Wow lost another 300k subs this quarter

Yoshiyuki Blade said:
I imagine it'll take a lot of work/thought to redo the character models. Can't overdo things to the point where people dislike the new look.

I also like the idea of being able to change the look of items. I still have some "mementos" from each era of WoW and might go with the old Warlord's PvP set look. :)
Click to expand...

EQ changed the look of everything essentially with one expantion. The outcry was massive but very short lived. I think WoW would be ok if they did some make overs.
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
I imagine it'll take a lot of work/thought to redo the character models. Can't overdo things to the point where people dislike the new look.

I also like the idea of being able to change the look of items. I still have some "mementos" from each era of WoW and might go with the old Warlord's PvP set look. :)
Click to expand...

To be honest an entire graphical overhaul is likely what they will do after 4.3 I would imagine at this point. The engine is updated and could easily take advantage of Direct X 11 but it would take a massive effort. When EQ was reworked like this it took an expansion and probably 6 months to smooth out performance issues but WoW was dated within a year in terms of graphics and it would be nice to see it coated in some fresh paint.

I still don't see how they will keep people happy with the game if they only do 4.3 and wait for any more major content until the expansion. They will bleed out users during that long wait so something tells me they are well on there way into the next expansion. They've already gone on record saying that they plan to speed up the releases of expansions. So I guess we'll see.
 
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if the character overhaul will wait till the next expansion or at least during the transition period. I don't expect it to be a massive though, maybe something along the lines of the old Thrall vs new Thrall look. Even then he looked uncomfortably different than he used to, artistically speaking. His model gained some polys, but not by a lot by the looks of it.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1831391
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if the character overhaul will wait till the next expansion or at least during the transition period. I don't expect it to be a massive though, maybe something along the lines of the old Thrall vs new Thrall look. Even then he looked uncomfortably different than he used to, artistically speaking. His model gained some polys, but not by a lot by the looks of it.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1831391
Click to expand...
It still looks a lot better than the current orc player model. I'd take that one in a heartbeat.
 
I’m surprised that they haven’t adopted (ripped-off) LOTRO’s cosmetic system yet. That allows you to equip whatever armor you want, but display many different outfits based on your mood. There have been some very unique and original looks created by the players over there. And yeah, being able to dye armor helps.
 
Space_Coyote said:
I’m surprised that they haven’t adopted (ripped-off) LOTRO’s cosmetic system yet. That allows you to equip whatever armor you want, but display many different outfits based on your mood. There have been some very unique and original looks created by the players over there. And yeah, being able to dye armor helps.
Click to expand...

EQ2 did it really well (and may have been the first to do it). You have two equip sets for your paper doll: Your real items and your appearance items. Your real items give you your stats. Appearance items just override the look. So if nothing is in the appearance slot, the regular item equipped shows up. Equip an appearance item, it overrides the regular item.

Not only do they have special "appearance only" gear, which is stuff with no stats that can only be put in there, but any regular item can be put in the appearance only area. So you get a new +5 Stabbity Sword of Asskicking but you like how your old -1 Wooden Sword of Lameness looks better? Move the old sword to the appearance tab and there you go. New sword stats, old sword look.

Well done and easy as hell to implement code-wise. I've no idea why more MMOs don't thieve that idea.
 
One thing about the Transmognifier :

You might have to own the armor before you can use it to swap the appearance of your existing armor.
Click to expand...

And for void storage of old gear :

Anything stored there will lose all gems and enchantments.
Click to expand...

Wow ..that's lame.
 
After hearing the next patch will have Deathwing...well that tells me Blizzard gave up on the Cata expansion.

It's too bad...blizzard killed warcraft with this expansion pack....great game with no new content will make people leave.
 
WoW could lose 300k subs a quarter for 5 more years and still have the most subs of any MMO, lulz.
 
alienate said:
WoW could lose 300k subs a quarter for 5 more years and still have the most subs of any MMO, lulz.
Click to expand...

That is true, none of the current MMO's out are even remotely close to WoW subscription #'s. They say an MMO could just get by at like 250,000 subscribers minimum, if you get 500,000 players your making good money. Well fuck, Blizzard has twenty times that :eek:

I don't see them going all the way down to 500,000 for years to come, could be a decade until they drop from the current 11 million to just half a million. What a fucking cash cow Blizzard created, keeps on milking cash every month.

.
 
11 million subscribers is nearly $2 billion per year. Holy shit, I knew they were making money hand over fist but.....wow.
 
Yeah, WoW has been Blizzard's license to print money for the last 7 years. I doubt Blizzard will stand by idly if this trend continues.
 
