Going to wait for xpac to go live so I can make my Demon Summoner be praetorian.  Not sure if I'll be a good or bad guy yet, but I'm sure I'll have a few levels to decide.  As for a secondary, probably leaning towards dark myself.   Maybe storm summoning as it looks like some of the demons are using ice attacks.

Originally posted by Methos12

Originally posted by DrowNoble

Cataclysm probably won't increase WoW's subs, but more likely keep those playing that are thinking about quitting.  Wrath came out and WoW's numbers didn't go up, so I don't see Cataclysm doing it either. 

I think you sorely underestimate the appeal of furries. :P

 Well one would of thought that Death Knights had enough "cool factor" to draw people in.  Apparently the subscription numbers tell otherwise.  Can't see how a makes-no-sense-lore-wise werewolf race will matter much. 

WoW needs new classes, period.  Blizzard seems to have an irrational aversion to making new classes.  Other mmos do it, why can't Blizz?

Originally posted by Garfunkel

I wouldn't get carried away praising Blizz although they are due some kudos. WoW's continued success isn't only testament to their design but also the utter failure of their competition.

There's been several big names come along and fail in spectacular form which really should have rocked WoW if they had taken a slightly different path and had another 18 months in development. Case in point: Warhammer - disappointment of the decade for me.
 

Personally, I only put so much credence in subscription stats that aren't independently verified. I know from personal experience that EU WoW has slacked off since the heady years of 2005-2006. Is WoW still getting 11mill+ subs, well Blizzard says so so it must be right, right?

 I don' think the competition had any utter failures.  WoW's success came from some simple factors. 

First, it had lower-end graphics allowing more people to be able to play it.  A lot of other mmos out there go for higher quality graphics which shrink their potential customer base.  EQ2 came out at the same time and SOE said (at that time) that no PC could play their game on max settings.  That's what SOE was going for with their game, Blizzard went a different path.

Second, WoW came right off the heels of Warcraft 3.  We had both Reign of Chaos (2002) and The Frozen Throne (2003) right after each other so to be able to jump right into the Warcraft universe was very appealing.

I don't think any one game will "kill" WoW, except maybe for WoW itself.  More likely you'll have several mmos that will chip away at WoW's subscription numbers.  Be interesting to see what effect (if any) The Old Republic has on WoW.

Basically "dumbing down" means making the game much easier than it was originally in order to try to get mass appeal.  Offhand, I can't think of a time when it benefitted a game really.

SWG is a good example of dumbing down nearly killing a game.  The good ol' NGE is still the subject of scorn, ridicule and jokes today.

Take a look at WoW, they been dumbing down for a while and their subscription numbers haven't gone up in 2 years.  Now, if I ran a company and doing Plan A was not increasing my customer base I'd drop it and go to Plan B.  For some odd reason though, Blizzard just doesn't seem to care and continues to dumb down a game that wasn't that hard in the first place.

Cataclysm probably won't increase WoW's subs, but more likely keep those playing that are thinking about quitting.  Wrath came out and WoW's numbers didn't go up, so I don't see Cataclysm doing it either. 

I would go back to WoW if.....

1.  They added new classes.  Yes, plural as in at least two.  Not recycle what's already there.  Not adding a new race.  A Comletely New Class that I'll want to run from 1-85.

2.  Drop the dungeon finder and instant bg queues.  What's the point of joining a guild now?  I don't need them can just queue up run whatever and leave.  Heck if I was an immoral player, I could ninja everything that drops since who cares I'll never see them again.

3.  Revert the pvp back to the old honor system.  You know, when people actually cared about winning.  Where you needed a certain rep to get the PvP Epic Sword of Pwnage.  Where doing stupid crap like mass murdering lowbies and their starter zone npcs had negative consequences.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Rockgod99

Originally posted by camp11111

Originally posted by Rockgod99

Originally posted by camp11111

Originally posted by DrowNoble

Thanks Sukiyaki glad to see someone acting rationally. 

