http://www.develop-online.net/news/39186/Warcraft-could-lose-1m-players-to-Old-Republic

The last line tells the story - something about rats and sinking ships..

Originally posted by ronderic

http://www.develop-online.net/news/39186/Warcraft-could-lose-1m-players-to-Old-Republic

The last line tells the story - something about rats and sinking ships..

 

 

Meh. Even if WoW lost another 1 million subs, it would STILL have over 8 million players. The Financial Market is always looking to quickly jump ship to not lose money, but the reality is WoW will continue to make a crap-ton of money regardless of SWTOR's success.

we will see

Id take it pretty serious, they polled 381 online customers... out of millions.  

Even though wow has been losing subs they have been making bigger profits due to the cash shop (according to http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/08/activision-blizzard-loses-1-1-million-wow-players-triples-profi/4).  

I dont play WoW but i do not see it going away anytime soon.  Id rather it be here, competition makes for better products.

Nothing lasts forever, and WoW has had one hell of a run. It will still have millions of active users, even if the loss to SWTOR is as great as predicted.

A couple of additional factors that are seemingly being looked over include, how the world receives SWTOR and what the retention rate is. All of this preliminary is fine and well, but SWTOR has yet to actually prove itself to the masses.

Additionally, Blizzard will release their next expansion pack within a year (give or take a few months), and even the linked article states that around 33 percent stated they would be purchasing. It would also be interesting to see how many locked in for the Annual pass as well. Even if they aren't active users, they're still paying customers.

With actual competition, Blizzard will have to make competitive changes to WoW, or start revealing what Titan is (or both). Competition is a good thing though, it'll keep both Bioware and Blizzard honest, to a degree.

Here's the thing with WoW...even if they dropped subs all the way down to 150,000 players it wouldn't really matter.  Blizzard has already recouped the money spent in developing and maintaining WoW.  SWTOR is the new hotness mostly because of who's developing it and their track record.  WoW probably isn't going away from a looooong time, even if it gets dethroned (which some speculate has already happened).  Heck, League of Legends has more players than WoW now.  But look at UO.  Their sub numbers aren't nearly what they were at their peak but the game keeps going because there are those who want to play it and the devs have already made their money back from developing the game.  All they need is enough to maintain servers and a paycheck and they're good to go.  I expect SWTOR to have high sub numbers, especially given the numbers of the beta weekends.  WoW was a good game for it's day but it has been around for a while and a majority of the market is ready for something new. 

WoW had a great run, and still is an example of a game with gradual polish that enhances the experience. 

Originally posted by ronderic

http://www.develop-online.net/news/39186/Warcraft-could-lose-1m-players-to-Old-Republic

The last line tells the story - something about rats and sinking ships..

 

 

hope not, rather see Blizzard keep that godawful fanbase of theirs.

Originally posted by ronderic

http://www.develop-online.net/news/39186/Warcraft-could-lose-1m-players-to-Old-Republic

The last line tells the story - something about rats and sinking ships..

 

 

Wierd report all round really, 50% said they would buy old republic (did they actually say they would leave wow??) and 38% declared an interest (as in, "it looks interesting"?).

Either way they somehow got to a loss of 900,000-1,600,000 (pretty wide prediction) to Old Republic, so does this mean that they are also predicting similar losses from other games and in turn predicting that Old Republic is going to possibly crash through the 1-2Mill barrier from launch?

The beginning of the end for WoW was the day it launched as every game will only last so long, but every prediction of the fall of WoW i have seen so far has been way off, although somone has to be right one day i guess.

Originally posted by jason_webb

Originally posted by ronderic

http://www.develop-online.net/news/39186/Warcraft-could-lose-1m-players-to-Old-Republic

The last line tells the story - something about rats and sinking ships..

 

 

Wierd report all round really, 50% said they would buy old republic (did they actually say they would leave wow??) and 38% declared an interest (as in, "it looks interesting"?).

Either way they somehow got to a loss of 900,000-1,600,000 (pretty wide prediction) to Old Republic, so does this mean that they are also predicting similar losses from other games and in turn predicting that Old Republic is going to possibly crash through the 1-2Mill barrier from launch?

The beginning of the end for WoW was the day it launched as every game will only last so long, but every prediction of the fall of WoW i have seen so far has been way off, although somone has to be right one day i guess.