TwistedAegis said:
11 million subscribers is nearly $2 billion per year. Holy shit, I knew they were making money hand over fist but.....wow.
Click to expand...

No kidding, they take in approx $ 150 million a month on WoW subscriptions :eek: Making hand over fist truck loads of cash. No way Blizzard's shareholders will be happy to see that steadily decline. if they need to make big changes to the game to keep it going strong I am sure they will.

I would expect the 4th expansion to release sooner than the typical 2 yrs between expansions, and I am sure big changes on the new expansion.
 
the 11 million players number is crap. Asian servers at least don't normally use the traditional subscription model, but a model based on credits for play. 11 million players is really 11 million accounts, not all active.
 
I still play wow now and then but only cause i dont pay real $, i buy game cards with gold in game. Once that stops being an option I'll quit and go back to Guild wars or something. Love free2play games
 
Tricyclthief said:
I still play wow now and then but only cause i dont pay real $, i buy game cards with gold in game. Once that stops being an option I'll quit and go back to Guild wars or something. Love free2play games
Click to expand...

Is this only allowed in certain countries? I've never heard of this in WOW.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Is this only allowed in certain countries? I've never heard of this in WOW.
Click to expand...

It's against the EULA but there are lots of grey market (not "illegal", but not allowed by Blizzard) places that will buy gold from players for game cards or money. They then sell that gold back to other players. One of my guild mates got banned for doing this in the early days of Burning Crusade.
 
Sometimes players will give a guild mate 5,000 gold and said guild mate will then buy a $14.99 play time from the blizzard store and give the code to the guy who gave him 5,000 gold. I have also seen people advertise in-game that they wanted to buy a 60 day time card for 10,000 gold. Doubt it's legal under the EULA, but I know people who have done it.
 
Mehphisto said:
Sometimes players will give a guild mate 5,000 gold and said guild mate will then buy a $14.99 play time from the blizzard store and give the code to the guy who gave him 5,000 gold. I have also seen people advertise in-game that they wanted to buy a 60 day time card for 10,000 gold. Doubt it's legal under the EULA, but I know people who have done it.
Click to expand...

I know someone whos attempted this several times, getting banned everytime.
 
Not sure how your friend is getting banned unless they are stupid enough to try to trade gold for game time to some chinese website or something..Thats how you get banned cause bliz assumes your selling gold by trading to pretty much anyone with an IP from china(on US servers). Also im not really sure why anyone would really pay $15 month to play wow, I can make 5k gold in few hours just farming cata herbs

Mehphisto said:
Sometimes players will give a guild mate 5,000 gold and said guild mate will then buy a $14.99 play time from the blizzard store and give the code to the guy who gave him 5,000 gold. I have also seen people advertise in-game that they wanted to buy a 60 day time card for 10,000 gold. Doubt it's legal under the EULA, but I know people who have done it.
Click to expand...
 
Tricyclthief said:
Not sure how your friend is getting banned unless they are stupid enough to try to trade gold for game time to some chinese website or something..Thats how you get banned cause bliz assumes your selling gold by trading to pretty much anyone with an IP from china(on US servers). Also im not really sure why anyone would really pay $15 month to play wow, I can make 5k gold in few hours just farming cata herbs
Click to expand...

He was probably doing just that, I just know the guy kept getting banned doing this. Couldn't really afford to pay for subscriptions, but he could make it up with gold. I did this a few times in EQ, SOE/Verant was never hard up on selling money, it was just characters so it was much easier there.
 
DASHlT said:
After hearing the next patch will have Deathwing...well that tells me Blizzard gave up on the Cata expansion.
Click to expand...

Deathwing will be in patch 4.3. Icecrown Citadel was in patch 3.3, so it sounds about right in terms of major content releases. It's just not going to take a whole year to push out. TBC was an exception with Sunwell Plateau (2.4), but I think they actually wanted to end it at Black Temple but ended up extending it.
 
I think the original development team didn't want to extend it beyond Wotlk in fact but money talks. Its rumored they made a deal to push out one more (cata) and then move on.

I think its almost 99 percent certain that an expansion will release sooner than there usual 2 year cycle. I wouldn't be surprised to see it by summer 2012 in fact.

Also did anyone see The Daily Show tonight? :

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/t...-class-warfare---the-poor-s-free-ride-is-over

LOL.
 
Haha, nice graphic there. :D

I remember reading something about 1 expansion a year a long time ago (around TBC days). Back then, I though that sounded too fast because there seemed to be a lot to do at the time. Well, there wasn't necessarily more to do, but progress seemed to move at a slower pace. Now, new expansions can't come fast enough.
 
