Originally posted by Ramonski7

I even tried to look up GW numbers for how the original sold as oppose to the expansions and no one is bothering to seperate the numbers. They are all lumped together as one big number at 6.5 million. And if you divide that number by the number of expansions then you get roughly 1.6 million per release. Now compare that to WoW's numbers at 4.7 million per release with the exception to the last expansion at 2.7 million. And if you lump together Blizzard's game + expansions like GW's, you get a whopping 21.5 million copies of WoW roughly sold.

ive only mentioned Blizzard compared to Blizzard in this thread

but since ANET has been mentioned - they too have a site for press releases

http://www.guildwars.com/events/press/releases/

ncsoft used to give a 2 year quarterly history of new GW1 accounts being sold

(not to be confused w campaigns -- these are new accounts)

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/ncsoft-releases-quarterly-report-guild-t10355520.html?s=03c4de217efb063cd387c2af2fa6ac77&t=10355520

QTR / Accounts
Sep 2006 / 2,447,000
Dec 2006 / 3,122,000
Mar 2007 / 3,555,000
Jun 2007 / 3,917,000
Sep 2007 / 4,500,000
Dec 2007 / 4,878,000
Mar 2008 / 5,159,000
Jun 2008 / 5,377,000
Sep 2008 / 5,589,000
Dec 2008 / 5,803,000

Originally posted by Ghern

Originally posted by Ramonski7

A damn near decade old mmorpg sells 2.7 million copies in ONE week before they release in China and this crowd is harking on it selling less that the last expansion? After so long do you really expect the game to continue to out perform itself? While at the same time it's STILL out performing the competition. Let's not debate that little nugget, but do yourself a favor and try to think of ANY mmorpg expansion released  that has outperformed it's previous expansion or matched it. You won't find those numbers and you know why? Because no other mmo developer EVER releases those numbers! And no one in the industry cares about them either.

 

I even tried to look up GW numbers for how the original sold as oppose to the expansions and no one is bothering to seperate the numbers. They are all lumped together as one big number at 6.5 million. And if you divide that number by the number of expansions then you get roughly 1.6 million per release. Now compare that to WoW's numbers at 4.7 million per release with the exception to the last expansion at 2.7 million. And if you lump together Blizzard's game + expansions like GW's, you get a whopping 21.5 million copies of WoW roughly sold.

 

I repeat, that is not bad for such an old game. To steadily out perform EVERY competitor since it's last exansion release 2 years ago says a lot about the impact it still has on the industry. That list includes: TSW, GW2, SWTOR and a slew of F2P and expansions for all of those games.

 

And this is coming from a guy that currently enjoying the sh*t out of GW2 and looking foward to enjoying DF: UW, AoW and AA.

I don't think anybody stated their sales were bad. I believe anyone to a man would admit it's still very impressive especially due to the age of the game.

The sales number comes up because it is also well known, as Blizz has reported themselves, that they are/were bleeding subs.

Now bleeding to Blizz is an entirely different thing than bleeding to other companies but on a percentage basis it has been very significant. Lost revenue is lost revenue.

This was the x-pac that they wanted to bring players back. Rekindling the horde vs alliance fued.

The sales number is the first barometer to see if Blizz has suceeded in their goal. I would say at the 1 week mark probably not. Sales are down from previous x-pacs. Again, that doesn't mean they are awful, just down.

Alot of people will buy, sub, play for a while the cancel again.

The 6 month mark will be very interesting for Blizz and the direction of WoW.

 

Yes, yes they're bleeding subs. Everyone knows it including Blizzard as you so pointed out. Is it that hard to understand with such an old ass game? It's like someone constantly telling me that Vanessa Williams is damn near 50 years old and me saying: Yeah, but she still looks good! Or better yet your grandpa is taking all newcomers in a boxing match and constantly whooping their asses and someone pointing out: Hey look! He's getting tired!

Well no sh*t after knocking out 10 people half his age or younger. We all know he won't last forever...

Originally posted by Ramonski7

Originally posted by Ghern

Originally posted by Ramonski7

A damn near decade old mmorpg sells 2.7 million copies in ONE week before they release in China and this crowd is harking on it selling less that the last expansion? After so long do you really expect the game to continue to out perform itself? While at the same time it's STILL out performing the competition. Let's not debate that little nugget, but do yourself a favor and try to think of ANY mmorpg expansion released  that has outperformed it's previous expansion or matched it. You won't find those numbers and you know why? Because no other mmo developer EVER releases those numbers! And no one in the industry cares about them either.

