I think some of the points the OP makes are pretty invalid.
First of all the success of Blizzard doesn't depend upon WoW succeeding, they have already earnt so much money it can die right now and have little impact on their plans. It already has (debatably) the best and most popular RTS game out and with the expansion for SC2 and Diablo 3 coming out, they'll do just fine.
Secondly saying if WoW died, people would put less money into making games is totally wrong. If people get bored out of WoW, thats 10million people looking for a new quality AAA game, If there was ever a time to pump money into developing a quality game, it would be then.
As long as there is any competition of any kind in a market, Companies will either opt out of the market, or compete and spend alot of money. There is only a few markets that have been monopolized and MMOs is definitely not one of them.
I was reading a thread with the topic on the benefit of WoW losing subs to competition. Well we talk about this idea of a "WoW Killer" ever so often.
do we ever stop to think of the outcome of Blizzard's downfall in the MMORPG genre?
lets assume,,,
"RIFT hit WoW with an Expose armor. Swtor and GW2 are coming with a 9mill eveserate."
this responce by another poster came with this..
"WoW loses subs, Blizzard loses income. Less income, less money to devopement. Not only less for WOW content, less for Diablo, Starcraft, Titan, all the games Blizzard makes, WOW funds all of these.
So now, the quality of Blizzard games suffers across the board, causing more Sub loss.
As Blizzard declines, the competition never again needs to put the time and money into a game like Bioware did. Games like AION, Warhammer, and Conan are the new standard of excellence, for with Blizzard gone, they don't have to put out excellent.
See how "good" Blizzards downfall is?"
I must admit. WoW has become the Standards for the MMORPG genre. all MMORPG get compared to the quality of Blizzard's World of Warcraft.
is this a bad thing?
for some, yes, for many, not so much.
what would be the standards of the genre, once WoW dies and pulls a EQ1 move on the genre?
"I do honestly think the greedly investors are the ones holding wow back now"
just imagine, if these greedy investors turn Blizzard into a SoE, killing WoW. what effect will this ripple have on the MMORPG genre?
Iam not talking about simply losing half its sub. I mean, a clear death of WoW. what you think will change in the gaming genre?
The moment Blizz gives even a crum of info on Titan people will go "SWTOR who?"
I was reading a thread with the topic on the benefit of WoW losing subs to competition. Well we talk about this idea of a "WoW Killer" ever so often.
do we ever stop to think of the outcome of Blizzard's downfall in the MMORPG genre?
lets assume,,,
"RIFT hit WoW with an Expose armor. Swtor and GW2 are coming with a 9mill eveserate."
this responce by another poster came with this..
"WoW loses subs, Blizzard loses income. Less income, less money to devopement. Not only less for WOW content, less for Diablo, Starcraft, Titan, all the games Blizzard makes, WOW funds all of these.
So now, the quality of Blizzard games suffers across the board, causing more Sub loss.
As Blizzard declines, the competition never again needs to put the time and money into a game like Bioware did. Games like AION, Warhammer, and Conan are the new standard of excellence, for with Blizzard gone, they don't have to put out excellent.
See how "good" Blizzards downfall is?"
I must admit. WoW has become the Standards for the MMORPG genre. all MMORPG get compared to the quality of Blizzard's World of Warcraft.
is this a bad thing?
for some, yes, for many, not so much.
what would be the standards of the genre, once WoW dies and pulls a EQ1 move on the genre?
"I do honestly think the greedly investors are the ones holding wow back now"
just imagine, if these greedy investors turn Blizzard into a SoE, killing WoW. what effect will this ripple have on the MMORPG genre?
Iam not talking about simply losing half its sub. I mean, a clear death of WoW. what you think will change in the gaming genre?
The moment Blizz gives even a crum of info on Titan people will go "SWTOR who?"
This.
The signs have been there for a while, everyone knows that Blizzard is working on their Titan project and some people may also be aware they pulled their main team away from WoW to work on the project.
