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World of Warcraft at 5.6 million subs (was 7.1M, 10M), Diablo 3 has sold 30+M copies
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
FTFY
HarryDemeanor
Member
This is what they deserve for Patch 6.1.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
The dropping subs are why WoW is obviously switching to selling full-price expansions instead of new content. You make a ton of money in one go by selling it at full-game price. They had 7m subscribers at launch and sold 3.3m copies of the game (@$50) in the first week and probably got to what, 5m? That's a shitload of fucking money for a game that is almost entirely just recycled assets or existing assets with new skins on them.
I honestly wonder if they'd ever consider a switch to F2P if you buy the expansion plus non-competitive transactions.
I honestly wonder if they'd ever consider a switch to F2P if you buy the expansion plus non-competitive transactions.
Would be rather low since they had around 11 million subscribers at that time and paying for another year wouldn't seem like a bad deal for an extra game.
I'd say Blizzard are probably my favourite game developers of all time, and I do want them to do well...
But I'm glad WoD is flopping for them, and I hope Heroes of the Storm follows suit. Too much money for what they are, and it's about time fans started to call bullshit on them.
But I'm glad WoD is flopping for them, and I hope Heroes of the Storm follows suit. Too much money for what they are, and it's about time fans started to call bullshit on them.
AmaterasuOni
Banned
Ok. I've always hoped they'd create a successor to WoW. Well, I guess all WoW fans would like that, but I guess the time is not right anymore. There's WoW and there's FFXIV. Then there are all these F2P/Freemium games to hop on every month or so.
I guess my MMO times are over then. Played FFXIV, enjoyed it, but it wasn't the experience I actually wanted either.
I honestly thought Pandaland would be the first Freemium xpac. Maybe they'll announce it on Thursday then?
meanspartan
Member
And yet, I hear no one talking about that game. I hear a smattering of discussion still about SWTOR, Guild War 2, and others, but almost nothing about Rift.
MMO history is littered with games once hyped as "WoW killers". The only thing that will ultimately kill WoW is its own advanced age, and even then it will probably hold on with a couple million subscribers for a loooong time, like a bigger version of EQ1.
Yeah it kinda sucks these days. I'm subbed and want to play, but we lost JUST enough people when MoP dragged on forever that we can't field a decent raid regularly. We were ok at the start of this xpac, but just barely. Lost a couple and bam. The way the raids are structured to pick up extras nowadays, it's not social and you don't grab people that join you in future weeks. They just hop in the the couple kills they need and drop back out, almost like raid finder. We didn't put a ton of work into it either, as it was mostly a group of former top end players that now just want to play a couple nights/week due to life.
MetroidPrimeRib
Banned
Can't see HotS doing bad. I've said it before but the only ones who had a chance at breaking into the big 2 (LoL and Dot) to make it a big 3 was Blizzard and it looks like they can succeed.
cartoon_soldier
Member
Expected, 5.5 was predicted by a few of us.
WoD really is just shit.
Gamescon Expansion Pack reveal is to entice subscribers to come back too.
WoD really is just shit.
Gamescon Expansion Pack reveal is to entice subscribers to come back too.
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
It's not killing their numbers though, in previous tally's their sub count lists all active accounts, there was a massive inflation leading up to the release of diablo 3 because of the number of people that got the 1 year sub from the diablo 3 promotion.
If anything the tokens should have inflated the Sub count.
Whats interesting about various WoW communities is how they use sub losses as justifications on their opinions on the game and how it "should be".
For example the MMO Champion boards are largely PvEers, they think that the 6.2 patch and new raid arent good enough. That LFR is destroying raiding, that the nearly 5 million people who left since WoD came out are these raiders who found the game too easy and raids bland. Ive seen opinions like "WoW tokens will help bump the sub numbers!"
Then you head to Arena Junkies and they think the reason people are unsubbing in droves is because of how bad PVP is and how X is unbalanced because Y has Z etc.
Meanwhile the casual player cares of neither of these things, and does not have 2-3 million gold to buy tons of tokens to play WoW for free, they might have 30k gold at best. Taanan Jungle which was introduced in the latest patch means nothing to them, since they have no aspirations to join "real raiding" guilds, they do LFR 2-3 times and never bother again. And if Blizzard removed LFR to get people to join "real raiding guilds", these people would just quit and go play League or Witcher 3 or whatever.
