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Why are you so angry and why do you want to see WoW fail so much? Why piss on others cheerios because of your misplaced anger?
World of Warcraft: Current Year
- Thread starter hodj
- Start date
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
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Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
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I think the misunderstanding stems from the contextual use of "dying." Yes, WoW's subs are tanking and have been tanking for years after peaking at 12 million. It would not be inaccurate to say that its dying based on continuously degrading subscription numbers. Himeo's point of contention is that 7 million subs is still over three times as many subs as any MMO'speaksince WoW was released almost ten years ago.
WoW may bedying, but it will be a very long time before it isdead.
WoW may bedying, but it will be a very long time before it isdead.
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The problem comes from what people consider dying. Your average mouth breathing wow player will say profit. Your normal MMO player will say population. EQ is considered dead by everyone yet it still makes enough to stay online.
Porkchop
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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There are some other threads here in dire need of your wisdom then, may I suggest the TESO and EQN thread?
Tbh I dont care much about WoW and last expansion I bought was TBC, it's just a slow day at work. I guess the question is when do they go F2P because I might take a look again, just not paying them $15 to look at my character, fail to understand the changes to my skills and talents in the last 5 years and log off again. I reckon dropping somewhere under 2-3 mill subs should be a good F2P entry point? That's still like two years then at this rate.
spronk
FPS noob
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blizzard is still actually making more money from wow every year than every previous year, so while sub numbers are way off the peaks they are still managing to keep a high western audience mix and apparently get a lot more money from cash shop and people just buying all the xpac boxes. If their subs dip from 9m to 7m over one year, that doesn't just mean they "lost" 2m subs - they may have lost 4m players, but also gained 2m new players who all bought wow+xpacs+3 month gamecards, which is a lot more money.
Their growth rate ($$ wise) has stalled a lot however, and for a public company how much you grow your revenue and income every quarter and every year is more important than how much you make.
After Kotick finishes his buyout of Vivendi, Blizzard will undergo even more severe pressure to grow the business and you will probably see a big exodus of talent, especially with Titan pushed so far out now.
Their growth rate ($$ wise) has stalled a lot however, and for a public company how much you grow your revenue and income every quarter and every year is more important than how much you make.
After Kotick finishes his buyout of Vivendi, Blizzard will undergo even more severe pressure to grow the business and you will probably see a big exodus of talent, especially with Titan pushed so far out now.
Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
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Give then tone of your posts, I'm assuming you don't play WoW, but there are several high population realms with queues for login still. With server merges rolling out in the next couple months I'd be shocked if the majority of servers didn't have filled capital cities (for both factions). I'm on a relatively dead server (though not as dead as some), Ner'zhul. At peak times there are probably 40-50 people standing around Shrine. When I get CRZ'd to Kiljaeden or Mal'ganis there are easily 150-200 people milling around inside and outside of Shrine. Org doesn't CRZ so I don't know what it looks like on those realms, but I'd have to assume it's pretty bustling.
It still is the top MMO and is very profitable. It just isn't a license to print money. Given some of the niche MMOs that still exist, it'll be around a long while. I think with Rift going F2P, the FF people moving towards that game, and just the overall age of the game it's western sub base will continue to decline, but I don't see any time in the near future where it's not profitable.
I think the bigger question will be when does it make business sense to move from a sub model to a cash shop, and I think Blizzard is prepared for that. There's no doubt there Western subscriber churn is extremely high, compared to 2006. know most of the people I used to game with feel the same way. The truth about how WOW is doing will be in the financial reports for next year. I think the fact they are doing so much to highlight the large drop in sub numbers is to justify what will be a pretty big revenue hit.
i agree that wow is far from dying at 7.7m repeat customers every month, but i reaaaaaally dont care if that number is 7m or 12m when 95% of all players are either complete assholes or retarded idiots.
Caeden
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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I worked 6 years in product development which included roadmapping volumes over time. Some of the products I helped replace are still making money in the tech industry but our volumes (aka subs) looked exactly like that fucking graph. We accounted for that in improvements and cost cutting projects. Just as the WoW team did with dev tools, talent revamps, mastery, etc.
This is a stupid argument. A product, and games are products, peak and die. All of them.
This is a stupid argument. A product, and games are products, peak and die. All of them.
Grayson Carlyle
Golden Squire
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Kind of wondering if you've actually been keeping up with WoW numbers or not after saying that. Yes, quite a bit more than half of those are Western actually. The big reason Blizzard isn't panicking much is because when they peaked out at 12M, 6.5M of those were Asian hourly "subs". They only have about 3M Asian subs left, so Western numbers have dropped from ~5.5M to ~4.5M. That's still a lot of money being raked in (you can run the numbers yourself from their balance sheets, I didn't do it, I just read it on mmo-champ from someone who bothered to). The biggest change though is that the number of people who have played the game for more than 2 years is getting smaller and smaller.
Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
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Just because millions of downsy retards around the world are eating paste, that doesn't make eating paste a compelling nor quality (good) activity. Most of you would probably make fun of the hipsters who engage in stupid activities like listening to records on antiquated record players while wearing ridiculous oversized archaic headphones.
Semantics over various terms like dead/dying/herpderp aside, WoW is the MMO/game equivalent of eating paste while wearing oversized archaic headphones. Regardless of the number of idiots who partake.
And yes, anyone with a brain can look at WoW and see that it is in decline, basically every product since the beginning of products experiences it. I'm pretty sure that's what people mean when they say "dying."
Semantics over various terms like dead/dying/herpderp aside, WoW is the MMO/game equivalent of eating paste while wearing oversized archaic headphones. Regardless of the number of idiots who partake.
And yes, anyone with a brain can look at WoW and see that it is in decline, basically every product since the beginning of products experiences it. I'm pretty sure that's what people mean when they say "dying."