is MoP destined to destroy all MMO records? 20mil+ subs?

[speakpkhq]

nevermind the Pandas thing

but Pandas.. and more importantly, Pokemon

get your chuckles out of the way and even though I unsubbed as soon as Pandas were announced

I am man enough to admit that Pandas and Pokemon are a HUGE combination

seriously.. not even joking.. do you people realize the power of Pokemon?

what's a bigger franchise than Pokemon?

Disney

that's about it..

I think MoP will go down as the single greatest mmo experience in gaming history

I'm talking 15-20million subs!!

POKEMON people! and Pandas! you know China will be playing.. every billion household will probably have a sub to be a Panda

Pokemon puts it over the top

and before you think this thread is a joke.. I'm dead serious

ask yourselves.. what's bigger than Pokemon?

it's a huge franchise.. it honest to god is if you people didn't know ask any child about Pokemon and they will know.. hell, all my nieces and nephews bug me about pokemon gifts nonstop -.-

just some thoughts.. although unsubbed, I personally think MoP will be so succesful it'll blow people's minds away

you ask two times what's bigger than pandas. the first you answer with disney, then you offer another answer altogether, which makes no sense.

pandas will be a successful xpac according to blizzard/ea and its shareholders, in that millions will still be subbed, and hundreds of thousands will re-sub for awhile until they realize they've resubbed to the exact_same_thing as before.

personally, i'm still having fun and hope the population increases. i'm on a declining (ok, dead now) server, and want more population like, right now. RIGHT NOW PLS. cmon blizzard, give the people something they want, so i can have a more populous server!

ME! ME! ME!

i think we all forget that 66.67% of the word "meh" is "me"

[Halabash]

OP i see what your driving at, the kids rule this market and carry the greatest representation across the board all genres included, but blizzard does not seem to have fully thrown the switch on their core audience to the child end and the 12 and younger spectrum. When nintendo did it they pretty much spelled it right out with the pokemon edition of the n64, when that thing came out it was like they threw in the towel for the 18-24 segment to sega (dreamcast, sob....) sony, and microsoft. AOC tried to pin down a more mature segment for mmos but failed to put a significant dent in blizzards market share, the same with most other mmos out there. Personally I think WoW is too big and the game struggles every year to find its own identity, which is why its a jack of all trades but a master of none, its strongest position is probably endgame raiding though. The truth plain and simple is Vanilla was gold b/c fewer folks played the game and as the community shrinks so to will the game begin the road to being gold again.

[Tarien]

I guarantee WOW will top 15 million subs with MOP

You can make no such guarantee. Beta players are already reporting boredom, there are significantly more AAA MMO titles around this time (SWTOR, RIFT, TERA), and growth in WoW peaked over a year ago, it is in decline. A small increase for those wanting to see what MoP is like is likely, followed by a fall back into the pattern of decline. The game is old, people are getting bored with it. Yes it is still the biggest, but there hasn't been any growth for a long time, and nothing being reported for MoP convinces me that anything will change.

[Deleted]

To be fair, I think it could be fairly easy for Blizzard to increase its subs. I think a lot of the reason why subs are decreasing is because Blizzard is not advertising as much as it used to. I remember when I first got into WoW, I had saw several adverts for it on TV and they were on fairly frequently. They were also on throughout WOTLK although not as frequency. I haven't seen 1 add campaign on TV during Cataclysm (except the Cata launch ad). Even the new Chuck Norris advert I haven't seen on TV.

So to answer your question; it would all depend on how much Blizzard advertise and push WoW.

---------- Post added 2012-05-07 at 11:23 PM ----------

You can make no such guarantee. Beta players are already reporting boredom, there are significantly more AAA MMO titles around this time (SWTOR, RIFT, TERA), and growth in WoW peaked over a year ago, it is in decline. A small increase for those wanting to see what MoP is like is likely, followed by a fall back into the pattern of decline. The game is old, people are getting bored with it. Yes it is still the biggest, but there hasn't been any growth for a long time, and nothing being reported for MoP convinces me that anything will change.

