WoW subscription numbers

[Huehuecoyotl]

Point 1

Global Player numbers are irrelevant for game play. Cross server content makes this rather trivial now. Soon realms will cease to exist as cross server trading and guilds will be added to CRZ and CR BG's and CR dungeons etc ...

Point 2

All supposed WoW killers ceased to exist ... As subscription based games. So the grass is no longer greener ... On the unpublished ones...

Point 3

MoP added a lot of new end game choises. I only hear positive noises from current players. Please ignore the ex WoW players in this.

Conclusion: useless thread as game play across servers will regroup any number of players in the future and there is no competition in the subscription based field.

oh good, BenBos back from his latest ban for spamming the same thing time after time on any thread with the slightest negative thing about WoW. anyone taking bets on how long it takes him to get banned this time?

back on topic, making everything one big realm isnt going to help, if "content" remains free of both fun and skill. until they rectify that, the only thing keeping the game going is player apathy, and the massive inertia that needs to be overcome for people that have played this game for years to leave. in the meantime there is nothing in the levelling gameplay that will grab any new players. there is no learning curve, no feeling of danger, simply a flat, linear progress through each zone in turn. that isnt an RPG. its barely even a game, imo.

are new players going to buy into the whole concept of "hey, i know its a bit rubbish when you start, but wait until you get through 90 levels of it. then you can play endgame, where everyone will insult you because the game hasnt taught you anything as you levelled. oh, and insult you because you didnt realise you needed to spend a few weekends reading up external websites in order to be able to play the game. oh, and a lot of time at 90 will be dailies. which are just as bad as levelling quests, but you need to do them again and again. and again. oh, and again."

[davesurfer]

If the game was good they wouldn't need a sale.

Pop on over to Steam. All of the top titles have been on sale

[Gambit5555]

oh good, BenBos back from his latest ban for spamming the same thing time after time on any thread with the slightest negative thing about WoW. anyone taking bets on how long it takes him to get banned this time?

back on topic, making everything one big realm isnt going to help, if "content" remains free of both fun and skill. until they rectify that, the only thing keeping the game going is player apathy, and the massive inertia that needs to be overcome for people that have played this game for years to leave. in the meantime there is nothing in the levelling gameplay that will grab any new players. there is no learning curve, no feeling of danger, simply a flat, linear progress through each zone in turn. that isnt an RPG. its barely even a game, imo.

are new players going to buy into the whole concept of "hey, i know its a bit rubbish when you start, but wait until you get through 90 levels of it. then you can play endgame, where everyone will insult you because the game hasnt taught you anything as you levelled. oh, and insult you because you didnt realise you needed to spend a few weekends reading up external websites in order to be able to play the game. oh, and a lot of time at 90 will be dailies. which are just as bad as levelling quests, but you need to do them again and again. and again. oh, and again."

See, its comments like this stated as fact that are just embarrassing.

This game has proven time and again to be enjoyable and exciting to millions of people. Just because you don't find something enjoyable doesn't mean that it is a bad game. Just move on already. You and the game are in seperate places and you need to let the game see other people. You are a scary stalker

[But I Hate You All]

See, its comments like this stated as fact that are just embarrassing.

This game has proven time and again to be enjoyable and exciting to millions of people. Just because you don't find something enjoyable doesn't mean that it is a bad game. Just move on already. You and the game are in seperate places and you need to let the game see other people. You are a scary stalker

Humanizing a video game.............that has to be one of the dumbest things I seen on the internet to date. Stop calling people stalkers and stop trying to Humanize World Of Warcraft

[JhanZ]

I expect 1mil loss in subs in the next conference call, that's my guess.

[ringpriest]

Point 1

Global Player numbers are irrelevant for game play. Cross server content makes this rather trivial now. Soon realms will cease to exist as cross server trading and guilds will be added to CRZ and CR BG's and CR dungeons etc ...

There are already battlegroup-wide LFR and LFD. There are many, many problems that need to be addressed before realms can "disappear". Among them, spawn rates on rares and resources need to be re-tuned. Cross-server Auction Houses will be like throwing an atom bomb into WoW's economy

Point 2

All supposed WoW killers ceased to exist ... As subscription based games. So the grass is no longer greener ... On the unpublished ones...

What kills WoW isn't going to be a clone, it's going to be a novel game. Something more like say, League of Legends, but that overlaps with WoW's niche, market, and playerbase.

Point 3

MoP added a lot of new end game choises. I only hear positive noises from current players. Please ignore the ex WoW players in this.

