These polls are unnecessary, why would someone stop in US/EU/AUS/LA playing because China's servers are offline because of some legal BS of license switching? It's not like there are such restrictive governments around here, we've already moved on from this dictatorship crap.
Now, ignoring the poll, this does indeed affect Blizzard's pride, also their blind fanboys and haters. But haters out there, don't worry, it represents an insignificant revenue for Blizzard, as you have seen their pay-for-hours revenue model goes as cheap as 6 cents per hour (wow, such an unrealistic price, when this model hits the West I believe we will see prices around 25 cents per hour while also offering the monthly subscriptions we are used to).
I play WoW, and I do enjoy it. I personally dont care if there are 1million or 30 million players. My server is packed and thats all that matters to me.
However the real problem here is China. Or should I say the Chinese government. The US owes China billions yet they constantly try to squeeze American products out of there culture. Yet we buy up there crap on a daily basis.
Originally posted by arcdevil Originally posted by Xiaoki
Originally posted by arcdevil
Originally posted by Ahiles
So wait some blog stating shit as true?? well hell did u know warhammer has 50 million players, im just gona go start a blod up now about that.
while its not official, its possible, and more than probable
Everybody knows chinese wow players amount well over 6m,its a fact blizzard never bothered to hide, just like its a fact noone of them can play WoW. 11-6 = 5 Its not probable and its not possible.
This blog forgot that not every last single Chinese player quit playing. A large number of them moved to other servers. You'd have to be pretty dumb or a WoW hater to believe this.
fair point,that possibilitity exists but what other server allows them to pay hourly? and hows the exchange rate for their currency? i dont picture all those chinese players paying a monthly sub in a western server that will cost them 4 or 5 times what their old server costed ...not even 10% of them... The other thing this blog forgot is that there are 6 million ASIAN WoW subscribers. That includes China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc.
This problem with China only affects the Chinese servers. I have no idea why but forum people automatically think Asia = China when it comes to WoW. Dont know if its racism or ignorance.
Arcdevil - the Chinese players wouldnt reroll on a Western server, they rerolled on other Asian servers like Taiwan, where WotLK is available.
I had no idea WoW china was offline. But hey the MMORPG community have said since day one they dont recognise china because apparently they are ALL goldfarmers and pay JUST 6cents/hour.
Please dont wipe aside the 6cents per hour charge, 6cents in china is worth far more than 6cents in the west.
The avergae income in china per year is 4,990 and in the US its 37,500 . so 6cents translate to the equivelant of 45centshour (x7.5) in the US.
Subscription cost in the west is $15/month (for unlimted play), for the equivelant of $15 in china a player would get of 33hours of game play (0.45x33 = 1500).
So who has it best.. from the above its the west.. a dedicated China player would have to pay out more than a western player.
BTW, how is 6 cents/hour insignificant? $0.06 x 5000000 x 3 hours per evening x 365 = $329 million/year That isn't chump change. Blizzard wouldn't be in China if they weren't making decent money there.
One, Blizz only gets about a third of the money. Second, there are only about 3 million chinese WoW players. The rest of the six million are in Korea and Taiwan where Blizz makes alot more money. The total dollar amount is closer to 60 million. This does not compare to the rest of Blizz's income thus no stock holder warnings.
Many of these accounts are farmbots and dualboxers anyway. The majority is from asia. So how many american/european players are there in the first place ? And did their number change ? At all ?
In any case, less subscriptions for WoW means more potential subscriptions for other MMOs.
P.s.: Note to self: If the original poster posts TWO initial postings, read the second one too before answering the thread ...
Looks like the king si about to be kicked from it's throne
Seriously... With China putting a ban on the RMT, this is only the beginning. Next, most of the Chinese accounts will be dropped on EU/US servers, and Blizzard will have 2.5M subs. Still a huge number, and IMO a more accurate one for actual active players/
With that, I think other games will follow with dropping subs. I've heard form my friends who still play Lineage II, the RMT spam is changed. It used to be to buy in-game currrency. With the Chinese law prohibiting that, they now offer time-cards for in-game money *wonders what they'll do with the gained in-game money*
Well his post is factual, with the exception of the 5 million number. WoW would only be down to 5 million subscribers if the Chinese servers never reopened.
