Can you understand China? (and WoW)

[Mormolyce]

Talking about my own ignorance it seems to have attracted some (apparently) free animosity from our fellow Mormolyce, who mocks others admitted ignorance with a complete lack of conscience of his own, correcting in imperative sentences:
"MoP was never aimed at the Asian market. It was aimed at the WoW market."
Thus spoke Truth's spokesman.

At least my bland statement of opinion was succinct.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 03:05 AM ----------

This is about it. I don't think fat panda bears and some asian architecture were enough to appeal to anyone that actually lives in that part of the world. Saying MoP is for Asians is kind of like saying we have Taco Bell for Mexicans.

Yeah might as well say the Taurens were included to attract native American players. Or Uldum was there for Egyptian players. It's silly.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 03:08 AM ----------

Lesson number one, if you are representing Chinese culture

HIRE CHINESE ACTORS!!

that is all.
P.S. Jim Cummings still rocks.

Fortunately they weren't.

I honestly cannot believe they did that especially after the problems a few years ago with Pandaren being portrayed in Samurai armour.

Pandaria has a fusion of classical Asian-esque cultures in the same way Azeroth has a fusion of medieval European-esque cultures. It's not meant to be a direct allegory for any one culture, that's not fiction, it's a weird documentary.

IT'S FANTASY IT'S ALL MAKE BELIEVE!

[Magemaer]

At least my bland statement of opinion was succinct.

Such humbleness!

[billielecter]

Yea, China's own peculiarities won't masquerade there're things to fix in order to keep new subs coming.

Here's a few comments from Yahoo's article:

"There is just nothing offered in the game anymore to validate $15 a month. Log on, spend a couple hours doing very little and then log off without really having much fun." - Arthur$
They finally started creating more optional content, things you can do outside of raids and pvp: finding artifacts, leveling reputations, brawler's guild, pet battles and so on. It's definitely a stepping the right direction, but it needs to be fun. Sure you can add grindy things too, such as bones farming on Isle of Giants. There are fans of grind. But most of such optional content should be easy to approach, fast to reward. And rewards should cosmetic/fun, not gear.
A huge mistake they did on MoP was giving such emphasis on dailies. Like item grind, dailies are the kind of things that only a few really love. Most get bored of repeating quests after a while, so for these grinding reputations through dailies should be fast.
Not all reputations need to be leveled through dailies. There are other fun/interesting methods of leveling a reputation out there.
They not only put way too much emphasis on dailies, but they also attached them to valor gear, so many players, raiders or casuals, felt "forced" to grind them, which isn't fun.
Pet battles have, in my opinion, a big problem, and that is grinding levels. Getting your first 3 to 25 is ok i guess, you get to go through many zones and feel progress. But after these 3, getting more pets to 25 is just so long, repetitive and boring. It's not fun doing pet battles once you've passed collecting and leveling a main team, because it's a boring grind after that. Making it faster to level other pets would change that, if you could bring any pet to 25 in 30min-1hour you could bother actually making teams and testing things. But as it the grind is unrewarding. You "spend a couple hours doing very little and then log off without really having much fun".
TL;DR blizzard is right in adding optional content, but they must pay attention to make such content fun and rewarding, and not just time consuming.

"with warcraft you buy the game then you pay for every expansion plus you then pay a large monthly fee. I;m a hard core gamer, and I like these kinds of games. but blizzard is double dipping. you either pay a monthly fee OR buy the game and the updates NOT BOTH, so I refused to play this game due to greed issues by blizzard" -Bruce B
I think he has a point here. WoW is unwelcoming to new players in so many senses, and this is one. It's intimidating having to pay for the game, its 4 expansions AND a monthly fee. We know that the first 2 expansions are coming for free. We know that all races are available despite not having all expansions. We know that there are often special sales and that you can buy WoW really cheap them. But new players don't know any of that.
They need a better approach here. I'd say: pay for WoW and ALL expansions once. Them monthly fee. If a player enjoys trial, they'll buy the whole game and get a month. After this month he'll decide if he'll be a subscriber or not.
Talking about new players, WoW needs to rebuild its community sense. Sure there's a community, but it's an endlevel community, with players already grouped and associated with peers they know for long.
A new player will find an empty world, except for randoms they get in dungeons and bgs, which he'll never see again, for cross-realm folks he finds here and there, which he won't be seeing again much, as it's another server (and it's unlikely getting realid of a guy you barely know, IF new players know how to add realid and such), and ofc high level gankers that abound in cross-realm zones. So this new player will likely get insulted in lfds for being bad, which is ofc natural for new gamers, get ganked when he's outside the world, and won't be making new friends and associations outside the guild that invited him for his gold contribution, if even this at all.
Blizzard needs to figure this community question, as relying so much on throwing players to game with randoms did hurt the community aspect of the game, and as crossrealm zones still are not quite the solution to make the world alive again, much less creating community.

