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Forums - Gaming Discussion - World of Warcraft breaks 9 million subscribers!

naznatips on 25 July 2007
DoesWhatNintenDont said:
I know so many people who love WOW. My best friend is addicted to it and has been playing it since launch. He talks to me from time to time about the politics of his guild and what not.; While I love him, it wouldn't be fair if I didn't say there wasn't room for concern.

Anyways, my wife really likes WOW, yet I can't seem to get into it. I've tried really hard twice to get involved with it, when it first launched and now with the Burning Crusade.

Personally, I found Final Fantasy XI and PSO much more fun. In fact I'm actually thinking of getting PSU's expansion for PS3 when it drops later this year....

 

My issue with Final Fantasy XI is it becomes far too group dependant.  That ruined the game for me.

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ckmlb on 25 July 2007
Avalach21 said:
 

The amount of people playing Wow is the same amount of people with Wii's about.

 

The amount of people with PS3s is less than half the amount of people playing WoW


 That was a totally necessary post that fit perfect with this thread.



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Bodhesatva on 25 July 2007
naznatips said:
DoesWhatNintenDont said:
I know so many people who love WOW. My best friend is addicted to it and has been playing it since launch. He talks to me from time to time about the politics of his guild and what not.; While I love him, it wouldn't be fair if I didn't say there wasn't room for concern.

Anyways, my wife really likes WOW, yet I can't seem to get into it. I've tried really hard twice to get involved with it, when it first launched and now with the Burning Crusade.

Personally, I found Final Fantasy XI and PSO much more fun. In fact I'm actually thinking of getting PSU's expansion for PS3 when it drops later this year....

 

My issue with Final Fantasy XI is it becomes far too group dependant. That ruined the game for me.

 My issue with Final Fantasy XI is the same issue I had with Everquest back when it came out. Here's how my initial experience with Everquest went.

Friend: "Hey, try this online game out! It's awesome! It's an online RPG you can play with other people."

Me: "Wow, it's like an online Final Fantasy! It's what we've always wanted."

I proceed to kill some monsters and gain some experience.

Me: "Okay, cool. Now, how do you fight other people?"

Friend: "You don't."

And that was the last time I played MMORPGs for... oh, about 4-5 years, until DAoC came out. I still do not get the point of an MMO where you can't fight other people (yes, EQ added it in later, much too late for me). 



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DoesWhatNintenDont on 25 July 2007

You know I fully understand about FFXI and the having to group issue. I was annoying at first for me. But personally I think that in the end it made the game more rich.

It forces you to have good socialization with others on the server. As a hunter in WOW I can basically use my pet as a tank and slowly fleece my way into 80% of the world without saying anything to anyone. It quickly becomes another dreadful hack-and-slash game if you ask me. No dueling in FFXI can be a bit of a pain though.

Also unless one establishes connections, joining a guild worth anything in WOW proves a challenge these days. Simply because people have gotten too focused on the game and demand ridiculous things. Like I mentioned before with my buddy, uber politics for a game.

But hey, to each his own. As stated it's pretty much a banked sale for SEGA from my wallet when the expanded PSU comes this fall.



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naznatips on 25 July 2007
DoesWhatNintenDont said:
You know I fully understand about FFXI and the having to group issue. I was annoying at first for me. But personally I think that in the end it made the game more rich.

It forces you to have good socialization with others on the server. As a hunter in WOW I can basically use my pet as a tank and slowly fleece my way into 80% of the world without saying anything to anyone. It quickly becomes another dreadful hack-and-slash game if you ask me. No dueling in FFXI can be a bit of a pain though.

Also unless one establishes connections, joining a guild worth anything in WOW proves a challenge these days. Simply because people have gotten too focused on the game and demand ridiculous things. Like I mentioned before with my buddy, uber politics for a game.

But hey, to each his own. As stated it's pretty much a banked sale for SEGA from my wallet when the expanded PSU comes this fall.

I have no problems with socialization in online games, but you should not only be able to play one way.  If I log on in FFXI and no one is online to group with me, I either have to get a pick up group or just sit on my ass till people get online.

If I get online in WoW I can go kill stuff, do quests, PVP, play in battlegrounds, Duel, etc.  When people do get online I can go do 40 man raids.   IMO everything in WoW (both group and solo) was handled better than everything in FFXI.



