Yes, screw the hardcore players, they don't pay the bills. I don't even want them in a game I play! WoW rocks, thats why it has 9+ million playing, my favorite class has been fun, unlike EQ where Warriors are WIMPiors.
Spoken like a true McDonald's customer....
I am a true WoW fan, WoW owns your puny stupid weak game. Vantard sucks, and so do its players, all of a puny 30k, we need our 9 million to post in comparable numbers to drive you out! Eve-NOTHING, EQ1 NOTHING, all of SOE games NOTHING! WAR and AOC are no threat to us, your games are the ones that can't afford the damage they will do to YOU!
WoW players-Get your friends, your guild members, get them to post here from WoW, overwhelm the other games here, as it should be!
First you should know that there is more to a game than numbers. Secondly, there are not 9 million WoW players, just 9 million accounts. Most of those are in China/Korea. Take those out and you'll actually have around 2-3 million. Still a lot, but then there are the gold farming companies take them out and you have about 2 million, then there are not active accounts like mine, that'll leave you with 1.5 million accounts in the US. The other games should overwhelm Blizz's monstrosity, it's a despicable game with few positive qualities. The only reason it does as well as it does, is it pulls you in with casual game play, then addicts you with a carrot on a stick, and the fact that it was produced by blizzard. Not many of your WoW friends will band together with you because they are going to be either glued to the game, or have some reasoning in them.
I didn't realize all the census folks we have on here, so you know for a fact that most of the accounts are asian gold farmers? Did you get to see some inside info on blizzards numbers? Did you do your own detective work? No? Then how did you come up with these figures? Oh? Just made them up in your head eh? <shakes his head> Hate on haters, hate on... <sigh>
You don't see more food places than there are people or more stores than there are people or more of anything taht sells to consumers than there are consumers. If there were 7million asian gold farmers and only 2-3million players - well that wouldn't be very profitable would it?
I said that there were 7 million asian accounts, not 7 million asian gold farmers. Also, I said that there were roughly 500k gold farmer accounts in the US.
Honestly the game seems monotonous.. but I have recently went back to other MMO's and they are just as if not more monotonous.. wow is overhyped yes.. it is fun yes.. but honestly imho all the mmo's on the market could use some work.. and could learn from wow.. blizzard knew wtf they were doing with wow.. graphics, gameplay, everything.. the game, as some people say, gets boring at higher levels.. I honestly think it feels like a grind no matter what I'm doing.. A feature I liked in EQ2 and VG was the full voiceovers for quest npc's and such.. makes me not want to skip through the quest text so much.. PotC has some neat story driving features too that make you feel like part of the world rather than an observer.. Like one of my favorite things in Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo were how the stories drove me to play them, even if the story wasnt the best or most original. Diablo especially honestly, but a lot of "church-goers" hated diablo due to its satanic references.. not realizing that you were actually a holy warrior against the devil.. so I could see where a problem would be with its lore and making it into a massive online game.. too many complainers and such.. so.. lets just take our favorite features from diablo and put them into wow (socketed items, talent trees, etc).. I'm stating as someone who's been playing RPG's since the first Zelda game.. Final Fantasy Veteran.. D&D Player, and played MMO's since UO.. I have what I'd say borders on an RPG addiction.. I've bought just about every mmo that looked halfway good.. and all of them had their merits and flaws.. if perhaps someone would take all the positive elements and as few as the negative elements as possible from every rpg/mmo they've ever played and made that into a game.. perhaps then wow will be beaten.. but if that person were smart he'd just get a job at blizzard and make wow the best game ever.. my point? none.. I just wanted to say that wow isnt the greatest.. its not the worst.. but it is on top right now.. i only play cuz my friends play honestly.. i'd quit if it weren't for that.. but my friends quit their other mmo's and i dont know anyone on my other current games (LoTRO, EQ2, SWG, VG).. I hope someday wow becomes the best mmo out there.. in all aspects.. because i've always loved blizzard games.. but i will admit its got its grindfest, boring flaws.. the Increase in xp is a great thing they will be adding soon but i still think they need to keep releasing more lands, quests, npcs, instances, dungeons, lore, races, classes, pvp.. content that makes people happy and busy.. i had many of my high lvl guildies complaining with nothing to do but run instances/raid/pvp as a last resort.. heck one would just sit in town and socialize was how bored she was.. she got on just to talk to us at that point.. haha.. just.. content.. keep people interested.. and not just high lvl content.. content all over the board.. honestly i have a lot of ideas myself.. but ideas are like opinions and @ssholes...
If there are 500k goldfarming accounts in America it would acount for roughly 1/4 of all active accounts there - a frankly ludicrous and economically ignorant statement.
In a related but separate issue...
1. Goldfarming is not exclusive to WOW.
2. Goldfarming existed before WOW.
3. As a percentage of total population, goldfarmers in WOW are no more prevalent than in any other game. In fact, when expressed as a percentage of total population I would expect WOW to have fewer goldfarmers than most due to the relative ease in which you can acquire gold compared to other MMORPGS.