TwistedAegis said:
11 million subscribers is nearly $2 billion per year. Holy shit, I knew they were making money hand over fist but.....wow.
Click to expand...

That's not including the various cash-based services and items is it? They make some good cash from those pets, server transfers, character renames, race/faction changes, etc.
 
TwistedAegis said:
I just multipled $15*11M to get a rough estimate, and it works out to $1.98B.
Click to expand...

Its insane to factor that in and then think its now no longer a "priority" at Blizzard like it use to be. I mean if it was any other company they would still be completely focused on it directly and pushing for more. Its kinda sad that Blizzard has basically just put it out to pasture considering what WoW has done for them both creatively and financially.
 
Godmachine said:
Its insane to factor that in and then think its now no longer a "priority" at Blizzard like it use to be. I mean if it was any other company they would still be completely focused on it directly and pushing for more. Its kinda sad that Blizzard has basically just put it out to pasture considering what WoW has done for them both creatively and financially.
Click to expand...

I would bet at this years Blizzcon they will announce major changes engine upgrades to the game. No way they sit by and allow 900,000 players leave with no issue.
 
Godmachine said:
I think the original development team didn't want to extend it beyond Wotlk in fact but money talks. Its rumored they made a deal to push out one more (cata) and then move on.

I think its almost 99 percent certain that an expansion will release sooner than there usual 2 year cycle. I wouldn't be surprised to see it by summer 2012 in fact.

Also did anyone see The Daily Show tonight? :

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/t...-class-warfare---the-poor-s-free-ride-is-over

LOL.
Click to expand...

Kind of reminds me about the original developer notes going behind wow before its release. Had them saved somewhere but going off the top of my head they were really proud with the reception of the litch king concept and the good following they got in WC3. They didn't want to do it injustice by releasing another rts so they wanted to go the mmo rout and bank on the popularity of the story. They also played it safe and waited to see how well it would do first before incorporating anything from the lore off the bat, diminishing anything they achieved from WC3. That's why we saw litch king lore at the end of vanilla.

I also heard the mmo was supposed to end with wotlk while which would be dumb to believe with its popularity and ability to print money. Im hopeful that a few things could happen, they are able to continue the story line with games side by side (rts and mmo release with the mmo having no real effect on the story), titan replaces wow completely and/or team b effectively turns wow around with some creativity.
 
Well despite Blizzards best intentions with "replacing" WoW with a totally different IP and expecting all the users to jump ship once it releases by the way is insane. Sony tried this with Everquest 2 and look how that didn't work out.

There is quite a bit of lore with WoW to explore with expansions if they wanted but the Lich King has been the driving force for a while now. Deathwing is Cata's Lich King but not as interesting , they also explored the titans a bit with Uldaman but there is a whole bunch left there to explore as well. The story is there its just a matter of presenting it in an interesting way which I think is Cata's main issue. The story is good but the presentation doesn't capture your attention like WOTLK did or TBC did. Like how you go into Cinema mode during a big story arch but not all of them are voiced (which ruins the immersion factor for a game like WoW) or how generic the camera angles were.

The priority list for WoW should look like this :

1. Fix long standing issues with game mechanics such as :

A. Dealing with Resilience and its unbalancing nature to PVP and Arena's in the current game.

B. Presenting an in game feedback system much like Xbox Live's feedback system were a player
can be ranked based on there behavior and serve as a warning to those playing with them. This can
fix a lot of external hassles with the social structure of the game. Players who get enough warnings
from GM's due to horrible feedback will face actual consequence.

C. Making all class mixes viable in the Arena , stop the composition hounding players exploit each season
will provide a more fair and balance atmosphere for the Arena as it should be. Much like the first
seasons when balance was actually much more reasonable.

D. Focus on releasing content patches on a more regular basis , stop releasing content just to push
out content. Make it interesting and engaging , do something different with that content that has not
been done before and stop being afraid to change the formula.

F. Expansions shouldn't just be new content and new skills/talents/abilities , they should be about
expanding the game world in such a way that it resembles a first timer going across the sea to
experience a different country and culture. It should be foreign and familiar at the same time. And
until the game experience reflects this expansions should also be released sooner than a 2 year
cycle to keep players interested and engaged.

Finally , update the game engine. It doesn't have to be an EQ 1 overhaul just up the poly count and produce new models. Support new effects instead of magical orgasm showers of particles make the spell effects more individual and sinister looking. WoW was dated graphically from the first year , its time bring the game engine into 2011.

I think if they were to take those steps and implement them over time that WoW could be fresh and interesting again.
 
