Coffee With the Devs - Rate of Change

[Deleted]

Except that if you had read the comments from the past couple of weeks, you would have found that WoW has less than half of the subscriptions it had when it was at its peak. The quote was: "There are more people that played World of Warcraft but no longer play World of Warcraft than currently play World of Warcraft".

So much for the 11+ million people. WoW will still continue on...but they will not dominate like they used to. SWTOR already has in US retail box sales, alone, more than double the total pre-orders that WoW had.

Just sayin'

The 11.1M current ( or at least the latest number) of subscribers is a fact.

so 'people that currently play world of warcraft' == 11.1M

And then your quote says that 'people that played wow but no longer play' is larger that this. Now, seeing as this group of ' have but no longer' is by definition distinct from the 'play now' group. This means the total amount of people having played plus the ones that are playing numbers over 22M.

The only way your way of reasoning works is if the subscribers numbers have dropped to around 5M in the last 3 months... and I doubt that ^^ but if you have a source on that I'll happily retract my words.

Also the mmo market has exploded over the last decennium, ofcourse swtor has more preorders than wow has. they are fishing in pond that has maybe 5 times the size it used to have and it's friggin Star Wars. Hell I have mine preordered.

[Idletime]

Interesting read, just reinforces my decision to get the hell out while the getting is good. I was a believer for 6 years, but GC and his crew have seriously messed this whole thing up since he came on the scene. He's making it far too complex and it's only resulting in the destruction of the game. Sure, casuals who don't care will always subscribe and the cutting edge raiders/PVPers will hang out and resubscribe patch to patch to insure their place in the gaming world pecking order, but what's left after that? The game is simply not much fun anymore. A month ago I would have told you I was just waiting on the next patch, but after losing half my guild and most of my long time WoW friends to other games (since Firelands is on par with watching paint dry) I made my decision to explore another title until SWTOR comes out, maybe D3 but I'm guessing that will be another Activisioned game. I totally agree with the above however, someone at Irvine had to pull his ass aside and tell him to stop being condescending to CUSTOMERS. You don't treat gamers like you would in game when you're the flipping head man in charge. I'm guessing it was someone that watches subscriptions. If you were at a restaurant and the waitperson told you "that's how it is, and that's that" you'd start demanding a comped meal and never eat there again. If you were a salesman telling your customer "sorry, that's how we do it so like it or leave it" you'd destroy your clientele base. He came on the scene when they were converting from the Vanilla/BC model to the Wrath model which is what made the game mainstream. In that time the demographic changed almost entirely and they didn't stay true to the demands of the market. Sadly I don't even want to watch Blizzcon again this year.

[lilbuddhaman]

This is a joke, right?

Throne of Lies

[gurusotah]

hi guys and ladiesI have been playing mmo games for a long time.First of all i must say that if wow had released last year with that brainless and 3rd class untalented dev. team members,they would have had a big problem and fell into deep shit with 100k subc, because no one would give a shit such a crap game in all aspects especially in pvp, it is so clear that Blizzard doesnt care about pvp and they dont even bother to nerf insane op classes like fmage spec feral and rogues , i play fmage and to be honest it is not even fun to faceroll everybody although they seem to be good players.Real wow dev team memebers left wow looong time ago and created ARENA net which is a creater of guild wars in a way.So if you think that wow send their talented dev team to titan, it is a bollox.Subs is 11 million rofl, guys are you all so naiv to think that there are still 11 mil ppl who play that game BOLLOX.it is not even 5 mil, they started to see deep shit i can predict that you know how?i play in 3 servers and even in peak time they all are DEAD.i have friends who play in different servers all say the same thing servers are dead may be not all but most of them.Ghostcrawler and his everquest buddies fucked that game and made wow their own gamecourt, GC and his buddies are the real reason why people are quiting.when i read how they think and what they want to do i loled hard and sady that these guys are designers of wow.as an old veteran mmo player i must unfortunately admit that wow will fall apart thanks to these brainless 3rd class dev teams with GC .

[[-Spiritus-]]

There is a lot to take in, but what stuck me the most was the idea of class balance. Notice he only talks about class balance in terms of raw DPS? What happened to control? AoE v. single target? Burst vs. steady damage? That is the real issue. "Bring the player, not the class" meant that pretty much every unique aspect of every spec was washed away, with the only real difference being how and what abilities you execute for maximum damage. So now, instead of "Arcane is good in X, but not as good in Y & Z, Fire is good in Y, and not as good in X or Z, and frost is good in Z, but not as good in X & Y" you have " Arcane is best at X, then next is Fire in X, and at the bottom Frost in X." When you are only balancing around X, then that 1% is the only thing that is truly separating the specs. If you had Y & Z, you could say, "Sure Arcane is good at X, but if you need Y, Fire."