People use your heads. If you want to start subtracting goldfarming accounts from WOWs total, then you have to subtract the same relative percentage from every other MMO.
Originally posted by Recant So those of us who think WoW is the best MMO haven't played other MMOs? Please. Don't get me started on junk food analogies, I could easily spend several pages going into diatribes about why other MMOs are more 'diluted' than WoW because the grinds in those other games are more apparrent and there's less content consumed with time. If anything, WoW is the juicy tender steak, and the other MMOs are the junk food.
Please go on for pages about it. I'd like to see you disprove the correlation between mass appeal like WoW and mass appeal of Mc Donalds.
As for your thoughts regarding hero classes, it's kind of funny to see how you would do it. It sounds like what you are asking for already exists in the game with the way talent points work. If you want "hero" classes to be a specialized version of a lower level class then you already have that. Just like a Shadow Priest plays utterly differently to a Holy Priest - your ideal version of hero classes it seems are already in the game. So you would just want to continue being your character with some extra abilities and then call yourself a "hero class"... boooorrriiinng... I think I prefer Blizzard's version to your non-hero class tbh
I love your "theory crafting" as to what I think is a good idea. Like most wow newbs you get it wrong. I would further specialize the talent trees thus making each class have 3 "hero classes". Select talents in the extended hero tree by earning X xp per talent so that someone that is 80 still has room for improvement.
All your new "hero" class you are getting is nothing more than mixed up abilities that other classes have mashed into one. You are playing the same class only now you have to re-do everything you did before for yet another character that isn't even the named character you started.
I like to improve the character I began, not be forced to re-roll because I can't use the new content.
Enjoy your fast food version from a slow cook.
Have fun anticipating yet another hyped MMO, maybe this one won't actually bomb or end up on SOE's Station Pass ;p
You can say what you like about the game WAR because it's not out but when you see the 2million or less WoW NA players start to hit 1/2 that or less after it's release then you can come join us.
Not in the top 10, it is number ONE in MMO's period and SOE games are all middle of the pack middling. LotRo upper game, Guild Wars upper, Lineage 1 and 2 upper, we can all look up player population. Only a fool says gold farmers make up a sizable percentage of players in ANY MMO. They are a small percentage of players, and how about all the hacks involving SOE games that aren't punished? You bet your bottom dollar Blizzard bans for that! They don't have the bug to start with! Vantard had ONE QA person, insiders admitted it. The McDonalds BS is that BS, talk MMOs not fast food. WoW rocked EQ1 to the foundation causing server combines, FACT. WoW launched their first expansion and helped rock Vantard, FACT. SOE sucks in subscriber numbers, FACT. Never underestimate WoW, Brad did and look what happened to his rotten game!
good thing i wasnt talking about population numbers. i was talking about the rating from players on THIS site. but besides that, the game itself (WoW) is a steaming pile of horse manure. why do you think it fell from #1 to a bunch of games that are older than it? (hmm, news flash, it sucks)
Not in the top 10, it is number ONE in MMO's period and SOE games are all middle of the pack middling. LotRo upper game, Guild Wars upper, Lineage 1 and 2 upper, we can all look up player population. Only a fool says gold farmers make up a sizable percentage of players in ANY MMO. They are a small percentage of players, and how about all the hacks involving SOE games that aren't punished? You bet your bottom dollar Blizzard bans for that! They don't have the bug to start with! Vantard had ONE QA person, insiders admitted it. The McDonalds BS is that BS, talk MMOs not fast food. WoW rocked EQ1 to the foundation causing server combines, FACT. WoW launched their first expansion and helped rock Vantard, FACT. SOE sucks in subscriber numbers, FACT. Never underestimate WoW, Brad did and look what happened to his rotten game!
good thing i wasnt talking about population numbers. i was talking about the rating from players on THIS site. but besides that, the game itself (WoW) is a steaming pile of horse manure. why do you think it fell from #1 to a bunch of games that are older than it? (hmm, news flash, it sucks)
People have voted where it counts. Their wallets. If the other games were so good you'd think they would get more subscribers. Maybe just maybe the others game are really not that great or WoW is better than a steaming pile of horse manure.
Blizzard with theyr wow OWNZ all MMO games out there nothing can beat it. All is made so perfect interface delishes and races and woaah! Im not playing WoW anymore but i know wow is good and wil be good cus blizzard made it! Blizzard is The best ! QUALITY!
They made diablo my favorite game and they made alot stuff I have played. Look at Patching and all this stuff its perfect! not like EQ2 with performance sucking for crappy graphic and all this small crappy expansions that is annoyng and then we got GW with ugly chine people with all this shit and crappy graphic in DAoC (stil good very good game)
Rest of MMOs I dont even wanna mention cus of ugly point to click controls that suck alot. And Rating on this site? dont even look at it rating here is like rating in ur ass. Fan boys vote for shit like Everquest and guild wars. Only good game who is right voted here is DAoC.