Blizzard has made so much money from WoW that they can work on all their projects comfortably without worrying about deadlines or impressing investors. This means they can quite happily work on a game as long as they see fit and we can all expect a quality product at launch.
Its clear that Blizzard is no longer focussing its best efforts on WoW, Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria are not the quality content for an expansion like we saw in Burning Crusade and WotLK, and word of Titan got out after these two expansions were done weren't they?
In conclusion, even though people believe that WoW is "bleeding subs" even if it does, even if it still has 1 million subs its doing better than just about every MMO on the market, hence it still being on top which is good for Blizzard i actually have a feeling Blizzard is no longer too concerned with WoW and want to move on to their next big thing, which will likely be Titan.
Originally posted by Gazenthia How long do you think WoW is going to last losing a net of, what was it? 800,000+ subscribers? Every quarter. it's going to get worse from here on out, maybe some relief with 4.3 but I doubt it.
Using round even numbers and guesstimations, I'd say maybe 3 years?
800,000 x 4 = 3.2 million / year guessing maybe 10,000,000 subs, that looks like about 3 years, give or take...
Of course, we all know that this is not a constant (the sub losses, especially not figuring ANY adds whatsoever) and nobody knows what is in store for the future.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
How long do you think WoW is going to last losing a net of, what was it? 800,000+ subscribers? Every quarter. it's going to get worse from here on out, maybe some relief with 4.3 but I doubt it.
Using round even numbers and guesstimations, I'd say maybe 3 years?
800,000 x 4 = 3.2 million / year
guessing maybe 10,000,000 subs, that looks like about 3 years, give or take...
Of course, we all know that this is not a constant (the sub losses, especially not figuring ANY adds whatsoever) and nobody knows what is in store for the future.
MMO history says otherwise. Games that steeply drop off in subs eventually bottom out, to some percentage (x) of their hardcore fans, and people who can't bear to give up their virtual wealth accumulations.
Look at the (rather large) number of early games that had a disasterous patch or some other Bad Event, and a steep dropoff in subs when something else (new game) is released. They fall into the 200-500k subs range, and then cruise on for year after year after year.
WoW's got a buffer, other markets. The dropoff won't be that steep, nor will it "die".
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
How long do you think WoW is going to last losing a net of, what was it? 800,000+ subscribers? Every quarter. it's going to get worse from here on out, maybe some relief with 4.3 but I doubt it.
Using round even numbers and guesstimations, I'd say maybe 3 years?
800,000 x 4 = 3.2 million / year
guessing maybe 10,000,000 subs, that looks like about 3 years, give or take...
Of course, we all know that this is not a constant (the sub losses, especially not figuring ANY adds whatsoever) and nobody knows what is in store for the future.
The underlined part, is the only valid thing in this entire topic
The Big Money leaving the MMO industry is the best that can happen. We had amazing games 10 years ago, now we have copycats of a formula that worked 8 years ago. It's time for innovation and risk, and you can't have those when 70 milion$ or more are at stake.
"WoW loses subs, Blizzard loses income. Less income, less money to devopement.
Subs are down, true, but I wthink you will find that this statement isn't true.
WoW's revenue is actually up.
Look, lets be honest, by the time that WoW is 'done' Blizzard will be dominating the space with something else.
Some folks may be bored with WoW but the decent sales we see for games that have emulated it like Rift and SWTOR means their formula isn't ready to die.
Why folks cheer on the demise of WoW and then support it's bastard children that are even worse I have no idea.
I can only assume it's because they want to like WoW but because it's how they fear they will be judged by other core gamers for playing the big name don't feel able admit it, and so they maybe settle for the next closest thing that dosen't have the same stigma.
Originally posted by Z3R01 Originally posted by Dewm WoW is not bleeding/losing subs. they still have millions more then the closest runner up.
over a million subs lost within a year isn't bleeding subs? If this keeps up in three years time WoW will have lost its foothold in NA/Euro territories. We all know WoW is strong in Asia but they only have 3-4 million in NA/Euro.
Most of the 'subs' were lost in Asia, not North America.