And that 33% plan to buy the next WOW expansion:)

Lot of crazy speculation from what? 381 people surveyed? and on-line too.

If any financial firm would really use an on-line survey from that small amount to make ANY decisions, well it is not WOW that i am worried about:P

I find it interesting that Blizzard's biggest competition yet is a game that does nothing new

I'm debating on whether or not to buy those 30 million shares that Vivendi dropped.   

Originally posted by bhima

Originally posted by ronderic

http://www.develop-online.net/news/39186/Warcraft-could-lose-1m-players-to-Old-Republic

The last line tells the story - something about rats and sinking ships..

 

 

Meh. Even if WoW lost another 1 million subs, it would STILL have over 8 million players. The Financial Market is always looking to quickly jump ship to not lose money, but the reality is WoW will continue to make a crap-ton of money regardless of SWTOR's success.

Yeah that's about it man. Even at worst if they had 4 million players, that would still be considered pretty damn successful. I've nothing against WoW. I've played it on and off since release, and it's given me a good casual game to play. Just wish they were a little more innovative with their expansions. Another thing is, can Star Wars retain those players? *shrugs*

I don't know if you have noticed but TOR isn't exactly getting rave reviews right now, words like Boring, incomplete, no features and bad mechanics pop up more often than not. No I think WOW might lose a few subs to TOR But will lose Mostly to GW2, a static drain from RIFT and maybe AION. But the next expansion looks so bad people might leave wow and just not play anthing at all, I think Scrabble would be a better mmorpgs experience than WOW at this point.

People say what they want to hear but why do so many people on forums constantly condemn WoW to a timely fate every year? I would have thought with 10+ million subs, everyone would figure it out by now. WoW is only going to die when it shoots itself in the foot. As much money as Blizzard has made from WoW, they could go F2P for 10 years and still be in the green from money earned on interest alone from current capital gains.

I stopped caring about WoW like I stopped caring about SWG after CU / NGE killed it. But like so many SWG Vets, people just can't seem to stop hating on WoW, me being one of them. Guess it's almost like a required statement we need to make to get that notch on our inciteful belt we all like to display.

Anyways, SWTOR will do fine at launch, that much is obvious. I pray to anything that listens that the WoW community stays in WoW. I seriously have nothing against WoW, it's a great game, but hell, the community is just plain horrid.

Originally posted by Rhoklaw

People say what they want to hear but why do so many people on forums constantly condemn WoW to a timely fate every year? I would have thought with 10+ million subs, everyone would figure it out by now. WoW is only going to die when it shoots itself in the foot. As much money as Blizzard has made from WoW, they could go F2P for 10 years and still be in the green from money earned on interest alone from current capital gains.

I stopped caring about WoW like I stopped caring about SWG after CU / NGE killed it. But like so many SWG Vets, people just can't seem to stop hating on WoW, me being one of them. Guess it's almost like a required statement we need to make to get that notch on our inciteful belt we all like to display.

Anyways, SWTOR will do fine at launch, that much is obvious. I pray to anything that listens that the WoW community stays in WoW. I seriously have nothing against WoW, it's a great game, but hell, the community is just plain horrid.

You can keep crapping all over the "WoW community", but it isn't just WoW. Nearly every mmo I have played any significant amount of time has wound up with a similar community, in WoW there's just more of them. This is the unfortunate future of the mmo community, and online gaming in general. Anonimity will always ensure that those who will act like raving idiots, get to do so from the safety of their own home.

Ironically, those on this site who like to spew hate against WoW wind up sounding as spite filled as the WoW community that they despise.

Hate to burst your bubble, but WoW players have been playing every other MMORPG out there since the release of WoW... they are not so glued to the game as to not check out the competition.  So there is NO GAME that you can play that is online that WON'T have current and former WoW players in it.  In fact, a good chunk of the beta testers for SW:TOR and GW:2 are from WoW... what better way to steer the development of a game than to infiltrate it from the very get go... muhahahaha!

WoW players are looking for something to do just like everyone else... if that means weilding light sabers or driving forklifts... they'll try it to fill the dead time until the next WoW expansion/patch comes out.

If WoW died, it wouldn't be any catastrophic for the WoW player base than it would be for Blizzard.  They know there's always going to be something else.