Mop - 2.7 million sold in first week

[Matchu]

With a game that has a monthly revenue model, based on subscribers, yes it very much is how growth works.

As opposed to coke, which is sold daily? I'm not following the reasoning.

[Jacob6875]

Those numbers were over a period of 7 days, versus Cataclysm's one.

They only managed to bring back 900k people.

It's sold less than Wrath.

I don't know where you're seeing success, if only you're just trying to find something to be positive about. No harm in that I suppose.

You do realize that 900k people is like 3x the subscriber base of most recent "wow killers" don't you? The game is 8 years old. It is expected that the sales of expacs will slowly decline in sales as time goes on. But for an 8 year old mmorpg the numbers wow has are unprecedented. Arguing the game is not successful is laughable when you look at it from any logical point of view.

[Duridi]

Very good numbers imho, considering rising competition and the (totally unjustified), bad reputation that Cata had.
/clap

Rising competition?

Guess it depends a bit how you define it . They have plenty of games trying, but falling flat on their face. I would hardly call that competition.

[Zeek Daniels]

The GW2 sig and avatar is not helping me take your statement seriously.

Yea its not and i actually like WoW im just not putting a blind eye to whats really going on. I see alot of ppl saying these numbers are a good thing but its a decline from Cata. 3.3 mil sales in 24 hours vs 2.7 mil in a week. So im wondering where all the subs are coming from. Ive seen ppl talk about the china thing, some ppl say they count subs different and it inflates numbers and others say thats not accurate. All i know is that china has half if not more than half of the sub base for WoW. Now i see ppl posting that china doesnt add to the expansion numbers even tho it sells there. So 2.7 mil players from NA/EU out of around 4 mil maybe bought MoP in the first week. What are the other 1.3 mil doing? are most of that 1.3 annual pass subs that arnt buying MoP (im included in that) or maybe its just a small portion that arnt buying MoP. Either way the numbers are going down after AP runs out. Then lets see what the subs are.

Rising competition?

Guess it depends a bit how you define it . They have plenty of games trying, but falling flat on their face. I would hardly call that competition.

Your actually pretty wrong here. In the NA/EU market those games competed fairly well. Swotr prolly had about 40% of the NA/EU market in terms of subs at its height. GW2 Sales wise had the same. I know alot of ppl like to throw out the 9.2 or the 10 or the 12 mil subs for WoW but you cant use those numbers when comparing to recent MMO launches. The NA/EU playerbase is somewhere between 4-5 million subscribers. So if swtor is pulling 2 mil at its height it was actually doing fairly well. Swtor isnt competing with Blizz in china so you cant add those numbers in. Thats like a US only restaurant chain competing against a EU/NA restaurant chain. The EU/NA chain is gonna make way more money and have a ton more customers just because of the fact that its area of distribution is bigger. The only thing the US chain is compeating with is the EU/NA resturants in the US.

[Freese]

so basically blizz is still hanging onto the Annual pass Sub base of 1.2 mil players some of whom arnt going to resub once it ends. And you added those who came back for mists. Really nothing to see here. Its going to go down in a month or so.

I don't understand this. Why do people think that all AP holders hate the game? You really think that ALL 1.2 million players who have the AP will just quit when it's up? Well, I'm about to prove you wrong: I have the AP and don't plan on quitting.

[Dhrizzle]

I corrected my statement. They aren't fudged, but they are presented as to deceive those who aren't precise.

You mean people who don't know days and weeks are different things?

Ouch, sold less than Wrath did.

That can't be good :<

How are you continuously surprised when a game past its prime doesn't perform as well as it did at its peak?

[KrazyK923]

Oh no, someone's being realistic.

Anything but that.

The game sold like shit, I don't know what you want me to say.

The numbers disappointed even me, of all people. And I'm the biggest pessimist on these forums.

I don't think you understand what pessimist means...

"The game sold like shit." Again, what are you basing that on? You realize you can compare that to previous expansions, and they have it right on the front page, right?

[MoanaLisa]

If this is it's 'rightful place', then It won't be here much longer. You can't have dismal numbers like this on an expansion release and expect it to still be called 'king' in a couple of months. No where near realistic.

When Rift or SW:TOR sells 2.7 million copies of an expansion in a week, be sure and let us know that they won't be around much longer either. Even for you, it's a bit over the top to say that sales like this mean "it won't be here much longer". I'm quite sure that Bioware and Trion would be happy enough to have 'dismal' sales like this.