On this page there is way to much people who say wow suck and wow this and wow that always wow wtf wrong with you?! all I can say you are freaking envious because they made a good game and powned ur favorite game or that you cant afford it. So plz quit this shit with wow suck it dosnt suck you suck if there is something that suck! I dont ment to write Everquest or anything suck all of them are good but wow got way bether quality cus blizzard know how to do this!
Yes I know my english suck suck so what ? You gonna bashing my english cus i say that wow is quality and dosnt suck? that is the truth blizzard never made shit. And if you going complaion on my english write pm or something I dont want any listen to that.
OK who posted their own opinions on wow that happen to be possitive?.... dont you guys know that showing your support for WoW is not welcome around here, the haters who amount to the majority on MMORPG will shoot you down with untruths, fabrications and outrageous staments based on nothing more than Macdonalds and fluff from their belly buttons.. and dont bother posting crediable links to support your points they will reply with Wiki links and what their brother said he heared down the pub.
Though World of Warcraft is a fun, addicting game, like most products from Blizzard, it lacks the content and experience that MMO's need. It becomes repetitive and boring. One could argue that any MMO you play long enough would be the same, but WoW is on a different level. You have to dedicated yourself to the game to have a chance at competeing with others. For a first MMO, sure Blizzard did great. But it's far from a good game. In the years to come i'm sure they'll polish it to its potential but that's not now. Warhammer Online and Age of Conan will most likely blow it out of the water. I want to see how many subscribers they lose on release of those two games.
I would say this is truly not going to happen. Those 2 games will take some subscription base but they will definately not blow WoW out of the water.
Just by personal experience because I use to play WoW, i don't think you're giving those games enough credit. That, or you're giving WoW too much. Warhammer Online is what everyone who plays WoW talks about. It's the "New, better WoW". Blizzard of course will still have those dedicated players, but they will lose more than you think.
Think about it in actual subscription. Lets say 1mil goes to AOC and 1 Mil goes to WAR that comes to 2mil subscriptions. 9 mill subs in WoW minus 2 mil = 7
7 million subs is far from being blown out of the water. It is also very hard to say either of the mentioned games will do that great until you have people that actually play the games and then keep their subscriptions after the initial free month from buying the game.
I used to play WoW and only reason I quit was because the game requires a lot of time invested to be anywhere near the people who can play for hours a day. I have also played many MMO and have seen these accusations from just about all the games out there and yet WoW is still going strong.
Remember Vanguard and LoTR were gonna blow WoW away too but it didnt happen.
I understand what you're saying, and you're completely right.
But WoW is a piece. It's dying. Everyone knows it. I'm really looking forward to WAR/AOC, and i'm confident enough that they will provide better game play than WoW.
Everyone has their own game style I guess.
[I still think more than 2 million will leave.]
As a WAR beta player (friends acct) I can tell you first hand WAR is nothing more than DAOC2 with elements of WoW. The sad part is WoW's combat system years aheads of the one mythic came up with for WAR.
Now seriously, who thinks the yearly revenues for a game producing companies are based only on number of subscribers? SoE has expected 2007 revenue 7.6$ bilions. Blizzard has 1.8$ You are stating your assumptions without checking first relevant facts. Edit: Yes Vivendi has 7.1$, but lets better not see Sony yearly revenues then (50-70$) don't force me to check it preciesly please.
Sorry I'm coming back into the conversation so late, but....
When the MMO production costs are in the $20-40 million range, then for most studios box sales are a means to offset your initial costs… hopefully. In order to recoup the costs of a $30million production cycle, you have to sell 600,000 units at $50. Selling 9million units is certainly nice. It’s a huge profit. But after costs to produce the boxes it’s not nearly as pleasant as having those 9million people pay you $15 a month for half a year or more. I’d love to hear some (substantiated) numbers on the profit margin for both the box sale, and the sub cost. My first guess would be 25% for the box, and 80%+ for the sub.
Blizzard has 3000 employees. The vast bulk of those (2000?) are IT and support for wow. 2000 people at $25/hour (very generous for phone support and basic IT personell, who are probably largely in India making $6/hour) is about $8million/month. 9million subs at $15 is $135million/month, which puts the profit margin at 94% before other costs. (I might actually be wrong, and Bliz has more like 2000 people. I can’t remember for sure. But that being the case, the profit margin would be even bigger.)
Now seriously, who thinks that an MMO company really gives a crap about box sales compared to the profit margin of subscriptions over time.
The numbers you have provided sound like complete BS to me. So yes, I would like you to prove them.
