LoL-K-Noob Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 I really don't care. Just focus on making a good Diablo, Blizz. PS have fun with your pandas, I'll keep my lightsaber. Diablo 3 is korean cash shop game if you wasn't aware. Its already doomed for failure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gildoania Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 (edited) Diablo 3 is korean cash shop game if you wasn't aware. Its already doomed for failure. Diablo 3 will sell more copies in its first day than this game will ever sell. There are two companies that are keeping pc gaming alive.(ea bioware isnt one of them). Without wows extreme success this game would not exist. Edited February 10, 2012 by Gildoania Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iheartnyc Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 1.7mil subs is pretty pathetic in todays market. WHAT??????????????? REALLY????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Lose ALL credibility for this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iheartnyc Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Diablo 3 will sell more copies in its first day than this game will ever sell. You cannot compare a game like Diablo 3 to an MMO. Or a game like Modern Warfare to an MMO. MMOs are still a very niche market for mostly hardcore gamers. Diablo was and always will be a "casual" experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akashayana Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 "And now for something we think you will really like!" http://www.youtube.com/fearofgirls Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gildoania Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 You cannot compare a game like Diablo 3 to an MMO. Or a game like Modern Warfare to an MMO. MMOs are still a very niche market for mostly hardcore gamers. Diablo was and always will be a "casual" experience. Niche genre games do not sell 10+ million copies ( or even 2 million). Wow and swtor will both lose subscribers to D3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derbefrier Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Niche genre games do not sell 10+ million copies ( or even 2 million). Wow and swtor will both lose subscribers to D3. yep i may be one of those at least for a while. i may be back a couple months after release but i know for a fact the D3 will drag me away from TOR for a bit. I got to try out the beta on a friends account and had a blast. As for GW2 well i am waiting for the open beta i will make a descion then. but honestly other than GW2 and D3 there isnt anything else that will take me away from this game and GW2 is the only one that threatens to do it permanently and its at a severve diasadvantage already since it doesnt have lightsabers and they dont even require subs so i could could always play all 3!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chromiie Posted February 10, 2012 Author Share Posted February 10, 2012 Niche genre games do not sell 10+ million copies ( or even 2 million). Wow and swtor will both lose subscribers to D3. Blizzard would still be making money off boxed sales and I bet the auction house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImperialSun Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 (edited) Blizzard has always, always been one step ahead of its competition.. and they continue to do so. There's another really, really important factor here. If that blue icon is on the box, it's going to be an amazing, quality title. Period. Blizzard has always released the best computer games and they always will.. Lol... Name one? StarCraft - meh? WC / WoW - the most blatant rip off of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, dumbed down for the Mc Donalds generation? TITAN - Vapour ware Like others have said, Blizz are just very, very good at marketing (well they used to be, not sure what to think about their latest tv ad campaign...lol Chuck Norris). Sounds to me like you are just a Blizz marketing mans dream because they surely do NOT make very good games imo and never have done. Driz Edited February 10, 2012 by ImperialSun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chromiie Posted February 10, 2012 Author Share Posted February 10, 2012 Lol... Name one? StarCraft - meh? WC / WoW - the most blatant rip off of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, dumbed down for the MdDonalds generation? TITAN - Vapour ware Like others have said, Blizz are just very, very good at marketing (well they used to be, not sure what to think about their latest tv ad campaign...lol Chuck Norris). Sounds to me like you are just a Blizz marketing mans dream because they surely do NOT make very good games imo and never have done. Driz His point still stands. When it's from Blizzard you know your getting a good game that is close to bug free as possible. Only other studio I buy from without a thought is Valve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImperialSun Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 I understand all that. The point is that WoW isn't dying, it simply is past it's peak. So even you admit it is 'in decline'. Fading, dying slowly...you might say? No? Driz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImperialSun Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 His point