1.3 million sub drop

[Tharkkun]

true. it is relative though, a player who is willing to put that kind of effort in to either of those grinds (classic or tbc) is not neccessarily the player they are trying to attract with the current time-investment requirements on badge gear.

both the tbc and classic grinds were just that, long-term time investments. I would argue that both were targeted at a similar or identical player profile. a player who was able to get 1 or 2 150 badge items in 2.4 was a player who put a substantial time investment into the game and towards rewards deferred weeks or months.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 06:05 PM ----------



about 18 months ago?, after the nasty sub loss quarter, they stated over half their subs were in china.

About 4 years ago they said China doubled their subscriber base.

[Deleted]

Will be more, comparing the amount of mmo's out there with few years back, WoW is still doing VERY good, but nothing lasts forever.

[Deficineiron]

About 4 years ago they said China doubled their subscriber base.

well china and/or asia (depending on how they broke down) was always roughly half once it was introduced there (I think late 2005). they released regional numbers up until the merger. they also have made some specific comments on china over time, 1 in the q4 2009 call after the move to netease.

[Pann]

well china and/or asia (depending on how they broke down) was always roughly half once it was introduced there (I think late 2005). they released regional numbers up until the merger. they also have made some specific comments on china over time, 1 in the q4 2009 call after the move to netease.

The last breakdown on MMOdata has the West at just over 5 million and the East at just under 6.5 million, I think towards the end of Wrath the spilt became greater in favour of the East as total subs stagnated despite the launch of Wrath in China.

[Deficineiron]

The last breakdown on MMOdata has the West at just over 5 million and the East at just under 6.5 million, I think towards the end of Wrath the spilt became greater in favour of the East as total subs stagnated despite the launch of Wrath in China.

mmo data just invented their data points after jan 2008. I can point out data points they invented which are explicitly contradicted by blizzard statements, unless they took my past detailed criticisms of that chart into account and modified it. the chart they had in the past just took the total sub number post-jan 2008 and split the regions at a fixed ratio between east and west, aside from the the9/netease outage. among the novelties that chart offered were a huge sub spike in late 2008/early 2009 in china during western wrath release, and blizzard stating china hit new high in late 2009 while the chart is flat.

in other words, post-jan 2008 there is very, very little hard data on regional breakdown. you used to be able to extrapolate quite a bit from the financials, though.

[Mortezu]

Question is, how many chinese are there to lose? It would be interesting to some time know exactly how many subs they have in EU, or NA... that would be interesting numbers. Probably a scary number to some :P

That is an interesting question idd. One I'm afraid we'll never know for a fact since it could have the "abandon ship" effect if it were something like 3-4m EU/NA and 4-5m Asia.
I also think WoW will continue to drop more and more subs, not because it's failing, but because of the other far more amazing games that'll be released this year alone.

[Pann]

mmo data just invented their data points after jan 2008. I can point out data points they invented which are explicitly contradicted by blizzard statements, unless they took my past detailed criticisms of that chart into account and modified it. the chart they had in the past just took the total sub number post-jan 2008 and split the regions at a fixed ratio between east and west, aside from the the9/netease outage. among the novelties that chart offered were a huge sub spike in late 2008/early 2009 in china during western wrath release, and blizzard stating china hit new high in late 2009 while the chart is flat.

in other words, post-jan 2008 there is very, very little hard data on regional breakdown. you used to be able to extrapolate quite a bit from the financials, though.

I must admit I'd only given it a passing glance but yeah looking at it does seem that they are just making things up.

[Galaddriel]

That is an interesting question idd. One I'm afraid we'll never know for a fact since it could have the "abandon ship" effect if it were something like 3-4m EU/NA and 4-5m Asia.
I also think WoW will continue to drop more and more subs, not because it's failing, but because of the other far more amazing games that'll be released this year alone.

Indeed. I can't decide which one!

Blade and Soul
Neverwinter
Age of Wushu
Swordsman Online
Firefall
Archeage
Dragon's Prophet
Wildstar

[Tharkkun]

Let me remind u that when Wow came out the HIGHEST review it got was 5/10. It was slated all over the internet by the reviewers. And we all know how well Wow did after those scathing reviews...

