WoW: Could 11 Million People be Wrong?

[themanwithsauce]

I would like to use some maths to explain WoW-nomics

15$ a month x 3 months = one new pc game

15$ a month x 4 months = certain PS3/Xbox 360 titles

time I often spend playing WoW - 3-4 month intervals.

New content patches introduced - roughly every 3-4 months.

So basically, they do develop a bunch of new content every couple of months to keep you interested and, in the long run, it's really no more expensive than a typical game if that's what you want to play. Of course, you can also do a trial run of only one month for 15$. And last time I checked, 15$<50$. You can easily get the original game key for free with the millions of promotions they're doing like recruit a friend and the new one they're starting with nvidia.
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Maths lesson over, my thought's on this thread are as follows.

Yes, you might not agree with 11 million people. If you know that MMORPG's are not for you, then WoW will likely not be any different. if you are on the fence, then give it a try. if you are like me and used to like the game but no longer do then stop playing. If you continue to play and complain, you are only telling blizzard that yes, you will pay 15$ a month to whine. And whether you enjoy the game or hate it, 15$ a month goes into blizzard's massive bank account anyways

And if you like the game and don't mind the fee, more power to you. It is your time and money, spend it on the games you want.

 

[John Funk]

It must be stated again that the 11 million number is misleading. Blizzard uses the TOTAL accounts to come up with this number. That means people like me, who haven't logged in in 3 years, are still counted.

I am sure its more like 4 million active.

Nope, you're wrong. 11 million (11.5, actually) *active* subscribers. If counting all the banned/expired/trial accounts, the number would (ballpark) be in the range of 20 million if not higher.

I really, really wish people would stop quoting that "WoW down to 5 million players" thing. It was one guy, posting on his blog, making assumptions, and I haven't seen a single reputable source that confirmed it.

I can see why people would complain about "watered down," but honestly, I just think it's much more *accessible.* There's nothing wrong with making it easier for everyone to enjoy the game's content instead of just the elite of the elite.

 

[DObs]

There's nothing wrong with making it easier for everyone to enjoy the game's content instead of just the elite of the elite.

Disagree %100. What your talking about here is pure marketing. Blizzard made the game they wanted to play and thought was great (vanilla wow - 1000 times more challenging than it is now) and have been slowly tailoring it to fit as many demographics as they can to make as much money as possible. WOW is an outstanding display of corporate capitalism driven by strong market research, in all its souless glory. You can't even call it that intelligent all they did is what any business does and look at the numbers, if a big percent of people arnt doing something they have put in the game - just make it A LOT easier for them to achieve it (instead of just writing them off as shit players).

I dont want my games produced for business.

On the brightside hopefully all that fabulous cash will go into making Diablo 3 the best game ever, we can live in hope.

 

[Pimppeter2]

Meh, I prefer Oblivion over WoW anyday.

 

[boholikeu]

I just refuse to play it because I don't want to pay money every month to play a game I bought.

I might have enjoyed WoW if I didn't need to spend so much money to play it.

I don't like WoW either, the people are jerks, and I just don't have that kind of money.

Never really understood the "WoW is too expensive" argument. There is so much content in that game that it's easily worth the monthly fee. I've been playing WoW for about 3 years now, and at no point could I claim that I'd seen everything in the game.

So if what you're saying is true, paying, on average, over a couple hundred dollars on a massive game is worth it, running all over this huge ass game land bringing people shit and killing things and trading stuff is worth it?

Yes, totally worth it.

Your average PS3/Xbox game is about $45-$60. Unless it has really good multiplayer I usually burn through those games in about a month and a half or so. Wow costs about $15 a month, and like I said I've never run out of content to experience (they add new quests/dungeons/bgs every few months). $30>$45-$60, so WoW is a better deal in my opinion.

Of course if you don't like the gameplay then any game will seem like a bad deal, but personally I've never played WoW hardcore enough to get burnt out on it.

There's nothing wrong with making it easier for everyone to enjoy the game's content instead of just the elite of the elite.

Disagree %100. What your talking about here is pure marketing. Blizzard made the game they wanted to play and thought was great (vanilla wow - 1000 times more challenging than it is now) and have been slowly tailoring it to fit as many demographics as they can to make as much money as possible. WOW is an outstanding display of corporate capitalism driven by strong market research, in all its souless glory. You can't even call it that intelligent all they did is what any business does and look at the numbers, if a big percent of people arnt doing something they have put in the game - just make it A LOT easier for them to achieve it (instead of just writing them off as shit players).

I dont want my games produced for business.