"That is because once you hit the level cap the game devolves into running a bunch of boring (a)ss dailies that you have already run 100 times before. Que an hour in Looking For Raid, since they have pretty much done away with five man dungeon runs and, unless you happen to be one of the lucky few in a raiding guild, LFR is your only option for gear. Then you get to put up with a bunch of idiots for two hours while hoping something other than gold drops" - Spunky
Personally i think LFR has hurt the game really bad. But it isn't alone, it's rather a consequence and a further development of bad things that were happening. Let's take a look at the game again.
You reach max level. If you like killing monsters and getting stronger, you're off to take bigger challenges. You're going beyond questing, you'll attempt to beat a place full of powerful monsters that is so tough that you can't do it alone: you need to group up. That is the principle of dungeons and raids.
Thing is, as we said above, WoW lost a lot of its community sense, which is so important for a mmo. Instead of actually grouping, you're pressing a button in a menu, getting into a line, and being thrown to play with randoms. In lfd you at least have a shot at an item. IN lfr the machine chooses if you win or not, and most of the time you do not. I understand his frustration.
But the problem isn't just not getting gear in LootForRetards, it is actually that it isn't fun at all playing the game like that. It doesn't compare to actually making a group and do it as a group, much less with a more constant group, where you have partnership and synergy in the mix.
Alright, not all groups are hardcore veteran raiders. There should be content for groups made of new players and such, easier bosses. That's the purpose of normal mode isn't it? If it's not enough, make an easy mode too. Just don't do LFR, it's a different horse, and a bad one.
Raiding should be a curve, from easier bosses to harder, from easier raids to harder ones, from easier modes to harder ones. And reward accordingly.

I am speaking as a Chinese player here. I have been living in China for more then twenty years and I know all the thoughts of Chinese players towards MOP. The failure of MOP, if I am permitted to say, is a design problem rather than a cultural one. The reason why I think so is that the majority of Chinese players dislike the daily quest system which keeps the game tedious. What's more, H-model Raid is another issue that many Chinese players don't appreciate. The reason is simple and direct. because we don't like reductions of numbers of RAID in a single expansion however this phenomenon is actually happening because Blizzard is using H-model as an alternative plan for not designing enough raids. Think about the numbers of Raid of old world and the raid we have in MOP. We are demanding more heroic figures coming back, additionally more epic plot design, more RAIDS!

[Tsuna]

Asian gamers are far more fond of grindiness in their video games than their western counterparts. As a whitewashed asian-american I can easily say I don't have near enough fortitude to handle most of the popular asian mmos, having quit FF11 for the vastly easier (and to me, much more fun) World of Warcraft.

Lots of Chinese and Korean mmo's are free to play and they give the players what they want, TONS of things to kill, TONS of things to collect, TONS of things to craft. It's just like real life, work is a grind and it's a part of their culture they embrace rather than shun. They take jobs because you need to work to eat, and they work hard to keep those jobs. WoW is NOT grindy at all in comparison to those kinds of games and people would be foolish to claim otherwise. Personally I like WoW the way it is, but I can appreciate the grind intensity found in Vanilla and BC because there were many different ways perseverance rewarded gains in your character's strength as opposed to the current Lobby/queue spam method that exists in MoP.

[Deleted]

I am speaking as a Chinese player here. I have been living in China for more then twenty years and I know all the thoughts of Chinese players towards MOP. The failure of MOP, if I am permitted to say, is a design problem rather than a cultural one. The reason why I think so is that the majority of Chinese players dislike the daily quest system which keeps the game tedious. What's more, H-model Raid is another issue that many Chinese players don't appreciate. The reason is simple and direct. because we don't like reductions of numbers of RAID in a single expansion however this phenomenon is actually happening because Blizzard is using H-model as an alternative plan for not designing enough raids. Think about the numbers of Raid of old world and the raid we have in MOP. We are demanding more heroic figures coming back, additionally more epic plot design, more RAIDS!

I can relate to that. The raid is the content, not the 3-4 difficulty levels. All the gear looks the same, doesn't matter that there are different numbers on it.