At $7.6billion, here’s what SOE would have to produce:
150million MMO units sold at $50 each
-or-
41million subscribers at $15/month (for a full year)
-or-
Some combination of the two
Frankly, there’s very little possibility that SOE has accomplished any combination of the two in their history, let alone in a single year.
at the New York Times from June of 2007, SOE enjoys “…revenue in the $150 million range … by creating and publishing a variety of subscription-based online computer games.” This is certainly slightly different than your suggested $7.6Billion revenue. Be aware that Sony Computer Entertainment owns Playstion and the console games divisions. Not SOE.
Sony Corporation as a whole earned $70.303Billon in revenue. (http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/qfhh7c000000lpn1.html). You’ll be hard pressed to convince anyone that a company that makes computers, monitors, televisions, cell phones, test equipment, home theater equipment, cameras, owns BlueRay and Playstation, produces 150+ television series per year totaling 10’s of 1000’s of episodes, makes dozens of movies, and 100 other things, earns 10% of it’s income from EQ, EQII and SWG (the only real breadwinners it has in the MMO market)… It’s a profitable business for them. But its not even remotely close to being a cornerstone of the Sony empire.
It would be easy to say with conviction that Sony Corporation is a behemoth compared to Blizzard. It would be equally easy to state that Disney Corporation (including Disneyland, Disneyworld, ABC, ESPN, etc) is a behemoth compared to Dreamworks (a subsidiary of Viacom). It’s an invalid comparison. But it is not valid at all to say that Sony Online Entertainment is a behemoth compared to Blizzard. Blizzard (a division of Vivendi), however, earns vastly more revenue than Sony Online Entertainment, and it services vastly more clients in the process. That is a valid comparison.
Now seriously, who thinks the yearly revenues for a game producing companies are based only on number of subscribers? SoE has expected 2007 revenue 7.6$ bilions. Blizzard has 1.8$ You are stating your assumptions without checking first relevant facts. Edit: Yes Vivendi has 7.1$, but lets better not see Sony yearly revenues then (50-70$) don't force me to check it preciesly please.
Sorry I'm coming back into the conversation so late, but....
When the MMO production costs are in the $20-40 million range, then for most studios box sales are a means to offset your initial costs hopefully. In order to recoup the costs of a $30million production cycle, you have to sell 600,000 units at $50. Selling 9million units is certainly nice. Its a huge profit. But after costs to produce the boxes its not nearly as pleasant as having those 9million people pay you $15 a month for half a year or more. Id love to hear some (substantiated) numbers on the profit margin for both the box sale, and the sub cost. My first guess would be 25% for the box, and 80%+ for the sub.
Blizzard has 3000 employees. The vast bulk of those (2000?) are IT and support for wow. 2000 people at $25/hour (very generous for phone support and basic IT personell, who are probably largely in India making $6/hour) is about $8million/month. 9million subs at $15 is $135million/month, which puts the profit margin at 94% before other costs. (I might actually be wrong, and Bliz has more like 2000 people. I cant remember for sure. But that being the case, the profit margin would be even bigger.)
Now seriously, who thinks that an MMO company really gives a crap about box sales compared to the profit margin of subscriptions over time.
The numbers you have provided sound like complete BS to me. So yes, I would like you to prove them. At $7.6billion, heres what SOE would have to produce: 150million MMO units sold at $50 each -or- 41million subscribers at $15/month (for a full year) -or- Some combination of the two Frankly, theres very little possibility that SOE has accomplished any combination of the two in their history, let alone in a single year.
According to this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/business/worldbusiness/11sony.html) at the New York Times from June of 2007, SOE enjoys revenue in the $150 million range by creating and publishing a variety of subscription-based online computer games. This is certainly slightly different than your suggested $7.6Billion revenue. Be aware that Sony Computer Entertainment owns Playstion and the console games divisions. Not SOE.
Sony Corporation as a whole earned $70.303Billon in revenue. (http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/qfhh7c000000lpn1.html). Youll be hard pressed to convince anyone that a company that makes computers, monitors, televisions, cell phones, test equipment, home theater equipment, cameras, owns BlueRay and Playstation, produces 150+ television series per year totaling 10s of 1000s of episodes, makes dozens of movies, and 100 other things, earns 10% of its income from EQ, EQII and SWG (the only real breadwinners it has in the MMO market) Its a profitable business for them. But its not even remotely close to being a cornerstone of the Sony empire.
It would be easy to say with conviction that Sony Corporation is a behemoth compared to Blizzard. It would be equally easy to state that Disney Corporation (including Disneyland, Disneyworld, ABC, ESPN, etc) is a behemoth compared to Dreamworks (a subsidiary of Viacom). Its an invalid comparison. But it is not valid at all to say that Sony Online Entertainment is a behemoth compared to Blizzard. Blizzard (a division of Vivendi), however, earns vastly more revenue than Sony Online Entertainment, and it services vastly more clients in the process. That is a valid comparison.
OOHHHHHH, how about Vivendi vs Sony (as a whole)...Sony wins right? 70billion is very god of godlike. Empire indeed compared to strongly built huts around the world.