 

I even tried to look up GW numbers for how the original sold as oppose to the expansions and no one is bothering to seperate the numbers. They are all lumped together as one big number at 6.5 million. And if you divide that number by the number of expansions then you get roughly 1.6 million per release. Now compare that to WoW's numbers at 4.7 million per release with the exception to the last expansion at 2.7 million. And if you lump together Blizzard's game + expansions like GW's, you get a whopping 21.5 million copies of WoW roughly sold.

 

I repeat, that is not bad for such an old game. To steadily out perform EVERY competitor since it's last exansion release 2 years ago says a lot about the impact it still has on the industry. That list includes: TSW, GW2, SWTOR and a slew of F2P and expansions for all of those games.

 

And this is coming from a guy that currently enjoying the sh*t out of GW2 and looking foward to enjoying DF: UW, AoW and AA.

I don't think anybody stated their sales were bad. I believe anyone to a man would admit it's still very impressive especially due to the age of the game.

The sales number comes up because it is also well known, as Blizz has reported themselves, that they are/were bleeding subs.

Now bleeding to Blizz is an entirely different thing than bleeding to other companies but on a percentage basis it has been very significant. Lost revenue is lost revenue.

This was the x-pac that they wanted to bring players back. Rekindling the horde vs alliance fued.

The sales number is the first barometer to see if Blizz has suceeded in their goal. I would say at the 1 week mark probably not. Sales are down from previous x-pacs. Again, that doesn't mean they are awful, just down.

Alot of people will buy, sub, play for a while the cancel again.

The 6 month mark will be very interesting for Blizz and the direction of WoW.

 

Yes, yes they're bleeding subs. Everyone knows it including Blizzard as you so pointed out. Is it that hard to understand with such an old ass game? It's like someone constantly telling me that Vanessa Williams is damn near 50 years old and me saying: Yeah, but she still looks good! Or better yet your grandpa is taking all newcomers in a boxing match and constantly whooping their asses and someone pointing out: Hey look! He's getting tired!

Well no sh*t after knocking out 10 people half his age our younger. We all know he won't last forever...

Well, I suppose because people find it interesting to watch.

It's in your right to get frustrated by all the talk about it but that isn't going to make it stop.

All the stuff you pointed out should be obvious to everyone. It does not mean people will just stop discussing it though.

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Ramonski7

I even tried to look up GW numbers for how the original sold as oppose to the expansions and no one is bothering to seperate the numbers. They are all lumped together as one big number at 6.5 million. And if you divide that number by the number of expansions then you get roughly 1.6 million per release. Now compare that to WoW's numbers at 4.7 million per release with the exception to the last expansion at 2.7 million. And if you lump together Blizzard's game + expansions like GW's, you get a whopping 21.5 million copies of WoW roughly sold.

ive only mentioned Blizzard compared to Blizzard in this thread

 

but since ANET has been mentioned - they too have a site for press releases

http://www.guildwars.com/events/press/releases/

 

ncsoft used to give a 2 year quarterly history of new GW1 accounts being sold

(not to be confused w campaigns -- these are new accounts)

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/ncsoft-releases-quarterly-report-guild-t10355520.html?s=03c4de217efb063cd387c2af2fa6ac77&t=10355520

QTR / Accounts
Sep 2006 / 2,447,000
Dec 2006 / 3,122,000
Mar 2007 / 3,555,000
Jun 2007 / 3,917,000
Sep 2007 / 4,500,000
Dec 2007 / 4,878,000
Mar 2008 / 5,159,000
Jun 2008 / 5,377,000
Sep 2008 / 5,589,000
Dec 2008 / 5,803,000

Those numbers INCLUDE campaigns sold as well since you cannot have a expansion without the original. I thought I explained that. They never released the sales figures of each campaigns sold seperately. I'm sure if Blizzard released a 2 year spread of how many WoW accounts were added since it's original release date til Dec 2006 you'd see number dwarfing those of GW.

I've come to the conclusion you will never see this number, ever. Lets all just move on and understand that WoW's subs will slowly go down more and more over time. I do believe it will be around for a long time but after MoP i just don't think they are going to put that much more into it and focus on Titan more.

Peace

Lascer

Originally posted by Ramonski7

Those numbers INCLUDE campaigns sold as well since you cannot have a expansion without the original. I thought I explained that. They never released the sales figures of each campaigns sold seperately. I'm sure if Blizzard released a 2 year spread of how many WoW accounts were added since it's original release date til Dec 2006 you'd see number dwarfing those of GW.