[billielecter]

Changes we have in 5.3, especially for PVP part is what drives almost 2millions people away in China. Yes, we have so many MMORPG alternatives for WOW in China, yet WOW remains the best among them. People feel reluctant to leave WOW because they do miss that world, however the major problem is that my country fellow do not feel a same WOW again sicne the expansion of CTM. This alone, makes countless complains and arguments in Chinese forum and it stills goes on until today's 5.3. Personally I miss some proto-design of WOW which we don't see them any more. Such instance cited as multiplied talents tree, old world map quests and individual set of 10RAID and 25RAID.
It is not the cultural background we don't appreciate, it is the content we find no amusement.

---------- Post added 2013-06-13 at 08:58 AM ----------

Very very true actually. We used to compare WOW to a visual world but now rumor has that it's only a game. WOW Culture has its vigorous adaption which fits China very well. Me myself being a catholic so I find Paladin very easy to understand as the Defender of Light and Justice. WOW is a language we all know by heart. Anyway since CTM, I have seen a declined trend of creation shortage which means there is no more real WOW spirit. I would much like to pay more if Blizzard could rethink its blueprint and reconstruct RAID system. We all reckon RAID as a magnificent part of gaming experience.

---------- Post added 2013-06-13 at 09:11 AM ----------

It is quite true that Chinese player are more keen into games, or in another word, more addicted. Comparing to the diversities of entertainments in western world it leaves people much less choices in China. It's totally reasonable that people seek for inexpensive ways of entertainment, such as WOW. I know economy has much to do with the ways people entertain themselves. But it is what we have in China, they don't go to bars or fight club, they just stay home and play WOW.

---------- Post added 2013-06-13 at 09:13 AM ----------

I can relate to that. The raid is the content, not the 3-4 difficulty levels. All the gear looks the same, doesn't matter that there are different numbers on it.

Very very true actually. We used to compare WOW to a visual world but now rumor has that it's only a game. WOW Culture has its vigorous adaption which fits China very well. Me myself being a catholic so I find Paladin very easy to understand as the Defender of Light and Justice. WOW is a language we all know by heart. Anyway since CTM, I have seen a declined trend of creation shortage which means there is no more real WOW spirit. I would much like to pay more if Blizzard could rethink its blueprint and reconstruct RAID system. We all reckon RAID as a magnificent part of gaming experience.

---------- Post added 2013-06-13 at 09:13 AM ----------

I can relate to that. The raid is the content, not the 3-4 difficulty levels. All the gear looks the same, doesn't matter that there are different numbers on it.

It is quite true that Chinese player are more keen into games, or in another word, more addicted. Comparing to the diversities of entertainments in western world it leaves people much less choices in China. It's totally reasonable that people seek for inexpensive ways of entertainment, such as WOW. I know economy has much to do with the ways people entertain themselves. But it is what we have in China, they don't go to bars or fight club, they just stay home and play WOW.

---------- Post added 2013-06-13 at 09:30 AM ----------

People forget that the majority of WoW players aren't in North America. Last numbers I saw were that North America only made up of approximately 3 to 3.5 million subs (way lower now).

The only thing Blizzard has stated is that the majority of the losses from the past few quarters have been in the East -- this could mean just 51% of 1.3 million or 675,000 subs in the east lost. This isn't as substantial of a loss than in the East, as loosing 650k subs in the west would be.

They're trying to downplay the losses (rightfully so, it's an investor meeting), by saying the majority of the losses are where the majority of the players are, which means a smaller percentage of players lost, than in the West where it's a much larger percentage of the playerbase lost.

If that makes sense.

Verified, 2-million players lost in China since 5.3, mainly because of changes in resistance.

---------- Post added 2013-06-13 at 09:32 AM ----------

Asian gamers are far more fond of grindiness in their video games than their western counterparts. As a whitewashed asian-american I can easily say I don't have near enough fortitude to handle most of the popular asian mmos, having quit FF11 for the vastly easier (and to me, much more fun) World of Warcraft.

Lots of Chinese and Korean mmo's are free to play and they give the players what they want, TONS of things to kill, TONS of things to collect, TONS of things to craft. It's just like real life, work is a grind and it's a part of their culture they embrace rather than shun. They take jobs because you need to work to eat, and they work hard to keep those jobs. WoW is NOT grindy at all in comparison to those kinds of games and people would be foolish to claim otherwise. Personally I like WoW the way it is, but I can appreciate the grind intensity found in Vanilla and BC because there were many different ways perseverance rewarded gains in your character's strength as opposed to the current Lobby/queue spam method that exists in MoP.