Then again, Vivendi and NBC is owned by a what Forbes calls the fourth largest company in the world... General Electric. Now that's an Empire. Sony comes in at 167th place. Even Vivendi on that list is at 155.
WoW lacks creativity, desperately. It is not innovative. It offered nothing new. Its genius is to take out the bad in Everquest and enhance the good; that is one part. The other part is addiction. WoW is designed to be as addictive as possible to keep YOU paying money.
It is easier to make the game addictive than it is fun.
----- WoW and fast food = commercial successes. I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
OOHHHHHH, how about Vivendi vs Sony (as a whole)...Sony wins right? 70billion is very god of godlike. Empire indeed compared to strongly built huts around the world.
Then again, Vivendi and NBC is owned by a very large EMPIRE... General Electric.
GE doesn't actually own Vivendi or Universal (yet). They have a partnership. But comparing GE to Sony would be a much more valid comparison than comparing Sony to Blizzard. Sony and GE are both parent companies. Sony would lose by a landslide in that comparison too.
WoW lacks creativity, desperately. It is not innovative. It offered nothing new. Its genius is to take out the bad in Everquest and enhance the good; that is one part. The other part is addiction. WoW is designed to be as addictive as possible to keep YOU paying money.
It is easier to make the game addictive than it is fun.
Name a game that fulfills your criteria for 'good'. There's been nothing innovative, creative, -or- addictive other than WoW for the vast bulk of MMO plays for years.
Everything is a evolution of something else. That's how humans progress. We take what we know, we polish it, refine it, and test it to see what happens. In terms of MMO's that's a slow progression because it takes years to produce a game. It's also risky to try to move too quickly because you could piss millions of dollars down the drain if you try something totally innovative that sucks. Top that with the fact that you will never predict what game players will really embrace until you've nearly finished your product, and trying to go too far out on a limb is a really stupid plan from a purely business perspective. Business is what pays for these games, and no sound businessman is going to fund a wildly risky endeavor when it's so costly to do so.
Originally posted by Feyshtey Originally posted by Sovren1 OOHHHHHH, how about Vivendi vs Sony (as a whole)...Sony wins right? 70billion is very god of godlike. Empire indeed compared to strongly built huts around the world.
Then again, Vivendi and NBC is owned by a very large EMPIRE... General Electric.
GE doesn't actually own Vivendi or Universal (yet). They have a partnership. But comparing GE to Sony would be a much more valid comparison than comparing Sony to Blizzard. Sony and GE are both parent companies. Sony would lose by a landslide in that comparison too.
Ok, your right...Vivendi Universal media and NBC partnered to make NBC Universal. This partnership is 80% GE while the remaining 20% is Vivendi as it is it's own company.
OK who posted their own opinions on wow that happen to be possitive?.... dont you guys know that showing your support for WoW is not welcome around here, the haters who amount to the majority on MMORPG will shoot you down with untruths, fabrications and outrageous staments based on nothing more than Macdonalds and fluff from their belly buttons.. and dont bother posting crediable links to support your points they will reply with Wiki links and what their brother said he heared down the pub.
AHH same thing you do on other games forums, as wow fanboi, you go there, and start shooting untruths about that games. so seems a bit hypocritical making statements like that.
WoW lacks creativity, desperately. It is not innovative. It offered nothing new. Its genius is to take out the bad in Everquest and enhance the good; that is one part. The other part is addiction. WoW is designed to be as addictive as possible to keep YOU paying money.
It is easier to make the game addictive than it is fun.
lol last one was the voice chat, i bet they gonna tell wow was the first!
WoW lacks creativity, desperately. It is not innovative. It offered nothing new. Its genius is to take out the bad in Everquest and enhance the good; that is one part. The other part is addiction. WoW is designed to be as addictive as possible to keep YOU paying money.
It is easier to make the game addictive than it is fun.
lol last one was the voice chat, i bet they gonna tell wow was the first!
People already tried to claim it was a revolutionary new thing that WoW had done yet there are a ton of others out there that had done it first and many years prior heh. Though some failed horribly with synthesizing voices etc.
WoW lacks creativity, desperately. It is not innovative. It offered nothing new. Its genius is to take out the bad in Everquest and enhance the good; that is one part. The other part is addiction. WoW is designed to be as addictive as possible to keep YOU paying money.
It is easier to make the game addictive than it is fun.
Hrmmm, don't gaming companies want our money? Don't they all try an addict us? So, you're saying blizzard does a really good job and what they are supposed to be doing?
I'm not sure I understand this as a disagreement. It more seems like an affirmation.
yeah to be honest im quiet surprised, until wow i didnt know how dedicated blizzard was, there first mmo and there putting there hearts into it well done kids
Comments
Spoken like a true McDonald's customer....
I am a true WoW fan, WoW owns your puny stupid weak game. Vantard sucks, and so do its players, all of a puny 30k, we need our 9 million to post in comparable numbers to drive you out! Eve-NOTHING, EQ1 NOTHING, all of SOE games NOTHING! WAR and AOC are no threat to us, your games are the ones that can't afford the damage they will do to YOU!