True, but you half to realise, the chinese half to pay through game cards, and 6cents a minute over there is a hefty price when you consider 6cents x24 =, $1.44 a day, then if you take a full month thats like $42 a month for a fully active subscription... I don't see china being one of the poorest countries as far as individual income continuining to hand purchase game cards that go by the hour to pay for a game they cannot even login to.
But it is true we cannot accurately guage how many "Subscribers WoW currently has". But, we can accurately say WoW has rougly around only 5 million "ACTIVE subscribers", Because we know the 6million in china are not actively logging in for gameplay.
I believe that a lot of WoWs success was being the right game, in the right place at the right time.
It's not qualitatively superior to every other MMORPG out there. There are others in the same ball park as to what they offer in game and world design.
The reason WoW was able to grow so huge was peer pressure. It's not just "I play WoW because I like MMORPGs", it's "I play WoW because all of my friends do".
Yes, I know this isn't the motivating factor for a lot of people, espescially the genre fans who seem to congregate here, but it was for millions of WoW players who didn't know what an MMORPG was before WoW.
Of course, the downside is that at some point such a phenomenon becomes so popular that it's no longer "cool". Myspace gave way to Facebook, but so far no MMORPG has come along to become the next "MMORPG place to be". It could be that the entire mmorpg fad for a lot of those people will be tossed aside as old news and the genre will return to being the abode of gamers and geeks.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
If you look at WOW in terms of Rogers Innovation Adoption Curve (which deals with the life cycle of a product), WOW is still in their late majority phase...
Eeek.. I belong to those old school wow players who played it before all the expansions, when you actually couldn't solo onyxia, but you guys dont know anything about that so nvm
I tried Burning Crusade Expansion, but naaah.. nothing for me. WOW was fun before the expansions, and then when they came everyone got just financial, money money.. witch ruined the game, they didnt put any energy into the expansions.
Eeek.. I belong to those old school wow players who played it before all the expansions, when you actually couldn't solo onyxia, but you guys dont know anything about that so nvm I tried Burning Crusade Expansion, but naaah.. nothing for me. WOW was fun before the expansions, and then when they came everyone got just financial, money money.. witch ruined the game, they didnt put any energy into the expansions.
I suggest you try WOTLK... one of the finest expansions for any MMO. TBC was more of the same but WRATH shines through.
Eeek.. I belong to those old school wow players who played it before all the expansions, when you actually couldn't solo onyxia, but you guys dont know anything about that so nvm I tried Burning Crusade Expansion, but naaah.. nothing for me. WOW was fun before the expansions, and then when they came everyone got just financial, money money.. witch ruined the game, they didnt put any energy into the expansions.
I suggest you try WOTLK... one of the finest expansions for any MMO. TBC was more of the same but WRATH shines through.
I was considering returning and trying WotLK but I in order to get it I had to but TBC, and at that point it was just a ridiculous amount of money they were asking.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
I wish Blizzard well with this. It may have far reaching implications for the rest of the worlds MMOs.
From watching business news, Chinese relations with western corporations seem pretty strained. If China really does want to protect their own MMO markets, I doubt it will be long before there's a formal embargo of western MMOs in China. How hard could it be to do so? I'd bet the communications companies are either gov owned or heavily regulated. Feed a list of IP addresses into the routers, and no more competition.
Scary huh?
Ken
www.ActionMMORPG.com One man, a small pile of money, and the screwball idea of a DIY Indie MMORPG? Yep, that's him. ~sigh~
I believe that a lot of WoWs success was being the right game, in the right place at the right time. It's not qualitatively superior to every other MMORPG out there. There are others in the same ball park as to what they offer in game and world design. The reason WoW was able to grow so huge was peer pressure. It's not just "I play WoW because I like MMORPGs", it's "I play WoW because all of my friends do". Yes, I know this isn't the motivating factor for a lot of people, espescially the genre fans who seem to congregate here, but it was for millions of WoW players who didn't know what an MMORPG was before WoW. Of course, the downside is that at some point such a phenomenon becomes so popular that it's no longer "cool". Myspace gave way to Facebook, but so far no MMORPG has come along to become the next "MMORPG place to be". It could be that the entire mmorpg fad for a lot of those people will be tossed aside as old news and the genre will return to being the abode of gamers and geeks. Only time will tell.
Now you have to find a reason why all people's friends played wow in the first place. And why they kept playing it after and not another one.
