3, and many more I can't name off the top of my head right now. All of these were pretty good to me (Disregarding Company / Engine call outs). These all are notorious for bad HDR or just poor mimicing of the effects to me.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
When I finally decided to "de-commit" myself from WoW and go see what other games had to offer with an open mind, what amazed me was just how dated and sad WoW is now by comparison. So to those who say "Well I don't miss them". You shouldn't. A whole new world awaits them. They probably don't miss you either.
WoW is essentially like a cult now. You play WoW, you devote all of your gaming time to WoW with no idea what is going on in the outside world (because you are so caught up on the accumulative investment you've made in the game) and if you finally do break free the first thing that happens is your eyes hurt because it's so damn bright out there.
Like sure I stepped away to try Diablo 3 (since i got it "Free" on the annual pass) but then after I gave WoW a rest I logged onto steam to try out a bunch of different games, and my assessment; Blizzard has gone from serving gourmet meals to serving fast food (but the prices on the menu haven't changed).
So I feel sorry for anybody amongst those 7.6 million people who believe that they are getting their money's worth for WoW.
When I've tried other MMOs, what struck me is how badly they play. The fluidity of movement, animation, speed of panning and rendering of scenery, and combat are all just terrible compared to WoW. I've been burned on this enough times to just not bother picking up new MMOs now. ESO and Wildstar, I'm not even bothering to try.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
MMO's are just bad in general. A novelty for the young shut-in. Really, nobody cares about the social aspect of them any way. Anybody who claims they play a game, from within the locked doors of their own home, for the purpose of socializing is being intellectually dishonest. It's all about E-Peen show-off, and a lot of non MMO games have E-Peen show-off built into them now.
And I mean, if you're having a LAN party, and WoW is the game of the hour, that's one bad LAN party.
Yeah, WoW probably operates the smoothest of any MMO, but that's probably because it's a 2004 game engine(older, yet including development) being played on 2010+ computers over 2014 internet connections. So of course it is going to play smoother than games that are newer will. All Blizzard has done to the game play is some graphical tweaks like adding DX11 support (unless you have an ATI card) and up the poly count on models and increase the terrain texture resolution.
The game world is still an inorganic slop, models are still clipping balls, and any attempt to change any of that with their game engine has failed.
If you want to pay hundreds of dollars a year for that, go for it. But I can assure you you aren't getting your money's worth.
But the graphics are still terrible (compared to other games), but that doesn't seem to scare off people. In other words, graphics rarely makes the game, game play does, however.
Naturally, it's all opinions, but I'm fairly certain most people won't stick around for long, if the only thing a game has to offer are pretty objects. Age of Conan, as an example, had (at the time of release) OMG graphics (although you needed a rather powerful PC to run it with those graphics) but rather crappy game play - lots of things weren't done when it was released. It has since resorted to a F2P model, and still contains many glitches far worse than WoW.
For me, I like the graphics used in WoW, it's a special sort of graphics, that doesn't seem to try and mimic real life in the same way other MMO's do. And when they do have the audacity to up the graphics, tons of people complain they can't run the game quit as smoothly as they used to.
New pretty graphics will surely attract new players (or old), but once they find that that is the only thing that's new, they'll soon quit again.
I concur.