Now, was this homogenization a good move? For some, absolutely. For others, not so much. You can't please everyone, but count me in the "not pleased" category when specs are devolved into raw output and then encounters are designed with primarily raw, homogenized output in mind.

[FurIouS007]

The 11.1M current ( or at least the latest number) of subscribers is a fact.

so 'people that currently play world of warcraft' == 11.1M

And then your quote says that 'people that played wow but no longer play' is larger that this. Now, seeing as this group of ' have but no longer' is by definition distinct from the 'play now' group. This means the total amount of people having played plus the ones that are playing numbers over 22M.

The only way your way of reasoning works is if the subscribers numbers have dropped to around 5M in the last 3 months... and I doubt that ^^ but if you have a source on that I'll happily retract my words.

Also the mmo market has exploded over the last decennium, ofcourse swtor has more preorders than wow has. they are fishing in pond that has maybe 5 times the size it used to have and it's friggin Star Wars. Hell I have mine preordered.

Yes i just signed up to reply to this post for a good reason.

ROFL 22m active subs, you really need to go "search" for posts about the active number of players in WoW.

I can tell you it's no where near what you think it is.

Edit: More on topic about massive wall of blue post.

WoW had it's glory days and now it's trying to still be the best when the people who made it the best are no longer around. Like EQ, GC will stuff WoW up and you can all ready seeing this happening. GC fate is the same as Kalagan ( I think that is how you spell it? ) that he will just vanish in to thin air.....

[Calzaeth]

Yes i just signed up to reply to this post for a good reason.

ROFL 22m active subs, you really need to go "search" for posts about the active number of players in WoW.

I can tell you it's no where near what you think it is.

Edit: More on topic about massive wall of blue post.

WoW had it's glory days and now it's trying to still be the best when the people who made it the best are no longer around. Like EQ, GC will stuff WoW up and you can all ready seeing this happening. GC fate is the same as Kalagan ( I think that is how you spell it? ) that he will just vanish in to thin air.....

The post you quoted never claimed that WoW has 22m active subs. It said that active subs + unsubbed = 22m. Which may be true.

[Requiem4aDr3am]

so who else pre ordered SWTOR?:P

[Ganimah]

The 11.1M current ( or at least the latest number) of subscribers is a fact.

So...if this is the case, let's see if the math adds up.

11.1 million subscribers at 15/month = 499,500,000

Total quarterly revenue for Q3 (including Cataclysm launch in China) = 313 million (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3...ore_Slowly.php)

So...with box sales eating up a decent number of the 313 million quarterly revenue (not profit but total money brought in), the highest possible number of active subscriptions, assuming absolutely ZERO retail box/digital sales would be equal to 6.96 million subscriptions. Remember that taking into account ZERO retail sales...ZERO micro-transactions/guild transfers/race or faction changes.

I'll stick with the math, because 11.1 million simply doesn't add up. It is more like what they have said when it's less than half of the number who used to play the game.

[Deleted]

Change, yes it's good. We like change as humans, but we also hate it when it's changed something that was pretty awesome in the first place and here is why

Firstly, yes it is a balancing act, this is true. But. They are not listening or don't seem to acknowledge players demands so leaving this to chill is kinda not wise, if you speak and the listener isn't responding of course you're gonna get angry and leave, I think openly speaking about it like for example the Censure hotfix, there was a collective "Yippee!" from avid Retribution fanboys.
Retribution has been broken for a little while and I do believe there were many posts explaining that it's inconsistent and heavily dependant on gear to even attempt viability, that's after a cut-throat guild would be prepared to theoretically carry a Paladin specced into Retribution.Another is frost mages, they are incredibly imbalanced. The point of a cloth-wearing class is to be like a glass bombs, they will do amazing damage but they are fickle... come on, they are meant to have paper bag armor yet they can kill any class. I could see originally in PvP one class/spec had a weakness to another, I could go into details but I'm sure we can pick many combos.. But now? Hm.