WoW players-Get your friends, your guild members, get them to post here from WoW, overwhelm the other games here, as it should be!
First you should know that there is more to a game than numbers. Secondly, there are not 9 million WoW players, just 9 million accounts. Most of those are in China/Korea. Take those out and you'll actually have around 2-3 million. Still a lot, but then there are the gold farming companies take them out and you have about 2 million, then there are not active accounts like mine, that'll leave you with 1.5 million accounts in the US. The other games should overwhelm Blizz's monstrosity, it's a despicable game with few positive qualities. The only reason it does as well as it does, is it pulls you in with casual game play, then addicts you with a carrot on a stick, and the fact that it was produced by blizzard. Not many of your WoW friends will band together with you because they are going to be either glued to the game, or have some reasoning in them.
I didn't realize all the census folks we have on here, so you know for a fact that most of the accounts are asian gold farmers? Did you get to see some inside info on blizzards numbers? Did you do your own detective work? No? Then how did you come up with these figures? Oh? Just made them up in your head eh? <shakes his head> Hate on haters, hate on... <sigh>
You don't see more food places than there are people or more stores than there are people or more of anything taht sells to consumers than there are consumers. If there were 7million asian gold farmers and only 2-3million players - well that wouldn't be very profitable would it?
I said that there were 7 million asian accounts, not 7 million asian gold farmers. Also, I said that there were roughly 500k gold farmer accounts in the US.
Honestly the game seems monotonous.. but I have recently went back to other MMO's and they are just as if not more monotonous.. wow is overhyped yes.. it is fun yes.. but honestly imho all the mmo's on the market could use some work.. and could learn from wow.. blizzard knew wtf they were doing with wow.. graphics, gameplay, everything.. the game, as some people say, gets boring at higher levels.. I honestly think it feels like a grind no matter what I'm doing.. A feature I liked in EQ2 and VG was the full voiceovers for quest npc's and such.. makes me not want to skip through the quest text so much.. PotC has some neat story driving features too that make you feel like part of the world rather than an observer.. Like one of my favorite things in Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo were how the stories drove me to play them, even if the story wasnt the best or most original. Diablo especially honestly, but a lot of "church-goers" hated diablo due to its satanic references.. not realizing that you were actually a holy warrior against the devil.. so I could see where a problem would be with its lore and making it into a massive online game.. too many complainers and such.. so.. lets just take our favorite features from diablo and put them into wow (socketed items, talent trees, etc).. I'm stating as someone who's been playing RPG's since the first Zelda game.. Final Fantasy Veteran.. D&D Player, and played MMO's since UO.. I have what I'd say borders on an RPG addiction.. I've bought just about every mmo that looked halfway good.. and all of them had their merits and flaws.. if perhaps someone would take all the positive elements and as few as the negative elements as possible from every rpg/mmo they've ever played and made that into a game.. perhaps then wow will be beaten.. but if that person were smart he'd just get a job at blizzard and make wow the best game ever.. my point? none.. I just wanted to say that wow isnt the greatest.. its not the worst.. but it is on top right now.. i only play cuz my friends play honestly.. i'd quit if it weren't for that.. but my friends quit their other mmo's and i dont know anyone on my other current games (LoTRO, EQ2, SWG, VG).. I hope someday wow becomes the best mmo out there.. in all aspects.. because i've always loved blizzard games.. but i will admit its got its grindfest, boring flaws.. the Increase in xp is a great thing they will be adding soon but i still think they need to keep releasing more lands, quests, npcs, instances, dungeons, lore, races, classes, pvp.. content that makes people happy and busy.. i had many of my high lvl guildies complaining with nothing to do but run instances/raid/pvp as a last resort.. heck one would just sit in town and socialize was how bored she was.. she got on just to talk to us at that point.. haha.. just.. content.. keep people interested.. and not just high lvl content.. content all over the board.. honestly i have a lot of ideas myself.. but ideas are like opinions and @ssholes...
</endless rambling>
If there are 500k goldfarming accounts in America it would acount for roughly 1/4 of all active accounts there - a frankly ludicrous and economically ignorant statement.
In a related but separate issue...
1. Goldfarming is not exclusive to WOW.
2. Goldfarming existed before WOW.
3. As a percentage of total population, goldfarmers in WOW are no more prevalent than in any other game. In fact, when expressed as a percentage of total population I would expect WOW to have fewer goldfarmers than most due to the relative ease in which you can acquire gold compared to other MMORPGS.
People use your heads. If you want to start subtracting goldfarming accounts from WOWs total, then you have to subtract the same relative percentage from every other MMO.
500k gold farmers is probably wrong, it's incredibly high though. I think I need better sources, after looking into it a little.
Please go on for pages about it. I'd like to see you disprove the correlation between mass appeal like WoW and mass appeal of Mc Donalds.
