1 million lost in 3 months?

[Shagrat]

thats quite a big drop in subs isnt it? So whats the next big MMO to fill this gap, as WoW has cornered the market, and nothing "new" seems to be coming along, just the same tired old crap.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15672416

 

[Deebs]

I've not played for a long time again. I enjoyed the last expansion and did all the quests. I guess I got bored wanting to go on raids and not having enough members online or available.

 

[Raven]

It's just a lull, it goes up and down all the time. 10.something million subscribers is still phenomenal, especially on a game that is 7 years old. DAOC was down to 10s of thousands at 7 years old.

Having said that, it's not as good as it used to be and they only seem interested in recycling old content.

 

[LordjOX]

Well it says in the article that the largest drop was in asia and the mmo market there is much more competitive

 

[Himse]

It's because the game is generally boring.

Raid, get gear, new content, raid, get gear, new content, raid, get gear.

PvP, get gear, new season, get gear, new season, get gear, new season, get gear.

It's actually awful how people are even addicted to that game.

 

[rynnor]

No doubt it will bounce back with the Panda expansion but will probably keep dropping off until then...

 

[Everz]

Hope it dies. Killed an enjoyable market.

 

[BloodOmen]

World of Warcraft subs are falling not because of the games age but because Blizzard tried to do a U-turn on difficulty, basically how easy it was in WOTLK is what attracted/kept the majority (casuals) interested and now Blizzard has basically turned around with Cataclysm and tried to make the game challenging again because Hardcore guilds (that make up less than 3% of the entire player base) are crying.

I'd put money on the next expansion being extremely easy to drag the player base back up as for what the next mmo will be that will be Titan a new Sci-Fi/space mmo made by Blizzard tho i've read the past few days alot of staff working on Titan have apparently been fired for some reason so i'd imagine its been put back quite abit.

 

[Whisperess]

They were all Chinese dropouts though. (or mostly)

 

[old.Tohtori]

Age, mostly chinese(guildwars is more popular there i think), some people getting bored after 7 years, still could lose another 80% before it became even seriously underpopulated and so on.

What i don't get is the massive amount of whining from people; if you don't enjoy it, take a break, or quit, It's simple really as blizzard will do what they want for the "greater good".

 

[Raven]

I think people are in the mindset of playing MMOs now. Seeing as there is fuck all else about that comes close to being any good, they get frustrated with WoW when it goes through a bad patch.

Personally, I am taking a break from it until after xmas.

 

[Aada]

Wow a million? So they still have like 7million players playing?

Why is this even news? Its the most successful mmo ever in the west and it will be years before anything can do what WoW has done.

SWOTOR is under a huge amount of pressure to be a good game at release because you know those million+ preorders they have? It won't matter because if the game sucks dick the subs will drop so fucking fast people will have wondered what all the fuss is about and go back to WoW for the next 5 years.

WoW literally has nothing to worry about because come the next expansion those inactive subs will go active again for 6 months to a year.

 

[Krazeh]

Wow a million? So they still have like 7million players playing?

It's more around 10 million players.

 

[BloodOmen]

the part that people are neglecting and should be worried about is the large majority of that 10 million sub base is asian, america and europe combined probably have quite worrying numbers in comparison.

 

[Aada]

And that is just pure speculation, my wife is playing WoW right now she just logged out to check servers 20 of them are on high population and 7 of them its not possible to join.

WoW is doing fine tbh.

 

[Deebs]

And that is just pure speculation.

He is talking about the 8 million gold farmers. He does have a point though, I bet for every legit player there are at least 3 to 4 gold farmers playing.

 

[Aada]

That's just it though, nobody has any proof of what the numbers are made up of, as far as anyone is concerned its better these days to say anything you can about WoW that is negative.

It's depressing when you go on an mmo forum say the SWOTOR forums and there's threads all the time titled "The end for WoW is near!" or some other variation of how WoW must be defeated at all costs!!

The bandwagon at the moment is to hate WoW for all its worth and to put out any negative thoughts possible its pretty sad.

The only thing that will end WoW is time and if games like Ultima Online are still going strong with 10-50k subs, then WoW with 10 million subs at this moment in time will be around for what another 10 years at least?

