Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Leucrotta

Originally posted by Zorndorf

 

No you are wrong.

I said the BEST selling PC game in each year of 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008  and the first half of 2009 was WOW an its expansions.

You add the total numbers of sold copies. . Each year a WOW product was individually  the best selling PC game.

Wow is by far the most succesful (money wise) maker in the complete game industry.

It has the EQUIVALENT ot 35.000.000 to 40.000.000 copies in subs worth alone (7 M subs * times 30 dollars * 6 subs cards).

That's ... the yearly 1.2 Billion dollars seen in its earnings spreadsheet. :))))))

Most games come only to 5 to 20 million dollars because they simply are NOT subs based.

 

 

Awesome how much do they get to keep from that?

 

Offline games sell and thats it no upkeep costs from servers devs gm's etc.

Nintendo makes more money in the industry then Blizzard

 

I was talking of the single most important product in the video game industry: WOW.

Nintendo publishes 100's of games and hardware.

 

they dont only publish, Mario im sure made more money alone then WoW and is made by nintendo

Zelda is made by Nintendo which sold over 40 million units which you claim it takes so there you go

Final Fantasy sold over 40 million units

Dude i can go on and on but yuo will never take those glasses off anyways

Here a list of the top 10 Franchise as imo Warcraft is an franchise

List of best-selling video game franchises

Top ten best-selling video game franchises:

1. Mario (210 million)
2. Pokémon (186 million)
3. Tetris (125 million)
4. The Sims (100 million)
5. Need for Speed (almost 100 million)
6. Final Fantasy (85 million)
7. Grand Theft Auto (70 million)
8. Madden NFL (70 million)
9. FIFA (65 million)
10. The Legend of Zelda (57 million)

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Leucrotta

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Leucrotta

Originally posted by Zorndorf

 

No you are wrong.

I said the BEST selling PC game in each year of 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008  and the first half of 2009 was WOW an its expansions.

You add the total numbers of sold copies. . Each year a WOW product was individually  the best selling PC game.

Wow is by far the most succesful (money wise) maker in the complete game industry.

It has the EQUIVALENT ot 35.000.000 to 40.000.000 copies in subs worth alone (7 M subs * times 30 dollars * 6 subs cards).

That's ... the yearly 1.2 Billion dollars seen in its earnings spreadsheet. :))))))

Most games come only to 5 to 20 million dollars because they simply are NOT subs based.

 

 

Awesome how much do they get to keep from that?

 

Offline games sell and thats it no upkeep costs from servers devs gm's etc.

Nintendo makes more money in the industry then Blizzard

 

I was talking of the single most important product in the video game industry: WOW.

Nintendo publishes 100's of games and hardware.

 

they dont only publish, Mario im sure made more money alone then WoW and is made by nintendo

Zelda is made by Nintendo which sold over 40 million units which you claim it takes so there you go

Final Fantasy sold over 40 million units

Dude i can go on and on but yuo will never take those glasses off anyways

 

Here a list of the top 10 Franchise as imo Warcraft is an franchise

List of best-selling video game franchises

Top ten best-selling video game franchises:

1. Mario (210 million)
2. Pokémon (186 million)
3. Tetris (125 million)
4. The Sims (100 million)
5. Need for Speed (almost 100 million)
6. Final Fantasy (85 million)
7. Grand Theft Auto (70 million)
8. Madden NFL (70 million)
9. FIFA (65 million)
10. The Legend of Zelda (57 million)

EVEN if you would take ALL different games from ALL franchises.
 

You loose on this one, because WOW sells the equvalent of 40.000.000 traditional copies of a game EACH year.

And this for 5 years long now.

Without even counting the basic products of WOW, TBC, WotLK.

Only LOOKING at the income of 6 million monthly subscribers......paying every two months ... 30 bucks ...