Secondly, the worst change is I guess... we can all agree, the game seems to have change since one golden rule...
It's being tailored to the masses and I mean the "casual gamers" mostly, the ones that play Wii and let it collect dust or randomly play iPhone/Blackberry/Samsung apps.
With the segregation of Normal modes and Heroics in a more stated and obvious way compared to 10man (Normal) and 25man (Heroic)... It's paved a way to the fundamental principles or there after the lack of those today.
- Major class changes, in functionality and gameplay...
Warlocks though I've never played one, their remake seemed much needed and for hunters, their quiver was somewhat outdated. Removing arrows altogether... Hum, I prefer there idea of elemental-damage-based arrows to improve DPS. But, stupid things like according to Blizzard Holy Paladins were "going to be not solely focus on tank healing and to be competitive at AOE", yeah, right.
[2][Freddo]:LF Tank healer!
[/w Freddo]: Holydin ilvl 365
Come on, who has even changed their mindset that a Holy Paladin is a raid healer, a Resto Druid to be a tank healer?
War
- Reducing the amount of stats and removal of said mechanics/stats that gave a class a form of uniqueness. Yes, firstly I'm talking about a few things like MP5, Armor Penetration, etc...
Well I dunno about you it's nice that they've reduced the headache of sometimes balancing about 15 stats to increase output and gave us the nice little Reforge to do so... but yeah, Armor Penetration for Rogues seemed... I dunno, a no-brainer? In terms of universal idea, they are sneaky bastards that could assassinate therefore nullifying even suits of armor...
- Vendor Epics
I think there should be some to granted start people up, the reputation based items and the ones based on collecting tokens is great. But draw a line, how can farming a heroic be similar or at some points depending on content (Like ZG/ZA) compare to a Raid?

Thirdly, Familiarity breeds contempt, this where I will say that keeping things the same is bad... and whether players know it or not, it has basically "destroyed" the faith in the GC and the team because well, the lore. They basically rewrote it to make ends meet such as Nefarian... Onyxia, Sinestra... and so on.
People may disagree but the majority says TBC was the best part of Warcraft, and why? The story behind it. The bosses related to something and gave a sense of accomplishment, like really you progress through all the bosses in Black Temple, go through the chain of command and see Illidan, kneeling, in all his demonic glory and think "Damn, I worked hard and I'm gonna be in an awesome battle to end all battles!". It was built with obvious love, time and well an underlying current. Of course Sunwell Plateau was kinda, aside to the basic tone of Illidan but it still related and to see Kil'Jaeden was at least a pinnacle to the instance... You had to bust a gut to get past the bosses to him.
And so far, though alot say WHY, WHY KILL HIM? People are fond that they ARE dead. You can't reminiscent without it ending. Period.

Lastly, which brings me onto another issue that , difficulty. The reason why people play a game, which contributes to the quality of the franchise's life. Let's face it, with each year they seem to dumb down games.
Anyone recall arcade machines or just older games where you would spend days, weeks even months on a game? Like snake on old-school mobiles, eventually you died you would try again... Granted if its too frustrating then we do give up but... difficulty didn't die with TBC, Ulduar is an OK example, wiping on hard-modes wasn't unheard of and longevity of the content did happen but not like Firelands where... people could clear it in weeks, or a good porportion got to 6/7 Heroic. That's not difficulty... That's like just... Hey, let's farm PTR get the basics and one-shot mostly the live-bosses for some purples.
We don't want to be spoon fed the game, not in the way that it is now. There should be a certain feel to progression within the character, not just a minor upgrade from one tier to another. Ok, maybe its because the glory of leveling your first level 1 has all but died as your first ding 60, 70, 80 or 85 depending on your entry to Warcraft but still, the gap between expansions is too big and the the gap between content patches seems way too small.
For what we pay for compared to other MMORPGs, why are you catering for the casual gamers? They don't really play for their money's worth compared to the more "veteran"-based players that are on the game. Why instead of pleasing the masses with easy loot and to get people into the game quicker, make the game more interesting for those that are your core-paying customers and constantly pay.
To be honest, you can argue that the systems in play such as Tier 11 being obtainable by Justice Points which can be farmed, is good for the core-payers but ask yourself, would they really be levelling alts to use those systems if they weren't dying of boredom in the first place? Make more content for individual play? Like RPGs originally are meant to be, I mean duh your genre is RPG... What role is it to AFK in Orgrimmar/Stormwind? The NPC one? No.

Overall, it seems that they've tried to change the game to the point of no return and in all fairness to what GC wanted. To make it feel it's HIS game, simple. Head Developer, you do as I say and want and you deal with it.
Well, sorry :\ we deal with it but you can see the profit shrink as people leave, players turning casual to soon viewing their subscriptions as a money-drain... Only a few hang in there because the communities formed there outlasts any half-mashed content you're currently wanting to put in there.. And even then, players leave so those fall and as a domino, more leave.