 

[BloodOmen]

speculation or not i'm willing to bet money that there is actually only 3-4 million active players in europe + america.

 

[Aada]

speculation or not i'm willing to bet money that there is actually only 3-4 million active players in europe + america.

So as I said WoW has nothing to worry about if we are basing it on guess numbers.

 

[Gray]

Chuck Norris will save WoW.


View: http://youtu.be/arKpdxjHamI

 

[Bigmac]

Hope it dies. Killed an enjoyable market.

The only thing that will kill WoW is Blizzard. Dont blame the market because of the game, blame the retards trying to copy the game.

As for me the problem with WoW is that its the same week in week out, raid or pvp till the next reset (every Wednesday) then do the same all over again. This coupled with the stupid panda expansion is why I'll be quitting after Deathwing has been killed.

I'm hoping one day someone will make a mmo that has the same gameplay as Dark Souls but in a daoc style setup (3 realms, open world pvp).

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

"There are 10 million players in World Of Warcraft because Chuck Norris allows them to live."

Actually, thats quite good

...still not going back to WoW. Thoroughly enjoyed playing it but done with it now.

 

[Raven]

Hope it dies. Killed an enjoyable market.

Missed this before.

No, it didn't kill it. It made the genre go mainstream. The problem is that everyone is trying to Ape WoW and falling short. That is what has killed the MMO scene. What's the point in playing a game that is like WoW but with half the content? All they do is frontload content onto the 1-45 levels, once you are 45-50 (or whatever the level caps are) you find there is absolutely nothing to do.

If someone would just for once come up with an original concept for an MMO they might find success. Eve has to a certain extent, not my cup of tea but it can't be argued that they aren't successful.

 

[Everz]

It made it mainstream which in turn forced all companies to want to have a piece of the pie so to speak. Just feel a once varied and unique market is good as gone heh.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

It made it mainstream which in turn forced all companies to want to have a piece of the pie so to speak. Just feel a once varied and unique market is good as gone heh.

Actually the market has more variation than ever. It just also has a very high proportion of WoW-wannabes. WoW increased the market size all by itself and there's never really been anything since that has captured imaginations so much. That will change - nothing lasts forever.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Before wow, what was there? Daoc...um...anarchy online...EQ?

 

[Cirventhor]

In my opinion, the main problem of the MMOs of this day and age is the notorious de-emphasizing of socialization in the everlasting quest to appeal to casuals who only plays 15 mins every odd day. I'm thinking of such things as designing the entire leveling game with only solo players in mind (SWTOR is certainly also guilty of this, perhaps more so than any previous game due to the story gimmick), and features such as the random dungeon finder. I feel that it detracts from the entire point of MMOs -- a virtual space where having fun with fellow gamers is the primary aim, and building up a good community. Running random dungones in WoW is the worst thing in the entire MMO space for me, since there is absolutely no element of socialization present when you group with faceless players from random servers. Bring back real groups!

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

I think the random dungeon feature would work really well with one proviso: the entire game is one big sandbox. That way everyone always remains accountable and if you meet some good peeps you don't have to not ever see them again. When I was playing and did the random dungeon thing it was usually horrible. Once in a while though I'd bump into some great folks and wish we were on the same server.

Sec, I feel a Roy Batty moment coming on...

All these memories lost, like tears in the rain.

Ok, I'm better now.

Anyway, it can work, just the way MMOs are generally deployed because their infrastructure can't handle a sandbox means that generally it won't even be attempted for now. I hope one day it comes though as a major issue with the desocialisation Cirv just mentioned immediately gets knocked on the head for casual players. You'll still get the twats with no social skills but you always got that in online gaming anyway. My view of DAoC back in its heyday is probably as rosey as anyone else's but I still remember a lot of twats from back then, some of them quite scary.

 

[Gray]

I think regarding the first paragraph above Blizzard have taken strides to accomodate that type of play. If i recall, in the next patch 4.3 you can add people from different realms to your battle.net friends list, in doing so that will allow you to play with them again in the future, either by raiding or by doing random dungeons etc. It might even be applied now, i just don't have any friends to test it with .

I just wish they would break down the American and European divide, or one of the other continents that have their own servers.

 

[Ctuchik]

They were all Chinese dropouts though. (or mostly)

No they just got released from prison...