Is that why their subs have been slowly dwindling? It's lost over 600k since Rift came out. and lets not forget that a huge portion of their subs are from China. I am willing to bet any amount of money that if given the situation where everyone had to either start all over or be given the chance to exchange all their characters for equal characters in another game they would not start over and would switch to a different game.

People are relunctant to leave not because of the game itself, but because of the ties they have gained from the game. (friends, guild, time wasted, ect) There's no doubt in my mind that people would move on if those ties were cut. 

how the f... can someone play a game 5+ years man, there is something called boredom eweeeeeeee

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Is that why their subs have been slowly dwindling? It's lost over 600k since Rift came out.

 Active accounts not subs. One of these days people are going to get it right. Oh I forgot, it's all about hating on the game.

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Is that why their subs have been slowly dwindling? It's lost over 600k since Rift came out.

 Active accounts not subs. One of these days people are going to get it right. Oh I forgot, it's all about hating on the game.

??? If you're subscribed to the games then essentially the account IS active.

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Is that why their subs have been slowly dwindling? It's lost over 600k since Rift came out. and lets not forget that a huge portion of their subs are from China. I am willing to bet any amount of money that if given the situation where everyone had to either start all over or be given the chance to exchange all their characters for equal characters in another game they would not start over and would switch to a different game.

People are relunctant to leave not because of the game itself, but because of the ties they have gained from the game. (friends, guild, time wasted, ect) There's no doubt in my mind that people would move on if those ties were cut. 

Huge as in what percentage? i am pretty sure it is 50-50 or China has a slight edge in population. But even with recent loss in subs (which MMO has not lost subs after 7 years?) many MMO companies would kill to have numbers like that. Is it really a surprise that a game as old as WOW lost 600K subs? 

Originally posted by Chilliesauce

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Is that why their subs have been slowly dwindling? It's lost over 600k since Rift came out. and lets not forget that a huge portion of their subs are from China. I am willing to bet any amount of money that if given the situation where everyone had to either start all over or be given the chance to exchange all their characters for equal characters in another game they would not start over and would switch to a different game.

People are relunctant to leave not because of the game itself, but because of the ties they have gained from the game. (friends, guild, time wasted, ect) There's no doubt in my mind that people would move on if those ties were cut. 

Huge as in what percentage? i am pretty sure it is 50-50 or China has a slight edge in population. But even with recent loss in subs (which MMO has not lost subs after 7 years?) many MMO companies would kill to have numbers like that. Is it really a surprise that a game as old as WOW lost 600K subs? 

The fact of the matter is WoW came at a prime time when the mmorpg genre was just starting to gain ground and since it's release not many competitive games have been released and those that have were just not able to play catch up and people were still devoted to WoW.

But yes, china hold roughly 50% of WoW's population which has been discussed in the past. Just think how many people don't even play and just farm gold and sell it?

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Is that why their subs have been slowly dwindling? It's lost over 600k since Rift came out.

 Active accounts not subs. One of these days people are going to get it right. Oh I forgot, it's all about hating on the game.

??? If you're subscribed to the games then essentially the account IS active.

 Clueless. In China they don't even sell subscriptions. And for all you know they have gotten 800,000 new players in the last month. It's as stupid as the McDonalds argument.

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Is that why their subs have been slowly dwindling? It's lost over 600k since Rift came out.

 Active accounts not subs. One of these days people are going to get it right. Oh I forgot, it's all about hating on the game.

??? If you're subscribed to the games then essentially the account IS active.

 Clueless. In China they don't even sell subscriptions. And for all you know they have gotten 800,000 new players in the last month. It's as stupid as the McDonalds argument.

I'm well aware that China players pay per hour... it doesn't change the fact that they're essentially "subscribed".

WoW is still the best mmo, for 11.1 mil players out there. It just a preference thing, if you understand.  Does it caters to the lowest deniminator that some claim? Nope. Open your eyes and see that it just caters to a diffferent crowd, and majority in that.

The old world of Azeroth especially, have alot of subtle things, like there's bones left behind after you're dead, errie voices when you reach UC, coversation between Arthas and he's dad? Graveyard on top of mountain etc that delicates to certain dev, smooth and nice combat animations ( which alot of games fail, imo ), areas thats being block off and left you wonder whats behind it, a sense of mysterious to it, etc  etc etc.....