Even if WoW collapsed entirely tomorrow, it would not halt or hinder development of StarCraft expansions or Diablo III. If anything, they would speed development along to get those things released. We'd probably see a new Warcraft RTS game come out.
I think the industry as a whole would shrug and move on.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I was reading a thread with the topic on the benefit of WoW losing subs to competition. Well we talk about this idea of a "WoW Killer" ever so often.
do we ever stop to think of the outcome of Blizzard's downfall in the MMORPG genre?
lets assume,,,
"RIFT hit WoW with an Expose armor. Swtor and GW2 are coming with a 9mill eveserate."
this responce by another poster came with this..
"WoW loses subs, Blizzard loses income. Less income, less money to devopement. Not only less for WOW content, less for Diablo, Starcraft, Titan, all the games Blizzard makes, WOW funds all of these.
So now, the quality of Blizzard games suffers across the board, causing more Sub loss.
As Blizzard declines, the competition never again needs to put the time and money into a game like Bioware did. Games like AION, Warhammer, and Conan are the new standard of excellence, for with Blizzard gone, they don't have to put out excellent.
See how "good" Blizzards downfall is?"
I must admit. WoW has become the Standards for the MMORPG genre. all MMORPG get compared to the quality of Blizzard's World of Warcraft.
is this a bad thing?
for some, yes, for many, not so much.
what would be the standards of the genre, once WoW dies and pulls a EQ1 move on the genre?
"I do honestly think the greedly investors are the ones holding wow back now"
just imagine, if these greedy investors turn Blizzard into a SoE, killing WoW. what effect will this ripple have on the MMORPG genre?
Iam not talking about simply losing half its sub. I mean, a clear death of WoW. what you think will change in the gaming genre?
Get an education in marketing and business finances before you speak about something you have not a single idea about. I haven’t read anything that was so stupid in a long time.
I think I’ll write a post about how you deliver a baby to the world from a doctors perspective .. I mean, I don’t need to know anything i just make stupid assumptions like this.
The Big Money leaving the MMO industry is the best that can happen. We had amazing games 10 years ago, now we have copycats of a formula that worked 8 years ago. It's time for innovation and risk, and you can't have those when 70 milion$ or more are at stake.
Bad developers aren't going to magically become good ones if Blizzard left the genre. Seems to me, a bad developer without a role model is going to make even worse games.
Also, if Blizzard leaves MMOs aren't magically going to stop requiring millions to make.
MMOs aren't really a great genre for innovation and risk. For starters, they're an old genre at this point. Second, innovation works best in agile games. MMOs are not agile games (there's a ton of deadweight work that has to be sunk into actually making them massive.)
If innovation is truly what you're after you play around in all the weird indie titles that get released all the time. For most gamers, innovation isn't really what they're interested in. Polish matters more than innovation (and I'd love to see an MMORPG release combat which felt more polished than WOW; thus far I haven't. Coincides with the lack of MMORPGs which are more successful than WOW.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The OP is fooling himself by thinking Blizzard isnt greedy, their track record shows otherwise.
Blizzard doesnt have too many tittles and the ...3 they have always have been milked to squeeze out every single penny they can find. Sadly it does seem they are cutting back on everything. Starcraft2.. sorry but besides it coming out 10 years too late, the sc2 is more a polushed up version of sc1 with new cutscenes without the anoying useless heroes.
Wotlk, reruns reruns reruns, they didnt even bother to actually change the stats on Ony's gear to Wotlk standards, they just raised the original stats to match the new gear level. Toc.. 1 room and every piece of gear looked the same. Atleast in Vanilla and BC they gave us different raid zones for each format. The list goes on and on.
Even the upcoming Diablo is being made to make an extra quick buck off it.
That said, WoW or more accurate.. blizzard dieing would be a bad thing for the market, granted it is for the best for them to be brought down to a point where they actually have equal compedators.
I don't really think you can call WoW the standard. If WoW is the standard then as a score WoW is a 5/10. 5 being the average or standard when WoW was an exceptional mmorpg an 8.5/10 at least for it's time.