On the brightside hopefully all that fabulous cash will go into making Diablo 3 the best game ever, we can live in hope.

Well, I disagree with you. You might call it better marketing, but I call it improving the game for those with limited schedules.

Vanilla WoW was really only more "difficult" because of the time you needed to put in to raid. First you had to grind the 5 mans until you had good enough gear to raid, and then once you started that you'd have to grind gold for pots/repairs/etc. I can't honestly say that any of boss fights needed more strategy.

 

[John Funk]

There's nothing wrong with making it easier for everyone to enjoy the game's content instead of just the elite of the elite.

Disagree %100. What your talking about here is pure marketing. Blizzard made the game they wanted to play and thought was great (vanilla wow - 1000 times more challenging than it is now) and have been slowly tailoring it to fit as many demographics as they can to make as much money as possible. WOW is an outstanding display of corporate capitalism driven by strong market research, in all its souless glory. You can't even call it that intelligent all they did is what any business does and look at the numbers, if a big percent of people arnt doing something they have put in the game - just make it A LOT easier for them to achieve it (instead of just writing them off as shit players).

I dont want my games produced for business.

On the brightside hopefully all that fabulous cash will go into making Diablo 3 the best game ever, we can live in hope.

As someone who raided hardcore until severe burnout in Classic WoW, I believe the game is exponentially better now than it was pre-BC. In Classic, you either were lucky enough to have 39 other people to do some of the most simplistic, basic raid content in the game, you lost your life to a truly soulless PvP grind that you could not take a single week off from, you ran Scholo/Strat/BRS/DM until your eyes bled and got pwned in BGs by the few raiders, or... you farmed for rare drops.

Sure, C'Thun was an amazing boss fight, as were the later Naxx40 encounters, but how many people ever saw them? 10% of the playerbase would be an extremely generous assumption. This was where all of Blizzard's time and effort was going, too. How does it make sense to devote (ballpark) 60% of your resources for 5% of your playerbase? By making aspects of the game so much easier and more accessible, you're much closer to achieving parity with effort spent = playerbase consuming than you ever were before.

The main challenge of Classic WoW was finding 40 people who weren't idiots. Even fights like 4H or C'Thun pale in difficulty to M'uru, Algalon, Mimiron Hard Mode or Yogg-Saron with 1/0 Watchers. They only seem easier because there are fewer weak links to break a raid, and because classes have so many more abilities than they did back in the day.

 

[DObs]

There's nothing wrong with making it easier for everyone to enjoy the game's content instead of just the elite of the elite.

Disagree %100. What your talking about here is pure marketing. Blizzard made the game they wanted to play and thought was great (vanilla wow - 1000 times more challenging than it is now) and have been slowly tailoring it to fit as many demographics as they can to make as much money as possible. WOW is an outstanding display of corporate capitalism driven by strong market research, in all its souless glory. You can't even call it that intelligent all they did is what any business does and look at the numbers, if a big percent of people arnt doing something they have put in the game - just make it A LOT easier for them to achieve it (instead of just writing them off as shit players).

I dont want my games produced for business.

On the brightside hopefully all that fabulous cash will go into making Diablo 3 the best game ever, we can live in hope.

As someone who raided hardcore until severe burnout in Classic WoW, I believe the game is exponentially better now than it was pre-BC. In Classic, you either were lucky enough to have 39 other people to do some of the most simplistic, basic raid content in the game, you lost your life to a truly soulless PvP grind that you could not take a single week off from, you ran Scholo/Strat/BRS/DM until your eyes bled and got pwned in BGs by the few raiders, or... you farmed for rare drops.

Sure, C'Thun was an amazing boss fight, as were the later Naxx40 encounters, but how many people ever saw them? 10% of the playerbase would be an extremely generous assumption. This was where all of Blizzard's time and effort was going, too. How does it make sense to devote (ballpark) 60% of your resources for 5% of your playerbase? By making aspects of the game so much easier and more accessible, you're much closer to achieving parity with effort spent = playerbase consuming than you ever were before.

The main challenge of Classic WoW was finding 40 people who weren't idiots. Even fights like 4H or C'Thun pale in difficulty to M'uru, Algalon, Mimiron Hard Mode or Yogg-Saron with 1/0 Watchers. They only seem easier because there are fewer weak links to break a raid, and because classes have so many more abilities than they did back in the day.

