See y'all in May !!! I'm gunna go play WoW now.
I don't always hunt things, But when I do, It's because they're things & I'm a Bear.
Anything above 5M is still a win considering the sad lapse in other MMO subs. Even those that went Free2Play are still losing people cause the freebies still need money to unlock all the subscriber content. (I'm talking to you, SWtOR)
After having come off the worst expansion ever that was Cataclysm, and introducing Panda's and Dailies (to an extreme), they still have almost 10M paying customers. My hats off to them. They won't listen to the community, cause in all honesty, most players have no idea WHAT they want
No, really, guys ... The sub numbers CAN'T go up to peak levels. Short of some kind of horrible and unspeakable dark bargains WoW is never going to be able to hit it's peak numbers again. The BEST that WoW can hope for is a stable number with bumps for major patches and expansions. That's it. That's the best it's going to get it being completely honest and realistic. Drops like this shortly after the release of an expansion shouldn't be a surprise, a lot of people don't play new games for very long. A lot of people do, but a lot of people don't as well.
It doesn't mean as much as some people seem to think. Look at EQ1 and EQ2. They're STILL going. WoW will be here and still going for a long time after it drops below the 1 million subs mark. The difference between WoW losing .5m people and a game like say ... SWTOR losing .5m people, is that for WoW 500,000 people is a dent, for SWTOR it was like 33% of their subscriber base.
Next quarter we'll either see a small bump back to 10m due to an exciting patch or we'll see more losses. It happens. The only place to go now is down. WoW is in a decline, it happens, it's not a problem for people that like the game.
My bad if I came off as rude or something to you, Crash. Thanks for at least being civil about this considering we kind of have differing opinions.
I'll wait and see before I pass my judgment on whether Mists is a financial success or not.
I highly doubt it'll be abysmal like Cata in the slightest.
One thing I didn't put in there because I"m not sure they'd take that step, but I am pretty sure is inevitable is changing raid sizes.
Let's face it, 25-mans are on the decline along with the general raiding population. This is documented. Less than 30% of players raid, and even fewer yet Arena. If Thunderforged fails, expect Blizz to can 25-mans in Expansion V. Either they will go to just 10-man, or they'll add 5-man as a raid size and merge what we call dungeons and scenarios together as 3-man leveling content.
FFXIV - Maduin (Dynamis DC)
Which community? The community that thinks Cata lost subs because it was too casual? Or the community who thought Blizz went overboard with difficulty tuning and drove casuals away?
I can't speak for "the community", but looking on a chart it appears that 4.3 stopped the bleeding that had been happening in WoW before that patch. So in that sense, it was a success.
Last edited by SamR; 2013-02-07 at 09:45 PM.
It's has absolutely nothing to do with opinions or reasoning. If the developers actually had even an ounce of innovation then it wouldn't matter how old the game was BECAUSE IT WOULD BE FRESH AND DIFFERENT EACH EXPANSION. All the time. They counter this argument by saying well if we change to much then people are just as upset but that's a cop out I feel. It's basically were afraid to try anything new we don't want to rock the boat. What they did in mists was a regression. Your ABSOLUTELY right that WoW is an old game, and in mists it feels older than ever but that doesn't mean it HAS to be that way.
Last edited by Leonard McCoy; 2013-02-07 at 09:46 PM.