Originally posted by PwndStar

as users who have logged into the game from internet cafes within the past 30 days."

This really makes it difficult to compare apples to apples with respect to subscription-only MMOGs.

Anyway:  I am not a WoW player, never have been, and have no intention of starting, but Blizzard's success is earned and not luck.  They simply took the best features of the existing crop of MMOGs, polished them to a fine sheen, and resisted the temptation to risk disaster by experimentation.  This is *exactly* what they've done with all their other games and the formula has served them well once again.

Lest anyone think I'm flaming Blizzard in the above:  it is not a trivial exercise to accurately deduce what the best features of MMOGs are; it certainly isn't easy to refine them; and while new and unbroken ground is a great thing it does carry with it the risk that what your designers and in-house playtesters think is the greatest gameplay idea since the mouse will be received by the playerbase as one enormous wtfbbq (note this is a noun, used in place of clusterf...).

Originally posted by zensaber
still some people have numerous accounts and also at least 80% of WoW's population is from Asian countries where 8 million isn't much of a game, there are games in china that have over 26 million supscibers

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Originally posted by Brainy
WoW is really turning the MMO industry upside down. There were sooo many of the famous MMO devs saying that the MMORPG industry was tapped out and would be cannilbalizing soon. Even Sir Bruce at MMORPGCHART.com was saying it for years. Then along comes WoW and totally trashes that theory.
If wow had 7.5 mil subscribers before xmas season even started. There is absolutely no way they will lose subs during xmas season. Their game is a top seller at the major retail chains and really nothing else has come out to make people quit. I wouldnt be surprised to see thier subs grow over 8.5 mil or even 9mil after xmas.
WoW will grow more then all the western MMO's subscribers put together. That is absolutely insane. Is this a monopoly? How can they be allowed to get away with this?

---

The only reason for this is that the majority of the so-called seers don't know that Neo-Classical Economics is faulty from the get go. Essentially, no one market has an absolute saturation point until all possible capital flow is maximized. And even then capital flow can be added upon via wealth creation [more folks making money so they spend it]. What WoW I think proves is that the MMO market, like all markets, evolves and expands. In some ways, WoW vindicates the theories of the Austrian and Chicago Schools of Economics. :) Barring that, WoW is still boring, at least for me. >_<

-- Bridget

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Originally posted by retrospectic

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Originally posted by zensaber
still some people have numerous accounts and also at least 80% of WoW's population is from Asian countries where 8 million isn't much of a game, there are games in china that have over 26 million supscibers

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What game has 26 million subs? Please show me. Is it free?

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To my knowledge there are none, but there are loads of private servers, especially WoW and Lineage 2 kinds, where people play, but most of them don't exceed 3000 people at their peek times ( I use to play a few international L2 servers that peeked at about 2.5k on the weekends. ).

-- Bridget

I'll let you all in on a little secret...The reason WoW has so many gamers is because it appeals to Children..Nothing else.

75% of the game is under 16 I would bet my life on it. They are all little Children who have no social status at all.

Why does it appeal to them you say?

It's because it's easy to play and the PvP means that they can become an internet tough guy by killing noobs online.

Why do the majority of people hate it even if they play it?

It trys to be too advanced and you just can't take it seriously with its piss poor attempt to cross cel shaded graphics and real graphics. Because the game is so easy that the little kiddies get to high level then repeatedly GanK you because they have nothing better to do.

The game is a noob fest, mostly made for first time MMORPG'ers. I have played every MMORPG on the market and WoW is nothing special. It has all the decent features but the community it holds and the lack of depth in quests etc just irritates me.

The lack of things to do to get cash in the game aswell as status/exp is annoying as anything else...They should have basically called it " World of Questing" that suits it more. Because the game is one big quest, from when you start to when you end. One huge on going quest with nothing to suprise you, nothing to draw you in and nothing to refresh you from the quests.

The game requires quests to level, if you just wanna go solo to get some levels it will take you 5x longer than questing. Which means if your from England or any other European country you will be lower than all the Americans because they are the majority of the players and are 8-5 hours behind us. So we have to play late hours of the night just to get partys to get levels.

I mean come on...How much could they ruin a good series.

I have more hate of this game to come but I can't be arsed to type anymore and I have to go into town for some last minute Christmas shopping.

I hope you thoroughly enjoyed my rant about a  piss poor attempt to make an RPG/RTS game into an MMORPG.

I would like the thank Blizzard for giving me the opportunity to verbally hate on their game and give me something on the Internet to hate more than geeks.

/Ash

Originally posted by Danhilderman
Perhaps.  I still believe that the majority of WoW players have NEVER played another mmorpg for any length of time (at least 2 weeks).
When you look at the satisfaction rates of people who have played other mmo's and those who haven't, it seems first timers are much more satisified.

I could be wrong though.  It's obviously done some things which attract millions of subscribers.

So..... lets THANK WoW for bringing in lots of new players to the MMO market.

Myself, i've played some MMO's played WoW... got bored of it, griping about some little things... played a bunch of other MMO's for a while... CoV, SW:G, ... tried EVE, EQ2... and a bunch of free ones (currently playing Voyage Century beta) ... and well, eventually after either getting bored or having way too big of problems I came back to WoW.  I see pontential, and the merits of lots of the games i've played, but for the most part i've had less gripes with WoW than any of them, and that's really what it comes down to.

I don't really think WoW is "the game for me" ... but until they come out with something better (crossing my fingers for Conan and WAR) ... WoW just seems to be the best, most polished game out there... so i'm just gonna wait until someone does something better that will appeal to as many or close to as many as WoW.