NO product comes even near. Not even total different games from 25 years of game industry
 

Awesome isn't it ??? :

LOL

 

 

 

No its not you didnt caculate the upkeep cost of  WoW you claim it makes the most money and im not convinced it does

1.2 billion is nice but if you have 1.3 billion (example)costs it kinda blows dusnt it.

and posted this before as well when an offline game ships its done, no more costs for server,dev,gm, etc

And as i posted before Warcraft is an Franchise not a single product. WoW wudnt be the same without the success of the warcraft games

and for your interest Mario 1 alone sold over 40 million copies.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Leucrotta

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Leucrotta

they dont only publish, Mario im sure made more money alone then WoW and is made by nintendo

Zelda is made by Nintendo which sold over 40 million units which you claim it takes so there you go

Final Fantasy sold over 40 million units

Dude i can go on and on but yuo will never take those glasses off anyways

 

Here a list of the top 10 Franchise as imo Warcraft is an franchise

List of best-selling video game franchises

Top ten best-selling video game franchises:

1. Mario (210 million)
2. Pokémon (186 million)
3. Tetris (125 million)
4. The Sims (100 million)
5. Need for Speed (almost 100 million)
6. Final Fantasy (85 million)
7. Grand Theft Auto (70 million)
8. Madden NFL (70 million)
9. FIFA (65 million)
10. The Legend of Zelda (57 million)

EVEN if you would take ALL different games from ALL franchises.
 

You loose on this one, because WOW sells the equvalent of 40.000.000 traditional copies of a game EACH year.

And this for 5 years long now.

Without even counting the basic products of WOW, TBC, WotLK.

Only LOOKING at the income of 6 million monthly subscribers......paying every two months ... 30 bucks ...

NO product comes even near. Not even total different games from 25 years of game industry
 

Awesome isn't it ??? :

LOL

 

 

 

 

No its not you didnt caculate the upkeep cost of  WoW you claim it makes the most money and im not convinced it does

1.2 billion is nice but if you have 1.3 billion costs kinda blows dudnt it

And as i posted before Warcraft is an Franchise not a single product. WoW wudnt be the same without the success of the warcraft games

 

and for your interest Mario 1 alone sold over 40 million copies.

Listen the fact that Wow brings in the equivalent money of 40 million copies sold EACH year for a SINGLE game can't be denied.
 

You had to resort to "trics" like franchising.

Wow is WOW (not WC1 or WC3).

And the costs ?????

Well ... getting the dollars on your bank account to deliver .... a 18 number digit is VERY costly to produce I would say.

:))))

Of course they have costs, but so is printing a manual and distributing packages to shops. Have you seen what's IN the package of bi monthly sub card ? One flyer and ... a number.

 

I didn't. i didn

its not 40 Million ffs, offline games dont have upkeep costs.

you think the servers are free?, the devs gm's customer support etc all work for an apple and an egg?

servers down, which result in free days, ungoing adverts,multipe websites/forums etc etc

Costs are more then producing an 18 digit play card number.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

 

This topic is about a WOW killer.

I showed you above there is NO other SINGLE  game (even complete franchises over 25 years and multi platform) that could compare to the total revenus of WOW in the past 5 years.

The bottom line is: MILLIONS of people - take around 6 to 7 M montly subs - pay around 180 dollars - EACH year to play WOW.

It is the equivalent of 40.000.000 copies sold for a "traditional" video game.

You say there are costs to maintain.

I agree.

But the ABOVE is the reason why everyone and his dog want a piece of the Blizzard cake.

And it shows (by the craptastic trials we had to endure).

Designers, developpers and ... players are simply not aware "subscriptions" are not even evident.

And I mean the WESTERN method of subs, not the almost free internet cafés or the FTP models.

----> A wow killer needs to do better (subs wise).

Nobody will do better in the coming decenium.

You don't need to be Einstein to understand this.

WHO in the world would pay 180 dollars just to play ONE game for a LOT of months.

Apart for WOW apparently very few.......

In revenus yes WoW tops about everything but that dusnt mean anything.

You stated Blizzard made the most money and that i just dont believe so you showed me nothing

But anyways i dont need a million links stats or anything to post that WoW wont be killed coz it wont.

i dont see it loose millions of subs in a year orso and even 5 years onwards ppl will still play wow.