If ur naive enough to judge a game on 10minutes of play after just downloading it then ur pretty dumb. If the UI is bad then im sure addons will fix it... didnt that also happen in Wow? lol



lmao

Compared to other games on Ultra Wow falls very short indeed. Other games look much more amazing on ultra than Wow. Theyre all more modern games designed with higher end PCs in mind so theyre bound to look better than Wow.

Naive? Wushu is a pile of junk. I fully understand that if a story line isn't intriguing after 10 minutes I didn't spend enough time but the game play is pure crap. Like I said this game is worse than Street Fight 2 or any fighting game yet it's 20 years later. Every review so far harps on the game play. Beautiful graphics don't carry a game very far.

I don't know what other MMO's you play but Wow on ultra definitely compares to them. You can't compare a MMO and a FPS or single player game.

[Trassk]

Whatever has been happening since the end of wrath, wow has been bleeding subscribers constantly, and all its managed to do it stop the leak now and again, until it begins leaking again.

What blizzards needs to do, it look at all the mistakes they've made since cata, sinice thats when it began to go downhill. The problem with a hole in a dam is it gets worse if not fixed, and despite there efforts, they haven't figured out how to fix it.

Theres many of dozens of reasons why. The one thing working against them is age, the games age, getting older and older, and looking it. That can't be stopped, so they will have to focus on other means to make the game fresh and keep people invested. Because lets be honest here, warcraft is blizzards largest product, more then diablo or starcraft, and it put them on the map.

[Mortezu]

Indeed. I can't decide which one!

Blade and Soul
Neverwinter
Age of Wushu
Swordsman Online
Firefall
Archeage
Dragon's Prophet
Wildstar

And those are just mmo's, most of which are f2p if I'm not mistaken. Then there's single player games like RomeTW2 (been waiting a long time for this), a single game simply can't compete with all of this.

Theres many of dozens of reasons why. The one thing working against them is age, the games age, getting older and older, and looking it. That can't be stopped, so they will have to focus on other means to make the game fresh and keep people invested. Because lets be honest here, warcraft is blizzards largest product, more then diablo or starcraft, and it put them on the map.

Very true, however I do think it'd be wise for them to invest in the future (Titan) rather than the past. I'm expecting them to milk every drop from WoW and feed it to their future projects, time will tell.

[Deleted]

Indeed. I can't decide which one!

Blade and Soul
Neverwinter
Age of Wushu
Swordsman Online
Firefall
Archeage
Dragon's Prophet
Wildstar

I must say that Wildstar is the one sneaking up and the back which is surprising everyone... i only looked into this the other week and the trailers look brilliant! lol

Obviously very early days to make any judgement on the game itself but im keeping an eye on it nonetheless

U also forgot Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen r coming out next year. And ofc the biggie - Elder Scrolls Online

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 09:27 PM ----------

I don't know what other MMO's you play but Wow on ultra definitely compares to them. You can't compare a MMO and a FPS or single player game.

I think everyone who reads this will lol hard

Ru seriously telling us that Wow graphics designed on 2004 PC technology r better than any MMO graphics released recently based on modern pc tech?

HINT: the entire Wow engine is from 2004 and CANNOT be rewritten unless they re-write and release a completely new game. The devs r stuck using a very old graphics engine to generate their graphics.

[Deleted]

wow's graphics are shit and blizzard made a huge mistake not undertaking models revamp WAY sooner,we're in 2013 and the race models,the absolute most important models of the game look like shit.
Some might say ''it's all hidden under armor anyway''...do you think that's how people play the game?
Especially new players,if they don't like the models they don't care that it can be hidden under armor,it's a huge turn-off for new blood.

[Trassk]

wow's graphics are shit and blizzard made a huge mistake not undertaking models revamp WAY sooner,we're in 2013 and the race models,the absolute most important models of the game look like shit.
Some might say ''it's all hidden under armor anyway''...do you think that's how people play the game?
Especially new players,if they don't like the models they don't care that it can be hidden under armor,it's a huge turn-off for new blood.

Wow graphics are not 'shit' per say, more the older graphics are dated. when you have a pandaren stood next to the dwarf, it looks like your seeing two console eras side by side, something from a ps1 era to something from a modern era.
The overal design of blizzards art style has always been one of the bests in most mmos, not to serious, but not to overly cartoony either, like a comic book design.

