Blizzard: You Can't Beat WoW Out the Gate

[Nikokvaj]

What in the world happened to Darkfall?

 

[Aeshi]

Given that just about any MMO that has tried to take WoW on has failed miserably I would agree with them on that, even moreso with Cataclysm on the horizon.

 

[Eatbrainz]

No other MMO can topple Warcraft from it's mighty golden throne. Sure as night follows day, sure as Christopher Lee is cool, sure as the Twilight franchise is shit.

Not that other MMOs aren't good, i personally will always have a love for Runescape.

 

[Exort]

wows numbers (which are the basis of it being considered the elephant in the room) are misleading.

to equal in the markets that actually count you need to hit around 2-2.5 million subs

thats how much they have in the US and EU

China and the rest of Asia is where the majority of their 12 million is and its not the biggest MMO there coming in 3rd or 4th to MMOs most people have never heard of (neither do the Asians subscribe so the "subscriber figures" are intentionally misleading any which way you want to slice them)

the world rebuilding in Cata is about player retention and attracting new players EOD they have said so multiple times.
why ?
because they have had near flatline growth since 2008.

incidentally SW:TOR apparently has a launch target of 1 million subs. if it succeeds (which could happen) it could easily be the equal of WoW in the US and EU markets within 1-2 years...but even more interesting is the reception the a Star Wars MMO could get in Asia (especially Japan a market WoW has never dented)

Sorry if this offend you but do you have numbers to back your statement up? Without those little numbers your statement, is just a option.

So let's go and check some numbers, shall we?

China: 363 servers. (http://www.warcraftchina.com/services/realm-status/)
EU: 263 servers. (http://www.wow-europe.com/realmstatus/index.html?locale=en_gb)
USA: 244 servers. (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/realmstatus/)
Taiwan: 45 servers. (http://www.wowtaiwan.com.tw/index/realmstatus.asp)
Korea: 34 servers. (http://www.worldofwarcraft.co.kr/news/server/index.do)

Total of 949 servers.

12,000,000 / 949 = 12645 players per realm. That seem pretty reasonable to me, out of all MMO I play WoW seems to have the highest player density, at least far higher than Warhammer online, and as you can you a lot of server are labelled as crowded.
One thing for certian that is what you said are all false. How can 2.5 million player be spead throughout 500+ realms. 5000 players per realm is way too low.

 

[Tron-tonian]

It's interesting that people are saying WoW is unstoppable. People said the same thing about EQ - you remember EQ, don't you?

WoW will eventually slide - it could be for a number of reasons: something newer, company mistakes (see also: EQ & EQ2), you name it.

That being said, a new MMO should be looking for a distinct market and targetting it, SWG used to have (and UO still does) have an openness that WoW simply can't match.

And I swear to the FSM - can we get something more than standard fantasy fare for our MMOs? I'm looking forward to the Fallout MMO for just htis reason - how many times do we need to see "Elves good, Orcs bad"?

 

[Exort]

/sigh

read the post again

i said "to equal in the markets that actually count you need to hit around 2-2.5 million subs

thats how much they have in the US and EU"

approx 2.5 million in the EU and US

this is backed up by this press release: https://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?080122 from which you can extrapolate the basic cut.

to use your own figures and the US as an example 244 servers severs devided between 2.5-3 million (adjusted to predictable split from 12 million) would give 10246-12295 per server

You said "to equal in the markets that actually count you need to hit around 2-2.5 million subs

thats how much they have in the US and EU"

That sound like EU and USA add up to 2.5 million. Not EU and USA have about 2.5 million each, that is a difference by 2 times.

Anyways that adds up, each server in every regien have about 12600 player per realm.

So it is about 12 million players.

 

[WittyInfidel]

Honestly, I just hope something can come along and compete with WoW because I'd like to play something other than WoW. I'd like there to be another big, fun game with a big budget and a lot of players, something I can enjoy getting sucked into. I'm hoping TOR can do that, but it can be something else too, if it's good. I like WoW. I enjoyed my time with it. I may even pick it back up for a bit to check out Cataclysm. But still, it'd be nice to see something new.

I came across a good MMO a little while back. It was called Allods Online.
A Russian group came up with it, and sank about $10 million into it. Graphically, it's as good if not a bit better than WoW. Gameplay and the UI arevery similar to Wow, as well.

It's free-2-play, and honestly worth a bit of time. I don't play it anymore (started playing WoW again) but it certainly kept me entertained. I certainly like how their "undead" had an Ancient Egyptian-meets-Necrons(Warhammer 40K) look to them.

http://allods.gpotato.com/

 

[Exort]

@mikozero
"12 million on Oct 7 2010 TWO YEARS LATER"

Actually I was excepting a decrease in player base (over last 2 year) because China, the largest Player base of WoW, was still in TBC not even two month ago. Chinese players was killing the same Boss(Illidan) for two years... I think the rest of regien was growing but China was decreasing in population. That is also why if you look at the China realm almost all realms are crowded or full, because massive amount of player starting to return in a burst.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Guild Wars beat World of Warcraft out of the gate.

The former was always a better game.

No it wasnt Guild Wars never was a serious threat to WoW and it never will be.

The only thing that can Dethrone WoW is Blizzard itself I think its new MMORPG or Diablo 3 are the only things in the near future that could possibly have an impact. And still after toying around with D3 for a month or two they will most likely return to WoW.

I didn't say it could outsell or "Dethrone" WoW.

I said it is a better game.

You can go ahead and pull your head out of your ass, now. Firstly, Guild Wars is far from perfect, it has plenty of problems and hang-ups that might chase a player away. Secondly, the two games are nothing alike. Guild Wars is a pure PvP fest where WoW was always more focused on its PvE content. Seriously, if you're gonna try to pass opinion as fact, at least compare similar games.

Then again, the underdog loyalists always blindly bash on the mainstream title as a form of self defense, so I guess I shouldn't be that surprised.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Lol. Didn't say it was perfect - no game is.

Also, lest I checked, it was an opinion.

I didn't mean to imply that you said it was perfect, I was just pointing out that someone could just as easily say "WoW beat-out Guild Wars on the long-term because WoW is just a better game". Oh, and also:

"Guild Wars beat World of Warcraft out of the gate. The former was always a better game."
"I didn't say it could outsell or "Dethrone" WoW. I said it is a better game."

Those are opinions? They might be statements based upon your opinion, but they certainly aren't opinions.

Underdog loyalist? XD I prefer one game over another and suddenly I blindly bash the mainstream? I think someone's trying a little hard

Granted that you weren't bashing on WoW in either of the posts that I quoted, but otherwise you fall right into the underdog loyalist category. They prefer the game with a much smaller cult following compared to one big-name title in the same genre, and anytime they speak their opinion on the matter it's just plain fact that their game is better than the popular game; and if anyone calls them out for saying it's better, then they fall-back back on the tried-and-true "opinion defense" despite the fact that they clearly stated their "opinion" as a fact.

You may or may not realize that you do it, but we have two quotes right here that certainly put you into that category.

 

[TheEndlessSleep]

The problem is that Blizzard has enough money to make WoW as good as thier fanbase wants it to be, and developers of new up and coming projects just simply don't have enough funding or manpower to give thier games that competitive edge.

 

[Baldr]

I'll agree most of WoW base is Korean and Chinese. The problem is Star Wars have never been a huge hit in Asia as it was in the US/EU. You can't reach WoW's base if you don't have the Asians on board.

Even if TOR was twice as good as WoW, it still couldn't have the numbers to compete.