still stands. When it's from Blizzard you know your getting a good game that is close to bug free as possible. Only other studio I buy from without a thought is Valve. ha ha ha.... Tell that to the people who were playing WoW at launch (that includes me).... "a good game that is close to bug free as possible" I almost fell off my chair... Driz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marak Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 I've always said that WoW will not be felled by a single mighty blow, but by a hundred small cuts. Aion took some people that never came back. Rift took some people that never came back. TOR took some people that will never go back. Some people just quit MMOs altogether. GW2 will certainly take some that will never go back. I'm not a WoW hater. I played it from January '05 until December '11. Blizzard deserves props for keeping me that long. But I also played EQ1 from '99-'04 and I know that nothing lasts forever. All kings die. WoW had a good run, but its glory days are behind it. It might still be the technical champion, but artistically it jumped the shark. Cataclysm felt completely discombobulated and MoP will be a total commercial success, but pandas? Really? The great fantasy epic of the Fallen Prince and the Demigod Dragon becomes about.. pandas. TOR doesn't have to beat WoW. It just has to survive and it will have done its job of leaving a lasting cut and true fans of the genre can eventually hope to see new and innovative things coming out of studios. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vulgarr Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Honestly, I suspect that most of the players leaving WoW for SWTOR had already left before December anyway.i canceled wow on the day SWTOR was released. i bet many others did this as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zyanzor Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 (edited) Link to original poster....http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/dubious-practices-in-mmo-marketing-how-numbers-can-be-misleading/#8fe17 And a real eye opener about Blizzard and their greedy ways - http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24657 Dubious Practices in MMO Marketing: How Numbers Can Be Misleading For the past few years, I’ve been suspicious of Blizzard’s grandiose claims of millions of subscribers for their World of Warcraft MMO. Those numbers have never struck me as being entirely honest. Via Tesh, this week it was revealed by Gamasutra that although Asia accounts for a paltry 6% of the total revenue from WoW, it makes up 50% of their global users. Combine this with the report that Blizzard earns $1 billion in revenues from WoW each year and you can arrive at some interesting deductions about how MMOs are marketed and promoted if you look hard enough. All Subscribers Are Not Equal Blizzard’s current claim that they have 11.5 million total subscribers while technically accurate is misleading because not all subscribers are paying the same to play WoW. Some of us already familiar with the Asian pay per play scheme for MMOs but I highly doubt the average WoW gamer in the U.S. and Europe would be aware of this. For every dollar a non-Asian WoW subscriber pays for WoW an Asian subscriber pays 6 cents. The reality is that all WoW subscribers are not equal; they do not have equal representative value for purposes of comparison. Yet for purposes of marketing and to the untrained eye: a subscriber is a subscriber. If there are 5.75 million WoW subscribers in Asia only bringing in 6% of the total worldwide WoW revenue then I have calculated that in terms of “real” subscribers the Asian market is the equivalent of approximately 370, 000 U.S. and European subscribers who pay to play by the month. Combine this with the actual numbers of U.S. and European subscribers and you’d have an adjusted total of approximately 6.12 million subscribers playing WoW — not the 11.5 subscribers that they claimed in their last press release. The resulting 6.12 million subscribers is a bit more than half the number that they claim that WoW actually has. Suddenly WoW doesn’t look like a social and cultural juggernaut. Are Westerners Subsidizing Asian MMO Gamers? Given the puny amount of revenue that Blizzard is generating from WoW in Asia, why aren’t they charging Asians more and the rest of us less? Fair is fair. Another issue worth bringing up is because of the millions of Asian gamers with access to WoW we now have the scourge of gold farmers with ties to organized crime syndicates. Player accounts are hacked, stolen and used to farm gold. They also disrupt gameplay within WoW with their spam. Blizzard spends a considerable amount of time and resources dealing with compromised accounts. Given all of these problems and inequities, why are western subscribers still subsidizing Asian gamers? I agree with Tesh, we are being soaked by Blizzard: …the $15/month bears little relation to the real costs of making the game function. It’s likely an order of magnitude larger than necessary to even be profitable. What’s adds insult to injury, is that precious little of the $1 billion in revenues goes back into the WoW. Millions of Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong Claiming that millions and millions of people are playing WoW has been always a big part of