They are reporting bordem because there is nothing to do. Pet battles aren't active, the farm isn't active, only three dungeons are active, you can only level to 88 (or 87? I forgot), so they aren't experiencing raids or ANY end game content. Imagine leveling through Cataclysm and you get to the end of Deepholm and all of a sudden there is nothing to do, you can't level further or experience any new content or end game content. I imagine you'd be bored within minutes that is what is on Beta at the moment.

Saying that people are reporting that they are bored of beta is a reason why WoW won't top 15 million subs is extremely stupid.

[Pancaspe]

Wow will never break 12,000,000 subs again. The game will only keep losing subs till it levels out somewhere.

Quoted this so I could find it again. I have said since the moment MOP was announced that Subs would crest 15 million. Pandas are pure genius, and Pet Battles will be an entire subculture to the game.

Never, never underestimate the brilliance of Blizzard

[Grevie]

No. I love the game, and MoP will be a successful expansion, but in my opinion 12 millions was the peak.

A fresh blizzard game will probably do it, like Titan probably.

[Pipboi]

It's just annoying when angry trolls like you constantly open new threads about how MoP will fail, when you've already unsubbed. Why the f*ck do you care if you dont even play anymore. You quit for your own reasons, but you don't need to come b*tch about it all over the forums. Move on. We forgot about you long ago, now it's time you forget about us.

---------- Post added 2012-05-07 at 11:14 PM ----------

But the worst thing... Is that all these macho "manly man" guys who are bashing the thought of pandas in the game (even though they've been in the lore since before vanilla), were/are probably running around WoW as a FEMALE character or an ELF. Yeah, you sound pretty damn badass and macho when you look at it like that. /sarcasm

[TJ]

20 mil? not a chance, I'd bet thousands of pounds on that. An increase is likely though, I'm guessing 11-12 million (depending on the most recent quarter losses/gains) at the expac release and if the game delivers then it could keep previous WoW sub numbers and possibly break their records. Blizzard have a chance to break 13-14 mil here at the end of the expac I reckon, as long as they don't keep their heads in their arses and actually give decent content/PvP balance.

[Arewn]

I came into this thread thinking what the fu-- I'm going to leave here peeved at idiocy.
And then you brought up Pokemon.
If there's one reason WoW's subs are going to noticeably climb again, it'll be this, and if they climb they're going to climb high.

In all seriousness I do recognize that the Pokemon pet battle system could suddenly cause a boom in WoW popularity, but overwhelmingly, chances are this will just be one of those gimmicky things that keeps some portion of the WoW player base stuck in WoW because they feel to vested in their character to leave AND NOW HAVE POKEBATTLES!!!

[TJ]

Quoted this so I could find it again. I have said since the moment MOP was announced that Subs would crest 15 million. Pandas are pure genius, and Pet Battles will be an entire subculture to the game.

Never, never underestimate the brilliance of Blizzard

After the failure of Cata, who wouldn't underestimate them?

[meroko]

Think about new subs though...to get to play Pokemon one would have to put a huge investment into the game (purchase all the previous expansions so we are talking in the hundreds if you include initial subscription price) and not many parents would do that for their kids.

If blizzard makes WOTLK part of the battle chest and making you only purchase Cata for say 29.99 and MoP for 39.99 then maybe it would be a higher sub count. But I don't personally see that many joining the game.

[MoanaLisa]

there are significantly more AAA MMO titles around this time (SWTOR, RIFT, TERA), and growth in WoW peaked over a year ago, it is in decline.

Rift: probably not growing.

SW:TOR definitely (after today) not growing.

TERA: Talk to us in about 8 months.

Someone might conclude that MMO's are generally not growing and that WoW is following the general trend. Besides which there certainly is more competition so a shrinking player base will disperse a bit.

20 million subs for MoP: No, but it's likely to make Blizzard's trend line much less steep and possibly begin to climb a little. Trion and Bioware would love to be able to do that.

EDIT: A few words about Titan since it's an interesting thing to think about.

Anyone still under the illusion that Titan is going to replace WoW or be just like WoW is seriously deluded. If Blizzard wants to grow their company, they'll make an MMO that might appeal to those who play WoW, SCII, or even D3 but whose primary purpose will be to enlarge their audience share. Which means the rumors about Titan being a FPS MMO make perfect sense.