But vanilla races really, REALLY are dated, it looks like they've been plucked from wc3 itself.


I mean.. god...



eewww...

[Gimlix]

Wow graphics are not 'shit' per say, more the older graphics are dated. when you have a pandaren stood next to the dwarf, it looks like your seeing two console eras side by side, something from a ps1 era to something from a modern era.
The overal design of blizzards art style has always been one of the bests in most mmos, not to serious, but not to overly cartoony either, like a comic book design.

But vanilla races really, REALLY are dated, it looks like they've been plucked from wc3 itself.


I mean.. god...



eewww...

Well now you pick the ugliest race ingame with a michael jackson nose.

[maniac2009]

Once Wildstar releases, it will bleed more subs.

[Ferocity]

Ru seriously telling us that Wow graphics designed on 2004 PC technology r better than any MMO graphics released recently based on modern pc tech?

HINT: the entire Wow engine is from 2004 and CANNOT be rewritten unless they re-write and release a completely new game. The devs r stuck using a very old graphics engine to generate their graphics.

Graphics is least important part in MMO, I'd say even more - the better the "graphics", or, in other words, the higher hardware requirements, the less people will be playing your game, and the more expensive it will be to make expansions and content patches: it will require 5-10 minutes to quickly draw dungeon using only ASCII, will take around half-hour (granted you have assets) to make it in 1-layer 2D, and each next step increases amount of time (and money) to make some dungeon exponentially.

For many people it was deciding factor to not give same SWToR even a chance due to high reqs (and obscene loading screens). And WoW, tbh, already becomes overdemanding for many PCs, as it nearly doubles hardware requirements each expansion. I don't know in what mythical countries people leave, but in my country and from what I saw in others - PCs are not expendables, and people don't tend to upgrade them just for 1-2 products.

In other words - update graphic engine to "modern levels", and WoW will lose several millions subs more.

[Trassk]

Once Wildstar releases, it will bleed more subs.

gotta be honest.. that might be the case. There advertising for the game seems to carry a lot of weight to it, not just the races, combat system and art design, but things like player housing, you know, that thing wow players have been asking for years.. yeah, thats actually a perfect means to grabbing peoples attention.

[Deleted]

Graphics is least important part in MMO, I'd say even more - the better the "graphics", or, in other words, the higher hardware requirements, the less people will be playing your game, and the more expensive it will be to make expansions and content patches: it will require 5-10 minutes to quickly draw dungeon using only ASCII, will take around half-hour (granted you have assets) to make it in 1-layer 2D, and each next step increases amount of time (and money) to make some dungeon exponentially.

For many people it was deciding factor to not give same SWToR even a chance due to high reqs (and obscene loading screens). And WoW, tbh, already becomes overdemanding for many PCs, as it nearly doubles hardware requirements each expansion. I don't know in what mythical countries people leave, but in my country and from what I saw in others - PCs are not expendables, and people don't tend to upgrade them just for 1-2 products.

In other words - update graphic engine to "modern levels", and WoW will lose several millions subs more.

Stop being an apologist.
It's not ''The graphics needs to be this way only,otherwise millions can't play the game''.
If this makes any sense.Then why does the pc gaming industry do the entire opposite?
I don't see the game industry adapting their games to wooden pc's?All the companies want people to play their games right?
Well maybe it doesn't make any sense,and the people who have decent pcs and the people who appreciate graphical quality in a game,technological progress,maybe those people make up quite a bit more in the costumer base then those legendary ''hordes'' of wooden pc users.

[MoanaLisa]

just randomthoughts -

1) a lot of the casual-catering mentality, in my view, was likely directly from the then-new ATVI mgmt after the merger. Kotick is quite keen on casual, it was a very successful formula for Activision (he singularly turned the company around), but it translates very questionably in the context of the MMO market.

I'm not going to actively contest anything in your post but--there's always a but isnt' there--if design for a more casual style player doesn't translate well in the MMO market, I'd like a list or even an example of an extremely successful non-casual MMO. As has been written here more times than is countable World of Warcraft was from the start a more casual alternative to EQ and its success was built on that. We can discuss degrees of 'casualness' until the sun explodes but if a hard-core MMO worked as a financial model--as opposed to smaller scope games such as DOTA/LOL--where is it?