Blizzard’s marketing and promotion strategy. Blizzard never seems to miss an opportunity to release self-congratulatory press releases claiming even more millions of people are playing their MMO. It’s often been argued that they are the McDonald’s of the MMO world in more ways than one. I remember growing up as a kid and seeing that kind of Madison Avenue spin used on one of Elvis Presley’s records entitled “50 Million Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong”. Even fast food giant MacDonald’s has used this motto for years with their “billions served” plastered on their brightly colored signs. This kind of marketing strategy plays on the tendency of most people to follow popular trends. It’s an appeal to consensus where we put aside our own feelings about something and instead trust in the judgment and wisdom of the “group”. Ergo, if something is popular and has mass acceptance then it must be worthwhile. This is exactly the part of the human psyche that the Blizzard marketeers are tapping into. I remember seeing an interview with a lady in the former Soviet Union many years ago. On her way home from work she saw a big line forming. She didn’t know what they were lining up for but figured it must be something important and took her place at the end of the line. It turned out there were lining up for cabbage. The Wall Street Connection Another reason why Blizzard may be combining subscribers from both markets is to look good to investors in the stock market. Good performance for traded stocks is predicated on favorable news. I doubt the typical Wall Street investor understands the subtleties of the Asian MMO pricing model versus the U.S. and European pricing model. The Downside of Dubious Marketing Practices Comparing Asian subscribers to US and European subscribers is comparing apples to oranges. The problem here is that all things are not equal. At first it may seem like clever marketing on the part of Blizzard to lump them all together to make their numbers look good but one wonders about some of the possible negative ramifications of this practice: It reflects poorly on Blizzard that they must resort to mixing subscribers from different pricing models and different cultures in order to create good copy for their press releases and marketing campaigns How many people didn’t bother to play other MMOs and instead chose to follow everyone else and play WoW because this particular marketing sleight of hand? How many good and unique MMOs didn’t get enough subscribers and lost precious potential revenues because of the pervasiveness of WoW in the public consciousness? I worry about the future development of MMOs when one company who has 62.2% of the worldwide MMO market share puts very little of those profits back into their MMO Conclusion The Gamasutra article has revealed some eye opening facts regarding Blizzard and their involvement in the Asian market. There are certain inequities such as the subsidization of Asian gamers that are troubling. As to why they are doing this I can only speculate that they are using WoW as a beachhead to establish future profitability there in the future and using Western gamers to fund it. I don’t fault Blizzard for their unparalleled success with WoW. They should be commended for taking a fringe demographic of the video game market and propelled it to new levels of popularity via innovation and polish. What I object to is their insatiable need to dominate the market even further by using this questionable millions served marketing approach to convince people on the sidelines to subscribe to their MMO. We’re all proud of what Blizzard has accomplished but could we please see a little less avarice? Having 5.75 million non-Asian subscribers is very respectable — there’s no need to inflate those numbers with Asian subscribers who happen sit down for a one hour session of WoW in an Internet cafe. They also need to stop issuing those bravado laden press releases. You’ve made your point Blizzard. We get it. And after all, they have an excellent product that doesn’t require this kind of dubious hype. Instead of using misleading numbers, they should let WoW stand on its own merits and be content with its undisputed market dominance. -Wolfshead Edited February 10, 2012 by Zyanzor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zrinking Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Hilarious that the same trolls who accused bioware of lying bout their numbers believe blizzard hook line and sinker. I am sure every MMO had better numbers in December considering how many people were on holiday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImperialSun Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Dubious Practices in MMO Marketing: How Numbers Can Be Misleading For the past few years, I’ve been suspicious of Blizzard’s grandiose claims of millions of subscribers for their World of Warcraft MMO. Those numbers have never struck me as being entirely honest. Via Tesh, this week it was revealed by Gamasutra that although Asia accounts for a paltry 6% of the total revenue from WoW, it makes up 50% of their global users. Combine this with the report that Blizzard earns $1 billion in revenues from WoW each year and you can arrive at some interesting deductions about how MMOs are marketed and promoted if you look hard enough. All Subscribers Are Not Equal