So Blizz have done alot of things right in there first mmo, apart from the WoW ip, if they hvnt and release something like VG during their release, they wont have the subs we looking at now. And because of the huge old world, there's still alot of rooms for expansions...

Will it die 1 day? depends, if blizz no longer brings new ideas to the game, if they keep sticking to raid-or-die, tedious dailies , too much phasing, focus on their new mmo, than yes slowly but surely their subs will 1 day, and a very long day , will die off.

Originally posted by 0guz

how the f... can someone play a game 5+ years man, there is something called boredom eweeeeeeee

If you can love a girl forever, than 5 years, or even 7 is nothing... :D

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Is that why their subs have been slowly dwindling? It's lost over 600k since Rift came out.

 Active accounts not subs. One of these days people are going to get it right. Oh I forgot, it's all about hating on the game.

??? If you're subscribed to the games then essentially the account IS active.

 Clueless. In China they don't even sell subscriptions. And for all you know they have gotten 800,000 new players in the last month. It's as stupid as the McDonalds argument.

I'm well aware that China players pay per hour... it doesn't change the fact that they're essentially "subscribed".

 Not by any cogent definition of the word "subscribed." You can hold a game time card for months without playing. Is your account active? No. Are you subscribed? No. Are you likely to play again in the future? Yes. Do you understand the distinction? Do the numbers you're putting out have any meaning? Not at all.

Originally posted by zymurgeist

   

 

 

 Not by any cogent definition of the word "subscribed." You can hold a game time card for months without playing. Is your account active? No. Are you subscribed? No. Are you likely to play again in the future? Yes. Do you understand the distinction? Do the numbers you're putting out have any meaning? Not at all.

 Blizz did state for the last 1 month of active account, same as you can dont log in, but as long as you are still paying a sub every month, you're still a sub.

In fact other mmo can also claim the same thing, if they can break into china

Originally posted by arctarus

Originally posted by zymurgeist

   

 

 

 Not by any cogent definition of the word "subscribed." You can hold a game time card for months without playing. Is your account active? No. Are you subscribed? No. Are you likely to play again in the future? Yes. Do you understand the distinction? Do the numbers you're putting out have any meaning? Not at all.

 Blizz did state for the last 1 month of active account, same as you can dont log in, but as long as you are still paying a sub every month, you're still a sub.

In fact other mmo can also claim the same thing, if they can break into china

 

Yeah but first they have to break into western market because i don't remember any P2P MMO that olds 4  million subs in western market. So i hardly doubt other MMOS would be able to claim anything if they breakout in China.

Originally posted by thexrated

You also have to consider that Blizzard is targeting quite different group of players with WoW than say CCP is with EVE. WoW is a good package for its target group. It offers, like you said, multitude of things to do in a very polished environment. It has also very low learning curve and is able to gather for type of gamers that do have that many hours in a week to play games, while still keeping more hardcore players interested. What it lacks in depth it does add with other features, creating an illusion of vast world with many things to do, but honestly, once you reach the maximum level, the stuff you can do is quite limited...but still very easy to access. And easy access, combined with others strong points, is what makes WoW the most popular MMO today. 

Using Eve and Wow in the same comparison about difficulty is about the most extreme and unrelated example anyone could possibly use.  Eve is anything but intuitive and wow is the complete opposite.   That isn't a criticism of Eve and I do often play myself. 

Most games that operate in the same segment that wow does are not massively difficult to play.  Most have extremely similar mechanics, but they lack an intuitive approach or are presented in such a way that they make things more difficult to relate to for no reason than poor presentation. 

However it does bring up an interesting point.  Eve being a very niche oriented game of harsh death consequence pvp space sandbox player driven economy game, yet its subscriber numbers dominate almost every other mmo in the genre.   That is a huge compliment to Eve, because a niche extreme game that is often refered to as "spreadsheets online" is kicking the everliving snot out even most flashy massive AAA game games that operate in the largest most mainstream mmo market.   That just further illustrates how much of the market those games are missing as a result of their poor condition.

Wow is a great product, but most certainly isn't the pinnacle of game design.  There is so much room for improvement or even catering to the interested of smaller segments in the overall fantasy setting that continue to go unaddressed.   Wow only dominates the market, because most of the market isn't delivering products on a competitive level.