The problem with WoW has always been the same, Blizzard develops largely PvE content for the raiding guilds in their patches, and tries each expansion to get more people into raiding, like going 40 to 25, to 10, to LFR, to Flex. They cannot accept that a big chunk of their playerbase simply does not want to raid.
And that was fine in Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King when "World of Warcraft" was still a fresh game that brought in new players. But its 2015, how many people are confused as to what WoW is? How many players are like "WoW? Ive never heard of it, i should try it?"
Their customer base is largely current and former players. Who has been trained by now to know what their major patches include: largely raiding content, a few new quests and maybe a new PvP season. Its hard to get excited about that for the 53rd time. I personally have 2.3 million gold, but my friends do not. They have no use of tokens, they have no use of Taanan Jungle, they have no interest in joining a guild and having to show up to raid 3-5 times a week.
I dont know what the solution is, but its obvious that raiding cannot be your sole focus of every content patch. Hell, that was obvious in Classic.
For example the MMO Champion boards are largely PvEers, they think that the 6.2 patch and new raid arent good enough. That LFR is destroying raiding, that the nearly 5 million people who left since WoD came out are these raiders who found the game too easy and raids bland. Ive seen opinions like "WoW tokens will help bump the sub numbers!"
Then you head to Arena Junkies and they think the reason people are unsubbing in droves is because of how bad PVP is and how X is unbalanced because Y has Z etc.
Meanwhile the casual player cares of neither of these things, and does not have 2-3 million gold to buy tons of tokens to play WoW for free, they might have 30k gold at best. Taanan Jungle which was introduced in the latest patch means nothing to them, since they have no aspirations to join "real raiding" guilds, they do LFR 2-3 times and never bother again. And if Blizzard removed LFR to get people to join "real raiding guilds", these people would just quit and go play League or Witcher 3 or whatever.
The problem with WoW has always been the same, Blizzard develops largely PvE content for the raiding guilds in their patches, and tries each expansion to get more people into raiding, like going 40 to 25, to 10, to LFR, to Flex. They cannot accept that a big chunk of their playerbase simply does not want to raid.
And that was fine in Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King when "World of Warcraft" was still a fresh game that brought in new players. But its 2015, how many people are confused as to what WoW is? How many players are like "WoW? Ive never heard of it, i should try it?"
Their customer base is largely current and former players. Who has been trained by now to know what their major patches include: largely raiding content, a few new quests and maybe a new PvP season. Its hard to get excited about that for the 53rd time. I personally have 2.3 million gold, but my friends do not. They have no use of tokens, they have no use of Taanan Jungle, they have no interest in joining a guild and having to show up to raid 3-5 times a week.
I dont know what the solution is, but its obvious that raiding cannot be your sole focus of every content patch. Hell, that was obvious in Classic.
Milly Osworth
Member
Ever since Activision took over Wow went downhill 😢
Subs will always jump up a bit after a new expansion launches. The real question is how many of those stick around for more than a month or two.
AnathemicOne
Banned
If Blizzard wants to penetrate into the ESports market, they need to not fuck it up like SC2
Playable demon hunters or no sale, IMO.
SMITE is already part of the big three. HotS is just overpriced fan-exploitative nonsense, and I don't want it to do well.
I mean there are several out right now that are pretty good
Napalm_Frank
Member
You know what must be done, Blizzard.
Vanilla WoW remake. Graphics being the only thing touched.
Vanilla WoW remake. Graphics being the only thing touched.
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
I wouldn't say that. In fact, I think WoD was mostly full of pretty good ideas, they just all turned out shitty, and they sort of amplified each other's shittyness. Like, garrisons wouldn't have seemed so crappy if people actually had more excuses to not sit in their garrison, Ashran wouldn't have felt so monstrously shitty if PvP itself wasn't the shittiest it has ever been. The removal of justice/valor had the double whammy of apexis being worthless of 5-mans being obsolete probably faster than in any other expansion.
It was the perfect storm of "well, this SOUNDED pretty cool..."
R
Rösti
Unconfirmed Member
Mike Morhaime said in the conference call that the next expansion will be tied to player feedback on Warlords of Draenor, and that we should be excited, in this aspect, for what they will show at gamescom.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Too bad they killed Titan, I guess the plan now is to ride WoW into the ground and hope the F2P stuff picks up the slack soon.