Bring back deathwing was lazy story writing. Dead, comes back, dead again, turned into the million dollar dragon, becomes the main bad guy. Titans is a good area to go into, they have tons of content to go off of, introduce a ton of stuff players have yet to experience and none of it is rehashed. Putting in a rehashed deathwing throws the story off and damages it more with the players then if they would of brought in something completely random.

They have teased us with the titans for a decade now but no sign them or their world coming into play either. It makes me mad that cata could of been the best expansion ever except they decided to rehash deathwing, rehash ragnaros and put in the exact same formula as wotlk.

The game issues are voided, a lot of what you bring up are the major points I feel are killing the game too.

The engine upgrade is very needed. More polygons are not the answer they can still keep those down and make the game look and flow better too. The mass upgrade eq had was met with disregard but that was gone very fast, it was also not mandatory to use new models for quite a while. They also need to hire who did the spell particle effects for Eq1 as those were awesome and the wow spell particle effects are forgetful.

They really need to get their heads out of their asses and give real new content. The maelstrom was the most interesting part going into cata and that was a crap job in the end as well. Stop dicking us around, give a new character to replace the licht king (seeming unobtainable) and move on. The story now has gone stale and risks the chance of being forgettable.
 
Yea there are things that need to be taken care of before they just barf more content into the game. With Diablo 3 releasing early next year and the SC2 expac coming next year and likely the official announcement of "Titan" as well its going to be interesting to see what they do with WoW during that time.

Oh well only time will tell.
 
True that, dissapointing they don't seem to be taking the warcraft universe very well. The warcraft universe is one of my favorites and it really just dissapoints me that they don't seem to care if it goes no where. Reminds me of a bunch of long novel series, generally after book 3 or 4 the writer just starts pumping out lazy work to keep the fans buying their work (sword of the truth?).
 
I took blizzard up on their 10 day cataclysm free trial. I loaded up my level 80 holy paladin. I took at least an hour re-familiarizing myself with Stormwind and trained my professions, re-glyphed etc. After figuring out my head from my rear I manually flew over to Hyjal to start questing because I couldn't find a portal or gryphon ride. Astute readers will notice that even though I haven't done anything yet I have a negative reaction to the game because what should be familiar to me is frustrating and confusing.

Upon arriving in Hyjal I land and get two quests. Two whole quests! The world has been ravaged by some massive evil dragon of destruction and they only need my help with two things. OK, I do these two simple quests which takes forever because my class has been completely redesigned since the last time I played it and I'm rewarded with crappy gear, a few gold, and two more quests! I guess the world isn't really in peril because there sure isn't a lot of stuff for me to help out with.

Since the questing is going nowhere fast I decide to queue for a dungeon. Although I've heard complaints about there not being as many 5 man dungeons in Cataclysm as the other expansions surely Blizzard put one in that you could hop into right away. TBC had a couple, WotLK had two, and ... "you do not meet the minimum item level requirement". I can see the dungeon names in the dungeon finder. I see that they say 80-85. I'm geared with mostly epics from ICC 5 man heroics and 25 man Naxx, the quest reward greens are worse than the gear I'm wearing, but I can't join a dungeon.

I logged off. Thank you for the trial Blizzard, but you're going to have to do better than that.
 
Trimlock said:
True that, dissapointing they don't seem to be taking the warcraft universe very well. The warcraft universe is one of my favorites and it really just dissapoints me that they don't seem to care if it goes no where. Reminds me of a bunch of long novel series, generally after book 3 or 4 the writer just starts pumping out lazy work to keep the fans buying their work (sword of the truth?).
Click to expand...

They really do seem to have run out of ideas, which is too bad. I had wondered what was coming with Cataclysm since it was their first "new story" expansion. All the others were just expanding and flushing out on the world that had already been introduced in Warcraft. However they had run all that out and had to add new stuff. No problem I would have thought, given that they invented all the original Warcraft stuff. However it really was rather underwhelming.
 
Sycraft said:
They really do seem to have run out of ideas, which is too bad. I had wondered what was coming with Cataclysm since it was their first "new story" expansion. All the others were just expanding and flushing out on the world that had already been introduced in Warcraft. However they had run all that out and had to add new stuff. No problem I would have thought, given that they invented all the original Warcraft stuff. However it really was rather underwhelming.
Click to expand...

WC has a truckload of lore they can use. The content creators are scared to venture into other areas of the story. Don't know the r reason why but they have access to almost unlimited lore to be placed into the game. I think it might be a money thing, people will play no matter what so don't spend a lot implementing the story. I just want them to continue it somehow, I don't care if they do it through the mmo or through an rts, just dont drop it completely.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top