Because they'd intentionally try to drive customers away. That's a great business model.
---------- Post added 2012-10-04 at 01:02 PM ----------
Yes, China doesn't buy expansions, it won't affect that number. It will however affect the subscriptions numbers since the 900,000 gained since Launch was before MoP launched in China.
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.
But that's my point. How many people bought MoP before the launch date? Yet those sales only get registered as day 1 sales. The same goes for China. The launch date is October 2 (it may be October 4 but that is irrelevant). The only way players in China can pre-purchase MoP is to go out and buy game time and they would most certainly have done this before the launch date so their numbers will be included in the 10 million regardless of how Blizzard words it.
Well if you take what the guy said about buying in anticipation you could see where they could have bought a week or two prior to Oct 2nd which is i believe the china launch date for pandaria? So actually those subs would include the china pop who resubbed(bought time) while not including chinese sales.
If you go to the source of that info they calculate Chinese game time in subscriptions based on if they have logged in in the past 30 days, meaning there is potentially a substantial number of "subscription" gains from that region as even if they bought the time in advance they aren't going to be counted unless they logged in prior to the launch, which I expect some would but many would not.
Seems to be doing okay to me! If nothing else, it's a solid xpac that should drive more players back as it's significantly better than it's predecessors!
I don't know that I would agree with any of that. TBC came at a time when the game was growing extremely rapidly, something that stopped some years ago.
All along, I've been more or less saying that early sales would be down simply because a huge chunk of the player population has gone missing since the start of Cataclysm.
As for polls here, they aren't evidence of anything at all. They're entertaining to read but mostly they're biased one way or another to get a specific result and the subject of endless mindless arguments.
In any case, don't presume to have an opinion about my expectations or honesty.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
"During the first week of launch, prior to the release in China on October 2, the expansion had already sold through approximately 2.7 million copies and the game’s global player base passed 10 million subscribers, with growth across all major regions."
They never said that the uptake wasn't in China, just that it was prior to the release in China but the only way for people in China to "buy" MoP is to buy subscription so it has to include them. Very sneaky.
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.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.
2.7M in first week, versus Cata with 3.3M in one day.
Keep trying to spin it to the shareholders.
I love it how some WoW players are targeting with their remarks people who claimed that "WoW is dead". Honestly, WoW is not dead and will not be for several years ahead. It has been said for years and nobody with at least a bit of common sense will claim otherwise. People who says "WoW is dead" are trolls or just people who loves flinging arguments on the level of 12-year olds. Targeting such people and proclaiming your victory is like bragging about outmuscling an infant. Most of witty remarks in this thread can be summed up as "Rofl. WoW biggest! WoW not dead! Fuck you!" The 2.7m sales are something that could be expected and they are neither a big success nor a big failure.
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.
There was an active ban to Iranian and some other Middle Eastern places that played WoW. It's not a tiny sub lost like 100 people. It's much, much higher.
Seeing the numbers posted this strong without them and without China ( their system for WoW works differently most often than not for this ) is nice to see. Good work, Blizzard. Keep the content rolling.
Thats a bit of a downer isn't it?
Despite all the complaints about the engine (largely justified), WoW is still a hugely fun game. And, with MoP, Blizzard has addressed the single major problem with Cataclysm responsible for the loss of subs...the near complete alck of end game, non-raiding content.
There are definite improvements that can be made in various areas, and WoWs lost that "shiny" and "new" feel but unless there is a major problem, I woudln't be too sure numbers will drop that much.
EJL