Rösti;174156420 said:
Mike Morhaime said in the conference call that the next expansion will be tied to player feedback on Warlords of Draenor, and that we should be excited, in this aspect, for what they will show at gamescom.
I wonder if he actually means it or if it's just PR talk for their share holders.
The xpack was/is awesome.
Most if not all the issues with vanilla D3 got fixed.
MetroidPrimeRib
Banned
People think they want that but you really don't. WoW has advanced so, so, so much over a decade, sometimes good and sometimes bad but stuff like the old raids people love to circlejerk over are actually pretty lame and boss mechanics have advanced so much that they are just boring.
Take Molten Core, none of the bosses even have any shittalk and are just reskins of other enemies, outside of Majordomo and Rag who says like 3 things.
If they were to do Vanilla WoW again they would have to at least update some things. People missing the community and meeting other people in the world and World PvP is understandable but Vanilla WoW was not the de facto best era in every way.
AnathemicOne
Banned
WotLK was a great expansion and released after the Activision merge
Good expansion + console version + new SKU for the expansion on the console.
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
PC vanilla+xpac, console vanilla+ultimate evil
They mean it as much as when they said 6.1 was a big patch.
Lol? Smite is barely a blip on the radar. I'm sorry, but no matter how much you like the game, it does not put it in the same category as League or Dota.
IMO the problem is and always will be
CONTENT!! CONTENT CONTENT..ESPECIALLY THINGS to do at the END GAME.
that plus
people are fucking sick of the orc story lines.
cataclysm was orcs (thrall and hellscream
pandaria was orcs- hellscream going nuts
warlords was ...orcs hellscream going back in time for the iron horde and the other hellscream and guldan.
lich king and draenor had imo better(read MORE) content for the end game person person to do- in the game that requires thought and efford
right now, its log onto char, do garrison mission table, do ship mission table, if low on some mats run around garrison and do mine/herb garden, otherwise make anywhere from 200-2000 gold A DAY per char doing this.
rinse and repeat for all characters over level 90.
fly to lion's watch
run to "cats" do the 3 summon bosses there--daily for 6 fragments
fly to - area- do that bonus- go back to lion's watch (or whatever the horde one is called)
turn in shards (if at 10) then either goto shanaar to farm demons/bonus area goto iron front for belt/bonus area fly to malo to do orcs/that bonus area
if boss is around that drops a plan- do that boss if pops, otherwise, once done- turn in quests log- goto next char...rinse and repeat..
draenor had 8 raids
wrath had 9 raids
cata had 6
pandaria had 5
draenor has 3****** <-- this is one of the main reasons why they lost 5 MILLION players in under a year.
once you run out of end game content, you lose players
CONTENT!! CONTENT CONTENT..ESPECIALLY THINGS to do at the END GAME.
that plus
people are fucking sick of the orc story lines.
cataclysm was orcs (thrall and hellscream
pandaria was orcs- hellscream going nuts
warlords was ...orcs hellscream going back in time for the iron horde and the other hellscream and guldan.
lich king and draenor had imo better(read MORE) content for the end game person person to do- in the game that requires thought and efford
right now, its log onto char, do garrison mission table, do ship mission table, if low on some mats run around garrison and do mine/herb garden, otherwise make anywhere from 200-2000 gold A DAY per char doing this.
rinse and repeat for all characters over level 90.
fly to lion's watch
run to "cats" do the 3 summon bosses there--daily for 6 fragments
fly to - area- do that bonus- go back to lion's watch (or whatever the horde one is called)
turn in shards (if at 10) then either goto shanaar to farm demons/bonus area goto iron front for belt/bonus area fly to malo to do orcs/that bonus area
if boss is around that drops a plan- do that boss if pops, otherwise, once done- turn in quests log- goto next char...rinse and repeat..
draenor had 8 raids
wrath had 9 raids
cata had 6
pandaria had 5
draenor has 3****** <-- this is one of the main reasons why they lost 5 MILLION players in under a year.
once you run out of end game content, you lose players
FFXIV is still struggling to retain 1M, it will be a long time until WoW is dethroned, and at that point all MMO's will be doing poorly compared to WoW's height of popularity.
Well, they're assuredly adding Reaper of Souls into Diablo 3 as separate sales, but Diablo 2 + LoD was incredibly popular at around 20 million itself, and the gaming audience has grown tremendously since then.