Lol, well done for missing the point entirely.... Go back and read the 2nd paragraph of your reply.. its a formula, a business formula and its (personally) not something i'm interested in. I don't want games that over time are going to be tailored to please everyone. They didnt assign all the special moves in Street Fighter to single button presses because 50% of the player base couldnt do them 38.5% of the time did they? and fyi WOW atm is in no way challenging and even in its early days wasnt in anyway towards being a hard game. I have friends whos children are as young as 12 that have had lvl 80 characters and have raided everything.

And the fact remains the main challenge in WOW is *still* finding enough non-retards to raid with.

My point is Im sick of devs ruining the direction of games by pandering to every cry and moan of Joe Public who can't play the game as well as 'Slightly better Joe Public'

And I'm not one of these ppl who is saying this because i was some epic monster who hates seeing 'noobs' in better kit either - in vanilla wow the furthest I ever raided was puggin' UBRS (10 man) I used to really like spotting the top-end raiders and drooling over their kit. In Burning Crusade I got as far as Gruul and Maggy and mainly concentrated on Kara and trying to perfect Zul'aman, could never get a regular 25 man going as I had a lot less free time. In Wotlk we were in Naxx within a few months cleared that in a matter of weeks then went onto Ulduar when that came out. After about a month or so in there of steady progression and seeing nerf after nerf after nerf to the bosses coupled with my guild and the entire server being full of retards (good players, just all very childish/emo/annoying/l33tpwners!!)is when I got bored and quit.

WOW *was* a good game, now its just a sugar coated reach-around for the masses. Its Harvest Moon for the west. If thats your thing fine, but its just not mine.

 

[John Funk]

Lol, well done for missing the point entirely.... Go back and read the 2nd paragraph of your reply.. its a formula, a business formula and its (personally) not something i'm interested in. I don't want games that over time are going to be tailored to please everyone. They didnt assign all the special moves in Street Fighter to single button presses because 50% of the player base couldnt do them 38.5% of the time did they? and fyi WOW atm is in no way challenging and even in its early days wasnt in anyway towards being a hard game. I have friends whos children are as young as 12 that have had lvl 80 characters and have raided everything.

And the fact remains the main challenge in WOW is *still* finding enough non-retards to raid with.

My point is Im sick of devs ruining the direction of games by pandering to every cry and moan of Joe Public who can't play the game as well as 'Slightly better Joe Public'

And I'm not one of these ppl who is saying this because i was some epic monster who hates seeing 'noobs' in better kit either - in vanilla wow the furthest I ever raided was puggin' UBRS (10 man) I used to really like spotting the top-end raiders and drooling over their kit. In Burning Crusade I got as far as Gruul and Maggy and mainly concentrated on Kara and trying to perfect Zul'aman, could never get a regular 25 man going as I had a lot less free time. In Wotlk we were in Naxx within a few months cleared that in a matter of weeks then went onto Ulduar when that came out. After about a month or so in there of steady progression and seeing nerf after nerf after nerf to the bosses coupled with my guild and the entire server being full of retards (good players, just all very childish/emo/annoying/l33tpwners!!)is when I got bored and quit.

WOW *was* a good game, now its just a sugar coated reach-around for the masses. Its Harvest Moon for the west. If thats your thing fine, but its just not mine.

So you think it's a good thing when the developers are allocating the vast majority of resources to content that the vast majority of players will never, ever see?

In what universe does that even remotely begin to make logical sense?

 

[DObs]

Twice in a row, not bad but im out.

 

[Zimbum]

I play a game called Guild Wars, it is in my opinion better than WoW and there is no monthly fee after you buy the game.

 

[boholikeu]

Twice in a row, not bad but im out.

To be fair, you are just as guilty of ignoring points as he is.

Not to mention, you never explain what it is that makes WotLK so much "easier" than vanilla WoW. If you look a little closer I think you'll be surprised to see that the actual fights in WotLK aren't any easier than their equivalents in previous expansions. The main things that were nerfed are the rep/gear/etc grinds needed in order to access the raids, which is a good thing.

From a gameplay standpoint that makes the game much better than it was in vanilla. After all, most of this thread is complaining about how much of a grind WoW is, and that's exactly what Blizzard has been working on changing.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, it's important to note that WoW is also getting to be pretty old. It's no longer revolutionary because it arguably set the standard that others are currently imitating. It's continued operating but the basics have remained more or less constant. As a result you see games with a lot of better ideas that were based on those from WoW, but without the polish or sheer amount of content that WoW has gained due to it's age.