Imo WoW is killed when Blizzard needs to pull the plug coz then it is no more, thus dead.

and that will never happen due to another game

Originally posted by arthen999

for the past few years we have heard the term wowkiller .theres been various contenders for the title which have so far failed to be anything more than niche games (  thats not to say they are bad i m playing both age of conan and lord of the rings online atm ) .At  a time when WoW subs are proberbly on the decline ( beyond the situation in China) Aion looks like it could be the first game since the release of wow that could appeal to a mass market and for once its not something thats easy to write off ( insptie of what wow fanboys say about asian grinders etc etc ) but how many subs does it have to steal from WoW to be considered a WoW killer . If we are waiting for a game to take wow offline we ll be waiting another 10 -20 years . lets face it ultima is still about .

It is better to talk about which game will dethrone WoW, instead of which game will kill WoW.

The answer to that is easy, once the mmo has the same amount of subs as WoW +1

Originally posted by Leucrotta

Originally posted by Zorndorf

 

This topic is about a WOW killer.

I showed you above there is NO other SINGLE  game (even complete franchises over 25 years and multi platform) that could compare to the total revenus of WOW in the past 5 years.

The bottom line is: MILLIONS of people - take around 6 to 7 M montly subs - pay around 180 dollars - EACH year to play WOW.

It is the equivalent of 40.000.000 copies sold for a "traditional" video game.

You say there are costs to maintain.

I agree.

But the ABOVE is the reason why everyone and his dog want a piece of the Blizzard cake.

And it shows (by the craptastic trials we had to endure).

Designers, developpers and ... players are simply not aware "subscriptions" are not even evident.

And I mean the WESTERN method of subs, not the almost free internet cafés or the FTP models.

----> A wow killer needs to do better (subs wise).

Nobody will do better in the coming decenium.

You don't need to be Einstein to understand this.

WHO in the world would pay 180 dollars just to play ONE game for a LOT of months.

Apart for WOW apparently very few.......

In revenus yes WoW tops about everything but that dusnt mean anything.

You stated Blizzard made the most money and that i just dont believe so you showed me nothing

 

But anyways i dont need a million links stats or anything to post that WoW wont be killed coz it wont.

i dont see it loose millions of subs in a year orso and even 5 years onwards ppl will still play wow.

 

Imo WoW is killed when Blizzard needs to pull the plug coz then it is no more, thus dead.

and that will never happen due to another game

Actually, and I don't agree much with Zorndorf, Blizzard did make the most money with WoW, there is no other game that can compare to it.

Upkeep costs are nothing, if an mmo with 200k subs can be profitable, then imagine what 11,6 million players can bring in. There is a reason why the largest Production / Developper house in the world is called Activision Blizzard and not Activision Vivendi ...

Just wanted to point that out.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

There won't be a Wow killer in the fantasy mmorpg world.

In a market where one player has 60%, you can't win that race with exactly the same ingredients, because in the end you just reinforce the market positions.

What are the ingredients to avoid: fantasy, level based, quests/experience gains, gear , long Raid content and PvP.

Consider the following.  World of warcraft dethroned Everquest and it was built on the same exact building blocks of everquest.  So you would be incorrect to say something is impossible or could never happen, because it already has. 

It is unlikely to happen right now, but the possibility exists. 

Everquest was a bit of a different case as it was a particuarly niche title in a niche period. WoW is pretty much mainstream. However, that's not to say no title will become more popular than WoW. The upcomming big titles like Final Fantasy- who will no doubt be aiming to make their offering more accessible than it's last- may be able to capture a big no of subscriptions. Whether WoW is dwinding then is the next question; that is a difficult one as being a subscription-based game (well sort-of) and comparing that to it's continuously high battle.net numbers (of WC3, and Starcraft) you don't know if that will make things a different case than it's ever popular previous offerings.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

 **"This April, AION officially made a challenge against WoW in China. Before its open beta, AION had already gained feverish popularity among Chinese players. A large number of players, some of whom are WoWers, had very high expectations on Aion. During the second closed beta this April, everyday there would be thousands of players waiting on the server. This kind of phenomenon continued until it went into open beta. Now, two months have passed, and we began to feel that the popularity of AION has remarkably cooled off. There are many reasons for the change, but one of them is probably because Shanda started to charge money for Aion. Shanda's promotions for Aion were so successful that many players were attracted to try AION out. However, most of them came for its fame only and a majority of players chose to leave after it began to charge money, which, to some extent at least, indicates that this game is not attractive enough."