[Freese]

Because it is not growth. Growth means exceeding your previous state. World of WarCraft's previous state has at a time been a bit more than 9 million subscribers, but before that it was well above 12 million. So, until it gets to that 12 milliom + once more, it is not growth, it is recovery. You can brandish it as growth, but that is, like Blizzard's press release, a deceiving move. Because just like a lot of people did not realise that there was no first-day sales figure for Mists, but an attempt to compare the first-week sales with those of the first-day sales of previous expansions, so in the case of growth, one can name recovery growth, but it is nothing but an attempt to deceive the perception of people. When you tell someone that there is growth in a game's profits, what he understands is that the game is making more money than ever, not that it is making more money than a specific period of time. Most people don't associate growth with recovery. They prefer recovery to be named exactly that, recovery. It is of course up to the individual to name recovery whatever he wants to, but he shouldn't expect others to agree with his naming. And so, for most people, not about this game, but sales in general, growth means treading new ground, not reclaiming lost one.

Alright, so it's "recovery" and not "growth." Is recovery a bad thing, then?

[Millennía]

Very strong sales numbers indeed. I wonder how many sales they will get from China since they just launched there

[Conscious]

As opposed to coke, which is sold daily? I'm not following the reasoning.

Cataclysm brought us to 12 Million.

We were recently at 9.1 Million.

Now we're at 10 million.

We've still a net loss of two million.

With a subscriber based game and revenue model, growth is calculated both quarterly and annually. We may have Q3 Growth, but for the FY2012, we're still -2 Million subscribers. Do you see what I'm talking about?

The same does actually apply to Coke, if they sell 1M units in Q3, and they're up in total from 3M units to 4M units, but prior to that Coke had been at 5M units, they're still - 1M Units for the FY2012.

Still follow me?

Very strong sales numbers indeed. I wonder how many sales they will get from China since they just launched there

You can't be serious ._.

[Dhrizzle]

Very strong sales numbers indeed. I wonder how many sales they will get from China since they just launched there

No "sales" so to speak, but I think returning players should boost the numbers to at least 11, possibly 12 million.

[KrazyK923]

You can't be serious ._.

I don't see how you can be serious. Especially when you compare two comments like:

ToR is far from dead. I hate to break it to you.

And

I mean come on, it only brought 900k people back? Like, that's it? On top of the fact it sold like shit.

[MMOTotal]

You can't be serious ._.

Right, what do you mean by this. The game has sold well, for a 8 year old game it is incredible. Now obviously the launch in China will increase to even more sales, what is the exact problem here.

[Conscious]

Right, what do you mean by this. The game has sold well, for a 8 year old game it is incredible. Now obviously the launch in China will increase to even more sales, what is the exact problem here.

I don't think you understand what pessimist means...

"The game sold like shit." Again, what are you basing that on? You realize you can compare that to previous expansions, and they have it right on the front page, right?

2.7 Million copies in a week. It took a week, to get to that number. Seven days.

All previous expansions took a day. Twenty-Four hours.

It took seven times as long to get to just shy, but Below Wrath's numbers, and just above TBC.

[Baar]

china doesn't buy the expansion..... There will be no sales there.

[KrazyK923]

2.7 Million copies in a week. It took a week, to get to that number.

All previous expansions took a day.

And it didn't even beat Wrath.

And? What actually matters is the monthly total.

[MMOTotal]

2.7 Million copies in a week. It took a week, to get to that number.

All previous expansions took a day.

And it didn't even beat Wrath.

But that doesn't matter. The game had the most subs in Wrath so it makes sense. It doesn't need to beat an expansion to be "better" MOP blows Wrath out of the water. Sales do not equal overall quality.

This expansion has been dragged through the dirt from die hard GW2 fans, panda haters overall undesirable people which has given it a bad rep but now it is launched and is incredible.

What saddens me is most people who hated Cata are now away from the game, this expansion is the revival of what wow should be. Exploration this is not just "Warcraft" but "World of" something Cataclysm lacked.

[Vinni]

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

They sold 2.7 million copies but their subscriber base rose to 10 million.
Not all players buy the expansion on first day/week/even month sometimes. Some simply just don't but it.

[Snarebusta]

Right, what do you mean by this. The game has sold well, for a 8 year old game it is incredible. Now obviously the launch in China will increase to even more sales, what is the exact problem here.

China doesn't buy expansions. They get them for free. I would assume someone with enough experience in this game and on this forum be a moderator on this forum, would know this.