General Discussion

Originally posted by Trowar

 

Originally posted by Retrad

 

Also, EL O FUCKING EL at the WoW only have 800k subscribers in the states and EU combined. Seeing how they hit a record of 4 or 5 million before expanding to China...I'm gonna say it's probably around 2.5-3.5mil subscribers in the states and EU combined if not more.

 

You are confusing "active players" with subscribers.  Take census checks at prime time on a High pop pve realm at say 21:00  you will get something like 2500 Allys and 1200 Horde. In this example this will mean 3700 active players. 

800 / 3.7 = 216 US+ Europe realms if they all where high-pop. Dunno how close this is the actual numbers of realms. But now you know where the sum 800k active players is from.

The numbers of subscribers are ofc much more, but many of those are logged in so rarely that they don´t have any effect on economy or have time to do raiding  instances etc. But what matter for the players in the realm are the numbers of active players.

 

And when those numbers shrank to 700k during the summer 2007 many raids were cancelled due to lack of players. This year we will have the double impact of both summer and AoC affecting the numbers of active players.

 

Lol...AoC currently only has 400k subscribers, many of those people(and I am one of them) will not be subscribing after our free month. Many of us have already uninstalled the game.

The only thing AoC has on WoW is better graphics which means nothing and FFA PvP. The FFA PvP is ruined by the instancing of zones. Hell...PvP in AoC is basically like WoW. You can only attack a guilds keep in a 48v48 glorified AV....basically you won't lose anything. They have PvP skirmishes that are eerily similar to battlegrounds.

AoC was a big let down and they will be lucky to see a subscriber base over 1 million...and that's being nice.

There are more than 200 players on Mal'Ganis during Prime Time and non-prime time hours.

Obviously Blizzard made stupid moves making new servers instead where the population on most is low. They can just merge them and the amount per server will drastically increase. However, why does that matter? To level up in WoW you don't ever have to group. Which is the reason why the game sucks. There's no sense of community like there was in the old MMOs like EQ.

The only game that has a chance to make a dent in WoW is WAR with some other games in the distant future such as GW2 which will have a persistant world, RvR like PvP, AND IT IS FREE TO PLAY!

Originally posted by Zorndorf

 

there are at the same time and ON PRIME time 800.000 Wow players always on line in the US and EU.

Ts.

 

Those 800k is from http://www.warcraftrealms.com/article/2008/May+Update+and+Concurrency+Numbers&fid=4

And the figure:  http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity-2008-05.htm

And that is what I have been saying all the time: The numbers of active players has stayed about the same (800k +/- 100k) since februar 2007. Up until then it was a steady increase.

And as the author of warcraftrealm.com  noted  " It's that time of the month again and we have calculated the April concurrency numbers provided by the CensusPlus UI Addon.

Well, April is showing a drop in concurrent players. Dramatically so for EU players, possibly even too dramatic."

And we have yet to see the numbers for May 2008.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

The OP confuses things.

there are at the same time and ON PRIME time 800.000 Wow players always on line in the US and EU.

That is HUGE !!!!

I remember the commercials they had about 18 months ago when Blizzard said that there were 400.000 on line at the same time.

So NOW they doubled this. 4.5 million subscriptions indeed in the US/EU = 800.000 users AT the SAME time !

In fact the record was held only a few weeks ago in China where at the same moment 1.000.000  ! were playing it at the same time ! Never before had an online game (or second life) have come close to these records.

So instead of proving something, the OP proves the opposite he wanted to prove LOL.

As for that post AGAINST TBC: that was countered on the Wow forums by a great number of players who (of course) didn't agree.

TBC only improved on the original Wow. Not only there are now FAR MORE choices in the end game, but Outland is now FULL 3D world you fly over in all freedom which wasn't the case in wow.

 

Also if somebody says Wow= 4 years old: it's not correct.

TBC = 20 months old and graphics ARE being adapted accordingly. After patch 2.3 support for dual mode processors  was up and Shattrah had far better handling the graphs than before.

Blizzard constantly monitors BTW the client PC's and adapt the graphics accordingly.

Last comment: How can ANY publisher even be compared with the means and development money Blizzard has. Turnover over MORE than 1 BILJON US dollars each year.

They just adapt the system after analysis of the PC clients.

See you in world PvP zones in WotlK with the announced air bombardements, mounted land siege engines and sea battles. And still you get 20 + dungeons, raids, 5 BG's free of charge with it.

Must be enormous---  flying with your personal mount over these new territories.

Now THAT is what I'd call PvP  and immersive MMORPG's.

 

TBC was a joke and the majority of the WoW community agrees. It was a sorry excuse of an expansion that only furthered the redundant grind and horribly tried to bring back World PvP with shitty situations such as taking over towers in Hellfire that gave no real long lasting rewards.

You're not opening your eyes wide enough. WoTLK is going to further the grind even more. They are bringing world PvP back....IN ONE ZONE. Instead of making all the zones in WoTLK siege capable they are only having one specific zone. This does nothing for world PvP. World PvP is supposed to happen throughout the world of the game...not centralized in one damn zone. This is a weak attempt and half assed one might I add to try and save face with the launch of WAR coming that promises actual world PvP.

