WoW Mists of Pandaria - why I'm convinced it's a joke.

[Coldie]

They've had about 12.5 million TOTAL subscriptions, i.e. 12.5 million people have in total pushed the subscription button. That counts for all those who had multiple accounts, created one for a month in vanilal and then left, those who only played through vanilla, those who quit in Wrath, those who have quit in Cata and those who are still playing.

So you take 12.5 million, minus multiboxing, minus those who left in vanilla, minus those who left in TBC, minus those who left in Wrath, and minus those who left in Cata. I think you're after that is ending up with a lot less than 10 million. I'd say about 3-4. Don't get me wrong, WoW is still a huge game, but they haven't made the trial last forever and been giving out TBC for free for no reason.

Then I sit corrected.

The last numbers that were popping up last time I checked were in the 10 million region. I didn't look any deeper I was just curious as to how many subs they had at the time.

3-4 million sounds a bit more realistic.

The 10-12 million figure is the number of simultaneously active subscriptions. Accounts that are active, that can log in and play. Closed and cancelled accounts are not included in this figure!

The total number of non-trial WoW accounts in existence (including inactive accounts) was, apparently, estimated at ~33 million, in 2009, by Rob Pardo. Couldn't find a more recent figure, but it's safe to say it's a whole lot more now.

 

[Nikolaz72]

The 10-12 million figure is the number of simultaneously active subscriptions. Accounts that are active, that can log in and play. Closed and cancelled accounts are not included in this figure!

The total number of non-trial WoW accounts in existence (including inactive accounts) was, apparently, estimated at ~33 million, in 2009, by Rob Pardo. Couldn't find a more recent figure, but it's safe to say it's a whole lot more now.

There, Now I press the bullshit button.

Rob Pardo is a big fat liar, me firend who subscribed a few months ago was number 12.6 million something.

It's pretty sad when a large gaming company lies to seem bigger and more important.

Well its a blog I got this from so it might be biased, mind you not as biased as you are but in the same way. (His very Anti-Blizzard)

If you followed him correctly its approximately 8,7 Million players having 11,2 Million accounts. Actively. If we say all are European, but if we follow logic and the chart with 70% of the WoWplayers are Chineese and the fact that Chineese pays approx 7 Euro. We suddenly have a lot more, probably bringing us up to just about 10-11 Million Active Subscribers.

So the place people get confused is the fact that Chineese folks pay like 50% of us Europeans. And also less than the Americans across the ocean.

 

[Coldie]

Rob Pardo is a big fat liar, me firend who subscribed a few months ago was number 12.6 million something.

It's pretty sad when a large gaming company lies to seem bigger and more important.

I have no idea where did you or your friend pull that number out of, but it is in no way representative of... well, anything at all.

Current active accounts already fell below 12 million so it's not that, current total WoW accounts are in the multiple dozens of millions, total number of Battle.net accounts is colossal (since it would include WoW-less accounts, as well as trial accounts), accounts are not sequentially numbered, you don't get popups telling you that you're the "12600001st customer" or "12600001st subscription active in the last month". The only way to know any account-related statistics is to ask Blizzard.

Granted, about half of the active accounts are in China, where they don't use the $15/month subscription model and pay in a different way, but "active" is "active". And 12 million was the number of active accounts (a year-ish ago), not cancelled or closed or frozen or trial.

 

[Xmaspast]

Here's the thing that bothers me about the trailer. It just says new race, not horde race or alliance race jut new race. So unless they bring out yet another race it may just mean there's Pandas running around that you am interact with right?

They're bi-factional. You choose which faction you want to join at level 10.
That being said, this was all I need to finally dirve me away from WoW completely.

 

[Rad Party God]

You can laugh as hard as you can until your lungs explodes, but you know what?, this is real, so deal with it.

Also, I'm getting a bit tempted to play WoW again, thanks to all this "Pokémon" stuff. I don't care about pandas.

 

[thiosk]

Pandas are in no way stupider than frigging night elves.

 

[SweetNess_666]

This expansion pack has made me want to try WOW once more, it looks different!

Yay someone that isn't slagging the changes before they've seen anything.

Ot: I welcome the expansion, we all pay our subscription fees every month so to get value for money blizzard are alway adding new areas quest races etc that's what I call good business. The people who are saying this is a joke etc.. don't play it....simple

 

[Coldie]

They send a mail saying "Congratulation, you're the 12 6## ###:th customer who has bought a WoW subscription" or something like that. Ok, they say more than that, but that it what it says at the top.

