Originally posted by Thornbeard

Originally posted by felix77

Originally posted by DZverev

 

Originally posted by felix77

Wow your funny, both were out long before WoW. Lineage 2 about a year before. They also have more real subs then WoW. In Asia they are actually monthly subs and not game time cards that WoW counts as subs. You buy one hour and they count you for a year as a sub lol. WoWs going down in the west, but due to AOC and WAR. Then not long after they will be released in Asia.

I'm sorry, but denying the extreme success of WoW is foolish and ignorant.

 

WoW did what no other game was doing at the time, It took a well known franchise and combined it with accessibility for players.

Unlike Lineage and Lineage 2, there was no grinding for half a year until you were at a competitive level. WoW gave something for everyone to do low or high level and made the leveling to 60 and 70 not feel like a grind, but actually enjoyable. That is a major part of its success.

I used to play Lineage 1 for 3 years, Lineage 2 for 1, and WoW for nearly 3. I quit Lineage 1 for Lineage 2 and Lineage 2 for WoW. I quit WoW because for a player who is centered on PvP it is lacking. Furthermore Blizzards style of lets release a new tier of gear every patch instead of focusing on other elements or balancing gear to not make one set absolute did not appeal to me.

Personally, I believe in term of losing subscriber base Blizzard has nothing to fear from any upcoming MMO, not even WAR or AOC, Bliz has their subscriber base locked down and loyal to the game, where they will not even care about any new MMO coming out.

  I'm not denying that WoW has millions of subs. They do, they have less monthly then Lineage at it's peak. All Asian countries buy WoW in game time cards. Hourly cards. So how much do you think a person has to buy before they are counted? Yes I do think they inflate their numbers. In every country. But especially in Asia where any amount of time purchased can be counted. The ignorance is just not knowing their Asian sub model. Lineage actually had 6 million monthly subs. WoW might have beeten that but not by nearly as much as they claim.

That's exactly what you are doing. You are living in denial when you expound these falsities without one shred of proof. If it could be proven that WOW fudged their numbers even marginally don't  you think it would have been proven by now? So you have no proof of it just a feeling. Well welcome to the world of conspiracy theorist. You get a free tin foil hat with membership.

For starters there are many companies(people) who don't need to even know anyone that works for Blizzard to be able to get accurate figures of their subscriber bases, whether concurrent or peak or whatever, and calculate their potential earnings.  As a side note and a funny way economies work, Asian players added a lot of numbers to WoW but isn't even a drop in the bucket for their earnings.  They don't make enough to cover the cost of running the game from the Asian market.  They pay by the hour to play, and if you convert the costs, it comes out to about .04 cents per hour.  Yes, in Asia it costs about 4 pennies to play WoW for 1 hour.

Secondly, STATISTICALLY speaking, almost 40 percent of users don't play WoW because it's a fun game.  Weird sounding huh?  Well the number one reason WoW is so successful is because Blizzard pretty much created the most successful business model their is right now.

As for the fun factor itself is that most analysts agree that the key to the games popularity is that, ironically, Blizzard built this massively MULTI-PLAYER game to be extremely fun to play ALONE.

And when they started, they didn't start with something other people couldn't think of.  They simply, but in the end not-so-simply, took the best strategies and elements from games before it, tweaked those, and added some of their own.

And it continues to be so successful because Blizzard is now a juggernaut who built up a tremendous reputation by only putting out high quality games that functioned well.  Their only downfall with that was it took forever for them to release a game.  With that they had age as well.  Over the years they built up a ravenous hardcore gamer fanbase before WoW was even a thought in the player's head.

One other thing I'd like to mention is currently they have the money and man power to make sure they are keeping a tight ship.  The game works, and works well.  It's solid, which accounts for keeping a lot of people playing.

Yep just letting you know, if you're new to the game, deciding whether to play or not, or are a veteran, you can listen to my in-game ramblings as well as the most recent GM interview and much more  We're located at FiestaHQ on Fiesta Podcast