Profile: Owyn
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• • Wheres all that money!?

  • Originally posted by CDCosta
    

    They count by anyone who ever made an account as a subscription, so all those free trials that they give out like candy are their numbers.

     

    That, however, is probably not true.  They say active accounts, so they probably DO mean active accounts.  Expired free trials and USA/EU players who have turned off their subscriptions are almost certainly not counted.  However, as I posted above, they do get to count a huge chunk of their Asian playerbase forever, even if not actively playing, because those are free accounts which never expire (pay by hour clubs).

  • Posted: 10/19/08 9:48 AM
    World of Warcraft
• • Wheres all that money!?

  • Originally posted by Thekandy
    

    Originally posted by AerthanTN
    

    Originally posted by MrTumN3s
    

    Anyone wonder where all that money that Blizzard receives each month from its " 9 million players" goes to? I'm mean, its definitely not going into our expansions or patches, so wheres it all going?

     

    Blizzard is usually pretty careful about not saying "9 million players", they usually say something like 10 million accounts, and they don't even say "active" accounts, so it could include gold farmers, banned accounts, even people who haven't played for years.  However Blizzard's parent company is a publically held company so they have to post their revenue numbers.  If you look at their revenue numbers and assume that subscribers are paying $15 a month they would have around 6.5 million active subscribers.  Some people might be paying less than $15 but at the same time this ignores all the other aspects of blizzard where they would have revenue, ie WoW box sales, server transfers, trading card game, diablo, books, etc. etc. etc.

     

     

    Of course the number includes gold farmers, unless something changed rapidly fast gold farmers are not given free accounts to farm with.

    You are assuming every player is paying $15 a month, which is incorrect.  People playing from most Asian countries (who represent a huge percent of WOW players now) are paying much less.

    It's important to also remember that WOW 'suffers' under the same issue Lineage 2 has in determining active player count.  Most Asian accounts *never* go inactive.  Unlike US and EU accounts, where when you turn of your subscription your account is made inactive, in Asia most players don't have subscriptions - they pay by the hour to play in what are basically internet cafes for gaming.  So when a person starts an account under those conditions, they might never play that account again - but it will never go inactive, either, so it still stays in the count of total accounts.  ;)

    It's sneaky, in a way.  Games with most or all of their market in the USA usually see a standard peak and then slow decline.  We won't see that decline very clearly at all in WOW, when it happens; because they will still be able to announce very high active account numbers, as most of their accounts will be free and never expire by that time.

  • Posted: 10/19/08 9:45 AM
    World of Warcraft
• • How come EQ II doesn't attract more players?

  • Originally posted by Jefferson81

    
    This is just not true because the non-PvP:ers outnumbers the PvP:ers with atleast 10 to 1.

    
    

     

    That perhaps used to be true five years ago; it is no longer so.

    In fact, even four years ago when WOW launched, their "pvp servers" (keeping in mind that every server had pvp, these just had more open range fighting) were more popular than the regular servers.  If you look at the last four years of MMO releases, virtually ALL of them have pvp as a major element.  That's not an accident - that's developers recognizing that players who appreciate having some form of limited, opt-in pvp are now the dominant demographic.

    These are not kids, either.  ;)  Remember, the average MMO player is still 26 - the same as it was six years ago!  Daedalus shows only a quarter of players are teens and preteens.  So it's not some "rampant influx of kiddies" that has made pvp more popular.  ;)  It's that the playerbase has changed their taste over time.

    Now, don't confuse opt-in pvp with full pvp - a very different story!  Although full or near-full pvp is gaining greater and greater traction (as seen by the heavy population on AOC and WAR open pvp servers), it's still nowhere near a majority.  But games lacking in some core pvp element are missing the mainstream boat.

    There's still a substantial crowd of players who enjoy a totally non-pvp environment, mind you.  They just aren't the majority, anymore.  That started changing when DAOC released in 2002, and it's been continuing steadily ever since.  PvE only is still too big to be called a niche market, but it's not the main market anymore, either.

  • Posted: 10/19/08 9:04 AM
    Everquest II
• • AC2 Free To Play!!

  • Guild Wars is a different game.  Heavy use of instancing means Guild Wars has MUCH lower overhead for bandwidth and server costs.

     

    That said, it's pretty obvious that free to play games can and do make money, even outside of Asia (where they are the norm, not the exception).  They generally make their income using ingame stores, credit purchases, or some other "pay us cash to get special benefits" feature.

  • Posted: 10/19/08 8:47 AM
    Asheron's Call
• • MMORPG's are "pointless?"

  • I like WAR, in general, but I'm going to agree here.  I think that there could be more meat added into the world pvp, to make it more pertinent.  When a keep is lost, it should NEVER be a "so what?" deal.  It should sting.  It should BURN.  You should feel it in your gut like a punch.  It should directly impact the gameplay of everyone on the side that lost, and drive them to do better next time.

    That's "gameplay with a point".  =)  I don't mean that it needs to be on the level of say, Shadowbane - not everyone enjoys their play to be as intense and consuming as it was in that game!  Loss there was EVERYTHING - game over, or darn close.  But I'd still like to see some more oomph added to the world RvR end of things.

  • Posted: 10/05/08 5:50 PM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)