GW1 and WOW expansions are impossible to compare

unlike other mmos -- you could buy a different GW1 campaign like Factions or Nightfall and need nothing else

for other mmos, expansion is worthless unless the base game is included

GW1 had a variety of bundlepacks but only 1 expansion (Eye of the North) that required an existing game

otherwise,

you are correct, if comparing sold accts to sold accts, WOW may be as high a 100 million

(even everquest claims they had 20 million accts over the course of history)

Originally posted by Ghern

Originally posted by Ramonski7

Yes, yes they're bleeding subs. Everyone knows it including Blizzard as you so pointed out. Is it that hard to understand with such an old ass game? It's like someone constantly telling me that Vanessa Williams is damn near 50 years old and me saying: Yeah, but she still looks good! Or better yet your grandpa is taking all newcomers in a boxing match and constantly whooping their asses and someone pointing out: Hey look! He's getting tired!

Well no sh*t after knocking out 10 people half his age our younger. We all know he won't last forever...

Well, I suppose because people find it interesting to watch.

It's in your right to get frustrated by all the talk about it but that isn't going to make it stop.

All the stuff you pointed out should be obvious to everyone. It does not mean people will just stop discussing it though.

Yeah I know it won't stop. Look, I've been at this (mmorpg gaming) for a long time. Been playing mmorpgs before WoW hit the scene and will be playing them well after it makes the final curtain call. It's just odd to see that some people can never get this game out of their system and I think the current and future crops of mmorpgs are the only things suffering from it. I've managed to move on while at the same time I don't hold any ill will toward my time in Azeroth. It was a good experience for me and I don't regret it (I learned some valuable lessons about myself as a mmorpg player). But some of the chuckleheads here are treating their time in Azeroth as a relationship gone bad rather a lesson learned (whether it's the evils of raids, gear threadmills or questing).

And people tend to hold on and fester in the memories of bad relationships much longer than bad experiences. They, unlike experiences, tend to carry over to the next relationship. While bad experiences, on the other hand, can be reflected on or reversed. I mean really, where do you think all that vemon will be directed at once WoW shuts down for good?

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Ramonski7

Those numbers INCLUDE campaigns sold as well since you cannot have a expansion without the original. I thought I explained that. They never released the sales figures of each campaigns sold seperately. I'm sure if Blizzard released a 2 year spread of how many WoW accounts were added since it's original release date til Dec 2006 you'd see number dwarfing those of GW.

GW1 and WOW expansions are impossible to compare

unlike other mmos -- you could buy a different GW1 campaign like Factions or Nightfall and need nothing else

 

for other mmos, expansion is worthless unless the base game is included

GW1 had a variety of bundlepacks but only 1 expansion (Eye of the North) that required an existing game

 

otherwise,

you are correct, if comparing sold accts to sold accts, WOW may be as high a 100 million

(even everquest claims they had 20 million accts over the course of history)

Both are still content  based on the original game made from the same company.  They can very well be compared: both are methods of distributing content.

Originally posted by TwoThreeFour

Both are still content  based on the original game made from the same company.  They can very well be compared: both are methods of distributing content.

how so?  if i bought Factions - i dont need Prophecies (the original game)

Factions has nothing from original game beyond the same core classes and same game engine

Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall -- are each "stand alone" games, independent of each other

 if you bought one campaign, you would never see the other campaigns

--  i met GW1 players that never had interest in buying other campaigns

in a game like WOW,  most players are at the upper levels

if you dont buy the latest expansion, you cannot play with the majority of the playerbase

Originally posted by nyxium
There are massive queues to get in realms at the moment. That does not mean large sales of MoP however, players could just want to login and roll a free panda without the expansion, or just log in to chew the fat.. after going to the offiical forums I get a preliminary hunch that the panda's are not going down too well, and have put people off the game. So far.

Pandas have definitely been a polarizing part of the game.  Either the player is insanely happy with them being added, and thinks it's the greatest thing in the world, or they think they were better left as an April fools joke and only make an already silly expansion even sillier.

The real complaint is the Cross Realm Zones (CRZ).  Finding nodes and rare mobs are annoyingly difficult now.  Granted, you could argue that rare mobs should be rare, but they've moved beyond simply rare, and into impossible territory.  Resource nodes, however, have no such justification.  Trying to level up a profession now is aggrivating, to say the least.