The logic behind this is fundamentally flawed and a huge ego stroke to WoW. You are basically saying that WoW is the greatest game, and that all other games that are decent owe their success to WoW, for forcing them to achieve that success because WoW is so good. This is circular logic. If WoW is dethroned, which is inevitable, the next top game will take it's place. Will this next game be responsible for the success of all other games? Of course not, and neither is WoW. I can't wait until WoW is no longer the top game. The end is coming....
The logic behind this is fundamentally flawed and a huge ego stroke to WoW. You are basically saying that WoW is the greatest game, and that all other games that are decent owe their success to WoW, for forcing them to achieve that success because WoW is so good. This is circular logic. If WoW is dethroned, which is inevitable, the next top game will take it's place. Will this next game be responsible for the success of all other games? Of course not, and neither is WoW. I can't wait until WoW is no longer the top game. The end is coming....
The logic behind this is fundamentally flawed and a huge ego stroke to WoW. You are basically saying that WoW is the greatest game, and that all other games that are decent owe their success to WoW, for forcing them to achieve that success because WoW is so good. This is circular logic. If WoW is dethroned, which is inevitable, the next top game will take it's place. Will this next game be responsible for the success of all other games? Of course not, and neither is WoW. I can't wait until WoW is no longer the top game. The end is coming....
But isn't it free to play? You can't call LoL an MMORPG either its just not got enough depth. Blizzard are going to try and take a slice of that playerbase too with their own version of LoL which may turn out to be bad news for them considering they based their game off of the Warcraft DOTA in the first place.
People also need to realise that even if WoW loses subs to other games they wont be hurting AT ALL. Blizzard had stated one time that after the game had come out in 2004 up until now. They have only used about 10% of the revenue they have generated from the game to pay employees, server upgrades, etc etc. So even if they lose a chuck of subs that they will in no way be hurting for money.
People also need to realise that even if WoW loses subs to other games they wont be hurting AT ALL. Blizzard had stated one time that after the game had come out in 2004 up until now. They have only used about 10% of the revenue they have generated from the game to pay employees, server upgrades, etc etc. So even if they lose a chuck of subs that they will in no way be hurting for money.
so Blizzard has 90% of the revenue from 7 years in the bank, to use as they please?
People also need to realise that even if WoW loses subs to other games they wont be hurting AT ALL. Blizzard had stated one time that after the game had come out in 2004 up until now. They have only used about 10% of the revenue they have generated from the game to pay employees, server upgrades, etc etc. So even if they lose a chuck of subs that they will in no way be hurting for money.
so Blizzard has 90% of the revenue from 7 years in the bank, to use as they please?
The company earned $1.449b ($1.449 billion) in revenue for the quarter, up from $1.308b in the previous March quarter. Profit also leaped to $503m ($503 million) for the March 2011 quarter, up from $381m in the March 2010 quarter. Activision-Blizzard had forecast revenue of $1.28b in the March 2011 quarter with profits of $336m - so the company easily beat both projections. Previously, Activision-Blizzard had projected revenue of $3.95b for January to December 2011, with profit of $672m for the year. The company now expects $4.05b in revenue for the year with profits of 61 cents per share - or about $732m. During the April to June 2011 quarter, Activision-Blizzard revenues are forecast to reach $985m, with profit at 19 cents per share, or $228m.
You see that? 503 MILLION in PROFITS. And thats only in a 4 month period. Imagine that over the course of how long they have been open and making games.
Originally posted by Arcona Originally posted by Tsuru People also need to realise that even if WoW loses subs to other games they wont be hurting AT ALL. Blizzard had stated one time that after the game had come out in 2004 up until now. They have only used about 10% of the revenue they have generated from the game to pay employees, server upgrades, etc etc. So even if they lose a chuck of subs that they will in no way be hurting for money.
so Blizzard has 90% of the revenue from 7 years in the bank, to use as they please?