Didn't know I'd ruffle the feathers of the WoW fanboys so badly.  It's like they are almost offended by the notion that there is any other mmo out there that has subs in the millions.  Not sure why, if the mmo market continues to grow can only lead to more mmos and (hopefully) improved existing mmos.  Heck Guild Wars has an estimated 2 million players, but people tend to ignore/forget that since the game has no subscription.  Just because Game A has X subs more than Game B doesn't mean that Game A is better or worse.

 

Acting rationally???

Being confronted with Blizzard's  1.2 billion dollars against NCsoft's 160 million dollars on a yearly basis of which only ... 43% comes from Aion it shows the "million players" of Aion aren't there. it is that simple.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/269073/NCsoft-Q4-2009-financial-report-released-today-.html

gives a very good break and analysis on NC soft total income for 2009:

55% of the total NCSoft income comes from ... ONE country: Korea.

 

And that Suk guy is a genious in twisting simply figures.

for example the "slide" he shows with some 600 ... million is in KOREAN money.

The ratio of today between US dollars and KW =        1,0000 KRW = 0,0009 USD

Comparing the income of Aion to WOW is around 43% of 160 million dollars to 1.2 billion dollars on a yearly basis as seen in the 2009 fiscal reports.

That's 5.8% of the WOW market. No way Aion has multi million subs (as the total income simply is not there).

US dollars that is

Logical: since 55% of all NCSoft income comes from South Korea.

Compared to Blizzard ----> NCSoft is a rather small publisher in view of the finances and only 43% comes from Aion.

Everyone with a decent open mind knows that by viewing the sheet balances.

Dude you edit your text and underline shit just like Zorndorf!!! Holy crap you are Zorndorf!!!!!!

Where's the

:))))))   <--------- laughing faces you always make zorn.

 

I am not Zorndorf, where is that dude btw?

At least we have some thing in common.

Logical financial sense.

 

 

Dude its crazy similar, you guys type up your posts exactly the same.

Might as well start using his laughing face  :))))) and you would replace the guy if you arent him.

He probably got banned for 6 months for using alts.

I have to agree, if Camp's not Zorndorf' its his twin brother.  Both have the same cult like fanaticism about WOW, similar belief that WOW somehow is a sandbox and the same caustic writing style.

Have to stay on topic, WOWs actually in a decline, even if they fail to acknowledge it.  That will all be erased by the new expansion, at least for a few months.

 Not sure if Cataclysm will boost WoW that much.  Blizzard said their subs haven't gone up in 2 years, that was with Wrath coming out.  If anything, one could argue that Wrath kept WoW's subs steady by keeping some players around who had been thinking of quitting.

Also, during the 2009 Blizzcon panel when they were announcing the changes in Cataclysm there were... less than positive responses from the audience.  The same audience which is made up of the hardcore Blizzard fans.  So if they weren't that happy, one can imagine how the average WoW player would of felt. 

Blizzard needs to dust off their creative minds and get to work on new classes.  So far, they just recycle existing classes over and over.  Horde Paladins and Alliance Shamans in BC gave the illusion of a "new" class for BC.  Wrath they added just 1 with the Death Knight.  Next xpac nothing new class-wise, just recycle existing classes... again.

Originally posted by camp11111

Originally posted by DrowNoble

They need new classes.  Period.  I don't care how many races they add, or how many ways the new races can be the old classes.  Once I've played a shadow priest then I've played a shadow priest.  I don't care if an ogre, goblin, worgen, murloc, deer or cattle can be one.

They have 11.5 million subs, they can afford to stop living out their Rock n Roll fantasies and get development going on a New Class.  Catacylsm is Blizz being lazy again and recycling the classes.  When they said there will be tauren paladins I did not care in the least.

 

Read about the redesign of the existent classes and talent settings. You'll need to learn to play your preferred classes again.

It is better to redesign 10 fundamental classes and the interaction between them then water down the game with X copies of the same class.