Originally posted by Ramonski7

A damn near decade old mmorpg sells 2.7 million copies in ONE week before they release in China and this crowd is harking on it selling less that the last expansion? After so long do you really expect the game to continue to out perform itself? While at the same time it's STILL out performing the competition. Let's not debate that little nugget, but do yourself a favor and try to think of ANY mmorpg expansion released  that has outperformed it's previous expansion or matched it. You won't find those numbers and you know why? Because no other mmo developer EVER releases those numbers! And no one in the industry cares about them either.

 

I even tried to look up GW numbers for how the original sold as oppose to the expansions and no one is bothering to seperate the numbers. They are all lumped together as one big number at 6.5 million. And if you divide that number by the number of expansions then you get roughly 1.6 million per release. Now compare that to WoW's numbers at 4.7 million per release with the exception to the last expansion at 2.7 million. And if you lump together Blizzard's game + expansions like GW's, you get a whopping 21.5 million copies of WoW roughly sold.

 

I repeat, that is not bad for such an old game. To steadily out perform EVERY competitor since it's last exansion release 2 years ago says a lot about the impact it still has on the industry. That list includes: TSW, GW2, SWTOR and a slew of F2P and expansions for all of those games.

 

And this is coming from a guy that currently enjoying the sh*t out of GW2 and looking foward to enjoying DF: UW, AoW and AA.

You're wrong, its not 6.5 per expansion, its not per box either, its 6.5 million accounts which can me from 1 box sale to all 4 box sales, ...

completely agree. so far i've seen the press online do everything they can to add together the special deals and such to improve the numbers far beyond what they actually are like adding annual passes n such.

The only accurate data out there is the estimated 700k sold on launch day. Not really impressive considering Cata sold 3.3 mil within the first 24hrs.

Originally posted by Ramonski7

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Ramonski7

I even tried to look up GW numbers for how the original sold as oppose to the expansions and no one is bothering to seperate the numbers. They are all lumped together as one big number at 6.5 million. And if you divide that number by the number of expansions then you get roughly 1.6 million per release. Now compare that to WoW's numbers at 4.7 million per release with the exception to the last expansion at 2.7 million. And if you lump together Blizzard's game + expansions like GW's, you get a whopping 21.5 million copies of WoW roughly sold.

ive only mentioned Blizzard compared to Blizzard in this thread

 

but since ANET has been mentioned - they too have a site for press releases

http://www.guildwars.com/events/press/releases/

 

ncsoft used to give a 2 year quarterly history of new GW1 accounts being sold

(not to be confused w campaigns -- these are new accounts)

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/ncsoft-releases-quarterly-report-guild-t10355520.html?s=03c4de217efb063cd387c2af2fa6ac77&t=10355520

QTR / Accounts
Sep 2006 / 2,447,000
Dec 2006 / 3,122,000
Mar 2007 / 3,555,000
Jun 2007 / 3,917,000
Sep 2007 / 4,500,000
Dec 2007 / 4,878,000
Mar 2008 / 5,159,000
Jun 2008 / 5,377,000
Sep 2008 / 5,589,000
Dec 2008 / 5,803,000

Those numbers INCLUDE campaigns sold as well since you cannot have a expansion without the original. I thought I explained that. They never released the sales figures of each campaigns sold seperately. I'm sure if Blizzard released a 2 year spread of how many WoW accounts were added since it's original release date til Dec 2006 you'd see number dwarfing those of GW.

You can hold any of the 2 campagins without the original, and you can hold the expansion with any of the 3 campaigns, you're wrong again.

Originally posted by Ramonski7

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Ramonski7

I even tried to look up GW numbers for how the original sold as oppose to the expansions and no one is bothering to seperate the numbers. They are all lumped together as one big number at 6.5 million. And if you divide that number by the number of expansions then you get roughly 1.6 million per release. Now compare that to WoW's numbers at 4.7 million per release with the exception to the last expansion at 2.7 million. And if you lump together Blizzard's game + expansions like GW's, you get a whopping 21.5 million copies of WoW roughly sold.

ive only mentioned Blizzard compared to Blizzard in this thread

 

but since ANET has been mentioned - they too have a site for press releases

http://www.guildwars.com/events/press/releases/

 

ncsoft used to give a 2 year quarterly history of new GW1 accounts being sold

(not to be confused w campaigns -- these are new accounts)

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/ncsoft-releases-quarterly-report-guild-t10355520.html?s=03c4de217efb063cd387c2af2fa6ac77&t=10355520

QTR / Accounts
Sep 2006 / 2,447,000
Dec 2006 / 3,122,000
Mar 2007 / 3,555,000
Jun 2007 / 3,917,000
Sep 2007 / 4,500,000
Dec 2007 / 4,878,000
Mar 2008 / 5,159,000
Jun 2008 / 5,377,000
Sep 2008 / 5,589,000
Dec 2008 / 5,803,000

Those numbers INCLUDE campaigns sold as well since you cannot have a expansion without the original. I thought I explained that. They never released the sales figures of each campaigns sold seperately. I'm sure if Blizzard released a 2 year spread of how many WoW accounts were added since it's original release date til Dec 2006 you'd see number dwarfing those of GW.