If they haven't put money aside for the day when WoW tanks, they're stupid. They have exactly one large, steady source of income. It's not too much of a stretch to think that one income stream might go belly up.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
People also need to realise that even if WoW loses subs to other games they wont be hurting AT ALL. Blizzard had stated one time that after the game had come out in 2004 up until now. They have only used about 10% of the revenue they have generated from the game to pay employees, server upgrades, etc etc. So even if they lose a chuck of subs that they will in no way be hurting for money.
so Blizzard has 90% of the revenue from 7 years in the bank, to use as they please?
If they haven't put money aside for the day when WoW tanks, they're stupid. They have exactly one large, steady source of income. It's not too much of a stretch to think that one income stream might go belly up.
Even if WoW starts to struggle and has to go on life support its not going to cost Blizzard much to keep it going if you think how the revenue they have and the money that the business has. They would probably let it die and move on to other prospects like Titan, which could be anything.
but first off, WoW is not bleeding/losing subs. they still have millions more then the closest runner up.
second, Blizzard earns billions each year BILLIONS, i'm sure they have a nice piggy bank saved up....BILLIONS x 8 years?
third, Blizz did just fine (really well) before WOW came out, so this whole "wow is funding other blizz games" is bull. I'm not a fan of WOW, but Blizzard makes quality games... end of story..
BILLIONS, they could remake RIFT x 40 if they wanted.
BILLIONS
wow is indeed LOSING subs. Its still top dog,it still has MILLIONS of subs, but please dont kid yourself, they are losing subs. its a fact and it is public info -- they are a publicly traded company after all.
And this is without any malice. Blizzard made much money on WOW, and its time to move on.
The deathgrip WOW has over the genre over the years , hurt every other game so much. Its time for new page, new wave, new gameplay.
And for this to happen WOW must die
very true. but with studios like Bioware throwing SWTOR out there, it isnt in the near future. the biggest MMO offering since maybe wow, and it is nothing more then a single player RPG with multiplayer options. not good.
Kind of a reductivist outlook. "As goes Blizzard, so goes the world."
I think Blizzard, which has done game development for a long, long time, set aside funds for Titan, Diablo 3 and Blizzard expansions long ago. What you are seeing in WoW is nothing more than the A team no longer on board. The varsity squad is off making Diablo 3 and Titan. Pandaria looks and reads like the newbies coding while the interns QA (my opinion, not fact).
Now if Titan sucks, well then we have a problem but I don't think that the decline of quality, overall, for Blizzard will drag down the genre.
What the genre needs is actual innovation that is intuitive, immersive and FUN! Remember when we talked about immersion and....(whispers) emergent gameplay?
The A team is still there but part time. Blizzard hired new people for Titan so they are not using all of their in house staff on it.
all this A-team talk banks of the idea that the A-Team is or even ever was A-Team quality. Blizz has lost ALOT of its top talent over the years. Most of the people who are really resonsible for the success of the 3 core franchise games, Diablo, warcraft and SC are long gone. their A-Team isnt the same, nor has it been for years.
Comments
I think some of the points the OP makes are pretty invalid.
First of all the success of Blizzard doesn't depend upon WoW succeeding, they have already earnt so much money it can die right now and have little impact on their plans. It already has (debatably) the best and most popular RTS game out and with the expansion for SC2 and Diablo 3 coming out, they'll do just fine.
Secondly saying if WoW died, people would put less money into making games is totally wrong. If people get bored out of WoW, thats 10million people looking for a new quality AAA game, If there was ever a time to pump money into developing a quality game, it would be then.
As long as there is any competition of any kind in a market, Companies will either opt out of the market, or compete and spend alot of money. There is only a few markets that have been monopolized and MMOs is definitely not one of them.
The moment Blizz gives even a crum of info on Titan people will go "SWTOR who?"
This.
The signs have been there for a while, everyone knows that Blizzard is working on their Titan project and some people may also be aware they pulled their main team away from WoW to work on the project.
