World of Warcraft

Originally posted by 123123456202

i see WoW total subscription numbers being to about 2 million in 2 years

i see it like this

the chronicals of spellborn- 500k

WAR- 2-10 million

darkfall 0-20 million

aion 200k in america and europe MANY in asia

champions online- 300k

stargate worlds-50-800k

earthrise- 20k-4 million

Age of Conan (xbox 360 version)- 3 million

you get my point atm there is well not too many good MMO's  atm and the market is expanding so much more than any other gaming market has in such a short period of time and with so many competitors WoW with start to be lacking with its graphics and gameplay (if you notices most of these have something unheard of in an MMO before ) i have a feeling that we will have about 4 top MMO's in 2 years and not just 1 king MMO and WoW wont be one of them

 

P.S.

the top 4 MMO's IMO will be

America/Europe

darkfall

WAR

Age of Conan (xbox 360 version)

and an unanounced MMO or one that has been accounced but nothing known about it KOTOR maybe

 

 

Asia

Aion

linage 3

WoW (maybe)

another asian grinder.

 

 

P.S.S. im suprised more companies dont relized they will get a hell of alot more money from asia than from us (half of wow's subs are from asia while the other half is the rest of the world)

 

ROFL, I lawl'ed so hard when I saw your numbers.

I know someone has already hit the nuts, but I can't help it.

WAR? Four of the six main cities aren't going to be in release. This is a sign of things to come - they tried to do too much, now they'll have to cut back and look at reality. I think it'll be a great game, don't get me wrong, but I doubt the content will be enough to get past 5mil subscriptions if even.

DARKFALL? Do you KNOW how many times this game has been "close to release"? It's a big game, but i'm thinking it'll head down the path of Vanguard - too big for its own good.

And 2 years from now, which will be 2010 - 6 years after WoW's release. If they still have more than 2 millions subscription it means the other games are doing something wrong. But who am I to say, after looking through the talent calculator for WotLK, I think i'll pick up WoW again when this expansion hits the shelves.

Originally posted by coffee

Originally posted by Sikhander

For me the most interesting statistic is that WoW basically have been flat since last summer but still top 5 in the sales charts. It means that the churn rate is very high in the player base - and hence that loyalty is relatively lower than before.

If anyone could calculate how many boxes (roughly) top 5 represents in the EU and US we could calculate the churn as well as a rough % :)

Edit: Found the numbers: ~2,500,000 subs in NA and 914,000 Warcraft boxes sold in 2007. So right now roughly 37% of players leave the game per annum and are replaced by others. Seems reasonably to me and it also means that the combat for the new players/entrants is the key battle to follow once Aion, WAR and the others are launched.

 

I would not say they were flat since last summer. Paying subs increased by 1.7 million since last summer (around half of those in EU/US) More subs than most any western subsription based game has had in its life time.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT® SURPASSES 9 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS WORLDWIDE - July 2007 

WORLD OF WARCRAFT® REACHES NEW MILESTONE: 10 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS - January 2008

Additionally, the statement tells us that World of Warcraft now has 10.7 million subscribers - May 2008

I cant imagine where that number will go in a few months when Wotlk is release and the Russian localised version is release. but I would happily put a few pennies on 14million active/paying subs.

Worldwide WoW is growing - however in the US/EU growth is basically 0% since mid 2007 looking at X-fire stats and MMO charts estimates. So the growth is mostly in Asia right now. We can debate the 0% (it might be 4% growth etc), but I see no data that support anything else than very limited growth in EU and US since summer 2007 and strong growth in Asia. Given sales figures of new boxes it means that attrition is reaonably high - 35+% pa.

New boxes might come from old players coming back etc - it does not matter though since it still means that someone is leaving the game.

Will WotLK increase the number of subs in old territories? Who knows, TBC roughly grew #accounts by 20% in EU and NA maybe WotLK can achieve the same.

The whole attrition thesis is also very much supported by the activity numbers in the level 1-69 bracket.