It's also notable that WoW's age also means that it's not exactly a titan when it comes to system resources. You can pull out a system that is five or six years old and run WoW pretty well. Not as true with a lot of newer games, which by their nature are using more recent technology and cutting out people who can't afford to upgrade their computers that often. With the economy in the shape it is right now, it's going to get even longer before people upgrade their systems since less people can afford to just drop a couple grand on gaming.

As far as the rest goes, consider also that WoW is an RPG. Not an action game. This is something a lot of people can't get their heads around. This is why it comes more down to stat management, itemization, and other things as opposed to twitching your way through the game. Yes, this type of gameplay DOES reward people who have been at it longer, but skill does play a role especially when you deal with progressing through endgame content. Such skill however is mostly team based as opposed to that of the individual player. You typically see a period where people compete with each other to get through the current baddest zones, and then once the best people on the server have beaten it, they start to gradually reduce the difficulty so everyone with the desire can do it and see the same stuff, then they release the next area, and it all starts again. Like any game it's pointless and time consuming, but I guess it all comes down to what you like. Me, I personally enjoy learning to "Farm" an uber raid boss that starts out wiping my guild and gets easier as we learn and adapt, and being able to show off that we did this before other people could. Of course I don't make any pretensions of being a deep person either. >

Basing advancement on gear is simply because you can only include so much content in a game, the technology for spontaneously generating endless original content around a theme does not currently exist. As such there is a point at which things cease to level, and advancing by obtaining treasure typically becomes more about the right strategies, or getting together with the same people often enough to coordinate increasingly complicated strategies. Most raid bosses simply cannot be killed in direct combat no matter what your stats are (though high stats can make things easier if you use the right strategy). This was kind of illustrated when guilds like "Death and Taxes" wiped out all the content up to Malygos in the first few days after the release of Lich King using gear that was incredibly sub-par for what they were doing. Skillwise however they and other guilds that did stuff like this (there are only a few) are the exception, rather than the rule. They simply illustrate that there is more to the game than simply grinding.

As far as class balance and such, all I can say is that I agree, game balance is a nightmare. But then again it's like this with ALL RPGs offline and online. Nobody has ever managed to come up with an absoltly perfectly balanced system for RPGs. Ever since the earliest versions of D&D and Empire Of The Petal Throne people have gone back and forth about game balance.

Part of the problem is also that even if you balance things for the purpose of adventuring (what they call PVE in MMORPGS) where everyone has a role, making it so that these characters are also balanced in combat against each other for Player Vs. Player combat is a whole differant issue can adds another layer of complexity.

Strides are being made, especially as technology increases and PVP objectives other than simply killing players are being added (ie ways to win by sneaking up on objectives or whatever), but so far nobody at all has successfully made a game with complete balance UNLESS all the characters are cookie cutters of each other (ie not class based).

The problem becomes even more interesting when you consider that people want there to be a lot of character classes and differances between characters. People generally aren't going to be satisfied for long with only a handfull of basic classes.

 

[Jonesy911]

The answer is yes, 11 million people can be wrong. I never really got WOW, it's sooooo boring and its all for its own sake.

They're not wrong, they just have a different opinion to you.

You're forgetting I'm Jesus therefore I cannot be wrong.

 

[BolognaBaloney]

The answer is yes, 11 million people can be wrong. I never really got WOW, it's sooooo boring and its all for its own sake.

They're not wrong, they just have a different opinion to you.

You're forgetting I'm Jesus therefore I cannot be wrong.

Except Jesus wouldn't be that close-minded about it.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

The answer is yes, 11 million people can be wrong. I never really got WOW, it's sooooo boring and its all for its own sake.

They're not wrong, they just have a different opinion to you.

You're forgetting I'm Jesus therefore I cannot be wrong.

Good save

 

[Jonesy911]

The answer is yes, 11 million people can be wrong. I never really got WOW, it's sooooo boring and its all for its own sake.

They're not wrong, they just have a different opinion to you.

You're forgetting I'm Jesus therefore I cannot be wrong.

Except Jesus wouldn't be that close-minded about it.

Well Jesus is religious and religious people are notoriously close minded.

 

[BolognaBaloney]

The answer is yes, 11 million people can be wrong. I never really got WOW, it's sooooo boring and its all for its own sake.

They're not wrong, they just have a different opinion to you.

You're forgetting I'm Jesus therefore I cannot be wrong.

Except Jesus wouldn't be that close-minded about it.

Well Jesus is religious and religious people are notoriously close minded.

Read the Bible and I think you'd be surprised how open-minded Jesus was compared to the religious people that you know, but regardless, don't speak out of ignorance.

 

[thewerebuffalo]

well, I pose a similar question, Is heroine that great of a drug