Originally posted by Torvaldr

ANet will eventually crush WoW because it only has room to grow for several years.  WoW has very little room left to progress.  In all it's kind of a silly comparison because WoW was from a previous paradigm and the world and market are much different now.  I still believe that no one will topple the success Blizzard had at their pinnacle with WoW, including Blizzard themselves.

offtopic but worth mentioning

if Everquest can spit out 19 expansions over the course of 13 years, including new game features

im confident WOW can keep churning out content for years

congrats, i am happy for Anet, but the B2P system can be a bit deceiving, because they might sell 2million copies, but it doesn't mean that those 2 millions are still actively playing, it will be way less than that, i know it because 1/2 of my guild already stopped playing

so if you guys are comparing this number of players to WoW, i think WoW still have more "active" subscriber

but again, WOW has been for 8 years,

so, congrats to Anet, you guys are doing okay!

looking forward to the next expansion already

Originally posted by Four0Six

Originally posted by kadepsyson

Originally posted by fatboy21007
Look out WoW,  some1 is gaining steam XD

WoW has more subscribers than GW2 ever will

 They should since GW2 doesn't really have subscribers....

I think in the end they will sell almost as many boxes as WoW has subs, especially if their expansions are good.

But it will never sell nearly as many boxes as WoW. If you want to do a comparison, count the box sales of both.....not box vs subs.....

Originally posted by GeezerGamer

Originally posted by Torvaldr

Except WoW never had 9 - 12 million subscriptions.  It had 9 - 12 million active accounts of which a majority of those were in Asia.  The payment model there isn't the $15/mo is it.  So they weren't generating $15/mo  * 9mill players.  They were generating a few million sub dollars plus the rest from Asia which is really hard to calculate.  It's still not surpassed by any Western game, but it pales in comparison to the most popular Asian games.  I think WoW comes in at 5th in revenue comparison to the F2P games.

I want to point this out because WoW's success is only measured against the Western market but uses it's entire player pool to do so.  The hard to swallow fact is that, compared with Asia, the West is a much smaller demographic.

ANet will eventually crush WoW because it only has room to grow for several years.  WoW has very little room left to progress.  In all it's kind of a silly comparison because WoW was from a previous paradigm and the world and market are much different now.  I still believe that no one will topple the success Blizzard had at their pinnacle with WoW, including Blizzard themselves.

I can appreciate your perspective and there is a lot of truth especially about the differences between the western and asian marktets, except it reads like you are trying to trivialize their revenue from the asian markets. Or trying to get us to exclude it.

And you are also making a pretty bold prediction there. Don't forget, this is ANET's 2nd attempt at this. And it really doesn't look like it's going to happen this time either.

 

I wasn't trying to trivialize the revenue from the Asian market.  More I was trying to point out that I think the revenue from the Western market is dwarfed by the Asian market.

The first attempt was pretty succesful for a new IP and a totally instanced hub based MMO.  GW1 sold around 7million total and had a very limited cash shop.  Two million in the first week or so is pretty good.

The reason I think they can only go up is because all they have to do is sell the box and supplement revenue via the cash shop with a core player base.  Since they don't require a subscription anyone can return any time and the opportunity for cash shop revenue is always there for the entire account base.

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Torvaldr

ANet will eventually crush WoW because it only has room to grow for several years.  WoW has very little room left to progress.  In all it's kind of a silly comparison because WoW was from a previous paradigm and the world and market are much different now.  I still believe that no one will topple the success Blizzard had at their pinnacle with WoW, including Blizzard themselves.

offtopic but worth mentioning

if Everquest can spit out 19 expansions over the course of 13 years, including new game features

im confident WOW can keep churning out content for years

I could have worded that better.  WoW has little room to grow.  EQ has put out expansions and is still lingering but that's all it's really doing.  I think if we looked at it's actual growth as a game, not player numbers or number of patches, but what those patches and xpacs have actually added and the game hasn't grown.  It has added more of the same which is fine for the core base, but I think has contributed to its lingering rather than prospering.

WoW will be able to add an xpac a year for time to come but the market isn't the same and we'll see in the next couple of years how that affects the gorilla.  I just don't think they hold the magic anymore.  I think the crowd that likes EQ2 and WoW style gaming / raiding will eventually migrate to RIFT (or maybe EQ Next if SoE doesn't bungle it).

Originally posted by IceAge

Originally posted by QuicklyScott

Originally posted by GeezerGamer

I have done no research so I'm only repeating numebrs that have been thrown around here for years.