Eeek.. I belong to those old school wow players who played it before all the expansions, when you actually couldn't solo onyxia, but you guys dont know anything about that so nvm I tried Burning Crusade Expansion, but naaah.. nothing for me. WOW was fun before the expansions, and then when they came everyone got just financial, money money.. witch ruined the game, they didnt put any energy into the expansions.
I suggest you try WOTLK... one of the finest expansions for any MMO. TBC was more of the same but WRATH shines through.
Before Wrath came out, I quit WoW. When I quit, I called it "Rash of the Itch King".
Now I'm referring to it with respect as "Wrath of the Lich King", because I think it's deserved it. I thought it'd be more of the same, unbalanced itemization, crappy looking gear, a boring continent, limited story until endgame, and floods of DKs making PvP stupid and unbalanced. Maybe it was like that back in November of last year, but as of right now, I'm impressed with Wrath. Blizzard fixed alot of the things I didn't like about WoW, plus added in new changes to streamline things and make them more fun.
So, they didn't screw the pooch with Wrath, I have to agree.
In short: "Now financially this is less of a blow to Blizzard than it sounds. The Chinese players pay only about 6 cents per hour to play WoW, and most of that went to the Chinese operator, so in spite of China providing most of the players, it only provided a small part of the revenues and profits of Blizzard." Numbers don't matter, the impact they have matters. If Blizzard is still making ridiculous amounts of money with 5 million (allegedly) customers, they can continue to patch and maintain the game. So, I don't care.
Duh, they would make ridiculous amount of money with one million players.
This will hurt blizzard a little but not much, Morhaimes ego might get a kick. Still numbers do matter, Blizz will need some pleyers to keep the game running and updating. But I think the number that would really hurt the game is half a million, and counting full paying western customers.
To give everybody some indication as to what happened with CH-WoW you can probably find the letter that the original distributor online somewhere.
It basically said how they had still not received Wrath and the new company would hopefully have it sometime in the next six months. And in the transition from company A to company B ( I don't remember the names) character progress would be lost. So basically this is what the Chinese players had to deal with - No Wrath even six months after it's release, the loss of ALL of their characters after the company switch and they probably wouldn't be getting Wrath for another six months.
Aion came out around December in Korea and then in China like a month later. So all these Chinese mmo gamers had a brand new, very fun MMO or an older MMO that apparantly doesn't care about them. I know what just about any gamer would do in this situation. Especially if you consider that in China they don't pay retail box prices or the same subscription fees that we do. They buy time, which works out if you play something like 10 hours every single day you end up paying ~15 dollars a month. If you play less than that then you end up paying less, sometimes a lot less since the time you buy doesn't expire.
We really do kinda get shafted over here in the west on this stuff. There are restrictions on their play time and what not though. So it's a bit of give and take.
The majority of money Blizzard pulls in on WoW is from the west, as is common knowledge. Aion will take a bite or two out of that, but WoW will still remain strong for at least another year or two. Other games will be coming out over that time that will take more and more bites. WoW won't "die", but it will cease to be the giant that it is. Blizzard knows this and probably has known it for a long time. This is evident by a Blizzard rep. saying that WoW may eventually become f2p. They're planning ahead.
Comments
These polls are unnecessary, why would someone stop in US/EU/AUS/LA playing because China's servers are offline because of some legal BS of license switching? It's not like there are such restrictive governments around here, we've already moved on from this dictatorship crap.
Now, ignoring the poll, this does indeed affect Blizzard's pride, also their blind fanboys and haters. But haters out there, don't worry, it represents an insignificant revenue for Blizzard, as you have seen their pay-for-hours revenue model goes as cheap as 6 cents per hour (wow, such an unrealistic price, when this model hits the West I believe we will see prices around 25 cents per hour while also offering the monthly subscriptions we are used to).
I certainly hope so... can't wait to play a Pandaren Druid.
I play WoW, and I do enjoy it. I personally dont care if there are 1million or 30 million players. My server is packed and thats all that matters to me.
However the real problem here is China. Or should I say the Chinese government. The US owes China billions yet they constantly try to squeeze American products out of there culture. Yet we buy up there crap on a daily basis.
BTW, how is 6 cents/hour insignificant?
$0.06 x 5000000 x 3 hours per evening x 365 = $329 million/year
That isn't chump change. Blizzard wouldn't be in China if they weren't making decent money there.
while its not official, its possible, and more than probable
Everybody knows chinese wow players amount well over 6m,its a fact blizzard never bothered to hide, just like its a fact noone of them can play WoW.
