Blizzard Admits The Old Republic Stung World of Warcraft

[DTWolfwood]

WoW has been declining since WoTLK, losing subs every patch. They staved it off with the Cata hype, but not for long.

Now they're entering the embarassing pandering stage where they'll desperately introduce all the gimmicky crap anyone ever asked for, in hopes of slowing the tide. It happens to every huge MMO - UO, EverQuest.

Looking at WoW's massive cultural impact, it still has a good 8-10 P2P years in it, but they'll be slow and unfruitful ones.

Whats embarrassing in that chart is SWTOR XD looking at the trend for all the other MMO, Swtor had the quickest rise and fall of any other MMO. if i could find my old posts here and on GT, i could say "I told you so" to so many peeps who bought the hype.

 

[DTWolfwood]

As interesting as this graph is, I want to now what caused the dramatic dip to WoW east in mid 2009. That drop is positively grand canyon like.

I believe that was when WOW was banned in China [http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-03-11/tech/30004898_1_first-hero-class-lich-king-chinese-government]

 

[Avatar Roku]

Understandable, and I would probably play ToR if there was a trial of some kind, but until then I'm staying with WoW, speaking of, why is a Panda so silly when you could play as a cow person from day one?

It was actually free for all of last weekend. I tried, it was pretty fun, and this is coming from someone who gave up on WoW's trial pretty quickly.

Understandable, and I would probably play ToR if there was a trial of some kind, but until then I'm staying with WoW, speaking of, why is a Panda so silly when you could play as a cow person from day one?

Existing players can refer you for a trial. Gimme a mail and I'll hook you up

Oh, can I get in on this too?

 

[teebeeohh]

still, wow lost more subscribers than most mmos had in their prime

 

[lacktheknack]

Understandable, and I would probably play ToR if there was a trial of some kind, but until then I'm staying with WoW, speaking of, why is a Panda so silly when you could play as a cow person from day one?

Not to mention that one breed of wolf people did the Lady Gaga "Poker Face" dance. Pandas are small potatoes.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

I think SWTOR was more lucky than good. I'm not saying that SWTOR isn't good, its got a lot of things going for it (Name recognition, established universe and fan base) but its reputation as a "WOW killer" because the dip in subscriptions is a bit undeserved.

WOW is showing its age. Looking at the graph, the recent dip in subscriptions begins well before SWTOR hit the shelves. That seems to imply that people were getting tired of WOW rather than lured in by another MMO.

 

[theultimateend]

3. Farmville? Who said anything about Farmville?

There's a new farmville-like faction in MoP called 'The Tillers'.

Which, just like Pet Battles, is entirely optional. "Oh noes! More possibility for stuff to do! WTF BLIZZARDS!?"

Hilarious.

Yeah the original comment really did come off as childish didn't it?

WoW has been declining since WoTLK, losing subs every patch. They staved it off with the Cata hype, but not for long.

Now they're entering the embarassing pandering stage where they'll desperately introduce all the gimmicky crap anyone ever asked for, in hopes of slowing the tide. It happens to every huge MMO - UO, EverQuest.

Looking at WoW's massive cultural impact, it still has a good 8-10 P2P years in it, but they'll be slow and unfruitful ones.

Whats embarrassing in that chart is SWTOR XD looking at the trend for all the other MMO, Swtor had the quickest rise and fall of any other MMO. if i could find my old posts here and on GT, i could say "I told you so" to so many peeps who bought the hype.

I really wanted to like it.

I started off as the Blind Jedi. The very first moment I see my character in game my DEFAULT Staff is clipping right into my ass.

My default ass.

How do you spend all this money on a game and then have the Camera focus in on a TERRIBLY obvious clipping issue.

Go try it if you have an account. Make a male of the blinded Jedi, I'm not talking little clipping, your entire staff is in your right ass cheek. I assume all the starting clothes are the same but if it matters I wore the leather stapled mask (really...staples in Star wars?)

That along with the dialogue boring me caused me to not make it for the free weekend. I'm sure it gets better, but that starting content is pretty bad . I did enjoy throwing a rock at people with my force powers though.

 

[Mista Miggins]

When Guild Wars 2 comes out, I think they'll see a little more than a "dip" in their subs.

 

[A-D.]

After peaking at 12 million in late 2010, user numbers were down to 10.3 million at the end of September 2011,

Did anyone else get an out of the blue brain freeze on this statement?

How can a 1.7 million drop in subs be due to a game that came out on Dec 2011? I mean, can someone really attribute a 1 million drop (averages) between Sept 2010 and say April of 2011 to TOR??

Or is someone trying to find a scape goat for the shareholders?

Actually, you are reading that wrong. Everyone is.

ToR didnt cause WoW Subs to dip that big, for one, it came out AFTER September, but here's the thing, It peaked to 12 Million in late 2010, okay so far, but by September 2011 the numbers were down to 10.3 Million, meaning that within that timespan over a Million people unsubbed from the Game.