It's not the first time they do this (playing a class in ol' WOW and Wotlk is very different eg. retri pala's), but now they 'll add other variants.

 

 

 Redesigning a class, is the same thing as recycling it.  It's really great if they look at ret pally dps, but saying that now Taurens can be paladins isn't adding anything "new".  A tauren ret pally will swing a weapon the same way as any other paladin before him.  He'll Judge the same way, heal the same way, etc.   They can add 100 new races to play, but a shadow priest is STILL a shadow priest regardless of what the race it is.

Before Wrath they did a talent overhaul and I had to relearn how to talents with my various classes.  That didn't mean that there was anything particularly "new" about being a paladin, mage, hunter, etc.   Mage still nuked, hunter still shot with a pet dps, etc.  Does not matter how many ways they tweak the talents, the core class gameplay remains the same.  As I said before, once I played a shadow priest then I've played a shadow priest.

As it stands WoW is stagnating.  Blizzard refuses to add anything new to the core gameplay.  Yes, new zones and such are good and expected with an xpac.  However, would be nice to see some new classes running around.   Adding new races is easy, doesn't require any balancing really.  Plus the goblin and worgen models are already ingame so didn't require much work on their part to make them playable.

They need new classes.  Period.  I don't care how many races they add, or how many ways the new races can be the old classes.  Once I've played a shadow priest then I've played a shadow priest.  I don't care if an ogre, goblin, worgen, murloc, deer or cattle can be one.

They have 11.5 million subs, they can afford to stop living out their Rock n Roll fantasies and get development going on a New Class.  Catacylsm is Blizz being lazy again and recycling the classes.  When they said there will be tauren paladins I did not care in the least.

Originally posted by indiramourn

I also enjoyed E&B at launch.   And I appreciate and empathsize with all the nastalgia about Earth & Beyond in this thread.  But it wasn't just a perfect game that was killed by EA.  It had serious design issues.  The killer for me was no autopilot to fly between star systems (like EvE has).  Seriously, you had to steer your ship every step of the way.  This got to be boring very quickly and drove many potential players away early on--including me and my friends.  But I know that EA neglected the game, and issues like that could have been resolved quickly if the developers were better supported by EA. 

Uh it did have autopilot, you click on Waypoint A and then Waypoint Z and you fly right to it with no further input needed from you.  Could interrupt the flight if you wanted to stop for whatever reason too.  Only way you manually controlled your ship was when you were moving sublight in an area (like running around a zone after hopping off your mount in other mmos).  This is how my jenquai defender helped newbies get some explore levels, I'd group up with them and then we'd fly around the galaxy doing some trade routes for quick cash.  They were basically auto-following me most of the trip.

Any mmo without support will fail.  EA just seemed to just not care about E&B, so just tried to recover some capital.

Originally posted by Sukiyaki

Originally posted by camp11111

The complete group of ALL games combined make only 160 million dollars for NC soft for the complete year of 2009.

Blizzard counters that with 1.2 billion dollars.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/269073/NCsoft-Q4-2009-financial-report-released-today-.html

I don't know where you got those Aion figures. I am sure you invented them on the fly !

So unless you can post hardcore links, it just showed in the above link that NCsoft made:

(From Page 18)
Net income Consolidated for 2009 was 185,389 million KRW ($160,251,011.133 USD)
Net income parent for 2009 was 182,506 million KRW ($157,605,409.518 USD)

 

43% of that 160 millon US dollars is Aion and that's just .... 5.8% of what WOW makes in one year.

 And NEXT time: publish the links (like I do).

Get over it: those supposed pre launch 3.5 M never happened. Everyone knows it. Everyone can see the financials too. It was a launching gimmick and a bad one too for all the western players that fell into the trap.

 

Ill will tell it just one time:

You

compared

Blizzard Net Revenues/Sales

to

NCSofts Net Income

in believe/as if NC Softs Net Income is the same as their Sales/NetRevenue

Net Income is not the same thing as Net Revenues/Sales

If you are not even familar with the basic difference of those two significant entries, why do you even bother to refer to financial reports or argue about and with them?