Blizzard’s current claim that they have 11.5 million total subscribers while technically accurate is misleading because not all subscribers are paying the same to play WoW. Some of us already familiar with the Asian pay per play scheme for MMOs but I highly doubt the average WoW gamer in the U.S. and Europe would be aware of this. For every dollar a non-Asian WoW subscriber pays for WoW an Asian subscriber pays 6 cents. The reality is that all WoW subscribers are not equal; they do not have equal representative value for purposes of comparison. Yet for purposes of marketing and to the untrained eye: a subscriber is a subscriber. If there are 5.75 million WoW subscribers in Asia only bringing in 6% of the total worldwide WoW revenue then I have calculated that in terms of “real” subscribers the Asian market is the equivalent of approximately 370, 000 U.S. and European subscribers who pay to play by the month. Combine this with the actual numbers of U.S. and European subscribers and you’d have an adjusted total of approximately 6.12 million subscribers playing WoW — not the 11.5 subscribers that they claimed in their last press release. The resulting 6.12 million subscribers is a bit more than half the number that they claim that WoW actually has. Suddenly WoW doesn’t look like a social and cultural juggernaut. Are Westerners Subsidizing Asian MMO Gamers? Given the puny amount of revenue that Blizzard is generating from WoW in Asia, why aren’t they charging Asians more and the rest of us less? Fair is fair. Another issue worth bringing up is because of the millions of Asian gamers with access to WoW we now have the scourge of gold farmers with ties to organized crime syndicates. Player accounts are hacked, stolen and used to farm gold. They also disrupt gameplay within WoW with their spam. Blizzard spends a considerable amount of time and resources dealing with compromised accounts. Given all of these problems and inequities, why are western subscribers still subsidizing Asian gamers? I agree with Tesh, we are being soaked by Blizzard: …the $15/month bears little relation to the real costs of making the game function. It’s likely an order of magnitude larger than necessary to even be profitable. What’s adds insult to injury, is that precious little of the $1 billion in revenues goes back into the WoW. Millions of Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong Claiming that millions and millions of people are playing WoW has been always a big part of Blizzard’s marketing and promotion strategy. Blizzard never seems to miss an opportunity to release self-congratulatory press releases claiming even more millions of people are playing their MMO. It’s often been argued that they are the McDonald’s of the MMO world in more ways than one. I remember growing up as a kid and seeing that kind of Madison Avenue spin used on one of Elvis Presley’s records entitled “50 Million Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong”. Even fast food giant MacDonald’s has used this motto for years with their “billions served” plastered on their brightly colored signs. This kind of marketing strategy plays on the tendency of most people to follow popular trends. It’s an appeal to consensus where we put aside our own feelings about something and instead trust in the judgment and wisdom of the “group”. Ergo, if something is popular and has mass acceptance then it must be worthwhile. This is exactly the part of the human psyche that the Blizzard marketeers are tapping into. I remember seeing an interview with a lady in the former Soviet Union many years ago. On her way home from work she saw a big line forming. She didn’t know what they were lining up for but figured it must be something important and took her place at the end of the line. It turned out there were lining up for cabbage. The Wall Street Connection Another reason why Blizzard may be combining subscribers from both markets is to look good to investors in the stock market. Good performance for traded stocks is predicated on favorable news. I doubt the typical Wall Street investor understands the subtleties of the Asian MMO pricing model versus the U.S. and European pricing model. The Downside of Dubious Marketing Practices Comparing Asian subscribers to US and European subscribers is comparing apples to oranges. The problem here is that all things are not equal. At first it may seem like clever marketing on the part of Blizzard to lump them all together to make their numbers look good but one wonders about some of the possible negative ramifications of this practice: It reflects poorly on Blizzard that they must resort to mixing subscribers from different pricing models and different cultures in order to create good copy for their press releases and marketing campaigns How many people didn’t bother to play other MMOs and instead chose to follow everyone else and play WoW because this particular marketing sleight of hand? How many good and unique MMOs didn’t get enough subscribers and lost precious potential revenues because of the pervasiveness of WoW in the public consciousness? I worry about the future development of MMOs when one company who has 62.2% of the worldwide MMO market share puts very little of those profits back into their MMO Conclusion The Gamasutra article has revealed some eye opening facts regarding Blizzard and their involvement in