I.e. It sounds like you ignore everything that doesn't fit your preconceptions. It's called Confirmation Bias.

Conclusion: useless thread as game play across servers will regroup any number of players in the future and there is no competition in the subscription based field.

Feel free to stop posting in it. Do you have any actual evidence for the massive (future) popularity of (hypothetical) server-transparent play?

[Farora]

One human is subscribing. The rest are bots.

[But I Hate You All]

I expect 1mil loss in subs in the next conference call, that's my guess.

It will be interesting. The annual pass will have expired for everyone, the honeymoon effect will be gone and the "issues people have with the game" I would not be surprised if we seen a large number of sub losses. I would be surprised if they reported any gains

[BenBos]

There are already battlegroup-wide LFR and LFD. There are many, many problems that need to be addressed before realms can "disappear". Among them, spawn rates on rares and resources need to be re-tuned. Cross-server Auction Houses will be like throwing an atom bomb

Feel free to stop posting in it. Do you have any actual evidence for the massive (future) popularity of (hypothetical) server-transparent play?

Who talks about unlimited cross server AH. It will be introduced in small steps like several servers linked for the economy.

Also many problems ? I don't see them for 99% of the players unless you call out qq'ers who whine about seeing people around when they pick flowers ...

CRZ is just the 3rd step of a fully integrated realm independant play (the first steps were already taken in 2006 and 2009 with BG's and Dungeons).

-----
Evidence of the popularity of server transparent play ???

All over the place actually:

---> EVE has such a system (easy implemented with empty space but the core of such a system is exactly this).

----> ALL newly launched MMORPG 's suffer from this non integrated single realm play ... 2 months after launch.

Server independant play is simply the Holy Grail: no longer will the player see his server go down with 50% activity in just a few months time, because CSPlay will populate all content from level 1 to level X.

I don't expect you to see this. I know I can see this as the future for always populated worlds. I don't care if you disagree, I know it will be implemented fully in just a few years time both in WoW and Titan.

---

Also the single realm play is JUST an old technical limit to populations. No one ever said: hey look we have 2 k players on line per server (concurrently) , so now let us call this the standard for "a population"'

Ridiculous as Eve proved that 400k per server cluster can work even better. Corporates or guilds are the mainstay, not some technical limited single server number ...

I would go even further: if EVE had been based on the standard 2-3K server play, it would have been dead after 2 years already... Because single server play was and is the death knell for any on line game in the long run.


----
Actually this technique renders these threads useless: WoW can loose 90% or more of its population ... And the world of Azeroth will be populated dozens time more by a fully integrated cross server play than ANY fully populated single realm can even hold these days.

I don't care you want to counter the argument because Blizzard will simply implement it anyway.

[But I Hate You All]

Well if 5.2 comes out in early Jan it might Fluff the numbers up

[Aquamonkey]

Well if 5.2 comes out in early Jan it might Fluff the numbers up

That's when 5.2 hits PTR.

[Deleted]

Well if 5.2 comes out in early Jan it might Fluff the numbers up

Q4 is October-December so they wouldn't be taken into account anyway.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

Also the single realm play is JUST an old technical limit to populations. No one ever said: hey look we have 2 k players on line per server (concurrently) , so now let us call this the standard for "a population"'

Ridiculous as Eve proved that 400k per server cluster can work even better.

I was there in EvE when they did their load testing per zone in 2010 (crowding zones with like 1k players all around Jita), and it had the same issues as WoW has with the CRZ zone server...lag.

Only so many hits can be processed before hangs occur. They demonstrated how to effectively grind a zone to a stuttering stop.

[BenBos]

I was there in EvE when they did their load testing per zone in 2010 (crowding zones with like 1k players all around Jita), and it had the same issues as WoW has with the CRZ zone server...lag.

Only so many hits can be processed before hangs occur. They demonstrated how to effectively grind a zone to a stuttering stop.

1. I don't have ANY lag when crossing world zones. The reason is simple: I have SSD's installed. Solid State HD's that no longer spin but access memory directly.

This means the "lag" is purely related to the quality of your local client machine. In other words start playing WOW on a computer instead of a 2006 type writer.



2. EVE is clustered server from the very start. Imagine EVE having had 3K populations per server on their economy...: yep indeed dead 6 months after launch.


3. I realise that for someone who - for some odd reason - wants WOW to die off so he/she can live on forever happy, this new cross server open world play is something of a terrible introduction.