It is quite true that Chinese player are more keen into games, or in another word, more addicted. Comparing to the diversities of entertainments in western world it leaves people much less choices in China. It's totally reasonable that people seek for inexpensive ways of entertainment, such as WOW. I know economy has much to do with the ways people entertain themselves. But it is what we have in China, they don't go to bars or fight club, they just stay home and play WOW.

[ReleaseDay]

Many sub drops was in fact in EU (and some in US) you can tell by the fact that many EU realms are low pop. Obviously MoP wasnt a success in west because of the lack of interest of asian culture and the simple facts that its not very liked by eu players (not as a xpac theme anyway). This is by no means saying "wow is dead" they can (and hopefully will) fix this by not waiting too long to release the next expansion.


Personally i enjoyed mop, but dont like pandarens as a race. I'd rather have seen Mogu.

[BenBos]

I imagine Chinese players may feel patronized to have their culture caricatured by a Western game studio, Korean players may be unhappy to explore a world modeled after their rival to the north, and Asian players in general may just be put off by the idea of an American game company basing an expansion off Kung Fu Panda stereotypes.

While I am convinced the subscription losses are due to EXTERNAL reasons, like the MMO industry going free to play and the fact after 9 years of WoW dominance players want something else (even crap) ...

I think the above explains why Asia lost players.

Blizzard's HQ should have known better: you can't conquer a market by patronizing it.

As to those wanting to dispute the loss was mainly in China: the last quarterly revenue in 2013 for WoW still showed 270 million dollars revenue from that quarter alone (that was inclusive the Elite service of COD, but that Elite service went free to play in late 2012).

So the fact WoW income did not go down explains the losses were mainly in Asia.

BUT you can never beat "free" really, even though it is crap.

Also: the MMO market is in a shake out right now. I am quite sure that free to play for the western market is NOT a long term solution. Mmo's are MUCH too expensive to make, certainly those with an open world etc ...

So old AAA made mmo's turning free to play is simply a stop gap to the way out and demise of the genre. Nothing can beat subscription income for planning and much needed funding.

So a few weeks before Titan was rescheduled ... i already posted here that Blizzard should take their time as MMO's are no longer "hot", certanly not those with a sub...

Let's face it: free to play is the buzz word these days, so Blizzard decided to launch new games with a WoW theme that are free to play and MUCH less costly to make: Hearthstone.

We will see if the good times of subscription based games will come back some day.

In the meantime: enjoy the last one to the fullest, because frankly only garbage is free.

[Pann]

While I am convinced the subscription losses are due to EXTERNAL reasons, like the MMO industry going free to play and the fact after 9 years of WoW dominance players want something else (even crap) ...

I think the above explains why Asia lost players.

Blizzard's HQ should have known better: you can't conquer a market by patronizing it.

As to those wanting to dispute the loss was mainly in China: the last quarterly revenue in 2013 for WoW still showed 270 million dollars revenue from that quarter alone (that was inclusive the Elite service of COD, but that Elite service went free to play in late 2012).

So the fact WoW income did not go down explains the losses were mainly in Asia.

BUT you can never beat "free" really, even though it is crap.

If it was the case of the MMO industry going F2P in Asia how do you explain Netease seeing a 12% rise in revenue in 2012 which they attributed to "...the outstanding performance of our self-developed games..." It would appear that all their other games have not been effected by this apparent industry shift.

You are using GAAP figures which includes deferred box sales from MOP non-GAAP figures show a clearer picture and Online Subscription revenue was $22 million, 9%, down on the previous year.

[ttak82]

Yea, China's own peculiarities won't masquerade there're things to fix in order to keep new subs coming.

Here's a few comments from Yahoo's article:



"with warcraft you buy the game then you pay for every expansion plus you then pay a large monthly fee. I;m a hard core gamer, and I like these kinds of games. but blizzard is double dipping. you either pay a monthly fee OR buy the game and the updates NOT BOTH, so I refused to play this game due to greed issues by blizzard" -Bruce B
I think he has a point here. WoW is unwelcoming to new players in so many senses, and this is one. It's intimidating having to pay for the game, its 4 expansions AND a monthly fee. We know that the first 2 expansions are coming for free. We know that all races are available despite not having all expansions. We know that there are often special sales and that you can buy WoW really cheap them. But new players don't know any of that.
They need a better approach here. I'd say: pay for WoW and ALL expansions once. Them monthly fee. If a player enjoys trial, they'll buy the whole game and get a month. After this month he'll decide if he'll be a subscriber or not.

