World of Warcraft: Current Year

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Gecko_sl

shitlord
1,482
0
Itzena_sl said:
Or it's because most of the lost subs have been from China so they're opening a cash shop in China.
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Since 90% of their subs are hourly in China I think, this does not make any sense.

The cash shop is for their bleeding western sub base. The cash shop is usually the precursor to F2P. I'm wondering what their bottom line for Western subs will be before they pull the F2P trigger.

Looking forward to adding WOW to my F2P MMO stable!
 
Caeden

Caeden

Golden Baronet of the Realm
7,581
12,534
I wonder if they'll do a tor or more of a b2p model. Maybe have to sub to heroic raid?
 
Miele

Miele

Lord Nagafen Raider
916
48
Most of the f2p games are utter shit until you sub, there are always enough missing QoL perks that you pretty much need (swtor is frankly ridicolous) that paying a sub is almost mandatory. WoW is a game I loved for years and still play from time to time, so subbing to it doesn't put a burden on my soul like giving a single dime to EA for example.

I give more monthly cash to ArenaNet than to any MMO I've ever played without even noticing, but I'm not missing a single feature required to play the game to its full potential. That's what matters in the end, playability and nice features, not shit like "to hide your head gear you need to fork cash" sw-fucking-tor style, let alone have enough hotbars to play the fucking game. I'd rather uninstall than giving those fuckers a single rotten coin.
 
bixxby

bixxby

Molten Core Raider
2,750
47
Why would they go F2P when they can just add a cash shop to their sub game and make even more money. Blizzard can get away with it, hell, Sony got away with it for like 4 years in EQ2.
 
T

The Ancient_sl

shitlord
7,386
16
SorrowsEnd_sl said:
Honestly it all depends on the price.

I despise daily quests and dread having to farm up even 50 of those stupid charms. Rare hunting is fine and all but some weeks I don't want to spend the time doing what I feel like is a job in WoW. I want to log on to raid in WoW...that is it. I'll toss a few bucks for a bucket of lesser charms to cut that stupid task out completely.
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I despise you.
 
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Gecko_sl

shitlord
1,482
0
bixxby_sl said:
Why would they go F2P when they can just add a cash shop to their sub game and make even more money. Blizzard can get away with it, hell, Sony got away with it for like 4 years in EQ2.
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My guess is they are closely watching how EA is milking TOR for big bucks by leveraging both a cash shop and a subscription program, and will in typical Blizz fashion re-engineer it and use it to get the most dollars they can. WOW is an older product and the MMO market is saturated so it makes sense to give as many people as possible as much opportunity to play as they'll take and give you their money, sub or no.

We'll see what the next quarterly financials report shows for WOW dinero. My guess is the suits are pushing for this change, especially with no expansion or other product on the horizon.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
17,090
13,618
Fyi, you can get lesser charms doing pet battles. You can get between 1-6 per win. I farmed 50 in like 30 minutes beating the solo
eyeballs outside Kara (not to mention xp for my pets).
 
SorrowsEnd

SorrowsEnd

Trakanon Raider
1,477
816
Flipmode_sl said:
I don't see how farming them is a chore. I have a surplus of those things. They drop off literally EVERYTHING you kill. I have enough to get my runes weekly for the next 3 months at least if I never got 1 more. Am I missing something?
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I had 500+ of the things for the first few months of MoP because I ran the daily quests for rep. Once I maxed out my factions I was done. I do not want to run a daily quest ever again.

I want to log on to raid. That is it. I raid 3 nights a week for 3 hours. I only want to play WoW for those 3 hours. I don't want to run LFR, I don't want to grind daily quests for bonus rolls on raids. Pet battles were stale and boring after leveling a team to 25. THAT is why I wouldn't mind spending a couple bucks for a stack of lesser charms to gamble with. The extra rolls are not required, they are fluff. I want to make the few hours I devote to the game enjoyable. A few bonus rolls for a couple bucks is fine with me rather than grinding a bunch of boring crap for an hour or two. What is your time worth to you?