Great, more mind numbing dungeons to grind loot in that everyone around me will have, 5 new bgs to grind rep and badges in that I can AFK all day to get.

Blizzard is shooting itself in the foot...then again most WoW players who are so in love with the easy mode, casual, unaccomplishing game content never experienced games like EQ or UO. Those who have and love the carebear casual easy mode only do because they've gotten older and have less time. Don't have time to put into an MMO? Maybe you shouldn't be playing them. Or maybe you should still have the attitude you once had. So what if it will take you longer to get to the end? At least you'll have a sense of accomplishment.

I never felt like I accomplished anything in WoW and I've done Sunwell and killed the first 3 bosses. So fucking mind numbing. It's why I quit.

It's also why I botted and leveld up 3 more 70s. The fun factor of WoW is gone after the first time through because the grind of stupid quests, badges, honor, and 8hrs raiding the same bullshit over and over just burns you out.

People forget ONE thing....

Good advice here: go look and see the interviews of the new WotLK.

The competition will look very surprised when they find out what Blizzard prepared.

Flying bombardments units over open world PvP zones....  Multi (!) - Mounted siege combat engines. Constructable keeps (and of course destructable buildings).

Watch the first ingame videos and you'll see these burning keeps BTW bombarded by flying units.

And to my own  surprise they even spoke of  sea battles, without forgetting the underwater  worlds.

So the competition can not even be compared with old Wow, but with the new expansion.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

People forget ONE thing....

 

Good advice here: go look and see the interviews of the new WotLK.

The competition will look very surprised when they find out what Blizzard prepared.

Flying bombardments units over open world PvP zones....  Multi (!) - Mounted siege combat engines. Constructable keeps (and of course destructable buildings).

Watch the first ingame videos and you'll see these burning keeps BTW bombarded by flying units.

And to my own  surprise they even spoke of  sea battles, without forgetting the underwater  worlds.

So the competition can not even be compared with old Wow, but with the new expansion.

Regarding WoW's continued growth, I simply point you to the lemming. WoW is growing on momentum and advertising. There are a lot of kid gamers (and their soccer Moms) in this world.

Last I checked, Wow's NA/EU subscriptions had just grown from 1.5mil to 2.0mil. Are we saying it has more than doubled in the last six months? Cuz I don't believe it.

Much love for Blizzard, though. They brought multi-player RTS to the mainstream. And Diablo was teh bomb. Congrats to them for scopping up those millions of 30-cent-per-month Asian subscriptions.

Let's put things in perspective. The MMO market has greatly proliferated in the last ten years. EQ at its peak had, I think, nearly 500k subscribers from NA/EU. That's only 1/4th of WoW. Consider this:

1. EQ did not advertise, at all. It grew from word of mouth only.

2. WoW advertised a SHITLOAD

3. A ton more people are playing online now compared to ten years ago; internet access is much cheaper and myspace made it "cool" to be online.

4. Blizzard is a very well known Brand Name

5. A toaster could run WoW; so soccer Moms with shitty computers can play it.

Frankly, if WoW was the game that came out in 1999; and EQ just came out now, I bet EQ's NA/EU subs would be higher than WoW. Oh but wait; WoW was made because Blizzard Devs loved playing EQ!! So that couldn't have happened.

Don't forget the fact the other reason why WoW is doing so great is because it hands the player everything on a silver platter. It's casual gamer friendly, so mom and grandpa can enjoy it with little Timmy. There are no negative consequences to anything, so the tears of the carebears no longer flood the ears of the developers.

WoW is a more advanced version of Hello Kitty Online, but a lesser version of old school MMOs.

Originally posted by Trowar

 

 

Those 800k is from http://www.warcraftrealms.com/article/2008/May+Update+and+Concurrency+Numbers&fid=4

And the figure:  http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity-2008-05.htm

And that is what I have been saying all the time: The numbers of active players has stayed about the same (800k +/- 100k) since februar 2007. Up until then it was a steady increase.

 

And as the author of warcraftrealm.com  noted  " It's that time of the month again and we have calculated the April concurrency numbers provided by the CensusPlus UI Addon.

Well, April is showing a drop in concurrent players. Dramatically so for EU players, possibly even too dramatic."

 

And we have yet to see the numbers for May 2008.

warcraftrealms.com doesn't have the stats on ALL players. they use  the census program and what did the man say again on his website

because YOU  wanted to quote :

"We could use more submissions to put the fears to rest that the data is incomplete. Even 1 person can make a significant contribution, and all help is appreciated. "

they depend of some samples and "even one person more in the sample" can have a signiicant contribution"

meaning the samples are very much worthless.

And IF you say something please do NOT lie

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity-2008-05.htm

Their graph shows that compared to the SAME period of 2007, Wow had about a 15% increase over the SAME period in 2008.

I still remember the figures of May/June last year : about 5.6 million played, now this figure lays about 6.1 to 6.2 million. For wath these figures even are worth !

Give or take the fact that the maker begs that everybody uses his program shows the figures need to be taken by a BIG salt.

YOUR HATRED towards Wow must be HUGE when you go seacrh some straws to even suggest with half truths that maybe just maybe the game is no longer growing.

Well hold on to you hats than when the storm of WotLK in FULL christmas season will hit you. I'd go on ski vacation if I were you !