This is the crux of it all. Buying/installing the game is inconvenient. Its not something you can do all the time considering the huge download size as well. (yeah, not everyone has broadband internet). Its just too much effort. People can use that time/effort for other games then.

[otarma]

As a Chinese I am happy to see some insights about China instead of the old communist stereotype.

But like many people know, sub loss is resulted from many factors. Without statistics, outsiders cannot analyze objectively. Nor can I.

So I will try to elaborate some ideas according to what I saw in Chinese gamer community, which are definitely shallow and biased.

The user iteration of China server is drastic. Because of the 2-year delayed release of WotLK, most experienced and avid players afk-ed and never came back. So the newer generation of players contributed to most of the player base. They are not loyal to the game. They don't even love the game. They are mostly minors. They don't care much about the humanism of lore or the value of teamwork. They grew up without playing console games but the F2P martial arts PC games. The latter are mostly about soloing monsters and becoming invincible at the expense of real money. They are used to it and enjoy it. With expansions, players became more and more impatient about the raiding play style. With new expansions came new players. But once they found they couldn't get shining gears without nights of repeated deaths, they quit. They play never for fun but for prestige. Obviously, the sub loss is mainly because the new players are not willing to stay, for whatever reasons.

The gaming market of China is different from any other places in the world. It is very young. Because China has just become rich enough to play video games at home in recent years. The market is open to any kinds of games because the players are mostly new to consider gaming as a way of entertaining. The players and the developers, even the investors are not quite interested in technology advancement. Like other places, recently it is web games and smart phone / tabloid games that lead the fashion. These games stole a lot of users from client-based MMO games. And because the market is very young, the impact is more severe.

Again without statistics I don't know how much the factors mattered regarding to the sub loss.

Also, trust me, culture issue is not a problem here, at least not that important. MOP is still a typical WOW expansion, not a martial arts game.

BTW, somehow relevant, the box office of Titanic 3D in China is reportedly over 100 million dollar.

[Deleted]

Asian setting =/= Setting aimed to Chinese players

Maybe not aimed at, but I recall someone from Blizzard (one of the higher ups) saying something like one of the reasons they went with an Asian themed expansion was as a nod to their eastern playerbase.
Which makes perfect sense.

[Deleted]

I can relate to that. The raid is the content, not the 3-4 difficulty levels. All the gear looks the same, doesn't matter that there are different numbers on it.

even if you think it that way, siege of orgrimmar has 14 bosses.
naxxramas had 15, hyjal+black temple had 14, icc had 12. so it is false that "not enough raid content is being designed".

[ashblond]

I fail to see how they can prefer Age of Wushu.

Look at this:
A realistic and thin swordman in a training ground. It's "realistic", not very beutiful, graphics are meh, setting is boring. I would play it for 10 minutes and check if it's actually fun to combat and such. But as i see here, it doesn't look exciting.

Now this:
Here we have a humanoid panda fiercely striking with a fire punch while roaring, he's in a training ground, a colorful and breathtaking scenario. All so unreal and cartoonish, but beautiful and immersive. Damm, it's fantasy and me like it. I'd like to play that, looks exciting. Adventure! Action! Fun!

Yea i fail to feel attracted to Age of Mushu. I don't understand it. Maybe they do move from game to game in mass, like mantis. Maybe a chinese guy is simply different than a western guy and prefer other stuff.

Edit: resized img

There are few reasons of decreasing Chinese subscription:

1. WoW itself is getting old. This is true for every player, not only for Chinese. Of course the games evolves and gets new expansions, but the basic system is the same, the contents are repeated. A lot of players are getting tired of bored of it.

2. The players changes too. Old players who started wow since beta have reached their middle age. They have families, kids and jobs to take care, and inevitably less time to play a game, be it wow or other games. Ofc there are new players to join, but they have much more choice today than it was 8 year ago when wow is THE game.

3. The game market changes. Chinese gamers love a lot of MOBA games like Dota, LoL, because it is easy to get few friends, make a team and play against different people whenever you have time. It is free, fun, less time consuming, and no effort putting into a game. WoW doesn't feel as fun as it used to be, and you need to invest some time and money into it. Personally, i love to play some poker, cards, majong games online when i have few time. It is relaxing and entertaining. And a lot of people do! The player number of cards and majong games is at least 10 folds of wow. lol

The art and expansion theme has nothing to do with it. IMO MoP is a great expansion in art, and portrays Chinese culture really well from a western standard. I don't think any Chinese players have problem with this.