Source: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-07-02/20090702054523101,1.shtml

Lol ya that is a reliable source.

And its not so uncommen either that a p2p game charge people after open beta ....

sure some ppl quit after that, like all games that give away free trials keep all of the trailers as subs:/

Try Q2 figures for a more reliable one and you will see a growth of 41 servers in china

Originally posted by Leucrotta

Originally posted by Zorndorf

 **"This April, AION officially made a challenge against WoW in China. Before its open beta, AION had already gained feverish popularity among Chinese players. A large number of players, some of whom are WoWers, had very high expectations on Aion. During the second closed beta this April, everyday there would be thousands of players waiting on the server. This kind of phenomenon continued until it went into open beta. Now, two months have passed, and we began to feel that the popularity of AION has remarkably cooled off. There are many reasons for the change, but one of them is probably because Shanda started to charge money for Aion. Shanda's promotions for Aion were so successful that many players were attracted to try AION out. However, most of them came for its fame only and a majority of players chose to leave after it began to charge money, which, to some extent at least, indicates that this game is not attractive enough."

Source: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-07-02/20090702054523101,1.shtml

 

Lol ya that is a reliable source.

And its not so uncommen either that a p2p game charge people after open beta ....

sure some ppl quit after that, like all games that give away free trials keep all of the trailers as subs:/

Try Q2 figures for a more reliable one and you will see a growth of 41 servers in china

You said it yourself...its not uncommon for them to charge after open beta .....that is exactly what the article said. And maybe they did add servers but so what? WAR did as well and look where they are.

Ask yourself this: If the success of Aion since they started with the massive promotions and ads had continued since they started charging, then why not release sub numbers? Aion is about to launch in NA and don't you think it would a marketers dream to say "We had X number of subs in China....its awesome...look how great the game is doing". They would hype the numbers continuously if the numbers were good. But since open beta ended, we have heard nothing from NCSoft about data or sub numbers. Nothing. Why is that?

Originally posted by templarga

Originally posted by Leucrotta

Originally posted by Zorndorf

 **"This April, AION officially made a challenge against WoW in China. Before its open beta, AION had already gained feverish popularity among Chinese players. A large number of players, some of whom are WoWers, had very high expectations on Aion. During the second closed beta this April, everyday there would be thousands of players waiting on the server. This kind of phenomenon continued until it went into open beta. Now, two months have passed, and we began to feel that the popularity of AION has remarkably cooled off. There are many reasons for the change, but one of them is probably because Shanda started to charge money for Aion. Shanda's promotions for Aion were so successful that many players were attracted to try AION out. However, most of them came for its fame only and a majority of players chose to leave after it began to charge money, which, to some extent at least, indicates that this game is not attractive enough."

Source: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-07-02/20090702054523101,1.shtml

 

Lol ya that is a reliable source.

And its not so uncommen either that a p2p game charge people after open beta ....

sure some ppl quit after that, like all games that give away free trials keep all of the trailers as subs:/

Try Q2 figures for a more reliable one and you will see a growth of 41 servers in china

You said it yourself...its not uncommon for them to charge after open beta .....that is exactly what the article said. And maybe they did add servers but so what? WAR did as well and look where they are.

Ask yourself this: If the success of Aion since they started with the massive promotions and ads had continued since they started charging, then why not release sub numbers? Aion is about to launch in NA and don't you think it would a marketers dream to say "We had X number of subs in China....its awesome...look how great the game is doing". They would hype the numbers continuously if the numbers were good. But since open beta ended, we have heard nothing from NCSoft about data or sub numbers. Nothing. Why is that?

lol game maker dont show number and if they do they do it like perfect world 

we go 50 million player

lol active acount character passive etc

you never get the real picture why you think lot of company dont really like to be listed on xfire even tho its inaccurate over a month i give a pretty fair picture of a game 

so when it show wow is on the top it means its prob very close to the top 

yes some game arent even show 

maybe in the futur this thing will be worldwide adopted 

Damn, does Zorndorfn really has to crush every topic on mmorpg.com with his copy&paste of his 10 different posts he has. This and this really annoys me...