At least as far as I understand, the key word is "accounts activated" (from the actual report linked in the gwguru thread). For example, I have prophecies, if I buy factions, then I wouldn't be counted as a new account since the new campaign is applied to my already existing account (unless I actually create a new account which I'm sure some people did). You have to take into account that GW1 had only one expansion (Eye of the North) with Factions and Nightfall being campaigns, not expansions. The difference is that they were basically standalone games, you could buy any of the three campaigns and play it completely without ever needing to have the other two, and even play the expansion with only one campaign.

I do agree that WoW sold a LOT more than GW1, nothing to contend there, just clearing up some things on the GW1 front.

Originally posted by L0C0Man

I do agree that WoW sold a LOT more than GW1, nothing to contend there, just clearing up some things on the GW1 front.

i agree - no contest  :)

Here is what I find interesting, supposidly according to Gamasutra  Mop sold 2.3 million copues and WoW is back to 10 million. Does that meant that over 7 1/2 million decided not to go Panda ? Says a lot of 2 out of every 3 players did not buy the expansion.

I have a lifetime sub but have not played LoTRO for 5 hours in the last year or so but I  still am considering purchasing the Rohan expansion just in case GW2 gets old to me

Originally posted by Jackdog

Here is what I find interesting, supposidly according to Gamasutra  Mop sold 2.3 million copues and WoW is back to 10 million. Does that meant that over 7 1/2 million decided not to go Panda ? Says a lot of 2 out of every 3 players did not buy the expansion.

I have a lifetime sub but have not played LoTRO for 5 hours in the last year or so but I  still am considering purchasing the Rohan expansion just in case GW2 gets old to me

From what I remember reading, about half (maybe a bit more) of the WoW players are in China, so if there are 10 million active players now, that makes it about 2.3 million of copies sold out of a total of 5 million (since MoP isn't yet available in China). All we can get from that so far is that about 1 out of every 2 WoW players hasn't bought MoP yet.. but that doesn't mean they won't buy it, or that they will either.

Also you have to take into account that there are several players that bought 1 year of WoW time after October 2011 (so they still count as active players) to take advantage of the offer to get Diablo 3 for free and might not be interested in MoP, but we can't say how many are there or how big of an impact will be once it ends (it could be big, it could be nothing).

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by fenistil

http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?id=6147208

2,7 mln copies in first week.   Subs rise to 10 mln. 

Now important will be figures 1  and 3 months from now on.

 MOP undersold LK - WOTLK had 2.8m in the first 24 hours

http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/11/20/wows-lich-king-sells-record-2-8-million-copies-in-24-hours/

 

That really shouldn't be surprising.  WoW was at its peak when WOTLK came out, and had just come off arguably one of the best expansions any MMO has ever had in The Burning Crusade.  So there's no doubt that WOTLK was going to be huge.  Once WOTLK hit, the raiding game opened up to more players than ever before, and although it had mixed reviews from veterans of the game due to the simplification of content, it was generally thought of as a solid expansion, and made the endgame raids and dungeons even more accessible than previously.  

Cata carried a lot of promise with it due to the restructuring of the old world content, which explained its great sales figures, but was a disappointment to many people.  It just wasn't a very good expansion.  Then Blizzard announced...pandas.  

So honestly, nobody should have expected this expansion to outsell Cata or any of the previous ones.  But I will say this:  I've been pleasantly surprised at how good the expansion is.  Blizzard did a solid job with this one, and the general feeling in the community is that this expansion was a step up from Cataclysm.  And for all the hype that GW2 got, it took MoP only a week to surpass GW2's total sales.  

Originally posted by RebelScum99

I've been pleasantly surprised at how good the expansion is.  Blizzard did a solid job with this one, and the general feeling in the community is that this expansion was a step up from Cataclysm.  

agree - ive heard people are very happy w MOP content