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Legend11 on 25 July 2007
Bodhesatva said:

World of Warcraft has now reached 9 million subscribers!

http://kotaku.com/gaming/money-should-be-renamed-wow/wow-breaks-9-million-subscribers-281824.php

As Kotaku said, "Money should be renamed WoW." For comparison, this means that WoW alone is larger than PSN and Xbox Live combined, despite the fact that it's just a single game and that game costs 15 dollars per month to subscribe to!

Interestingly, this amounts to:

15 x 9 = 135 million dollars a month for Blizzard in revenue

Or 15 x 12 = 180 dollars per year per customer

Or 180 x 9 = 1,620,000 dollars for Blizzard per year in net revenue. That's 1.6 Billion dollars in revenue based on this game alone, and that's not including the purchase of the actual game itself or its expansion(s). Assuming that even 30 percent of former WoW players have canceled their subscription, that means this game has sold 12 millions copies thus far, and is still selling quite well (still in the top 10 best selling games on Amazon, both for the original and its expansion). This means that WoW would be one of the most succesful games of all time if we were simply judging by game sale revenue, which we haven't even included. Let's assume that the average player paid 35 dollars for the game (it was 50 to start with, but is now 20. 35 seems like a reasonable average).

That's 35 x 12 = 420,000,000 dollars in revenue from sales of the original game. Approximately 5.5 million copies of the expansion have sold, at an average price of 40 dollars, so that's 40 x 5.5 = 220,000,000 dollars. WoW has been in release for 2.6 years. If we assume that WoW had an average of 6 million subscribers last year (that's pretty close) and 3 million the year before that (also pretty close), we get the following:

3 x 180 = 540 million for the first year
6 x 180 = 1,080 million for the second year

Thus, by November of this year, we can estimate that World of Warcraft has produced approximately this much revenue:

540 + 1,080 + 420 + 220 + 1,620 = 3.38 billion dollars in revenue, and still climbing quite quickly. We're likely to see at least another billion dollars (at least -- more likely closer to 1.5 billion) by November 2008.

I'm going to bold this synopsis for people who don't like math: World of Warcraft has likely produced somewhere between 3 and 3.5 billion dollars in revenue for Blizzard. It will likely produce 1.25-1.75 billion dollars more in the next year. 


Sorry to nitpick but your numbers aren't right.  For example in some countries you don't even have to purchase the game (South Korea), in others you only have to buy a serial number for $3.75 (China).  Also monthly subscriptions aren't available in some countries and instead they pay by the hour.  Also people get discounts if they choose longer subscription packages.  Anyways still impressive numbers to say the least :)



lenardo on 25 July 2007

Dropping asia from the picture - both myself, my wife , and my 6yr old son play(2 accounts though)

about 5 million people in europe and the us servers. (about 2.5 million each )

a lot pay quarterly - i do- it's cheaper

so figure 5x13.5x12=yearly revenue from just the us and europe servers

810,000,000 gross yearly income from subscriptions.

and that is ACTIVE subscribers. (people actively paying)

in terms of Box Sales...- again us and europe only, assuming oh a 66% retention factor atm- of all box sales 66% are still paying/playing...

around 7 million box sales of the ORIGINAL game have been sold(not including the expansion)

of said 5 million players probably 60%-75% have bought the expansion (another 40 dollars for box sales) so ~3-4 million or so have bought the expansion as well..



Cadence on 25 July 2007

Why do people find WoW so addictive? It's boring.



PlagueOfLocust on 25 July 2007

I dodged the WoW bullet because I got hit with the Diablo II bullet prior. I learned from that game that if Blizzard made an MMO, I would never stop playing it ever. Hence, I opted to play more, different games instead of the one all the time, even though I know I'd really enjoy playing it.

Whew, close call.



"Whenever you find a man who says he doesn't believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later."   -C.S. Lewis

"We all make choices... but in the end, our choices... make us."   -Andrew Ryan, Bioshock

Prediction: Wii passes 360 in US between July - September 2008. (Wii supply will be the issue to watch, and barring any freak incidents between now and then as well.) - 6/5/08; Wow, came true even earlier. Wii is a monster.