As has been stated before the only game that will kill wow is wow.  Halfway through burning crusades the game started dieing for me although it took a couple more months of brain dead boredom for me to realize it.  So wow has been killed, at least for me and i dont think im alone.  If you enjoy the game then by all means play it but do yourself a favor and every once in awhile step back and ask yourself if your enjoying the game or just trying to keep alive the fun you once had with it.

Originally posted by templarga

Originally posted by Leucrotta

Originally posted by Zorndorf

 **"This April, AION officially made a challenge against WoW in China. Before its open beta, AION had already gained feverish popularity among Chinese players. A large number of players, some of whom are WoWers, had very high expectations on Aion. During the second closed beta this April, everyday there would be thousands of players waiting on the server. This kind of phenomenon continued until it went into open beta. Now, two months have passed, and we began to feel that the popularity of AION has remarkably cooled off. There are many reasons for the change, but one of them is probably because Shanda started to charge money for Aion. Shanda's promotions for Aion were so successful that many players were attracted to try AION out. However, most of them came for its fame only and a majority of players chose to leave after it began to charge money, which, to some extent at least, indicates that this game is not attractive enough."

Source: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-07-02/20090702054523101,1.shtml

 

Lol ya that is a reliable source.

And its not so uncommen either that a p2p game charge people after open beta ....

sure some ppl quit after that, like all games that give away free trials keep all of the trailers as subs:/

Try Q2 figures for a more reliable one and you will see a growth of 41 servers in china

You said it yourself...its not uncommon for them to charge after open beta .....that is exactly what the article said. And maybe they did add servers but so what? WAR did as well and look where they are.

The post said Aion is in decline, and Q2 shows it isnt. or you think they open 41 servers in china without people to populate it?

War opened  its servers at launch. NCsoft is adding servers on demand.

And why NC dont release subs, no idea to this point they never did, just servers in quarter reports.

Originally posted by Leucrotta

Originally posted by templarga

Originally posted by Leucrotta

Originally posted by Zorndorf

 **"This April, AION officially made a challenge against WoW in China. Before its open beta, AION had already gained feverish popularity among Chinese players. A large number of players, some of whom are WoWers, had very high expectations on Aion. During the second closed beta this April, everyday there would be thousands of players waiting on the server. This kind of phenomenon continued until it went into open beta. Now, two months have passed, and we began to feel that the popularity of AION has remarkably cooled off. There are many reasons for the change, but one of them is probably because Shanda started to charge money for Aion. Shanda's promotions for Aion were so successful that many players were attracted to try AION out. However, most of them came for its fame only and a majority of players chose to leave after it began to charge money, which, to some extent at least, indicates that this game is not attractive enough."

Source: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-07-02/20090702054523101,1.shtml

 

Lol ya that is a reliable source.

And its not so uncommen either that a p2p game charge people after open beta ....

sure some ppl quit after that, like all games that give away free trials keep all of the trailers as subs:/

Try Q2 figures for a more reliable one and you will see a growth of 41 servers in china

You said it yourself...its not uncommon for them to charge after open beta .....that is exactly what the article said. And maybe they did add servers but so what? WAR did as well and look where they are.

 

The post said Aion is in decline, and Q2 shows it isnt. or you think they open 41 servers in china without people to populate it?

 

War opened  its servers at launch. NCsoft is adding servers on demand.

 

And why NC dont release subs, no idea to this point they never did, just servers in quarter reports.

Actually, I just read the 2nd Quarter Report and I see nothing about opening any servers to be honest. However, if you do look at the Q1 reports, Aion in China had 113 servers and now (per below) 154. So I assume that is where the 41 servers come from.

According to the report, there are 154 servers in China as of Quarter 2, 2009 (launch was in April - 16th to be exact), 43 servers in Korea (launch was in Nov. 2008), 19 servers in Taiwan (launch in July), and 9 servers in Japan (launch in July as well).

More so, if you read the reports in detail, Aion sold ~2000 fewer copies in Q2 than Q1.

You have to download the report but it can be found here: http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

Here is a link to the Q1 data: http://www.curse.com/articles/aion-en-news/473589.aspx

It is interesting to me that they only added 2 servers to Korea and 41 servers to China and the game is opening with a small fraction of servers in Taiwan and Japan.