You know: looking at OLD posts and see ///

..."the open world of Azeroth is dead" or "there is no one running the old dungeons anymore" or "my server BG's are empty" vaporated after the intro of cross server play,

so will the threads about "WOW dying thing" vaporate once Azeroth will be populated by region wide populations and no longer is dependant on purely single server play...


I can imagine the 3rd step in CR play (after Bg's, dungeons/raids) this open world thing is quite annoying to these "whish it would die soon" guys...

Just be assured it is a way Blizzard will develop CR further (they started it already in 2006).


Like I said: CR trade and CR guilds are even easier to implement than seamless cross server open worlds, so a lot of people will need to retune their thread titles ... once again.


I remember you posted it back then: the pops will slowly die off until it is no longer fun to play on all those empty servers.

That scenario can alreeady be scrapped.


Perhaps it is time to put on another record. Like "they killed communities now".

Which of course is idiotic as EVE proved for 10 years now, a community is quite happy and well with 400.000 players on ONE server (cluster) too !

the end conclusion for player fun is still the same: these threads are now rather meaningless with region wide Azeroth play.

[Huehuecoyotl]

1. I don't have ANY lag when crossing world zones. The reason is simple: I have SSD's installed. Solid State HD's that no longer spin but access memory directly.

This means the "lag" is purely related to the quality of your local client machine. In other words start playing WOW on a computer instead of a 2006 type writer.



2. EVE is clustered server from the very start. Imagine EVE having had 3K populations per server on their economy...: yep indeed dead 6 months after launch.


3. I realise that for someone who - for some odd reason - wants WOW to die off so he/she can live on forever happy, this new cross server open world play is something of a terrible introduction.

You know: looking at OLD posts and see ///

..."the open world of Azeroth is dead" or "there is no one running the old dungeons anymore" or "my server BG's are empty" vaporated after the intro of cross server play,

so will the threads about "WOW dying thing" vaporate once Azeroth will be populated by region wide populations and no longer is dependant on purely single server play...


I can imagine the 3rd step in CR play (after Bg's, dungeons/raids) this open world thing is quite annoying to these "whish it would die soon" guys...

Just be assured it is a way Blizzard will develop CR further (they started it already in 2006).


Like I said: CR trade and CR guilds are even easier to implement than seamless cross server open worlds, so a lot of people will need to retune their thread titles ... once again.


I remember you posted it back then: the pops will slowly die off until it is no longer fun to play on all those empty servers.

That scenario can alreeady be scrapped.


Perhaps it is time to put on another record. Like "they killed communities now".

Which of course is idiotic as EVE proved for 10 years now, a community is quite happy and well with 400.000 players on ONE server (cluster) too !

how about giving it a rest? everyone in the universe has now read this post 100 times, yet you insist on repeating it again and again on every thread you "contribute" to. we get it, you love WoW. you worship Blizzard. everything they have ever done has been carefully planned and brilliantly executed. all other games wish they could be as original and successful as this one.

oh, and i used to get lag when i crossed zones once CRZ came in. and my computer wasnt built in 2006. please talk me through why the SSD makes such a difference. what extra information gets loaded from the hard drive when you cross into a CRZ zone, as opposed to crossing into a normal zone? surely the only extra information needed relates to who is there from other servers, which is going to be data coming from the Blizzard server. or do you know details of the internal workings of CRZ that arent available to the rest of us?

[Pann]

1. I don't have ANY lag when crossing world zones. The reason is simple: I have SSD's installed. Solid State HD's that no longer spin but access memory directly.

This means the "lag" is purely related to the quality of your local client machine. In other words start playing WOW on a computer instead of a 2006 type writer.



2. EVE is clustered server from the very start. Imagine EVE having had 3K populations per server on their economy...: yep indeed dead 6 months after launch.


3. I realise that for someone who - for some odd reason - wants WOW to die off so he/she can live on forever happy, this new cross server open world play is something of a terrible introduction.

You know: looking at OLD posts and see ///

..."the open world of Azeroth is dead" or "there is no one running the old dungeons anymore" or "my server BG's are empty" vaporated after the intro of cross server play,

so will the threads about "WOW dying thing" vaporate once Azeroth will be populated by region wide populations and no longer is dependant on purely single server play...


I can imagine the 3rd step in CR play (after Bg's, dungeons/raids) this open world thing is quite annoying to these "whish it would die soon" guys...

Just be assured it is a way Blizzard will develop CR further (they started it already in 2006).


Like I said: CR trade and CR guilds are even easier to implement than seamless cross server open worlds, so a lot of people will need to retune their thread titles ... once again.