 

To give a simplified sample:

Selling 1000 gameboxes for 50$ each results into  Net Revenues/Sales of 50.000$ => What you counted in case of Blizzard

The Net Income are those 50.000$, minus the total cost to produce those gameboxes, administary and operating expenditures, taxes, etc  the rest is the Net Income => what you counted for NCSoft as Net Revenues

Or simply just look under the correct name, when you want to compare the Net Revenues/Sales to Net Revenues/Sales.

Here a picture of what you did, on the source itself:

 

 

The source of all above numbers are  linked to int he post you just posted youself. I also named the source the quarterly reports of NC before. Typing "NCSoft" and "quarterly" into google should not be all unfamilar to someone who argues about NC Softs financies.

But here again the same source you cited just yourself before

www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/prfile.aspx

Here for each of the rest of all financially results i got the Aionsalesnumbers from.

www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

Aion Sales are to find like in every report on the page for "Sales Breakdown"

All the numbers both you and I cited are and stand still correct. Not your interpretation of them and those calculation results you came up with.

 

 Edit: let allone all the other ignored variables, like different population distribution in East and West and different salesmodels resulting into different  revenue results without even touching on the total subscribernumbers. But im too tired now...

Thanks Sukiyaki glad to see someone acting rationally. 

Didn't know I'd ruffle the feathers of the WoW fanboys so badly.  It's like they are almost offended by the notion that there is any other mmo out there that has subs in the millions.  Not sure why, if the mmo market continues to grow can only lead to more mmos and (hopefully) improved existing mmos.  Heck Guild Wars has an estimated 2 million players, but people tend to ignore/forget that since the game has no subscription.  Just because Game A has X subs more than Game B doesn't mean that Game A is better or worse.

Overall I would say WoW has a below average community.  If you were a true newbie and asked a legitimate question in general you're more often than not going to get a smart a** reply.  Not to say that WoW's community is all bad, there are some good people and guilds out there, just that the "idiots" tend to be louder and more noticeable.

Originally posted by Frostbite05

all they have to do is get rid of the mid level grind and the game would be great.

I agree with this.  Another issue was the lack of options.  When leveling up from 10-20 you go through the same zone doing the same quests you did the last time you leveled an alt.  Other games usually have more than 1 zone to go through to level until you get to the endgame.  Aion was go to Zone A til 20 then Zone B til 30, that got old quick.

Originally posted by Xondar123

Originally posted by wgc01

nice update, the game has come along way, still has a long way to go, but like any new mmo, has it's first year growing pains, nothing new in the mmo world, I have seen it time and time again in new mmo's over the last 10 years of play..:)

 

Have you also seen most new MMOs lose over half their subscribers in a single month too?

Launch month is critical.  If the game is ... lacking... word will get out and it won't recover.  Doesn't matter how much they improve the game later if it isn't working or fun now, they'll have trouble recovering from the bad PR.  AoC is vastly improved from its launch month, but some refuse to play it because of the issues it had initally.

Course, probably didn't help Cryptic's cause that they alienated a lot of trek fans by butchering the lore so badly.

Age of Conan comes close to this with its Destiny quest line.  Each quest builds on the previous and is only playable by YOU.  A single player instance solely designed for you and you alone.

The Old Republic claims it will do something even more, but I am dubious that even Bioware can pull off a tailor made story in a mmo as well as they do in games like KOTOR and Mass Effect.

The "phasing" tech that Blizzard used in Wrath is a step in the right direction.  By completing certain quests, my actions have "changed" the environment to my point of view.

Originally posted by Toquio3

From the same news article:

"A 28-year-old man dropped dead recently after playing his favourite game Starcraft for 50 hours non-stop without eating and drinking."

Ah, it puts a smile on my face to know that natural selection and survival of the fittest is still around and kicking ass.
 