Blizzard has made so much money from WoW that they can work on all their projects comfortably without worrying about deadlines or impressing investors. This means they can quite happily work on a game as long as they see fit and we can all expect a quality product at launch.
Its clear that Blizzard is no longer focussing its best efforts on WoW, Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria are not the quality content for an expansion like we saw in Burning Crusade and WotLK, and word of Titan got out after these two expansions were done weren't they?
In conclusion, even though people believe that WoW is "bleeding subs" even if it does, even if it still has 1 million subs its doing better than just about every MMO on the market, hence it still being on top which is good for Blizzard i actually have a feeling Blizzard is no longer too concerned with WoW and want to move on to their next big thing, which will likely be Titan.
800,000 x 4 = 3.2 million / year
guessing maybe 10,000,000 subs, that looks like about 3 years, give or take...
Of course, we all know that this is not a constant (the sub losses, especially not figuring ANY adds whatsoever) and nobody knows what is in store for the future.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
MMO history says otherwise. Games that steeply drop off in subs eventually bottom out, to some percentage (x) of their hardcore fans, and people who can't bear to give up their virtual wealth accumulations.
Look at the (rather large) number of early games that had a disasterous patch or some other Bad Event, and a steep dropoff in subs when something else (new game) is released. They fall into the 200-500k subs range, and then cruise on for year after year after year.
WoW's got a buffer, other markets. The dropoff won't be that steep, nor will it "die".
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
The underlined part, is the only valid thing in this entire topic
over a million subs lost within a year isn't bleeding subs?
If this keeps up in three years time WoW will have lost its foothold in NA/Euro territories.
We all know WoW is strong in Asia but they only have 3-4 million in NA/Euro.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
The Big Money leaving the MMO industry is the best that can happen. We had amazing games 10 years ago, now we have copycats of a formula that worked 8 years ago. It's time for innovation and risk, and you can't have those when 70 milion$ or more are at stake.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Subs are down, true, but I wthink you will find that this statement isn't true.
WoW's revenue is actually up.
Look, lets be honest, by the time that WoW is 'done' Blizzard will be dominating the space with something else.
Some folks may be bored with WoW but the decent sales we see for games that have emulated it like Rift and SWTOR means their formula isn't ready to die.
Why folks cheer on the demise of WoW and then support it's bastard children that are even worse I have no idea.
I can only assume it's because they want to like WoW but because it's how they fear they will be judged by other core gamers for playing the big name don't feel able admit it, and so they maybe settle for the next closest thing that dosen't have the same stigma.
If this keeps up in three years time WoW will have lost its foothold in NA/Euro territories.
We all know WoW is strong in Asia but they only have 3-4 million in NA/Euro.
Most of the 'subs' were lost in Asia, not North America.
Even if WoW collapsed entirely tomorrow, it would not halt or hinder development of StarCraft expansions or Diablo III. If anything, they would speed development along to get those things released. We'd probably see a new Warcraft RTS game come out.
I think the industry as a whole would shrug and move on.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Get an education in marketing and business finances before you speak about something you have not a single idea about. I haven’t read anything that was so stupid in a long time.
I think I’ll write a post about how you deliver a baby to the world from a doctors perspective .. I mean, I don’t need to know anything i just make stupid assumptions like this.
Bad developers aren't going to magically become good ones if Blizzard left the genre. Seems to me, a bad developer without a role model is going to make even worse games.
Also, if Blizzard leaves MMOs aren't magically going to stop requiring millions to make.
MMOs aren't really a great genre for innovation and risk. For starters, they're an old genre at this point. Second, innovation works best in agile games. MMOs are not agile games (there's a ton of deadweight work that has to be sunk into actually making them massive.)
If innovation is truly what you're after you play around in all the weird indie titles that get released all the time. For most gamers, innovation isn't really what they're interested in. Polish matters more than innovation (and I'd love to see an MMORPG release combat which felt more polished than WOW; thus far I haven't. Coincides with the lack of MMORPGs which are more successful than WOW.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The OP is fooling himself by thinking Blizzard isnt greedy, their track record shows otherwise.