I love your "theory crafting" as to what I think is a good idea. Like most wow newbs you get it wrong. I would further specialize the talent trees thus making each class have 3 "hero classes". Select talents in the extended hero tree by earning X xp per talent so that someone that is 80 still has room for improvement.
All your new "hero" class you are getting is nothing more than mixed up abilities that other classes have mashed into one. You are playing the same class only now you have to re-do everything you did before for yet another character that isn't even the named character you started.
I like to improve the character I began, not be forced to re-roll because I can't use the new content.
Enjoy your fast food version from a slow cook.
You can say what you like about the game WAR because it's not out but when you see the 2million or less WoW NA players start to hit 1/2 that or less after it's release then you can come join us.
http://www.greycouncil.org/
good thing i wasnt talking about population numbers. i was talking about the rating from players on THIS site. but besides that, the game itself (WoW) is a steaming pile of horse manure. why do you think it fell from #1 to a bunch of games that are older than it? (hmm, news flash, it sucks)
good thing i wasnt talking about population numbers. i was talking about the rating from players on THIS site. but besides that, the game itself (WoW) is a steaming pile of horse manure. why do you think it fell from #1 to a bunch of games that are older than it? (hmm, news flash, it sucks)
People have voted where it counts. Their wallets. If the other games were so good you'd think they would get more subscribers. Maybe just maybe the others game are really not that great or WoW is better than a steaming pile of horse manure.
Blizzard with theyr wow OWNZ all MMO games out there nothing can beat it. All is made so perfect interface delishes and races and woaah! Im not playing WoW anymore but i know wow is good and wil be good cus blizzard made it! Blizzard is The best ! QUALITY!
They made diablo my favorite game and they made alot stuff I have played. Look at Patching and all this stuff its perfect! not like EQ2 with performance sucking for crappy graphic and all this small crappy expansions that is annoyng and then we got GW with ugly chine people with all this shit and crappy graphic in DAoC (stil good very good game)
Rest of MMOs I dont even wanna mention cus of ugly point to click controls that suck alot. And Rating on this site? dont even look at it rating here is like rating in ur ass. Fan boys vote for shit like Everquest and guild wars. Only good game who is right voted here is DAoC.
On this page there is way to much people who say wow suck and wow this and wow that always wow wtf wrong with you?! all I can say you are freaking envious because they made a good game and powned ur favorite game or that you cant afford it. So plz quit this shit with wow suck it dosnt suck you suck if there is something that suck! I dont ment to write Everquest or anything suck all of them are good but wow got way bether quality cus blizzard know how to do this!
Yes I know my english suck suck so what ? You gonna bashing my english cus i say that wow is quality and dosnt suck? that is the truth blizzard never made shit. And if you going complaion on my english write pm or something I dont want any listen to that.
OK who posted their own opinions on wow that happen to be possitive?.... dont you guys know that showing your support for WoW is not welcome around here, the haters who amount to the majority on MMORPG will shoot you down with untruths, fabrications and outrageous staments based on nothing more than Macdonalds and fluff from their belly buttons.. and dont bother posting crediable links to support your points they will reply with Wiki links and what their brother said he heared down the pub.
I would say this is truly not going to happen. Those 2 games will take some subscription base but they will definately not blow WoW out of the water.
Just by personal experience because I use to play WoW, i don't think you're giving those games enough credit. That, or you're giving WoW too much. Warhammer Online is what everyone who plays WoW talks about. It's the "New, better WoW". Blizzard of course will still have those dedicated players, but they will lose more than you think.
Think about it in actual subscription. Lets say 1mil goes to AOC and 1 Mil goes to WAR that comes to 2mil subscriptions. 9 mill subs in WoW minus 2 mil = 77 million subs is far from being blown out of the water. It is also very hard to say either of the mentioned games will do that great until you have people that actually play the games and then keep their subscriptions after the initial free month from buying the game.
I used to play WoW and only reason I quit was because the game requires a lot of time invested to be anywhere near the people who can play for hours a day. I have also played many MMO and have seen these accusations from just about all the games out there and yet WoW is still going strong.
Remember Vanguard and LoTR were gonna blow WoW away too but it didnt happen.
I understand what you're saying, and you're completely right.But WoW is a piece. It's dying. Everyone knows it. I'm really looking forward to WAR/AOC, and i'm confident enough that they will provide better game play than WoW.
Everyone has their own game style I guess.
[I still think more than 2 million will leave.]
As a WAR beta player (friends acct) I can tell you first hand WAR is nothing more than DAOC2 with elements of WoW. The sad part is WoW's combat system years aheads of the one mythic came up with for WAR.
Sorry I'm coming back into the conversation so late, but....