A sad as the needless death of this child is, at least I can take comfort that the two moronic parents won't be breeding any time soon.   Boggles the mind how you can neglect a kid so long that it starves to death.  Love the statement that they haven't been near a PC, riiiight not many LAN sessions in prison I bet.

I also think it matters what type of game it is.  A game like DAoC is built around pvp, including meaningful pvp objectives that have a server-wide effect.  Go to CoH and the pvp is more of the "for fun" variety as the game is ripe with pve content to the point many don't miss the lack of pvp.

If you cram pvp in a game that doesn't really seem built for pvp, then that game as a whole has been diminished.  Instead of adding pve content, you excluded it for something pvp that doesn't seem to "fit". 

Originally posted by Xiaoki

 

---

Originally posted by DrowNoble

---

Originally posted by Xiaoki

 

 
 

---

Originally posted by DrowNoble
 
Aion currently has 7 million subs in Asia alone.  Just thought I'd throw that tidbit out there.

---

Yeah, and how about you throw a link out there as well.
 

---

 

 
Link 1, 2 months after Asian release:
http://www.curse.com/blogs/aion-en-news/archive/2009/05/23/aion-australian-distribution-and-current-number-of-subscriptions.aspx
Link 2, showing Aion sales and revenue growth Q4 2009
http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/overview.aspx
Link 3, for those that don't want to sort thru the above pdf:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/269073
As I'm sure you know companies are reluctant to publish numbers.  Since many in "the public" feel that those numbers are the ones that matter, if you post X subs today and it drops (even slightly) to Y subs next month, you risk people leaving or not starting up.  Remember, Aion was out in Asia a year before the western release Q4 09.  My point was that WoW is not the only mmo that has subs in the millions.  I'll also point out you don't need millions of subs to turn a profit either.

---

No where in any of those links you provided say that Aion has 7 million subscribers in Asia alone.

 

The only link that mentions subscribers is the first one which is a blog quoting another blog that was quoting a sourceless number from IGN.

Next time you are making up complete lies be a little more conservative, they're more believeable that way.

Can't do basic math eh?  Plus, it can't be a "complete" lie as I posted some links for your reading.  It's not my fault if you were either too lazy or too much in a hurry to read some, admittedly boring, financial reports.  A "complete lie" would be 100% fabricated, which according to the links cannot be true. 

Sales totals for the year were roughly 35% contributed by Aion and 41% for both Lineage games.  Now, the US Aion share is only 12% with 55% coming from Korea.  So that means that in Korea there is almost 5 times the subs as there are in the US, roughly speaking since box sales are included in that figure.  Aion contributed to 43% of their total sales, but if you just straight divided the sales value by that percentage you wouldn't take into account the number of boxes sold vs subscriptions.  The number comes to 18.2 million subs *IF* the game had been given away free, which is not correct.  If you took off the 700k boxes sold at/near launch that would drop the total subscription value to 15.8 million, which still seems to be a bit high but not impossible as this game is very big in Asia and less so in the US.

Ok enough numbers it's there if you don't want to believe my "complete lies" after all. 

I been an RPG fan since I was a child.  So an mmo is basically a RPG that doesn't end.  With alts or extra content, I can continue to play in that virtual world without having to "beat it" after getting to "the end" so to speak.

A second reason is the community.  Even if a game is the greatest game Ever Made, if the community is rude or non-existant doubtful I will stick with it.

Originally posted by Goob

Does anyone more informed than me know if any Blizzard employee could be fired by Activision? I would always like to think that Blizzard was special in their independence within their publishers claws.

For the record, I really enjoy Scott Jenning's articles.

What it is is Activision and Vivendi merged in Dec 2007, with Vivendi owning 52% stake.  Vivendi had already owned Blizzard at this time, so in July 2008 when the merger was finalized Activision essentially owned Blizzard as well officially.

It is possibly that an Activision exec could fire a Blizzard employee as a result.  Though Activision's track record as of late is just crank out the cash don't worry about quality games.  Since WoW is holding steady at 11.5 million subs, doubtful anyone at Blizzard will get sacked any time soon.