And no, there isn't "multiple dozen of millions" that have subscibed to WoW, there isn't even 13 million who have done it.

And if current active accounts are below 12 million, why do they keep saying "Join 12 million other players in the World of warcraft" or something like that?

Sure there are. People are leaving the game and people are entering the game all the time. The last time they announced the current subscription base, around early Cataclysm, it was just above the 12 million mark and has been reduced by ~900 thousand since then. There were millions of accounts closed in the years before Cataclysm. The general in-out dynamic is stable enough that they were stuck on ~11 million subs for something like two years of WotLK before finally climbing up to the coveted 12 million, making the 900k net loss in the year since then pretty significant.

22-33 million may seem like a lot of accounts, but not at all unreasonable, when you consider how WoW opened up the MMO genre to the general public and the huge number of simultaneous subs it had at the peak.

"Join 12 million other players" is an old ad that was created when the 12 million threshold was crossed. It's not something that updates in real time to reflect current account billing situation.

The alleged letter is either misquoted, actually a phishing scam mistaken for an official letter, or an outright fabrication.

 

[Hiphophippo]

Even if they release the Pandas, they won't be playable or in any way hostile because of China.

You could not be more wrong if you tried.

OT: Regarding the theory? Trolololo. Regarding the expansion? Think it sounds pretty cool.

 

[technoted]

Once again people on the internet are whining at change, should I be surprised? No, no I should not.

If it doesn't appeal to you then don't play it, it's really that simple. Me on the otherhand, it interests me, I want to see how it's going to turn out and play rather than being an idiot and judging it beforehand.

*Edit* Also where are all these people getting their information from? 3-4 million players? Europe alone has about that many, the figures have dropped by about 1 million subscribers which is about 11 million.

And half of the supposed emails from Blizzard that you people are on about are nothing more than scam emails that I get about 50 of a day...

 

[Calvar Draveir]

I don't really think it's that bad, it's just unfortunate that it seems like it was entirely geared to make Kung Fu Panda allusions unavoidable. If they had stopped at the asian inspired setting and pandas, ok, but adding martial arts is kinda obvious.

And really, none of those bulletpoints said "Questing and levelling structure changed so that everything is at least a little fun and doesn't feel like grinding", so I don't care.

I think that they should really start lowering the subscription fee. If it was lower, then I could see myself bothering to play it for a bit.

Once again, Guild Wars is the MMO I've played longest, because if I want to just dick around in the first expansion forever, I can. But being given that freedom motivates me to purchase new ones when I can afford it. I really think that's the nicest buissness model of all time.

And I really hope that people realize that when Guild Wars 2 comes out. I think that's going to be my favorite game for so many reasons.

 

[Jdb]

I wonder if Warcraft is still an appropriate name for the series. To me, it looks like every bad guy is gone except for Sargeras' Burning Legion and only two lore characters want to continue the Alliance and Horde war. Combine this lacking opposition with the new expansion's light heart tone and Warcraft looks like a Saturday morning adventure cartoon instead of fantasy world war.

 

[Sansha]

Bump due to release of the MoP trailer on this website, and because I'm banned for 30 days from the WoW forums for calling a community master (blue post) 'gay' for supporting this shit.

 

[elfguy]

Look on the bright side, SWTOR is out soon, Blizzard is on the way out in the MMO arena!

 

[Sansha]

Look on the bright side, SWTOR is out soon, Blizzard is on the way out in the MMO arena!

I hope so. I hope SW and GW2 causes a mass exodus from WoW, and convinces the devs to unfuck themselves.

 

[Azure Sky]

The Panda men were supposed to be in the game a long time ago but because of Chinese law they didn't do it. Appearenlty this is the only idea they have left. They also know how many furries play their game and this is yet another way to panda to them.

I see what you did there... >.>

Anyway, last I checked wasn't one of the expacs supposed to revolve around the whole 'Emerald Dream' thing?

 

[Sansha]

The Panda men were supposed to be in the game a long time ago but because of Chinese law they didn't do it. Appearenlty this is the only idea they have left. They also know how many furries play their game and this is yet another way to panda to them.

I see what you did there... >.>

Anyway, last I checked wasn't one of the expacs supposed to revolve around the whole 'Emerald Dream' thing?

No, the whole Emerald Dream thing was resolved in a book, telling about the world between Wrath and Cataclysm expansions.