I've always been a fan of Blizzard and their highly polished games........ but I was never as much of a fan of Warcraft as I was of Diablo 2 and Starcraft... but they've always made a quality product which all of course you could make gripes about, but what they do well they do VERY well. Make a World of Diablo or Starcraft Blizzard and you'll really have me hooked  

Originally posted by DemDemDem

I'll let you all in on a little secret...The reason WoW has so many gamers is because it appeals to Children..Nothing else.

 

75% of the game is under 16 I would bet my life on it. They are all little Children who have no social status at all.

Why does it appeal to them you say?

It's because it's easy to play and the PvP means that they can become an internet tough guy by killing noobs online.

Why do the majority of people hate it even if they play it?

It trys to be too advanced and you just can't take it seriously with its piss poor attempt to cross cel shaded graphics and real graphics. Because the game is so easy that the little kiddies get to high level then repeatedly GanK you because they have nothing better to do.

The game is a noob fest, mostly made for first time MMORPG'ers. I have played every MMORPG on the market and WoW is nothing special. It has all the decent features but the community it holds and the lack of depth in quests etc just irritates me.

The lack of things to do to get cash in the game aswell as status/exp is annoying as anything else...They should have basically called it " World of Questing" that suits it more. Because the game is one big quest, from when you start to when you end. One huge on going quest with nothing to suprise you, nothing to draw you in and nothing to refresh you from the quests.

The game requires quests to level, if you just wanna go solo to get some levels it will take you 5x longer than questing. Which means if your from England or any other European country you will be lower than all the Americans because they are the majority of the players and are 8-5 hours behind us. So we have to play late hours of the night just to get partys to get levels.

I mean come on...How much could they ruin a good series.

I have more hate of this game to come but I can't be arsed to type anymore and I have to go into town for some last minute Christmas shopping.

 

I hope you thoroughly enjoyed my rant about a  piss poor attempt to make an RPG/RTS game into an MMORPG.

I would like the thank Blizzard for giving me the opportunity to verbally hate on their game and give me something on the Internet to hate more than geeks.

 

/Ash

75% of the WoW Players are under 16? ROFL. Dude don't speak on anything you don't know about. Firstly you have no facts to back this and secondly my Guild of 200+ members are ALL above the age of 20. And a lot of the poeple I meet in WoW come from EQ2/SW:G/FFXI.

This just goes to show the stupidity of some people right here...

...

Lol ya... i'm 18 and everyone I know that plays is 18+ ... i'm sure there's younger players out there, but they really don't usually get far enough into the game to spoil my fun. Maybe that's just me.

And about the quest system... entertaining what you say for a second ... questing all the way through is a little (really... just a little) mroe entertaining that grinding... for most people anyway.

Personally I don't quest ... anymore. I did a little when I first started and somewhat enjoyed it, but it gets as tedious as anything. I personally like to run dungeons for my levels... something you can start doing around lvl 16

16-24 VC, 24-28? Stockades, 28-35 Gnomer, 35-46 SM/SFK, 46-54 ZF/Mara... then BRD ... i've found grouping with others to run these dungeons (which usually includes a few quests that u get along with the xp of killing mobs until about the 4th or 5th time you've done it.) to be a great way of leveling. The most fun I have doing these is when I get good groups that all know what they're doing and we can run through without problems.

Anyway... saying that ... I find dungeons to be faster than questing, and everyone i've talked to has said they find grinding faster than questing, so I don't know what you were smoking when you were doing this (assuming you've ever really played to a decent level before you've criticized a game) but questing seems to be the slowest way of leveling unless you're a god at questing and have nothing slow you down the whole time... personally i'll cut out all the running back and forth time and stick to instancing.

Originally posted by Brainy

I was reading this article http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=14745

And Rob Pardo (VP at Blizzard) Says:  "We thought we were reaching for the stars by hoping we'd hit a million subscribers... We've clearly gone way beyond that now with almost eight million worldwide."

Anyone else seen anything confirming this info?  I read another article a month ago saying WoW had 7.5 million.  Does that mean its increasing in Subs?

Or are they talking about total people who purchased the game?  It said subscriptions thou?

 

I gonne make topic to "Is it 10million now?" hoping alot will reply and say wow is it that many or yeh its 10million isnt it great wow is so good and get a hard......

Well i think this is why you make for zillions time a WoW topic about how many this crap game are playing:P

Its worldoffanbois on mmoprg.com lately:P

Greetings from Brazil,

       I disagree with most ppl here trying to make WoW a boring game for childrens. Thats not true, i play mmo for a long time and WoW is far the most fun for me. I believe the secret of sucess is the world that blizzard presents in their games since warcraft1 and diablo. Most players like this kind of world, some D&D like and unique blizz creatures and stuff. Its what makes wow so great. I have friends that played adicted UO long time ago and they were flaming wow telling me that its a UO copy in 3D. I convinced then to play wow and now they have other vision of the game. WoW got features that no other mmo has and the pvp system is so much better than any other i played.

       As a reply for Wow being a game for children, i disagree with that. Some ppl on this forum already said most of their friends are 20+ and so are my friends. I dont have any RL friend or any friend in WoW that is under age 20. Most of them are married, working or at least in university. I dont think wow as a children game cause kids want simple games not complex games and wow is much more complex than most ppl think.

    Im gonna end here cause my english sux and im going to play wow now! ;)

    /cheer to everyone

Bruno  

I Bet there counting all the "Trial" Accounts :P, + Banned accounts still.

But anyways good for Blizzard Entertainment, They set out to get 1 million subscribers and now have Nearly 8 million.

I predict an increase of 50% after the expansion.

That's how it has been for all the other MMO's.

@3L1TE

Read my post on the first page.

Originally posted by -Zeno-
Its total accounts created.  They are doing what Guildwars is doing, except they are not saying "total accounts created" and considering them all "subscribers".  

Guildwars has 3 million subscribers in Blizzard terms!