[Hypocratus]

Interesting. When about a year ago when I wrote here that GC is arrogant moron who destroys the game, most of the people were disagreed. Now, when he and his gang have successfully done it, most of the people are agree. Good, good. And I wish he said at least a word about what part of this "design process for people to have fun" brought those idiots to converting healing from relative fun (i had all 4 healing spec in WoTLK and enjoyed playing them) to cretinistic boring mana-watching-is-everything-enjoy-your-3-sec-heal-which-saves-nobody shit of Cata, when I didn't even level 3rd and 4th of my healers and now I play only main and only in raid. How did you come to that, idiots? I would love to read, really. And, ye, when you heal trolls in full Fireland gear it's easy, if that what you did mean by "gear up and this will be fun again". I really hope this idiot finally is going to be fired.

[Mulled]

Can't believe all you people complaining can talk for the rest of us.

Example : Warriors need buffing were in such a bad shape at this point in the game, that I can't even compete with other classes in the pvp scene.

Now, Ask yourself what's wrong with that statement?

Can't figure it out? Here let me telll you.

That statement, States that the warrior class NEEDS buffing from his only perspective they need buffing.

But has he taken into account not only his own skill level/experience but also his gear / knowledge of the class?

So ask yourself, Before you go complaining X class is in the gutter and Y class needs nerfing is it the class? Or is it you..the player.

Stop speaking for everyone else and learn to play, I mean you're telling these people who CREATED the class that they are wrong in their decision? I mean, I'm sure they know what they are doing and have the means to do what they do.

I, Myself play a warrior and while I do think they need work if there is a nerf to the class it is quite possibly needed now I'm sure you won't agree with me because your in you're own little world but please, For the sake of the rest of the gaming community.

Shut up and play!


Cheers bro.

[tehdef]

So...if this is the case, let's see if the math adds up.

11.1 million subscribers at 15/month = 499,500,000

Total quarterly revenue for Q3 (including Cataclysm launch in China) = 313 million (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3...ore_Slowly.php)

So...with box sales eating up a decent number of the 313 million quarterly revenue (not profit but total money brought in), the highest possible number of active subscriptions, assuming absolutely ZERO retail box/digital sales would be equal to 6.96 million subscriptions. Remember that taking into account ZERO retail sales...ZERO micro-transactions/guild transfers/race or faction changes.

I'll stick with the math, because 11.1 million simply doesn't add up. It is more like what they have said when it's less than half of the number who used to play the game.

Just wanted to let you know that you are wrong. The number is 11.1 unique accounts, not subscribers. EU and NA are the biggest subscriber territories, which only account for 5-6 million iirc. The rest comes from China, which they pay to play. The basics is that you have an account, you pay for an hour to play at a lan center. That is considered a unique account that logs in, and is tallied in their total subscriber base. Please try to read the fundamentals of the details laid before you. This is critical when you are trying to form solid arguments or even baseline discussions.

Thanks,

[Ganimah]

Just wanted to let you know that you are wrong. The number is 11.1 unique accounts, not subscribers. EU and NA are the biggest subscriber territories, which only account for 5-6 million iirc. The rest comes from China, which they pay to play. The basics is that you have an account, you pay for an hour to play at a lan center. That is considered a unique account that logs in, and is tallied in their total subscriber base. Please try to read the fundamentals of the details laid before you. This is critical when you are trying to form solid arguments or even baseline discussions.

Thanks,

So basically you are saying that there are over 6 million people NOT playing the game and that there are less than 5 million people still playing the game. Which, by the way, was exactly what I have been stating all along. Unique accounts don't count towards a player base, those who continue to play the game do. Technically I still have an account with Blizzard, but I have not paid them a cent in quite a long time.

But I guess you were looking for some kind of odd sub-text, when the rest of us were talking about how many ACTIVE players there are left in WoW, versus your stipulation of how many total accounts there are.

I guess it might be YOU who need to learn that premises form conclusions and to change the form of the premises without changing the conclusion is called a false premise. If all A are B and all B are C, then all A are C. But in your world it's seems to be ok to say: If all D are B and all B are C, then all A are C. Otherwise known as, you can't flip my argument to fit yours and I can't flip your argument to fit mine. I made a separate argument to show you different line of argumentation and somehow you missed that.


TL;DR Version: The ACTIVE player base for wow is 5 million or less players. Confirmed not only by quantitative argumentation, but also by citation of sources and confirmation from the devs.