When the MMO production costs are in the $20-40 million range, then for most studios box sales are a means to offset your initial costs… hopefully. In order to recoup the costs of a $30million production cycle, you have to sell 600,000 units at $50. Selling 9million units is certainly nice. It’s a huge profit. But after costs to produce the boxes it’s not nearly as pleasant as having those 9million people pay you $15 a month for half a year or more. I’d love to hear some (substantiated) numbers on the profit margin for both the box sale, and the sub cost. My first guess would be 25% for the box, and 80%+ for the sub.
Blizzard has 3000 employees. The vast bulk of those (2000?) are IT and support for wow. 2000 people at $25/hour (very generous for phone support and basic IT personell, who are probably largely in India making $6/hour) is about $8million/month. 9million subs at $15 is $135million/month, which puts the profit margin at 94% before other costs. (I might actually be wrong, and Bliz has more like 2000 people. I can’t remember for sure. But that being the case, the profit margin would be even bigger.)
Now seriously, who thinks that an MMO company really gives a crap about box sales compared to the profit margin of subscriptions over time.
The numbers you have provided sound like complete BS to me. So yes, I would like you to prove them.
At $7.6billion, here’s what SOE would have to produce:
150million MMO units sold at $50 each
-or-
41million subscribers at $15/month (for a full year)
-or-
Some combination of the two
Frankly, there’s very little possibility that SOE has accomplished any combination of the two in their history, let alone in a single year.
According to this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/business/worldbusiness/11sony.html)
at the New York Times from June of 2007, SOE enjoys “…revenue in the $150 million range … by creating and publishing a variety of subscription-based online computer games.” This is certainly slightly different than your suggested $7.6Billion revenue. Be aware that Sony Computer Entertainment owns Playstion and the console games divisions. Not SOE.
Sony Corporation as a whole earned $70.303Billon in revenue. (http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/qfhh7c000000lpn1.html). You’ll be hard pressed to convince anyone that a company that makes computers, monitors, televisions, cell phones, test equipment, home theater equipment, cameras, owns BlueRay and Playstation, produces 150+ television series per year totaling 10’s of 1000’s of episodes, makes dozens of movies, and 100 other things, earns 10% of it’s income from EQ, EQII and SWG (the only real breadwinners it has in the MMO market)… It’s a profitable business for them. But its not even remotely close to being a cornerstone of the Sony empire.
It would be easy to say with conviction that Sony Corporation is a behemoth compared to Blizzard. It would be equally easy to state that Disney Corporation (including Disneyland, Disneyworld, ABC, ESPN, etc) is a behemoth compared to Dreamworks (a subsidiary of Viacom). It’s an invalid comparison. But it is not valid at all to say that Sony Online Entertainment is a behemoth compared to Blizzard. Blizzard (a division of Vivendi), however, earns vastly more revenue than Sony Online Entertainment, and it services vastly more clients in the process. That is a valid comparison.
-Feyshtey-
Then again, Vivendi and NBC is owned by a what Forbes calls the fourth largest company in the world... General Electric. Now that's an Empire. Sony comes in at 167th place. Even Vivendi on that list is at 155.
I completely disagree.
WoW lacks creativity, desperately. It is not innovative. It offered nothing new. Its genius is to take out the bad in Everquest and enhance the good; that is one part. The other part is addiction. WoW is designed to be as addictive as possible to keep YOU paying money.
It is easier to make the game addictive than it is fun.
-----
WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
GE doesn't actually own Vivendi or Universal (yet). They have a partnership. But comparing GE to Sony would be a much more valid comparison than comparing Sony to Blizzard. Sony and GE are both parent companies. Sony would lose by a landslide in that comparison too.
-Feyshtey-
Everything is a evolution of something else. That's how humans progress. We take what we know, we polish it, refine it, and test it to see what happens. In terms of MMO's that's a slow progression because it takes years to produce a game. It's also risky to try to move too quickly because you could piss millions of dollars down the drain if you try something totally innovative that sucks. Top that with the fact that you will never predict what game players will really embrace until you've nearly finished your product, and trying to go too far out on a limb is a really stupid plan from a purely business perspective. Business is what pays for these games, and no sound businessman is going to fund a wildly risky endeavor when it's so costly to do so.
Baby steps.
-Feyshtey-
Ok, your right...Vivendi Universal media and NBC partnered to make NBC Universal. This partnership is 80% GE while the remaining 20% is Vivendi as it is it's own company.
AHH same thing you do on other games forums, as wow fanboi, you go there, and start shooting untruths about that games. so seems a bit hypocritical making statements like that.
lol last one was the voice chat, i bet they gonna tell wow was the first!
lol last one was the voice chat, i bet they gonna tell wow was the first!
People already tried to claim it was a revolutionary new thing that WoW had done yet there are a ton of others out there that had done it first and many years prior heh. Though some failed horribly with synthesizing voices etc.
I'm not sure I understand this as a disagreement. It more seems like an affirmation.
yeah to be honest im quiet surprised, until wow i didnt know how dedicated blizzard was, there first mmo and there putting there hearts into it well done kids