But I do feel, the trend of the Chinese gaming market, will be small and simple F2P games, not MMO. You shall never expect any MMO to have the same player numbers as those games.

---------- Post added 2013-06-14 at 12:28 PM ----------

i really do think Mists has offended china and their player base rather than representing it. Every time I see something that supposedly resembles Chinese heritage in wow.. i start laughing. The fact was blizz ended up trying too hard, I mean sure it sounds nice to have an expansion with something new in mind like.. oh hey lets add pandas and china symbols everywhere.. but really.. ever since cataclysm started they've been screwing things up.

No, just no. I don't think MoP offends Chinese in any way. You can't expect WoW to present Chinese culture better than a Chinese game. but MoP does it really really well for a foreign game.

[LilSaihah]

This is the crux of it all. Buying/installing the game is inconvenient. Its not something you can do all the time considering the huge download size as well. (yeah, not everyone has broadband internet). Its just too much effort. People can use that time/effort for other games then.

It's not inconvenient, it's just incredibly expensive to play. If you're looking for an MMO that you're going to be playing for an entire expansion cycle (spitballing at 18 months), consider your options. You can buy (and this is a very small range because I don't really pay too much attention);

World of Warcraft; $20 Cataclysm, $40 MoP standard edition, $60 deluxe edition. $270 worth of subscription fees assuming you're paying by-the-month; I'm not sure on how much the cost gets cut for longer-term deals.
Guild Wars 2; $50, standard edition. $70 for the deluxe edition, but you don't get locked out of any content, it's just a few niceties.
SWTOR; $20 for the digital expansion, or $25 for the digital expansion + a month of subscription. You can also just flat out subscribe for $15 a month, which will also get you about $6.50's worth of the cash shop currency.

For the price of WoW, you can buy GW2 and spend the money you would have otherwise spent on subscriptions to give five of your friends keys as well, and you can get yourself the digital deluxe edition for shits and giggles. If you're the forever-alone type and don't want to buy other people the game, then you can buy every style item in the gem store twice over and have enough money left for a few character slots.

For the price of WoW, you could buy SWTOR's expansion along with a month's subscription, and buy about 40000 cartel coins. That's enough to buy every account-wide unlock that affects your play experience two and a half times over. If you subscribe for 18 months, paying per month and with the authenticator, you get 10800 cartel coins, which is enough to get you plenty of goodies from the cash store.

At worst? I'd probably say SWTOR is maybe 80% of what WoW is. GW2's a very different game, but I'd probably say it's about 90% of what WoW is, if you're ambivalent on the gameplay. They should be 8% and 18%, as rough estimates of how much they cost. And this analysis isn't even considering the fact that Blizzard puts mounts and pets on the gem store, and makes serious bank on account services.

[ashblond]

probably because there are many free asian mmos available to them that cater to them better.

I think something the westerners don't know is that MMO is never the most popular games in China. People quit wow not always because they go for another MMO.

How many wow players were there in china during its peak in wrath? 6-7 millions max?
How many LoL and Dota players are there in China? easily 50-60 million.
And how many people play Tencent QQ game (biggest cards, pokers, majongs etc game platform in China)? Countless.
As of 20 March 2013, there are 798.2 million active QQ accounts, with a peak of 176.4 million simultaneous online QQ users.

So wow lost 2 million players in China. That is very normal, and really not noticeable for the Chinese game market. Who cares? i think only blizzard does, hehe.

[RicardoZ]

When a company tries to aim a product at a certain market they usually try too hard and it fails. The crowd it's intended for gets mad that it's now "gone mainstream" or something and starts pointing out all the little details it got wrong and it doesn't do very well with them.

Chances are it wasn't even intended for the Asian market itself, but rather the big section of gamers that are obsessed with asian culture. Kind of like how the majority of movies that take place in New York are of very little interest to people who actually live in New York, but to somebody in Blowsville, Nebraska it's fascinating.

[Deleted]

Well people would like to know where the subs dropped, and i'm happy that EU didn't lose more then they gained.

Where is the evidence for this?

Kotick actually said that ALL regions lost subs, its only that the 'East' lost the most subs.

[billielecter]

It is hardly the numbers of bosses in one single expansion that matters. It is how many players get involved in RAID which matters. H-model has separated players into different classes. Elitists won't deal with the others, middle-class players won't deal with rookies. I have never seen WOW as a such classified game until debut of CTM. Additionally there is no more differences in the content between 10/25 RAID which makes the game boring enough.