11-6 = 5
Its not probable and its not possible.
This blog forgot that not every last single Chinese player quit playing. A large number of them moved to other servers.
You'd have to be pretty dumb or a WoW hater to believe this.
fair point,that possibilitity exists
but what other server allows them to pay hourly? and hows the exchange rate for their currency? i dont picture all those chinese players paying a monthly sub in a western server that will cost them 4 or 5 times what their old server costed ...not even 10% of them...
The other thing this blog forgot is that there are 6 million ASIAN WoW subscribers. That includes China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc.
This problem with China only affects the Chinese servers. I have no idea why but forum people automatically think Asia = China when it comes to WoW. Dont know if its racism or ignorance.
Arcdevil - the Chinese players wouldnt reroll on a Western server, they rerolled on other Asian servers like Taiwan, where WotLK is available.
I had no idea WoW china was offline. But hey the MMORPG community have said since day one they dont recognise china because apparently they are ALL goldfarmers and pay JUST 6cents/hour.
Please dont wipe aside the 6cents per hour charge, 6cents in china is worth far more than 6cents in the west.
The avergae income in china per year is 4,990 and in the US its 37,500 . so 6cents translate to the equivelant of 45centshour (x7.5) in the US.
Subscription cost in the west is $15/month (for unlimted play), for the equivelant of $15 in china a player would get of 33hours of game play (0.45x33 = 1500).
So who has it best.. from the above its the west.. a dedicated China player would have to pay out more than a western player.
One, Blizz only gets about a third of the money. Second, there are only about 3 million chinese WoW players. The rest of the six million are in Korea and Taiwan where Blizz makes alot more money. The total dollar amount is closer to 60 million. This does not compare to the rest of Blizz's income thus no stock holder warnings.
Oh jeez... I think I will stop playing WOW if they are not giving service in China.
Well, 11 million or 5 million, who cares ?
Many of these accounts are farmbots and dualboxers anyway. The majority is from asia. So how many american/european players are there in the first place ? And did their number change ? At all ?
In any case, less subscriptions for WoW means more potential subscriptions for other MMOs.
P.s.: Note to self: If the original poster posts TWO initial postings, read the second one too before answering the thread ...
Looks like the king si about to be kicked from it's throne
Seriously... With China putting a ban on the RMT, this is only the beginning. Next, most of the Chinese accounts will be dropped on EU/US servers, and Blizzard will have 2.5M subs. Still a huge number, and IMO a more accurate one for actual active players/
With that, I think other games will follow with dropping subs. I've heard form my friends who still play Lineage II, the RMT spam is changed. It used to be to buy in-game currrency. With the Chinese law prohibiting that, they now offer time-cards for in-game money *wonders what they'll do with the gained in-game money*
True, but you half to realise, the chinese half to pay through game cards, and 6cents a minute over there is a hefty price when you consider 6cents x24 =, $1.44 a day, then if you take a full month thats like $42 a month for a fully active subscription... I don't see china being one of the poorest countries as far as individual income continuining to hand purchase game cards that go by the hour to pay for a game they cannot even login to.
But it is true we cannot accurately guage how many "Subscribers WoW currently has". But, we can accurately say WoW has rougly around only 5 million "ACTIVE subscribers", Because we know the 6million in china are not actively logging in for gameplay.
I believe that a lot of WoWs success was being the right game, in the right place at the right time.
It's not qualitatively superior to every other MMORPG out there. There are others in the same ball park as to what they offer in game and world design.
The reason WoW was able to grow so huge was peer pressure. It's not just "I play WoW because I like MMORPGs", it's "I play WoW because all of my friends do".
Yes, I know this isn't the motivating factor for a lot of people, espescially the genre fans who seem to congregate here, but it was for millions of WoW players who didn't know what an MMORPG was before WoW.
Of course, the downside is that at some point such a phenomenon becomes so popular that it's no longer "cool". Myspace gave way to Facebook, but so far no MMORPG has come along to become the next "MMORPG place to be". It could be that the entire mmorpg fad for a lot of those people will be tossed aside as old news and the genre will return to being the abode of gamers and geeks.
Only time will tell.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
WOW's appeal has never been just because of their numbers, it has a lot to like going for it and people will still be drawn to it.