You cant attribute that to a single Game. In fact the further decline of WoW is already set in Stone with all the Games lately going F2P. Lineage 2, Age of Conan, DC Universe Online, Champions Online, City of Heroes, Aion, Lord of the Rings Online, Ragnarok Online, Star Trek Online..the list goes on.

WoW and ToR are basicly part of the last remnant of truly P2P MMOs by now, ToR will go the F2P Route eventually, so will WoW. Times are a-changin' as it were. WoW lost Subs and will continue to do so, and there's hardly any shame in that, thats how the market has always worked anyway, its just the rules are changing a little this time around.

Also quite the funny Captcha: ding-dong

 

[Monkey_Warfare]

You guys realise Mists of Pandaria is designed to cater to the Chinese audience right?
Either way WoW has been busy picking out the remains of its competitors from its teeth for a while. Now Blizzard is just trying to keep it alive to try and use it as leverage to get players onto the next MMO they make, see the offer they have made with diablo 3. Doesn't phas me as DotA 2 is my new digital crack and I'm not giving it up anytime soon.

 

[Brad Shepard]

Wow will be around when Tortanic is long gone

 

[Exterminas]

The fact that WoW's current content was WoW's content in december might have helped a little too.

 

[Strazdas]

I love how everyone seems to think "Stung" means "Slain"

No. LOL slain WOW. SW is simply stinging a dieing dinosaur.

I tried wow, for a day. i found it ultimately boring and moved to other games where i grind for hours. fun.
point is, recently there were A LOT of games coming out that competes with wow and surely it will eat a lot of its players. thats only natural.

 

[Chaos Marine]

Meh. ToR is the exact same as WoW but with a voice acted cast, watered down ME storyline and a Star Wars skin. It is also extremely boring with bland gameplay mechanics that don't stray from the norm at all and the one area where they really dropped the ball was space combat. On-rail-shooters. For fuck's sake, really? Look at Star Trek Online! Everyone hates the ground based stuff but people love the space based combat. If ToR had a proper space combat system, the game wouldn't be starting to haemorrhaging players like it is now.

 

[chstens]

or we dont want kung fu panda, pokemon and farmville in our gameplay experience

I actually DO want Pokémon in WoW, it sounds fucking awesome, as for "Kung Fu Panda". Pandaren have been canon since WC3.

 

[Azmael Silverlance]

Even though they must be sad for losing 2 million subs hey 10 mil people is alot.
Thats 170,000,000 each month out of thin air.
The Old Republic was going to be profitable with just 500,000 remember that projection from EA?

So whatever WoW will keep funding Blizzard and they have so much $$$ stored in their Vault that even if they cancel wow tommorow they can keep producing games for years to come. Not to mention those games will also make them money!

AAAAAAAAND TITAN! They are realising that new generation of games will make people less excited no matter how good wow becomes. So they are already working towards a new Titan of a game (ehehe) to take over wow. And if anybody can do it its Blizzard.

I just hope before WoW goes away we can somehow save our statistics and achievements to view in later years with fond memories.

 

[fieryshadowcard]

WoW will die, but it's far more likely it will kill itself long after SW:ToR has failed to take it down.

I mean, really. You can almost hear the smugness in Lagrave's words. He sounds more amused than intimidated.

There are two major problems with SW:TOR. The first is a far less open-ended world, and the second is actually having to compete with an MMO behemoth (even an injured one) when it first came out. WoW suffered neither of those, because MMOs at the time of WoW's birth were still very niche.

 

[VondeVon]

"I'm one of the few people who's still playing it"

Heh heh... burn.

 

[Li Mu]

What Blizzard Said: "We lost subscribers because of ToR"
What People Hear: "Pandas ruined wow"

Strange how that happens. Much like how Gabe Newell says "I like ham" and gamers hear "HALF LIFE 3 IS COMING"
Gamers love to hear only what they want to hear.

People who speed through SWTOR and ***** about end game while shouting TORTANIC!! HAHAH FUNNY JOKE are idiots. Theres 50 levels of story telling for every class with a multitude of options for everything. Yes, the kill 10 mobs quests are still kill 10 mobs with dialogue in front of it, but it still freakin' helps! Its good to have context behind everything you do especially when its presented nicely. People need to enjoy the ride and stop bitching because they speed through games.

Indeed. The problem with gamers is that they tend to want the game tailored specifically to them. They forget that MMOs need to appeal to a very wide range of people. People who like to complete every quest. People who want story. People who only want endgame content. People who hate end game content.

And yet, when little Jimmy Jones gets to the end of his MMO and finds that the game hasn't been specifically made for him and him alone he throws a RRRRAAAAAGGGGEEEE fit on the forums about how much this game sucks and how Blizzard/Bioware/etc hate the fans.