Back in the EQ days I used to farm platinum for folks in my guild and sell it to them directly. Hell I used to sell tradeable loot as well to some of the older people that worked way more than I did. Even now in WoW I know of numerous people that buy gold so they don't have to farm. I really don't understand the angst towards me about this.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
17,090
13,618
I think the concern is as a company they might "soft force" people into that product/service by increasing the difficulty to obtain said product/service inside the game. For instance, if they sell charms, do they nerf their drop rate ingame in an effort to make people pay for the bonus charms?
 
bixxby

bixxby

Molten Core Raider
2,750
47
I wish they would sell in game expansions/subscription months/race/faction/server changes that you can sell on the AH if they're going the cash shop route. Seems like it would fulfill the income game and also hurt chinamens farming.
 
Caeden

Caeden

Golden Baronet of the Realm
7,581
12,534
Doesn't eve do something like that? I may be asininely wrong since I don't follow eve.
 
OneofOne

OneofOne

Silver Baronet of the Realm
6,887
8,712
Yes and it works well for everyone - a model I wish more companies would follow. Players can buy Game Time Cards with cash. They can then sell/trade them in the game. GTCs can be used for your monthly sub, to pay the entry fee for CCP's "EveCon" (whatever it's called), and a few other little things. The company rakes in all the money for selling them, and players can essentially buy in game currency/assets for real life cash, all with CCP's blessing. As someone who played for "free" for literally years by buying GTCs from other players, I think it's one of the best innovations in MMOs in the last decade.
 
Big_w_powah

Big_w_powah

Trakanon Raider
1,887
750
I am hereby promoting that Mage Firespec be turned into a 2h weilding melee Spec similar to herald of xotli from AoC.


My will be done.
 
C

Chakravartin_sl

shitlord
362
0
Not cool with this. They purposely make the new tier gear looks like shit rolled over to put the good looking shit on the store and the dumbasses just eat it up
 
Dandai

Dandai

<WoW Guild Officer>
<Gold Donor>
5,918
4,503
I was wondering what happened to that horn model everyone assumed would be the legendary meta gem particle effect.
 
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Itzena_sl

shitlord
4,609
6
Chakravartin_sl said:
Not cool with this. They purposely make the new tier gear looks like shit rolled over to put the good looking shit on the store and the dumbasses just eat it up
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rrr_img_35760.jpg
 
F

Flight

Molten Core Raider
1,230
288
Itzena_sl said:
Or it's because most of the lost subs have been from China so they're opening a cash shop in China.
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I've been playing for the last month or so and what was one of the oldest/original and busiest European servers (Terenas) is dead. Out of my guild of varying 50-100 members only two have been online. The AH is dead, zones are only busy with cross server people, even the MoP zones (which don't seem to have been included in the cross server functionality) are dead.

LFR and cross server are the life support for WoW at the moment.


I don't believe for a second they still have 8mill subscribers. I suspect those numbers are massaged massively. Here's a clue - Kotick himself said recently that they expect an even bigger drop off of subscribers in the near future.
 
spronk

spronk

FPS noob
23,358
27,216
while they can massage around the total sub numbers since their accounting in asia is just bizarre and has to be a nightmare between cybercafes trying to rip off their chinese partner, and their chinese partner trying to rip off blizzard they still made over $1b in revenue from the world of warcraft unit in 2012, which means their US/EU numbers are still holding flat at around 4-5m players (4m players = ~700m in sub fees) plus a couple hundred million in store shit, remember asia ends up contributing almost nothing monetarily.

When the quarterly revenue numbers start actually dropping (they are still flat to increasing as of last quarter, meaning a steady stream of new players buying boxes and/or whales buying tons of shit on the store) then you will know US/EU numbers are finally cratering, that hasn't really happened so far. I do hope this new store shit backfires and more people quit as they realize the game is now a shitty mix of f2p (cosmetic cash shop) and sub (why am I paying a sub if there is a cash shop??) but I wouldn't hold my breath.
 
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