If GW2, has currently sold 2M boxes, how many boxes has WoW sold?

If 10M players bought the original game plus 3, now 4 expanisons, we are looking at not 10M boxes but multiples of 10M boxes.

Like what 40M boxes over the years?

It is estimated WoW sold between 60-80 million boxes.

It's a VERY bad estimation. People from Asia does not buy boxes, you got that?

Fair enough. So we'll also disregard GW2 sales when it hits Asia as well then. Right?

Again guys this is a silly conversation. All we can get from the current evidence at hand is that GW2 has made some significant sales at launch. So financially they currently look to be doing pretty darn good. Now if they had only pushed something absurd like 100k units that would be different. As it stands now they've had a good start. Where they go from here in continued market appeal and player retention is something we will just have to wait and see on, until we can get some concrete evidence on how sales and the playerbase is shaking out. Anything else is right now is just pissing in the wind.

Originally posted by kadepsyson

Originally posted by fatboy21007
Look out WoW,  some1 is gaining steam XD

WoW has more subscribers than GW2 ever will

Of course it will.GW2 doesnt require a subscription.

Originally posted by silverreign

since the game isnt sub based, the box sales vs actual people playing are deceiving. i bought the game but i am not playing anymore. yet my box sale is being considered as a playing member. 2 million box sales doesnt exactly mean 2 million people playing

 

And the point is they got all the money they needed out of you since you bought the box.Its too bad you dont like the game.Its really fun and to me well worth your time.But opinions will always vary.

Originally posted by Tardcore

Where they go from here in continued market appeal and player retention is something we will just have to wait and see on, until we can get some concrete evidence on how sales and the playerbase is shaking out. Anything else is right now is just pissing in the wind.

Maybe MMOs should just stick a counter on their websites showing how many active players there are. Then again, that would make it harder for less than good MMOs floating around to hide their lack of retention or something...

Originally posted by Lethality
Hehe, no. This game isn't mainstream enough... it has a limited appeal, and there are signs that the foundation has cracks in it (endgame, broken designs, balance.)

 

In your opinion maybe.It has pleny of appeal and all the balance issues you seem to think it has can be fixed if necessary.I havent played to endgame but since the plan is to follow the GW1 model that statement is pretty moot as well.They will release expansions for the game and there you have it more "endgame".I have yet to see any "broken designs" so I dont know what your talking about.All MMO's come out with a few bumps.This ones only been out for what 2 weeks?Haters gonna hate I guess and as I said before your entitled to your opinion however wrong I may think it is.

Originally posted by Lethality

Originally posted by botrytis

Originally posted by Lethality
Hehe, no. This game isn't mainstream enough... it has a limited appeal, and there are signs that the foundation has cracks in it (endgame, broken designs, balance.)

Not really - no more than any other game that was just released 2 weeks ago. The game is pretty balanced and TSW doesn't have decent end game either and TOR - fuh'get about it.

 

Your bias is showing.

It's not bias  - it's experience and knowing what I see when I see it.

Are you level 80? Hav eyou been to Orr? Whgat can you tell me about end game, the dynamic events and grinding for gear?

 

 

I have played pretty much every real MMO out there and they all end up with a lack of what you call endgame and a gear grind.Unless they were to have programmers dedicated to adding new content people like you who thhink they are experts on MMO's and how they should work will never be happy.Thats not a feasable proposition for any MMO company.Had you stopped to smell the roses and enjoyed your journey not rushing to 80 you would have seen what a great game we have here.Some people will never be happy no matter what you put otu there.Thats too bad for you.

Originally posted by fatboy21007
Look out WoW,  some1 is gaining steam XD

Please don't do that. We REALLY need to let the whole "WoW-killer" thing go. The only thing that will kill WoW is WoW and per Taugrim's "Fanboys just don't get it" vlog, GW2 or SWTOR or TSW or Tera being a success doesn't correspondingly mean WoW loses and vice versa.

Originally posted by sodade21
And how exactly vanilla wow had sell at the second week of its release? U cant compare cataclysm expansion...cause wow has already builded its community while gw1 and gw2 its different games complitely..gw1 wasnt even a real mmo. So lets dint compare oranges with apples here.. gw2 must be compared.so far wirh vanila wow.. wow also comes from another succesful game and not mmo.

Now only if GW2 released in 2004 it may have been the game that started the MMO boom. Now if WoW was created in 2012 it would be taking from those players brought into the genre by GW2.. lol.

Good for Anet.  2 million copies in two weeks is definitely an accomplishment.  Lets hope they continue to grow.