Originally posted by Pappy13

One thing that has been overlooked is the distribution of character levels at the bottom of the page.  It's nearly flat all the way to 70 and then a big spike at 70 which makes sense since you can't get any higher than this.  But ignore 70 for a minute and look at all the other levels.  It's nearly flat.  There are no real peaks or valleys across the board.  What does this mean?  It means that the low level character activity which everyone claims is non existant is false.  It's very much alive and kicking.  Across the board from 10 to 69 you can easily find people online all the time. 

Edit:  OK, either my estimating skills suck or their graph isn't that accurate, because I did a little more research and found the following numbers.

10-19  - 760,776 characters

20-29  - 648,810 characters

30-39  - 478,841 characters

40-49  - 417,385 characters

50-59  - 329,639 characters

60-69  - 624,914 characters

Total    - 3,260,365 characters

70 only - 2,604,449 characters

So there's actually more active toons from level 10-69 then there are level 70 toons.  That's pretty astonishing.  And there's approximately 1/4 to 1/6 the number of characters in any one 10 level range as there are total level 70's.  That's pretty impressive too.  And even more surprising is that there are more in the 10-19 and 20-29 range than the 60-69 range.  So much for the theory that BC killed all the pre-BC content.

imo thats a severe misconception here, judging from the numbers stated above that low lvl areas are alive or even kicking. Of course there are lots of low lvl chars existing, such as bank chars, mules, mail pickups in various cities, etc and of course the different classes everyone has tried up to certain lvl. Most of this chars are rotting in the Char screen or logged in a couple of minutes per week - they are surely not all active played toons. Ever tried to find a group for a low lvl dungeon ???  I remember what it was like 2.5 years ago when i leveled my first char - compared to that low level areas are indeed dead

The new expansion will certainly bring some curious old players to resubscribe and see what's new. It will be interesting to see if this expansion will accomplish the same as the previous one. Generally this expansion has certain things in favour and others against it.

The fact that the game has some sort of competition after quite some time is something that helped improve the game. Certain things that were postponed since the launch of the game (some sort of serious world PvP for example), are implemented in some fashion in the new expansion. Also the new expansion does not seem to constitute a complete travesty of the lore (and consecutive of the world). The game seems to be going back to its roots and the Outland experiment is abandoned (the whole alien-spaceships world was more of an abomination than an addition to the otherwise very interesting World of Azeroth).

On the other hand however, they could repeat the weaknesses of the first expansion (the major weakness being the necessity to do certain things elevating the game to work status, like farming herbs or doing daylies). Also at this point the seem unwilling to modernise the game to today's standards, even as an option, like LOTRO for example. While the art style helps, the outdated engine detracts too much from the immersion, especially in this age and time, where the affordable monitor sizes have grown to the 20+ size. The character reset with each expansion doesn't help either.

I'm still hoping for a futuristic or wastelands MMO, from either Blizzard or anybody else.

The above of course are my opinion only.

I think a lot of people on the WAR boards would probably refer to me as "WoW fanboy" But I find it hard to imagine WoW growing even *more* even with the expansion, i think it will bring a lot of people back, lots of those will have quit in the months leading up to the expansion probably due to waiting for new stuff.

I'm not sure if the Russian localization will bring a major influx of players, I'm rather expecting the Russian players move to those servers from the ones where they are now on.

I guess an advertising campaign might pull in new russians, hard to tell.

Mostly I'm expecting people to come back rather than getting a new influx.

Originally posted by akritas

Originally posted by Pappy13

One thing that has been overlooked is the distribution of character levels at the bottom of the page.  It's nearly flat all the way to 70 and then a big spike at 70 which makes sense since you can't get any higher than this.  But ignore 70 for a minute and look at all the other levels.  It's nearly flat.  There are no real peaks or valleys across the board.  What does this mean?  It means that the low level character activity which everyone claims is non existant is false.  It's very much alive and kicking.  Across the board from 10 to 69 you can easily find people online all the time. 

Edit:  OK, either my estimating skills suck or their graph isn't that accurate, because I did a little more research and found the following numbers.

