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It's more about the percentage than the numbers. When you're losing 15-20% of your customers every year for four years straight there's more than at play than just "people moved on".
Take a look at any other company that has died in recent years. Blockbuster, for example. People didn't suddenly get bored of watching movies; the company just failed to understand HOW their customers wanted to watch movies. Sears and Kmart are going out of business not because people don't want to shop anymore (as Walmart and Target are doing great), but because they failed to understand what their customers wanted.
Then you have the brand itself. It's very clear that a lot of people who buy WoW only do so because of the franchise. This happens quite often with games; Diablo III, for example. It sold something like 10m copies back when it was utter shit, before loot 2.0, before PvP, etc. Why? Because it was Diablo. Same thing happened with Dragon Age 2, which was a shit game but sold well because of the success of the first one. This even happens to good games, such as DOTA 2. It's a great game but it also would not have nearly as many players if a) it wasn't called "DOTA 2", and b) some company other than Valve made it.
The reason why percentage-based numbers are valid is because they scale. If you take a look at other MMOs that lose 15-20% of their players per year... they don't last long. If the current rate, which has been steady for four years now, continues... then WoW will be down to 1,000,000 subs by the time the next expansion is released. And, even more alarming, is the fact that losses are INCREASING every quarter. A loss of 800k four years ago when there were 12m players is not nearly as bad as an 800k loss now when there are only 7.5m players.
All of that being said, my posts were intentionally worded to stir up some hostility. I'm just curious how people feel about the sub losses and you get a lot better (ie more enjoyable to read) responses if you manage to make people angry in the process.
I do think anyone in the "WoD will fix it!" crowd should lower their expectations, though. If you enjoyed Cata and MoP then you will very likely enjoy WoD. If you're hoping for WoD to be TBC 2.0 then you're going to be extremely disappointed.
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Doesn't matter about numbers. People unsub for various of reasons. The game got boring No more new content until next expansion. No more friends are playing. The list can go on and on.
I'm not subbed to WoW anymore because I'm waiting for WoD and that doesn't mean I unsubbed because MoP was a bad expansion. It was a great expansion. It was without a doubt much better then Cata in terms of content and raids(Except Firelands) in my opinion.
Lets not forget to mention that WoW during Vanilla time, it was a brand NEW mmo so of course its going to have alot of people during and at the end of it and also the fact that they were coming out with TBC, wallah numbers grow and grow after expansions then after a certain point in time the numbers will drop until it gets to a point where the numbers are average and consistent. WoW is 9-10 years old lets not forget about that fact and it still has millions of players. It's never going to have as many players again as it did during its peak that is pretty much an accepted fact.
As I've said many times before that I've played since Vanilla beta and I'm not a blind fanatic. Yes, Vanilla was good and fun but it was still a new game that was still being developed in terms of mechanics in boss fights, dungeons, the lore. The mechanics in Vanilla were laughable at best because people were new at the game and some didn't even understand their classes fully like people do today. Lets not kid ourselves, Vanilla was good but it wasn't and still isn't the Holy Grail that many people make it out to be. I will however say that PvP was the best during Vanilla. Also, it is pretty obvious that Blizzard is trying to milk WoW before the ship sinks and will still lose unhappy customers because of that. Its pretty clear that don't fully listen to their customers about what they want because they are stubborn and think they know whats best for their game which isn't always the case.
So, if your going to say that Vanilla was the "best" then at least provide something thats not numbers because numbers don't mean everything and they don't explain everything.
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And I still enjoy WoW than other MMOs. Granted I try to play more FF14, but as of last patch fps has been dropping too much for me to play. I don't really care for the number of people playing. Doesn't do much more than saying, "My game is better than yours," which is like saying, "The Twilight movies made a lot of money so they must be good."
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Or "Miley Cyrus must be one of the best singers of all time!".
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Counterproof: Vanilla is used for milkshakes and pies and everything else far more than any other flavoured ice cream so your data is biased.
Anyone else with a dead horse to beat?
Blizzard tried to bring their asian player base back with an asian styled expansion, didn't seem to do so well and now they try appealing to different crowd. As long as the raids stay at MoP quality I know I'll be playing.
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On August 07 2014 02:17 DCRed wrote:Counterproof: Vanilla is used for milkshakes and pies and everything else far more than any other flavoured ice cream so your data is biased. Anyone else with a dead horse to beat? Blizzard tried to bring their asian player base back with an asian styled expansion, didn't seem to do so well and now they try appealing to different crowd. As long as the raids stay at MoP quality I know I'll be playing.
Maybe they should make a cowboy expansion to bring back westerners
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They could do what Transformers did. Michael Bay realized that black people didn't like his movies so he added two extremely racist hip-hop autobots. So, the solution is simple...
Blizzard just needs to give a few NPCs blackface.
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If Grom Hellscream can go backwards in time, he can obviously go forwards as well. The next expac will clearly be titled World of Warcraft: World of Starcraft: Orcs in Space: Kerrigan's Revenge
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Meh Haters will hate I guess.
WoW is old. It is old enough to not attract a whole lot of new players anymore, they go try the latest MMO on the block instead.
So you only have your old players who for a hundred different reasons quit or come back. Its only natural that the numbers drop like this. Its the same for any other game. And before you mention Eve its an extreme niche game with no other competition at the moment, its situation is vastly different (mostly because there is no MMO like it that can attract new players instead).
Ofc the content drought at the end of an expansion (esp this one which will be a year ><) is bad and costs them a ton of subs but that has been commented on again and again. Nothing new to add there.
Now your free to dislike it all you want but fortunately your hate has no impact on other peoples enjoyment.
And no Serejai, your hate spewing posts don't make me angry or bash me into flaming you back. They just made me shake my head and dismiss your opinion as utterly irrelevant.
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I guess the stuff prepared for 10th is nice enough. I hope it's in WoD already or sadly I'm gonna miss it.
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not surprised, WOW is TEN years old. People of course would get bored of the same old grinding routine and move on to newer fresher games that don't require grinding to be on a competitive footing (DOTA2) or to games that still continuously pump out new contents without needing subscriptions (GW2)
IMO I think if they tinkered with their business model they will increase their revenue. Get rid of the monthly subscription and go with the micro-transaction system like GW2 and DOTA2.
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On August 07 2014 05:02 ref4 wrote:
not surprised, WOW is TEN years old. People of course would get bored of the same old grinding routine and move on to newer fresher games that don't require grinding to be on a competitive footing (DOTA2) or to games that still continuously pump out new contents without needing subscriptions (GW2)
IMO I think if they tinkered with their business model they will increase their revenue. Get rid of the monthly subscription and go with the micro-transaction system like GW2 and DOTA2.
I think you missed the part were they reported growing revenue even though their number of subscribers decreased.
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Hows that work? Keeping servers up just that much cheaper these days? Fewer customer support reps & GMs? Less development cost?
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I'm so excited for the Molten Core LFR. Nearly twice the ridiculousness of 25 man LFRs!
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Costs affect profit, not revenue.
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Wasn't that revenue also including D3 and HS tho? As in all of Blizzard?
Also according to them the majority of lost subs are in Asia who pay per time played and not subscriptions like the west so I guess they bring in less money for blizzard comparatively. Tho that on its own ofc does not explain the growth in revenue.
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You're telling me people are actually buying those mounts and pets and other nonsense in large numbers? ew.
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On August 07 2014 06:15 TheFish7 wrote:
You're telling me people are actually buying those mounts and pets and other nonsense in large numbers? ew.
I wouldn't want them either but the fact they keep pumping them out would say yes, people do.
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EPT