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by tkoreaper

Is that why their subs have been slowly dwindling? It's lost over 600k since Rift came out.

 Active accounts not subs. One of these days people are going to get it right. Oh I forgot, it's all about hating on the game.

??? If you're subscribed to the games then essentially the account IS active.

 Clueless. In China they don't even sell subscriptions. And for all you know they have gotten 800,000 new players in the last month. It's as stupid as the McDonalds argument.

I'm well aware that China players pay per hour... it doesn't change the fact that they're essentially "subscribed".

 Not by any cogent definition of the word "subscribed." You can hold a game time card for months without playing. Is your account active? No. Are you subscribed? No. Are you likely to play again in the future? Yes. Do you understand the distinction? Do the numbers you're putting out have any meaning? Not at all.

That's why they look back and give their figures based on scope of a certain time frame... "X amount of accounts were playing within X amount of time". It's not that hard.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by thexrated

You also have to consider that Blizzard is targeting quite different group of players with WoW than say CCP is with EVE. WoW is a good package for its target group. It offers, like you said, multitude of things to do in a very polished environment. It has also very low learning curve and is able to gather for type of gamers that do have that many hours in a week to play games, while still keeping more hardcore players interested. What it lacks in depth it does add with other features, creating an illusion of vast world with many things to do, but honestly, once you reach the maximum level, the stuff you can do is quite limited...but still very easy to access. And easy access, combined with others strong points, is what makes WoW the most popular MMO today. 

Using Eve and Wow in the same comparison about difficulty is about the most extreme and unrelated example anyone could possibly use.  Eve is anything but intuitive and wow is the complete opposite.   That isn't a criticism of Eve and I do often play myself. 

Why I used EVE as a comparison is because it is often used to represent the opposite.

Most games that operate in the same segment that wow does are not massively difficult to play.  Most have extremely similar mechanics, but they lack an intuitive approach or are presented in such a way that they make things more difficult to relate to for no reason than poor presentation. 

However it does bring up an interesting point.  Eve being a very niche oriented game of harsh death consequence pvp space sandbox player driven economy game, yet its subscriber numbers dominate almost every other mmo in the genre.   That is a huge compliment to Eve, because a niche extreme game that is often refered to as "spreadsheets online" is kicking the everliving snot out even most flashy massive AAA game games that operate in the largest most mainstream mmo market.   That just further illustrates how much of the market those games are missing as a result of their poor condition.

Wow is a great product, but most certainly isn't the pinnacle of game design.  There is so much room for improvement or even catering to the interested of smaller segments in the overall fantasy setting that continue to go unaddressed.   Wow only dominates the market, because most of the market isn't delivering products on a competitive level.

It is not only about complexity of a game but how much time is required to achieve anything worthwhile. In WoW, you get rewarded for very little efford, but with older games, and in games like Aion, achieving anything takes a lot more time...and repetition. WoW did not use to be this easy, but today it is. Its target audience is quite different from that what it was during the launch. 

WoW vs Eve is comparing apples to oranges, but I understood where you were going. 

As for easy, that is how most games get when they age.  The difficulty hasn't really gotten less.  After nearly 7 years the gameplay is almost second nature and doesn't challenge the same way it used to.  It is hard to put that into words, so I hope that made sense.

That isn't to say that some things have gotten "easier" so to speak.  Less xp to level, more rewards for grouping at lower levels and so on.  Most of that is aimed at retaining and growing the player base instead of letting the game grow entirely top heavy like so many other games have done.   Removing things that used to be achievements, but have turned into little more than time sinks and barriers has a certain value for a games long term health.  It might not be as hard as it was back in the day, but soloing, running dungeons, completing quests and raids are all the same difficulty they used to be. 

I don't think the target audience is different as much as it is the existing playerbase has just gotten good at playing the game.  Not that there isn't some truth to what you say, but I just don't think it is as big as most make it out to be and fails to factor in the player element.

dont know if rift will beat it but it is a nice game with very nice graphic and smooth game

Agree with many... most popular =/= best.

It is true... WoW is the Ford of the MMO industry.  Ford died & came back to life... WoW will experience the same... soon... 

....swtor....

The title of this thread is misleading. Im sure everyone here can agree that WoW is not the BEST, its just the most populated and has the best income.

You can compare this to the car industry. Toyota is #1, but is DEFINITELY NOT THE BEST CAR!