I suspect SL's hiatus will have the lowest subs in history and it will trigger events

[Zeons]

Wow is P2W. Period lol.

How can anybody argue otherwise is delusion

Then every game that allows trading or boosting is P2W. I can pay anyone in RL to buy gear in game. This includes any MMORPG in existence.

[Steelangel]

You're fully entitled to not consider this P2W, but you're wrong and will be wrong for as long as microtransactions exist.

There is no number of tokens that you can buy that will provide you gear/acheivements/VIP Status directly from Blizzard. You purchase these things from someone else who has to provide the service unaffiliated with Blizzard.

But whatever. You know best Mr. Forum Rando.

[loras]

Let's face it; most people still around from the early days of the game are 40+ year olds who start not even gaming anymore; the younglings aren't few but they don't tend to stay especially since WoW is nothing too special in the context of new games.

An expansion that just has "dragons and Alex the hot!" is not going to cut it; it might have a small peak at launch but even that may be underwhelming; the new producers will likely pull the plug entirely and possibly try something extremely new.

The nature of "extremely new" is up in the air but I have some predictions; perhaps they will delete all technical notions of 'expansion' and release it only as 'Warcraft'; what do you think they might do?

Average age was always 35+ in case you didn't know, contrary to popular opinion younger audiences are not actually more useful to a game's practical or financial health, especially in the long term.
Though the easy money from getting a mass-adopted hit like i.e. fortnite is of course always enticing, so penty of games make greater or smaller efforts to landing that particular quarry.

As to other games: WoW still has saddeningly little serious competition despite its age, and they seem to have learned in recent expansions that they should play to their strengths as opposed to following the flavor if the month; attempts integrate rts elements (warmfronts), exploring (expeditions), improving the overworld experience (cypher system, area development since WoD, dragonriding maybe) and others are all at least attempts with varying degrees of succes. So i dunno about your predictions, i mean SL was shit and there is plenty of reason to doubt everything, but that's not the same as emotionally proclaiming that ut's all dying and dead. I mean i remember people doing that all the way back in tbc and every expansion afterwards.

I mean some time they're going to be correct, but i kinda doubt that that moment is very near unless they fuck up majorly. Which is not unreasonable to expect, but it is unreasonable to think of it as a certainty.


As to release stuff: Why would they not market it as Dragonflight? You get both the value of the existing brand of Warcraft and the excitement of New Product™.

Personally i think they are in the process of rethinking and solidifying the core gameplay concepts, judging by their reworking attempts of talents and professions, and their apparant intent to introduce a new flying system. If the gameplay is solid, thelore and theming at least decent, then you'll pretty much have won already as a dev, from there on onward adding on new goodies (races, content, etc.) and trialling new systems is relatively straightforward and would provide sufficient impetus to the game. With the caveat that they would need to realise by now that you can only tack on so much new stuff in regards to core gameplay systems before you have to re-compose the entire thing into a new coherent whole.

[Stickiler]

I hope sometime in the near future the server technology and cost of developing an MMO becomes affordable and feasible for smaller indie studios. I really don't think we're going to get anything good until that happens. Or Riot might pull it off?

It's not the server technology that's the problem, it's that you need to somehow pull constant content out of your butt to satisfy your customers. SP games have the advantage that they can go dark for years to produce enough content to last their customers days/weeks. With an MMO, people expect you to produce content as fast as they can consume it, which is physically impossible, doubly so for a small indie studio. Look at the response to any major patch for any MMO, you'll have people angrily posting on the forums within a week or two of the patch complaining there's "nothing to do"

[Adamas102]

God, just imagine what other companies would do to have a "niche games" that sells 3.7 million copies in preorder/on release day... That's one huge niche man.

Blizzard’s MAUs make up like 6% of ATVI’s total MAUs. That’s just the one company and WoW’s MAUs are only a fraction of that 6% so yeah, it’s a pretty niche game.

[james2400]

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ac.../1100-6502758/

Rip

[Asrialol]

I don't understand why people care about sub numbers still.

[james2400]

I don't understand why people care about sub numbers still.

Health of the game?

I be shocked if there is 1million people left playing the game(still profitable)

[Biomega]

Wow is P2W. Period lol.