Okay so bare with me for a minute......

It was reported, at launch in China that Aion had 1 million players. Source here: http://www.aionsource.com/forum/news-announcements/13352-1-million-china-growing.html

So that means, and again its rough math, 1 million players on 113 servers in China.

Since then (April 19th), supposedly the game has grown to 3.5 million players.

As a matter of fact, the 3.5 million number first surfaces in May. Source: http://pc.ign.com/articles/985/985368p1.html

So let me get this straight.

The game launched in China on April 16th with 113 servers. Those servers have roughly 1 million players. That averages out to roughly 8849 players per server.

One month later (or some point in Q2), according to the data 41 servers has been added in China and none in Korea (the additional 2 servers were added in Q1 so they are not counted - they would have been included in the original numbers).

So how in the bloody hell do 2.5 million players fit on 41 servers?

Seriously, if it takes 113 for a million players, how can 2.5 million fit on 41? 41 servers would be more like 500,000 players and not 2.5 million.

Further, if they are averaging 8849 players per server, and were required to open more servers and opened 41, to support that many players the servers would have to hold....get this.....60,975 players EACH!!!!! There is no way.

Again, I am just using the data provided.

So is 3.5 million correct? Not at all, it is logistically not possible and the DATA does NOT support it.

It is more like a typo occurred and it should have been 1.5 million players.

Otherwise, someone explain to me how 2.5 million players can fit on less than half of the servers 1 million players can fit on. And why is it takes 113 servers for 1 million players, why it only takes 41 for 2.5 million.

I agree with this mate, btw nowhere did i claim Aion has 3.5 million subs. nor did NCSoft, it just wet finger guess work from unreliable sources.

But saying that Aion is in decline as of april is just not true if you look at the q2 figures and that was my point.

sales may went down a bit but it dusnt mean sales stopped. so Aion is still growing.

Also im not really sure bout this but i thought china dont buy Aion but pay per minute

Seeing the added servers i may asume people keep playing

I think  it will take about 6 million subs to be the wow killer, and only if those 6 mil are from current wow players. Nothing is going to knock wow to the dirt and kill it, something sure as hell come along and knock it off its pedistal though.  Right now blizzard sweats nothing cause they got so many more subs than any other game, its ridiculous. Let a game steal more than half of their subs, make them shut down 50% of their servers and you got the wow killer.

The arguement that the only game that can kill wow is wow is a half truth, first we have to want to go(alot of us do), then we need something to go to(something we don't have yet).

Originally posted by Kilmar

Damn, does Zorndorfn really has to crush every topic on mmorpg.com with his copy&paste of his 10 different posts he has. This and this really annoys me...

Hit that 'Block' button. Ever since I tossed Zorn, Wizardry and the two greens in the Block bucket, forum browsing on MMORPG.com became much more enjoyable.

Originally posted by Xiaoki

Aion supporter/WoW troll starts another "Aion vs WoW" topic?

Now Ive seen everything.

on topic - an MMO would have to supplant WoW as the dominant MMO in the genre. Which means Aion(and lets face it you're talking about Aion) would have to gain 10 million subscribers or WoW would have to lose subscribers and go below the number of subscribers that Aion has.

Seriously, both of those scenarios are about as likely as Aion forcing WoW to close down.

However, even if that were to happen it would most likely only give Aion a press release talking point, nothing more. If you had actually read my posts about financials instead of going on about subscription numbers this and subscription numbers that you have seen that subscribers is becoming a meaningless number.

Really, so what if you have 10 million subscribers in China if you dont make any money from them. When WoW China was in full swing Asia accounted for about 10% of WoW revenue even though it was more than 50% of the subscribers.

I m hardly Aion supporter . I many be this time next year when i ve had enough time in game to experiance the extent of what it has to offer . All i can say is its no more an asian grinder than WoW is at its early levels .i only used Aion as the most immediate example . ( i somehow doubt champions will appeal to a mass market ) . We ve heard the phrase WoWkiller often enough but its really highly unlikly any game will actually kill WoW as in closing it down .

The only thing that can kill WOW is WOW itself and they're doing a good job of it too.  This instance issue they're having is really pissing people off.