It will stay above 10 million.
It will go under 10 million.
From the #1 Cata review on Amazon.com: "Blizzard's greatest misstep was blaming players instead of admitting their mistakes.
They've convinced half of the population that the other half are unskilled whiners, causing a permanent rift in the community."
Don't worry hes just trying to troll up a reason to explain his "WoW is really dieing" theory since Guild war 2 hasn't done crap to kill WoW like how he expected.
Don't make it personal - ML
For a game to have Subs go back up even with the two so call WoW-Killer (SWTOR and GW2) out any gain is a +, aren't you one of the people that said the second GW2 came out WoW would be dead, even with their panda expansion?
Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2012-11-08 at 07:04 AM.
On a fan forum though, negativity about the game is just annoying.
I once made a comparison to people who complain about WoW on a WoW forum is like people cheering for the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. You're free to do it, but you're not going to make any friends when you do it.
So on a conference call to discuss the Q3 numbers they just filed, you expected them to discuss early Q4 numbers. I'd say your expectations are off.
---------- Post added 2012-11-07 at 07:42 PM ----------
I don't remember them giving 1-month-out numbers in the past. Can't say I've examined all their filings since WoW launched, but at least the last 3 or 4 quarterly calls, they've never given numbers past the end of the last quarter.
Until subs drop below 25 and you can no longer raid at all or below 40 on each faction so you can no longer PvP at all then you can blame subscriber loss for you no longer enjoying the game. That is unless the only enjoyment you get is because you're doing what everyone else is doing, in which case an MMO's subscriber base is the least of your worries.
obviously above 10 million.
Q3 ends at the end of September and they just announced reaching 10million subscribers a few days before that.
dumb question tbh.
Many judge a MMO by how many players appear to be ingame to public activity (e.g., requests for raids in chat). If they don't see such activity they can be suspicious a game is dying.
I know when I join a new MMO if there's not enough players around; the economy is too one sided; and seeing players are rare, the game is not healthy and may not be worth the time+effort to become established there.
From the #1 Cata review on Amazon.com: "Blizzard's greatest misstep was blaming players instead of admitting their mistakes.
They've convinced half of the population that the other half are unskilled whiners, causing a permanent rift in the community."
CRZ is a quick fix for a larger problem.
That problem plagues all MMOs, of once content is old, how to get players back to reuse older content. CRZ doesn't fix the underlining problem, it's for show.
WoW is different from other MMOs because their business model is keeping players in the game by leveling more alts (as was revealed in the Glider lawsuit). It's why CRZ appeals to Blizzard, as it gives levelers more access to other players in a zone to level. Problem there is the game was never designed for sharing resources across so many realms.
To fix the problem needs a better bandaid than opening the doors for appearances.
From the #1 Cata review on Amazon.com: "Blizzard's greatest misstep was blaming players instead of admitting their mistakes.
They've convinced half of the population that the other half are unskilled whiners, causing a permanent rift in the community."
As people pointed out, AP was counted for totals in Q3, and 5.1 isn't really groundbreaking patch whatsoever (more dailies). We might see some global changes or big promo action quite soon.
I think it is good time to follow example of some other companies and make game based more on micro-transactions (half-f2p model, and no - what is called in WoW f2p is not f2p and is simply a trial). There would be still subscription plan, which would bring most benefits, but you could get subscription time and benefits by trading with other players using micro-transaction currency. This way noone will ever question amount of subs, as there would be a lot of people sitting on f2p model but fueling system via micro-transactions, and same time older players who sit on mountains of gold and not really willing to spend it on BMAH for fluffy stuff and temporary upgrades could use their gold to continue playing on subscription plan while otherwise they would question if game currently still worth 15$ per month.
I think BMAH is a testing step to this - attempt to make gold more interesting and gate some content (Brawler's Guild in 5.1) behind BMAH/gold. Official gold-selling based on elaborated micro-transaction system, being implemented smartly, would also help to get rid of all current gold-selling going around.
CRZ was implemented to save on hardware, as keeping 10 instances of 1 zone active or only 1 instance is quite a difference. But you can't just force people to always interact with each other; any MMORPG will die without solo component (and multiple players in same zone competing with you on quest mobs, rare mobs/pets and resource nodes completely demolish solo aspect). And a lot of people who went from same EverQuest to WoW did this because they were tired of constant grouping even to kill normal mobs which were considered gray to them (unless they were solo class), and each player in same zone with you = high risk of "train" (who played - will understand). Even Sony realized this and introduced mercs in one of EQ expansions. Results of CRZ backlash will soon show themselves unless Blizzard will start hiding sub-numbers or will move game more to micro-transaction based model.And yet many insist they don't understand why Blizzard is going to do CRZ no matter what.
Last edited by Ferocity; 2012-11-08 at 07:29 AM.
I would advise you to go back and reconsider your post in that case which was all about new players, appearances and how those appearances can negatively affect perceptions. It's not just chat channels, it's also people wandering around in leveling zones. Totally empty zones do not look good or healthy.
Your own words from 75 minutes ago:
I know when I join a new MMO if there's not enough players around; the economy is too one sided; and seeing players are rare, the game is not healthy and may not be worth the time+effort to become established there.
Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2012-11-08 at 07:30 AM.
"...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."
With WoW being in its mature phase of its life cycle, garnering new players is always nice but its more about retention, you get a new player you potential get 3 new players if you lose a player you may lose more than 3 players. So what we'll see is pretty much blizzard making the game "easy to walk away from and easy to come back too" rather than how it was in the beginning "easy to come to but hard to walk away from". The audience that blizzard would like to have are those former players since they are most likely to come back, which means few dollars spent acquiring new players through adverts.
Yesterday there was a post about that conference call on frontpage. Where did it go?
Adding 1 million players after losing 3 million isn't growth? What?
---------- Post added 2012-11-08 at 12:45 AM ----------
What sub loss? You do realize subscriptions went up right? Yes obviously some NA/EU accounts were lost in favor of Asian accounts but paying accounts are paying accounts and profit is profit. Again the situation was explained to the shareholders you just refuse to see it because it eats you up knowing the game isn't dead yet and won't be for quite some time.
---------- Post added 2012-11-08 at 12:47 AM ----------
For the eternally stupid it needs to be pointed out yet again: paying accounts are paying accounts regardless of where they are from, who they are, why they pay, or how many accounts they own.
---------- Post added 2012-11-08 at 12:48 AM ----------
You are NOT an investor simply because you play the game. You seriously need a reality check here.
---------- Post added 2012-11-08 at 12:49 AM ----------
I multibox and I haven't had any problems with cross realm zones whatsoever. So again what the fuck are you on about? Do you even know? I doubt it.
---------- Post added 2012-11-08 at 12:53 AM ----------
And you are a flat out liar. You damn well know you were posting in the previous earnings call thread with your nonsense. In fact I think you were even banned as a result. ALso enjoying the game and saying positive things about it isn't fanboyism. If you hate the game you have no business being on these forums.
It is somewhat concerning that they didn't say much.
On the other hand, just 1 week before ending the quarter, there was this press-release.
Maybe that is the reason they didn't announce numbers? Who knows?
I was looking on the frontpage for news about the call but strangely nothing.
It seems everything is being kept behind doors this time around.