I remember you posted it back then: the pops will slowly die off until it is no longer fun to play on all those empty servers.

That scenario can alreeady be scrapped.


Perhaps it is time to put on another record. Like "they killed communities now".

Which of course is idiotic as EVE proved for 10 years now, a community is quite happy and well with 400.000 players on ONE server (cluster) too !

the end conclusion for player fun is still the same: these threads are now rather meaningless with region wide Azeroth play.

The lag from crossing one CRZ to another is network lag and a SSD will have very little effect. A conventional HDD is more than fast enough to load the data for one zone when crossing from another.

Honestly it seems as if you know very little about EVE. EVE works as each individual star system is on a separate node, an individual server is capable of running more than one node, a normal node can hold about 200 pilots whereas systems such as Jita are on super nodes and can hold about 2000 (I believe there are only or two super nodes). To cross from one system to another you must use a star gate which invokes a session change timer much like when you travel from one continent to another in WOW, this is not seamless, in EVE it works as it gives a sense of the huge distances involved.

CCP have made great progress in developing the single server technology since the games release, I can still remember when you had to email them a day in advance if you planned on having a large scale battle so they could reinforce the node, but even after ten years they are nowhere near producing what you claim Blizzard is working on.

[BenBos]

oh, and i used to get lag when i crossed zones once CRZ came in. and my computer wasnt built in 2006. please talk me through why the SSD makes such a difference. what extra information gets loaded from the hard drive when you cross into a CRZ zone, as opposed to crossing into a normal zone? surely the only extra information needed relates to who is there from other servers, which is going to be data coming from the Blizzard server. or do you know details of the internal workings of CRZ that arent available to the rest of us?

The problem with slow hard disks is that the data can't be transferred fast enough to your central memory.

Server information is limited to x,y,z positioning and simple data stats.

ALL the rest of the info (graphical data of the worlds and avatars) comes from your local client which resides for 99% on your hard disk.

As a result IF I wanted to port to Stormwind with a fully populated city, I load it up and get displayed in less than a second on SSD technology.

Crossing zones for me is complete seamless due to this extreme fast loading of new world/avatar information coming from the personal hard disk.

The actual data coming from the Blizzard servers is just reference data, nothing else. Just a few bytes per mili second.

Good advice: the FIRST thing you need to purchase for an MMORPG is the best HD's...

Actually you can find on You Tube THOUSANDS of videos which demonstrates this seamless playing between zones. The ones having problems are those with lousy hardware in HD's and graphic cards (500K video memory for example).

As SSD's become very cheap these days, I don't see why it would be a problem to include it in a buget PC. For example: the IPad would be impossible to manufacture without SSD's.

[Pann]

The problem with slow hard disks is that the data can't be transferred fast enough to your central memory.

Server information is limited to x,y,z positioning and simple data stats.

ALL the rest of the info (graphical data of the worlds and avatars) comes from your local client which resides for 99% on your hard disk.

As a result IF I wanted to port to Stormwind with a fully populated city, I load it up and get displayed in less than a second on SSD technology.

Crossing zones for me is complete seamless due to this extreme fast loading of new world/avatar information coming from the personal hard disk.

The actual data coming from the Blizzard servers is just reference data, nothing else. Just a few bytes per mili second.

Good advice: the FIRST thing you need to purchase for an MMORPG is the best HD's...

Actually you can find on You Tube THOUSANDS of videos which demonstrates this seamless playing between zones. The ones having problems are those with louse hardware in HD's and graphic cards (500K memeoty for example).

Even the slowest hard disk is many times faster than the average internet connection, the lag whilst crossing into a CRZ is due to the client having to wait for data from the server.

[BenBos]

Even the slowest hard disk is many times faster than the average internet connection, the lag whilst crossing into a CRZ is due to the client having to wait for data from the server.

complete false.

There are only a few bytes between server and client data in coms.. Those are only reference positioning data and coordinates (very small packets)...

While HUGE MASSES of graphical data (100's megabytes) need to be switched between your LOCAL memory management system and graphic cards...

The bottle neck in this case is clearly the local client HD/memory management/graphic cards.

Proof ? You can find MANY examples of seamless crossing between zones in WOW on You Tube.

[velde046]

Believe what you want. Guess we will see in Feb but than you and your elk will say the same thing you said all trough cata. "It still has X amount of players".

Which is true for most players... the majority of th eplayers do not care about those numbers the least, they're not worrying in any way, so as long as we can play why bother?