We'll know when we know but Blizzard is much more likely to be looking to grab off pieces of the gaming audience they don't have now instead of spending untold millions in a gamble to bring people back. There are plenty of things they can do to bring people into WoW or back to WoW, as they've already demonstrated, without betting everything on something that will be even mildly a WoW clone.

[dezzick]

Rift: probably not growing.

SW:TOR definitely (after today) not growing.

TERA: Talk to us in about 8 months.

Someone might conclude that MMO's are generally not growing and that WoW is following the general trend. Besides which there certainly is more competition so a shrinking player base will disperse a bit.

In the forum for Rift on THIS website... at least once a day there is always a thread asking if they should join back. The game is a year old and has had the most content updates of any MMO out there this year.

[MoanaLisa]

In the forum for Rift on THIS website... at least once a day there is always a thread asking if they should join back. The game is a year old and has had the most content updates of any MMO out there this year.

I think Trion is working really hard to make Rift a success. It's difficult to see that what they're doing is having a lot of success though and there are other questions about whether they can manage to keep up the release pace over the long run. Design pipelines over the first year of an MMO tend to be long and they are bright people and good designers. If I were lead designer I'd be damn certain to have a ton of stuff nearly ready to go the first year when I opened up. So we might be seeing that. If they're still releasing at this pace 12 months from now, they'll be in good shape to maybe grow over the long term.

But they're doing a good job of it and Blizzard would be very smart to keep an eye on them.

[Deficineiron]

Blizzard is adding what used to be called Door Games to wow (pokemon, and this farm thing which also seems to encourage regular log-ins) and in terms of trying to get hooks into people to keep them participating in the game and paying 15 bucks a month, it is a potentially smart. If those door games are popular, you are going to have a fairly new cross-section of players and potential players participating in those aspects of the game and it will influence subscription patterns in the west (china doesn't have subscriptions, it is 6 cents an hour or so, there is a very different dynamic there than the ritual of starting or canceling a sub. in na/eu.).

None of this has any bearing on the actual gameplay of what was once considered normal wow in the expansion, I have no idea what the reaction overall to it will be. I do think they are gradually shaking out all the players who want a more challenging or immersive, effort-for-reward based world and thus they can afford to deviate more and more from the traditional mmo model that was in place in the first 4 years of the game.

And to be fair, given where they are at right now with the state of the game, in an LFD/LFR world, what else can they do? they aren't about to make parallel content (not difficulty settings, but actual different environments) for folks who don't want an instant-gratification game. Heck, the fact 'challenge' dungeons (still not clear on what the challenge is - aoe down while your dmg goes down or?) do not give better gear says a lot about their progression philosophy.

---------- Post added 2012-05-08 at 03:15 AM ----------

At launch, I'm sure that they may see something like 11-12 million subscribers, from people who still play, like myself, to people who got burnt out and are coming back to see if this expac will be any better than the last. 20 million is one hell of a lofty goal, though, and one I believe unattainable by ANY MMO.

Fantasy Westward Journey says Hello. 1.6m peak concurrent users, with registered users in the mid-8 digits (I would assume a lot of overlap in acct ownership due to time restrictions there). The pay model is by the hour, the same way (and to the same company) most wow players pay.

Considering that over half of wow subs are in china, it does seem fair to include chinese mmo's.....

---------- Post added 2012-05-08 at 03:21 AM ----------

Wow will still be huge going into mop exp. even with declining sub numbers and other mmos constantly appearing .
The seer number blizzard has make them the giant in the mmo world .

Not talking fanboy statistics but actual numbers 10 million subs estimated is more than any other P2P current mmorpg on The market.
And unless something can steal 6mil + from blizzard then they will continue to be the giant

Your opinion of the game doesn't matter you can love or hate wow but the numbers don't lie

The same company running wow in its biggest country has many more subs on another mmo they run, using the same pay plan as wow.

If you are going to use wow subs in china, which are over half the 10.2m number, then be sure to include chinese mmo's. western wow subs, once you back out korea and taiwan from what is left, are probably around 4m. swtor potentially had half of that in its spike shortly after release.