the Asian market. There are certain inequities such as the subsidization of Asian gamers that are troubling. As to why they are doing this I can only speculate that they are using WoW as a beachhead to establish future profitability there in the future and using Western gamers to fund it. I don’t fault Blizzard for their unparalleled success with WoW. They should be commended for taking a fringe demographic of the video game market and propelled it to new levels of popularity via innovation and polish. What I object to is their insatiable need to dominate the market even further by using this questionable millions served marketing approach to convince people on the sidelines to subscribe to their MMO. We’re all proud of what Blizzard has accomplished but could we please see a little less avarice? Having 5.75 million non-Asian subscribers is very respectable — there’s no need to inflate those numbers with Asian subscribers who happen sit down for a one hour session of WoW in an Internet cafe. They also need to stop issuing those bravado laden press releases. You’ve made your point Blizzard. We get it. And after all, they have an excellent product that doesn’t require this kind of dubious hype. Instead of using misleading numbers, they should let WoW stand on its own merits and be content with its undisputed market dominance. -Wolfshead Superb post...couldnt agree more. Thanks for taking the time to write it up Driz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mormack Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 I didn't cancel my sub until this month because I was trying to judge both...You can't make that judgement now... Plus, they forget to admit that it was during that last quarter that Cata released in China so they had a big influx of people in China that was buying the game. And Honestly it doesn't matter because I'll start playing it again once Pandaria comes out. I'm excited for Monk class and Pandarens. I was disappointed when they weren't the alliance race in BC (I remember the rumors....and then they confirmed it shortly after blizzcon this year.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dantragk Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Long Post Blizzard probably counts the people that unsub and resub on content patches. Not 100% of their user base subs throughout the entire year. They will unsub and resub as content is released. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamus_Divinus Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 (edited) Blizard say WoW makes 1 billion in revenue a year? So how do you get 10mil subs making only 1 billion in a year? 10 billion in revenue ($15 a month x 12 months) is around 5mil subs....ah the asian millions don't contribute much at all? Ok so TOR's 1.7mil is up againt WoW's 5mil atm. Not a bad result imo Edited February 10, 2012 by Jamus_Divinus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zrinking Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 I'm excited for Monk class and Pandarens. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/zrinkill/wow-pandaria-wide-560x280.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xQuicksilverx Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Doooooooomeeed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrTijger Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Yea....you don't have any idea what your talking about do you? Competition is good for us as consumers(not the producer), keeps the producers thinking of cool stuff to keep the customer base and grow it. Assuming Blizz wanted competition for their profits I wouldn't say TOR is competition. If you recall EA and BW threw the gaunlet down and said they were going after WoW before TOR launched. Now that TOR is on the market its funny that they even tried with this game. Pretty sure TOR will be around for a while, just like Warhammer, Aion and AOC, just accept it this game is a second class MMO. You're a fool, sorry. Devs want competition, companies want it too, nothing is ever improved in a vacuum. Do I have to point out the virtual standstill of the browser market due to lack of competition a few years back? Also, you keep treating this as a zero sum game which it isnt, there's plenty of potential customers out there who wouldnt buy WoW but will buy a SW MMO. As for the second class...whatever floats your boat, I like the game *shrug*. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrTijger Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Blizard say WoW makes 1 billion in revenue a year? So how do you get 10mil subs making only 1 billion in a year? 10 billion in revenue ($15 a month x 12 months) is around 5mil subs....ah the asian millions don't contribute much at all? Ok so TOR's 1.7mil is up againt WoW's 5mil atm. Not a bad result imo Because the Asian subs which make up 50% of players only make up 5% of revenue. Different sub model in Asia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mormack Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/zrinkill/wow-pandaria-wide-560x280.jpg You would have me if this didn't come first by a long shot http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RAONVUj4sG0/TrPFr8eWOTI/AAAAAAAAAxw/xcGm7UOoNIk/s400/ChenStormStout2.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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