10 years of PC gamer thirst, I guess. A few million console sales certainly didn't hurt, either.
I'm a Dota fan that doesn't play SMITE at all. Perhaps it's because I'm looking at it from an eSports POV, but I see SMITE as a much bigger game than HotS will ever be. Nowhere near LoL or Dota 2, but bigger than HotS.
I hope so. I'm already eager to play again, but just can't justify resubbing right now for WoD.Rösti;174156420 said:
Mike Morhaime said in the conference call that the next expansion will be tied to player feedback on Warlords of Draenor, and that we should be excited, in this aspect, for what they will show at gamescom.
MetroidPrimeRib
Banned
Almost assuredly, if they are moving WoW to gamescom.
Every time I tried to upload my selfies to Twitter, my client crashed.
Best patch ever.
Napalm_Frank
Member
But I miss farming soulshards for 2 hours before the raid for them lazy bastards crying for summon ;-;
Woah, that's a big drop.
For what it's worth, they listen to player feedback. That's what got us WoD, since people hated daily quests and loved Timeless Isle.
For what it's worth, they listen to player feedback. That's what got us WoD, since people hated daily quests and loved Timeless Isle.
AHA-Lambda
Member
When did they actually say this?
After the horribly poor support for the expansion and poor reception to end game content, it was more than expected.
I haven't played in more than 4 years and recently went back using a free 7 day promotion. My server, Blackrock, was one of the most populated servers in the game when I left. It was always marked "full". Now, it is at "low" (there's full > high > medium > low). I wondered if there was some mass exodus from the server to another one but after reading about the patches, I just knew that everyone stopped playing.
To summarise, Warlords of Draenor launched November 13, 2014.
Patch 6.1 released February 24, 2015
Patch 6.2 released June 23, 2015
Patch 6.2 is the last patch until the next expansion. Basically, the game has received only one content patch for Warlords of Draenor. This looks utterly pathetic compared to Final Fantasy XIV.
Smooth Operator
Member
cormack12
Gold Member
I tried returning last year. It was so different to what I remembered. The starting zone and the story mode. Vehicles etc. was all a bit weird. I think I hit level 30 within a week, which I never would have done at launch.
Everything seemed geared to giving me XP as quickly and as heavily as possible. I'd join dungeons using a dungeon finder thing and it was like joining a high level char diablo 3 dungeon run. I was struggling to keep up and the content was new to me so I was getting lost and there was no mercy from the group, they just kept sprinting through.
It was a chore to get to speak to anyone even joining a guild. Just felt empty, like everyone was zombified while they played instead of the good natured general chat, weird chat, general interaction with each other. The world had much more content in it than when I left, but it never felt so...........devoid of other players I guess.
Everything seemed geared to giving me XP as quickly and as heavily as possible. I'd join dungeons using a dungeon finder thing and it was like joining a high level char diablo 3 dungeon run. I was struggling to keep up and the content was new to me so I was getting lost and there was no mercy from the group, they just kept sprinting through.
It was a chore to get to speak to anyone even joining a guild. Just felt empty, like everyone was zombified while they played instead of the good natured general chat, weird chat, general interaction with each other. The world had much more content in it than when I left, but it never felt so...........devoid of other players I guess.
Mitch
Banned
Agreed. Not playing until the expansion pre-patch.
Doesn't this put Diablo 3 in the category of most sold games of all time?
Code:
Title Copies sold /Paid downloads
Tetris 100 million[1]
Wii Sports 82.69 million[2]
Minecraft 70 million[5]
Grand Theft Auto V 52 million[6]
Super Mario Bros. 40.24 million[7]
Mario Kart Wii 36.38 million[8]
Tetris 35 million[9]
Wii Sports Resort 32.80 million[2]
New Super Mario Bros. 30.79 million[10]
Pac-Man 2003 Mobile 30 million[11]
New Super Mario Bros. Wii 29.32 million[2]MetroidPrimeRib
Banned
Yes I think what is really killing WoW is lack of patches. One raid patch for WoD is a joke.
Cataclysm at launch had the highest WoW numbers ever and Cataclysm fucking sucked but it got patches until Dragon Soul's content drought which really started the decline.
Cataclysm at launch had the highest WoW numbers ever and Cataclysm fucking sucked but it got patches until Dragon Soul's content drought which really started the decline.