---------- Post added 2012-05-08 at 03:24 AM ----------

Please stop spreading this tired old rumor. Many Asian games feature pandas as playable characters. The ONLY issue China ever had with Pandaren was the fact they featured Japanese armor. No other reason. None. As for the trouble China gave Blizzard over Wrath that was mostly to give them shit for doing business with countries China doesn't approve of. China is notorious for the hoops they put businesses based in capitalist countries through.

I don't think folks appreciate that atvi is taking likely around or over a quarter billion dollars OUT of china every year from wow and starcraft2. It is extraordinary. I may not like atvi mmo philosophy but they sure as hell understand business (and advertising/marketing promos)

---------- Post added 2012-05-08 at 03:28 AM ----------

If they keep the payment model like it is...subs continue to drop.
Even MoP release wont change that.

If they change it however to F2P, the subs gonna explode.
All the Pokemon loving Kids & Girls gonna jump on the WoW train.

I gonna put my Cash into a more serious MMO, which is aimed at Adults.
The not even Teenage Content in WoW makes me sick to my stomach, and i played a lot in 7 Years.

hopefully everyone understands the definition of corporate suicide and death-by-boardroom and shareholder lawsuit and why this isn't going to happen.

---------- Post added 2012-05-08 at 03:35 AM ----------

Who? This is a serious question. Not one single new mmo that has been released in the past year or anything coming out this year is going to innovate anything. It is more of the same old tired hotkey mmos. I love how people demonize Blizzard for not innovating anything but the problem is no other company is either. Until that changes the market for mmos is going to continue to stagnate and no game is going to get groundbreaking amounts of subscriptions no matter who holy grail gimmicks it has.

I think you could possibly be wrong here. classic closed out at 3.5 western subs (according to blizzard) - I think it currently is only ~10-15% higher than that. It is certainly lower than where bc closed out, even more than the worldwide number seems to imply. I trust you understand that china is > 1/2 of 10.3m as per q3 comment, then you have korea/taiwan (no hard numbers I can find but both are consistently given about ~10% of the total sub number combined, though I guess a person could reduce them radically. You can find the total number of servers in each region and compare to total servers other places with more known numbers). The revenues also support serious erosion of the western sub base compared to 2011's numbers.

Taking into account that digital download for an expansion at time of release was only avaiable for cataclysm (wotlk wasn't, though you could get classic/bc via dd at that time), look at the sales over the first month or so, if blizzard releases them, and compare. They will probably beat early bc sales but I doubt they beat wotlk or cat. sales. They have simply lost too many players in the regions that actually pay for expansions.

I have no view on competition as a factor in this, I really don't think it is one anyway. The loss of paying players is the issue. Expansion sales the first month will be less than the peak number of subbed players the first month in the expansion-selling regions.

---------- Post added 2012-05-08 at 03:39 AM ----------

The sole purpose of this expansion is to maintain the cash cow, Asian subscribers: Pandaren race, pokemon battles, chinese art, etc.. MoP will bring a raise of those subscriptions but gradually it will lose subscribers in the rest of the world. On the other hand I think that GW2 will hurt the subscriber base outside of Asia due to its fan base, art direction, real dynamic events and no monthly subscriptions (there are few arguments to justify $15 a month, very very few).

If you think carefully WoW ran out of original ideas long, long time ago and today can only resort to incorporate successful elements of other games and movies to mantain the illusion of new content (not to mention the best of Blizzard programmers and art people left WoW years ago to focus exclusively on Titan).

WoW was a great game.

Folks who think wow is trying to target asia with this expansion just don't understand the economics of china subs. They only make like 1/6th or 1/7th as much per china sub compared to a western sub. they could add 600k china subs each month, lose 100k westerns, and have record worldwide subs and still have less revenue and income from wow.

[artem123]

Folks who think wow is trying to target asia with this expansion just don't understand the economics of china subs. They only make like 1/6th or 1/7th as much per china sub compared to a western sub. they could add 600k china subs each month, lose 100k westerns, and have record worldwide subs and still have less revenue and income from wow.

dont you pay per hour if you play wow in china? instead of per month?