How can anybody argue otherwise is delusion

Only in the strictest sense, really.

ANY game is "P2W" if you simply pay other people to play it for you. You can "buy" yourself a full set of mythic raid gear, and then what? The game's goal isn't to get all that gear, it's do to the thing you need to do to get it - and you've paid people to do that. You can have all the gear you want, you step into a mythic raid or high M+ key, you'll get destroyed instantly if your skill doesn't measure up to your gear.

Same with PvP. You can pay someone to get you to 2,800 rating with full conquest gear - and then what? You're not going to "win" playing against other 2,800-rated people, and you can't queue against 1,000-rated people with your gear to destroy them.

You can buy yourself a set of ilvl 280 gear and then do WQs, and that's technically "P2W" but it's also little more than that - a technicality, with little objective value.

The only even close to legitimate case would be someone who's good enough to do mythic raiding, high m+, or high-ranked PvP themselves, but doesn't have time or whatever to grind out what you need to compete so they pay someone to do it for them. Which is an edge case that barely matters considering that is already illegal anyway, and someone who's interested in that level of play is also unlikely to risk everything on such illegal actions. The ACTUAL cases like this probably can be counted on the fingers of two hands, and while they technically exist they don't really change the true, honest "P2W" argument one bit.

[Mysterymask]

Health of the game?

I be shocked if there is 1million people left playing the game(still profitable)

Most people who care about sub numbers ESPECIALLY here are less caring about how the game is doing and more chasing some validation that the game is failing and attempting to rub it in if something proves them right ...which in their eyes anything will

[sam86]

1- they flat out stated that sub numbers isn't what paying bills since years, but the (idiot) whales who buy tokens for real money and cash shop
2- literally anyone who knows wow knows that sub numbers will drop, and with how negative blizz is saw this exp it is predicted and saw miles away, no need to 'react' to something 100% normal, so if anything will change from something that is 100% will happen, that will be stupid
there are many factors why this drop will happen to try to 'change'

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Most people who care about sub numbers ESPECIALLY here are less caring about how the game is doing and more chasing some validation that the game is failing and attempting to rub it in if something proves them right ...which in their eyes anything will

i hate current blizzard direction to be clear, but for me personally nothing i want more than wow to improve, heck i had plans to resub
but (surprise) battle.net decided to stop working and NO fix working since weeks, checking official forums seems that problem exist since march (wtf?), add to it 'colorful' presentation of next exp and how they focus on hire ppl with color/diversity instead of actual skill makes me question everything
What i want is to play wow, i still follow it, heck just this month i revisited some old stuff etc, i signed for beta, but while i had optimism, i have negative faith in current direction and i'm skeptical how will blizzard itself moves forward

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Only in the strictest sense, really.

ANY game is "P2W" if you simply pay other people to play it for you.

no
what exactly paying in LoL for example gives u? Or Hots if u prefer blizz version? nothing, just skins, they have zero gameplay power
wow gives u gold, which can buy a lot of stuff on AH, it doesn't give u the absolute best gear, but if u and me both sub right now, play exact same hours, but u buy tokens and i don't anyone will tell how massive difference between us will be with ur gold buying u gear while i have to scrap the bottom to get any group to start if that is even possible

that curve may flat with 100+ day playing on same character, but while mostly i'm stuck on 1 character trying to gear it u probably moving to ur 2nd or 3rd alt with token gold boosting

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I don't understand why people care about sub numbers still.

in a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER online game, seems everyone (blizz included) forgot that the more playerbase the more ppl to actually play and do activity with
wow has way too many servers for current playerbase tbh, which every exp start and sometimes big patches return back to state that needs big servers again

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There is no number of tokens that you can buy that will provide you gear/acheivements/VIP Status directly from Blizzard. You purchase these things from someone else who has to provide the service unaffiliated with Blizzard.

But whatever. You know best Mr. Forum Rando.

don't worry blizz actual higher up employees sell boosts for gold in-game as literally saw before and even streamed, so actually buying tokens for gold give u gear and achievement and vip status from blizz staff themselves, indirectly that is

[Wangming]

Blizzard’s MAUs make up like 6% of ATVI’s total MAUs. That’s just the one company and WoW’s MAUs are only a fraction of that 6% so yeah, it’s a pretty niche game.