Like all games, it has to decline one day, just a matter of time.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Of course that's your contention.
You're a first year grad student.
You just finished some Marxian
historian, Pete Garrison prob'ly, and
so naturally that's what you believe
until next month when you get to James
Lemon and get convinced that Virginia
and Pennsylvania were strongly
entrepreneurial and capitalist back in
1740. That'll last until sometime in
your second year, then you'll be in
here regurgitating Gordon Wood about
the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the
capital-forming effects of military
mobilization.
Eeek.. I belong to those old school wow players who played it before all the expansions, when you actually couldn't solo onyxia, but you guys dont know anything about that so nvm
I tried Burning Crusade Expansion, but naaah.. nothing for me. WOW was fun before the expansions, and then when they came everyone got just financial, money money.. witch ruined the game, they didnt put any energy into the expansions.
I suggest you try WOTLK... one of the finest expansions for any MMO. TBC was more of the same but WRATH shines through.
I suggest you try WOTLK... one of the finest expansions for any MMO. TBC was more of the same but WRATH shines through.
I was considering returning and trying WotLK but I in order to get it I had to but TBC, and at that point it was just a ridiculous amount of money they were asking.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
I wish Blizzard well with this. It may have far reaching implications for the rest of the worlds MMOs.
From watching business news, Chinese relations with western corporations seem pretty strained. If China really does want to protect their own MMO markets, I doubt it will be long before there's a formal embargo of western MMOs in China. How hard could it be to do so? I'd bet the communications companies are either gov owned or heavily regulated. Feed a list of IP addresses into the routers, and no more competition.
Scary huh?
Ken
www.ActionMMORPG.com
One man, a small pile of money, and the screwball idea of a DIY Indie MMORPG? Yep, that's him. ~sigh~
Now you have to find a reason why all people's friends played wow in the first place. And why they kept playing it after and not another one.
I suggest you try WOTLK... one of the finest expansions for any MMO. TBC was more of the same but WRATH shines through.
Before Wrath came out, I quit WoW. When I quit, I called it "Rash of the Itch King".
Now I'm referring to it with respect as "Wrath of the Lich King", because I think it's deserved it. I thought it'd be more of the same, unbalanced itemization, crappy looking gear, a boring continent, limited story until endgame, and floods of DKs making PvP stupid and unbalanced. Maybe it was like that back in November of last year, but as of right now, I'm impressed with Wrath. Blizzard fixed alot of the things I didn't like about WoW, plus added in new changes to streamline things and make them more fun.
So, they didn't screw the pooch with Wrath, I have to agree.
Duh, they would make ridiculous amount of money with one million players.
This will hurt blizzard a little but not much, Morhaimes ego might get a kick. Still numbers do matter, Blizz will need some pleyers to keep the game running and updating. But I think the number that would really hurt the game is half a million, and counting full paying western customers.
To give everybody some indication as to what happened with CH-WoW you can probably find the letter that the original distributor online somewhere.
It basically said how they had still not received Wrath and the new company would hopefully have it sometime in the next six months. And in the transition from company A to company B ( I don't remember the names) character progress would be lost. So basically this is what the Chinese players had to deal with - No Wrath even six months after it's release, the loss of ALL of their characters after the company switch and they probably wouldn't be getting Wrath for another six months.
Aion came out around December in Korea and then in China like a month later. So all these Chinese mmo gamers had a brand new, very fun MMO or an older MMO that apparantly doesn't care about them. I know what just about any gamer would do in this situation. Especially if you consider that in China they don't pay retail box prices or the same subscription fees that we do. They buy time, which works out if you play something like 10 hours every single day you end up paying ~15 dollars a month. If you play less than that then you end up paying less, sometimes a lot less since the time you buy doesn't expire.
We really do kinda get shafted over here in the west on this stuff. There are restrictions on their play time and what not though. So it's a bit of give and take.
The majority of money Blizzard pulls in on WoW is from the west, as is common knowledge. Aion will take a bite or two out of that, but WoW will still remain strong for at least another year or two. Other games will be coming out over that time that will take more and more bites. WoW won't "die", but it will cease to be the giant that it is. Blizzard knows this and probably has known it for a long time. This is evident by a Blizzard rep. saying that WoW may eventually become f2p. They're planning ahead.
Were is that thread where a poster thought the CEO of Blizzard might by asking us about his new MMO? Looks like the CEO is here mate.