Blizzard doesnt have too many tittles and the ...3 they have always have been milked to squeeze out every single penny they can find. Sadly it does seem they are cutting back on everything. Starcraft2.. sorry but besides it coming out 10 years too late, the sc2 is more a polushed up version of sc1 with new cutscenes without the anoying useless heroes.
Wotlk, reruns reruns reruns, they didnt even bother to actually change the stats on Ony's gear to Wotlk standards, they just raised the original stats to match the new gear level. Toc.. 1 room and every piece of gear looked the same. Atleast in Vanilla and BC they gave us different raid zones for each format. The list goes on and on.
Even the upcoming Diablo is being made to make an extra quick buck off it.
That said, WoW or more accurate.. blizzard dieing would be a bad thing for the market, granted it is for the best for them to be brought down to a point where they actually have equal compedators.
I don't really think you can call WoW the standard. If WoW is the standard then as a score WoW is a 5/10. 5 being the average or standard when WoW was an exceptional mmorpg an 8.5/10 at least for it's time.
My theme song.
The logic behind this is fundamentally flawed and a huge ego stroke to WoW. You are basically saying that WoW is the greatest game, and that all other games that are decent owe their success to WoW, for forcing them to achieve that success because WoW is so good. This is circular logic. If WoW is dethroned, which is inevitable, the next top game will take it's place. Will this next game be responsible for the success of all other games? Of course not, and neither is WoW. I can't wait until WoW is no longer the top game. The end is coming....
LoL has 11,5 million monthly players and growing
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1495692
But isn't it free to play? You can't call LoL an MMORPG either its just not got enough depth. Blizzard are going to try and take a slice of that playerbase too with their own version of LoL which may turn out to be bad news for them considering they based their game off of the Warcraft DOTA in the first place.
People also need to realise that even if WoW loses subs to other games they wont be hurting AT ALL. Blizzard had stated one time that after the game had come out in 2004 up until now. They have only used about 10% of the revenue they have generated from the game to pay employees, server upgrades, etc etc. So even if they lose a chuck of subs that they will in no way be hurting for money.
so Blizzard has 90% of the revenue from 7 years in the bank, to use as they please?
The company earned $1.449b ($1.449 billion) in revenue for the quarter, up from $1.308b in the previous March quarter. Profit also leaped to $503m ($503 million) for the March 2011 quarter, up from $381m in the March 2010 quarter. Activision-Blizzard had forecast revenue of $1.28b in the March 2011 quarter with profits of $336m - so the company easily beat both projections. Previously, Activision-Blizzard had projected revenue of $3.95b for January to December 2011, with profit of $672m for the year. The company now expects $4.05b in revenue for the year with profits of 61 cents per share - or about $732m. During the April to June 2011 quarter, Activision-Blizzard revenues are forecast to reach $985m, with profit at 19 cents per share, or $228m.
You see that? 503 MILLION in PROFITS. And thats only in a 4 month period. Imagine that over the course of how long they have been open and making games.
If they haven't put money aside for the day when WoW tanks, they're stupid. They have exactly one large, steady source of income. It's not too much of a stretch to think that one income stream might go belly up.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Even if WoW starts to struggle and has to go on life support its not going to cost Blizzard much to keep it going if you think how the revenue they have and the money that the business has. They would probably let it die and move on to other prospects like Titan, which could be anything.
wow is indeed LOSING subs. Its still top dog,it still has MILLIONS of subs, but please dont kid yourself, they are losing subs. its a fact and it is public info -- they are a publicly traded company after all.
very true. but with studios like Bioware throwing SWTOR out there, it isnt in the near future. the biggest MMO offering since maybe wow, and it is nothing more then a single player RPG with multiplayer options. not good.
all this A-team talk banks of the idea that the A-Team is or even ever was A-Team quality. Blizz has lost ALOT of its top talent over the years. Most of the people who are really resonsible for the success of the 3 core franchise games, Diablo, warcraft and SC are long gone. their A-Team isnt the same, nor has it been for years.