According to the latest quarterly report the PC revenue is behind both console and mobile. The latter is more than double.
As for MAUs Blizzard has 22, Activision proper has 100 and King has 250.

So yeah at this point Blizzard is dead weight.

[Ilir]

I'm not in my 40ies and not even in my 30ies and i've been playing since 2005, the fuck you on about oo

[Aggressive]

Then every game that allows trading or boosting is P2W. I can pay anyone in RL to buy gear in game. This includes any MMORPG in existence.

When you have a game that literally sells a token for gold so that a gamer can buy gear, weapons then yes WoW IS P2W. At one point in Shadowlands top guilds were buying stuff off the AH just to do world firsts. So yes WoW IS P2W. Not sure why gamers from WoW keep trying to defend this.

[Shakzor]

When you have a game that literally sells a token for gold so that a gamer can buy gear, weapons then yes WoW IS P2W. At one point in Shadowlands top guilds were buying stuff off the AH just to do world firsts. So yes WoW IS P2W. Not sure why gamers from WoW keep trying to defend this.

The whole argument falls apart when you realize that this requires someone else ot have invested time to acquire the gear AND actually list it on the auction house.
Just having the gold gives you absolutely nothing and there is no way to "buy" gear for money.
By this logic, EVERY game is p2w, cause you can pay someone to carr you to a higher rank, kill you a hard boss or whatever. Gold seeling was always going on, they just came up with a way to profit off of it.

Anyways, this is about the SL Hiatus, not "WoW is p2w thread #5942"

[Aggressive]

The whole argument falls apart when you realize that this requires someone else ot have invested time to acquire the gear AND actually list it on the auction house.
Just having the gold gives you absolutely nothing and there is no way to "buy" gear for money.
By this logic, EVERY game is p2w, cause you can pay someone to carr you to a higher rank, kill you a hard boss or whatever. Gold seeling was always going on, they just came up with a way to profit off of it.

Anyways, this is about the SL Hiatus, not "WoW is p2w thread #5942"

And finally it seems one said to stay on topic with the original point. You said your piece and I said mine. Moving on to the next topic.

[Vorkreist]

There is no number of tokens that you can buy that will provide you gear/acheivements/VIP Status directly from Blizzard. You purchase these things from someone else who has to provide the service unaffiliated with Blizzard.

But whatever. You know best Mr. Forum Rando.

What does is matter that its slightly indirect when its the same game ruining outcome ?
The game still makes it stupidly easy to buy with cash all the advantages you see in standard p2w.
No matter how hard you're gonna cope token remains a p2w feature.

[Skylarking]

What does is matter that its slightly indirect when its the same game ruining outcome ?
The game still makes it stupidly easy to buy with cash all the advantages you see in standard p2w.
No matter how hard you're gonna cope token remains a p2w feature.

Dude what are you going on about the game has been p2w since it's inception. People have been buying gold from gold sellers since vanilla to skip game content and it is still going on in the classic servers. Also anyone that is serious about p2w is still buying from Chinese bot farmers on retail rather than the token because the exchange rate in comparison is pretty shite. Blizzard rarely cracks down on buyers unless you do something really dumb.

[Soikona]

It was the best selling PC game of all times (on release day), period. GTA/CoD count PC + console sales. So fact is, SL was the best selling release day PC game, ever.
But yeah, it's "niche". Like I've said - you may call it niche it you want, but that's one huge niche.

Wasn’t it beat very shortly after by Cyberpunk though?

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In wow's case it means even less since its a mmo and most of the buyers quit after the first months of the expansion when the husk of horrible systems is exposed in all its glory.
There were quite a few factors that boosted the SL sales like most people sitting inside the house because of covid and a general illusion that Blizzard surely got the message loud and clear and would deliver after the fiasco of Battle for Azerite.

Let’s not forget the cycle of good expansion bad expansion was broken too. That defo contributed to SL expansion sales. I know a few that thought that and then quit after a month.

Was that the cycle the jailer meant to break?

[Rageonit]

Wasn’t it beat very shortly after by Cyberpunk though?

It was, that's why I used past tense. But for a PC game - with an added subscription! - it still sold pretty darn well.