Who says the numbers arent normal or expected? What were the numbers for Legion after 2 months? And the addons before? From these numbers alone, you cant interpret anything.
I disagree. The problem isn't Hazzikostas himself just as Greg Street wasn't the problem per se. We are just seeing Ion at the forefront just as we used to see GC at the forefront before, but they are not the people that decide the direction of the game. It's all of them combined. To steer WoW to its present state was a collective decision. Everyone agreed. Hazzikostas, Allen-Brack, Chilton. All of them. Firing Hazzikostas and his afro-haired friend won't change anything. They will just hire others to continue where the previous left off.
Veteran vanilla player - I was 31 back in 2005 when I started playing WoW - Nostalrius raider with a top raid guild.
You realy have to learn to see through the marketing BS. What they said was that compared to other expansions, it sold more 'by the first release day'. They forgot to mention that 'by the first release day' the game was already purchasable for several months with major content incentives (allied races) available to purchasers only. People that were going to play BfA had 0 reason not to buy it before that day. This time they even allowed upgrading to the Physical Collectors edition at the price of the difference. So they are basically comparing the whole of an expansion's unique subscription sales to what was in the past a one day sale.
I know that it counts alts, or people are still leveling, but this far into BfA I'd assume most people who played it at least have 1 120.
110 :
US: 4.122.280
EU: 4.058.855
111-119:
US: 923.147
EU: 818.119
Number of 110 of course is still huge, because many people had multiple alts for questlines/artifacts/magetower, and 2 years instead of 2 months of expansion.
Last edited by Teri; 2018-10-15 at 03:35 PM.
Didn't Blizzard say 10m at launch, or something like that? Seems pretty off to these numbers.
That said, I wouldn't be too shocked. There's usually a big drop-off within the first couple of months, then things stabilize and fluctuate throughout for patches.
EDIT: He also says that his numbers don't include China, so that's a massive discrepancy.
How many times do you people need to have it explained to you. BfA didn't fucking sell 3.5M copies around launch day. It sold that many copies EVER up to that point, including the pre-sales that started way back in Legion so people could access the new fucking races.
There is a LOT of data about NA/EU subs that comes from RIGHT HERE ON MMO-C. When they do those data pulls (that they do a LOT less often now), they track data for X character from X accounts active in the last 30 days and quite often the number of active accounts for NA/EU has been below 2 million.
If I were to hazard a guess, the reason those data pulls have stopped is because it does in fact show things Blizzard would rather the public didn't see.
In any case, if 3.5 million people overall have bought BfA and and even say 750k of them bought it way back when then it's not a stretch to think that the dabblers who try out every expac have drifted away and we could be at below 2 millions subs because we see numbers that low frequently, which tells us kind of where the floor is. It's just not normal for it to happen this early in an expac but with this one, I find it totally plausible. I have never felt less like playing than now and my sub is active only because it's prepaid with gold.
Wait... wut?
3.4 million sold preorder. Sure they sold some after that but not very many. People who play WoW don't wait til after launch to buy it... only a very few.
To think that they lost 1/2 their subs in the first few months? Totally believable... same thing has happened last 2 expansions as well. Only Blizz hasn't released numbers... and there is a reason for that.
I mean.. come on. 12 MILLION players during WotLK TWELVE! And stayed throughout the ENTIRE EXPANSION.
Now people are trying to defend 3.4 million dropping to 1.7?
Part of that drop is people trying FF14... a game that is growing... not dying. A game that is on the exact same business model as WoW... Buy it up from for $60 and $15 a month thereafter.
People... by kissing their butts... you are hurting your own game! Before long WoW will go into maintenance mode... and you won;t get new content to lay.. all because you trusted them to make self-identified changes to make the game good again.
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No doubt... but WE will know simply by seeing the population in game vs. modern ghosttowns. And Activision will demand numbers internally as to how Classic is doing.
Bad game is dead. Classic will launch with triple the BFA population.
No, you're right. It doesn't necessarily equal players, but it's not an unreasonable assumption to say that someone who pre-ordered or bought it day one ended up playing it. I'd be interested to meet the people who did buy it and then never played it. That's a lot of money for a product you'd never use.
Thats worst thing you can do. Most people use LFR but is LFR fun? No it isnt. People use it only becouse it is easy way to get grar and see content. Create content on praticipation numbers is no go. Fun is factor what you should use. Becouse long run nobady will play boring game no matter how accessible game is. I hate LFR yez i still done it back in Legion for free chance of legos but it doesnt mean it is good system what i enjoyed. I joined LFR and watched streams, youtube on my second monitor.
Here's a guesstimate: the average revenue just from the game and ingame services per month for a WoW account is around 20$. Even with 'just' 1M players, that would mean about $240M year. That is not yet adding all revenue from merchandising, events and IP. Do you honestly believe they would just let that go?
and people say "the mount for the gametime is not there because the subs look bad!" well ... ofc it wasnt made in the last 5mins... its a failsave smart people have failsaves in case something goes bad..
why do you think all of a sudden Ion is reporting new stuff that would probably be better fit for blizzcon panels?
a mount that you get "for free" if you sub...
sure its not a last minute decision to do that stuff... its a failsave.
and the people that say "oh that must be only one region" maybe you should understand that your beloved game isnt so popular anymore? im mean just look at the gaming industry there is plenty of other games out there.. and the kids play stuff like fortnite nowadays..
its possible because they count preorders into that number. people preordered while in legion and didnt have a sub active at launch.
(if they wouldnt count these preoders into the release sales they would cuck themselfs because thats why they did the WORLDWIDE release just so the numbers look better. old xpacs werent worldwide releasees and still had better sales numbers but when they say "best selling worldwide release" they are right to say that altho the numbers are far from good if you take the history into account)