10-19  - 760,776 characters

20-29  - 648,810 characters

30-39  - 478,841 characters

40-49  - 417,385 characters

50-59  - 329,639 characters

60-69  - 624,914 characters

Total    - 3,260,365 characters

70 only - 2,604,449 characters

So there's actually more active toons from level 10-69 then there are level 70 toons.  That's pretty astonishing.  And there's approximately 1/4 to 1/6 the number of characters in any one 10 level range as there are total level 70's.  That's pretty impressive too.  And even more surprising is that there are more in the 10-19 and 20-29 range than the 60-69 range.  So much for the theory that BC killed all the pre-BC content.

 

imo thats a severe misconception here, judging from the numbers stated above that low lvl areas are alive or even kicking. Of course there are lots of low lvl chars existing, such as bank chars, mules, mail pickups in various cities, etc and of course the different classes everyone has tried up to certain lvl. Most of this chars are rotting in the Char screen or logged in a couple of minutes per week - they are surely not all active played toons. Ever tried to find a group for a low lvl dungeon ???  I remember what it was like 2.5 years ago when i leveled my first char - compared to that low level areas are indeed dead

 

 

WRONG (again). Complete BULL shit I'd even say.

Those are ACTIVELY played characters or they are not even in this man's Stats (for what they are worth even). 15 days to be precise.

As a matter of fact: try leveling a new character on a medium to full server (which is recommended every 6 weeks for a few days).

I had MUCH more players in these leveling zones than 2 years ago. Competing in SV or Tanaris to first get the mobs and little bosses :))) It was even annoying at prime time.

I have done about EVERY dungeon up to Sunken Temple with my new character( up to lvl54 now) and did it in prime time without ever having to wait for more than 15 to 20 minutes.

I guess the raids and hard dungeons on lvl 60 don't seem to have people (only for specific quests), but all up to BRD are full of questers.

And it is normal of course because Wow is bigger than one year or two years ago. As there were hardly more servers added since TBC. (one to be precise and that was 1 month ago !).

As for new players: just look at the sales; Wow outsells NOW every MMORPG market by a wide range so stop telling "invented" stories.

It is Number one on Xfire for 1070 consecutive weeks, so NO other PC player (free !) is being played more than Wow and ALL stats prove this.

In center Europe WOW takes position 2, 3, 6 and 7 on the general top sales on Amazon.com.

Talking of new players ....no problem at all.

[quote][i]Originally posted by Pappy13[/i] [b]One thing that has been overlooked is the distribution of character levels at the bottom of the page.  It's nearly flat all the way to 70 and then a big spike at 70 which makes sense since you can't get any higher than this.  But ignore 70 for a minute and look at all the other levels.  It's nearly flat.  There are no real peaks or valleys across the board.  What does this mean?  It means that the low level character activity which everyone claims is non existant is false.  It's very much alive and kicking.  Across the board from 10 to 69 you can easily find people online all the time.  Edit:  OK, either my estimating skills suck or their graph isn't that accurate, because I did a little more research and found the following numbers. 10-19  - 760,776 characters 20-29  - 648,810 characters 30-39  - 478,841 characters 40-49  - 417,385 characters 50-59  - 329,639 characters 60-69  - 624,914 characters Total    - 3,260,365 characters 70 only - 2,604,449 characters So there's actually more active toons from level 10-69 then there are level 70 toons.  That's pretty astonishing.  And there's approximately 1/4 to 1/6 the number of characters in any one 10 level range as there are total level 70's.  That's pretty impressive too.  And even more surprising is that there are more in the 10-19 and 20-29 range than the 60-69 range.  So much for the theory that BC killed all the pre-BC content.[/b][/quote]

How is that surprising?  Players in their 60s are motivated top get to 70 asap.  There are lots of twinks and would be-twinks in their teens and 20s who just want to show off and don't give a damn about leveling.

Originally posted by Xasapis

The new expansion will certainly bring some curious old players to resubscribe and see what's new. It will be interesting to see if this expansion will accomplish the same as the previous one. Generally this expansion has certain things in favour and others against it.

The fact that the game has some sort of competition after quite some time is something that helped improve the game. Certain things that were postponed since the launch of the game (