MMOs by Subscriber

[Clementine]

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html

I found that chart amusing.

[camron]

More like MMONOPOLY LOlololoLOloll

[Wylan]

This graph shows that WoW was at one point experiencing a sharp decline in subscribers largely due to the game being to difficult and not friendly enough for casuals.

You can see that from the moment they implemented badges, and all the other easy shit they put in, that the number of subscribers jumping ship to the competition halted and started to go back up.

Oh wait.

After actually looking at the chart, you can see that at no point in time did WoW ever lose a substantial amount of subscribers...or...to put it more accurately, at no point did they have a net loss of subscribers over a year to year period.

This means that enough people enjoyed the product and while it's possible the weak were leaving, the product was still growing in popularity. So...if the game were still in Vanilla...it would still be getting subscribers because the competition for WoW is dogshit.

They didn't have to nerf WoW. Fuck Blizzard.

[Wendell]

The number of subscribers is actually significantly less, China has been down for over a month with no resolution in sight as two companies are fighting over the hosting rights. They also never got Wrath since it has undead and that upsets the leaders. Stars and others switched to other regions to get the 1st Alone in the Darkness.

No, I don't think maintaining difficulty would have affected casual numbers at all. If anything it would have affected hardcores more with burnout, casuals would still keep going about their business. Back in the Naxx days Defiant had more turnover than Leviathan, Chi Cerca Trova or any of the other casual guilds doing Molten Core, BWL, up to Twins in AQ and maybe Razuvious and Anub'rekhan. In fact, those guilds kept growing. It's not like there is a lack of content now. WoW still did well back when UBRS, Stratholme and Scholomance were the only places you could go if you weren't in a hardcore guild. They didn't have Molten Core Lite or Blackwing Lair Lite back then either.

Their mistake was giving in to casuals. As soon as they started releasing places like Zul'Gurub it just opened the floodgates to more whining, and more nerfs until they now have to spoon feed the same content to casuals that they give to hardcore. They can't make something hard now without having their previous nerfs thrown in their face by a sense of entitlement. It doesn't matter how much they nerf it, there will always be someone that still won't be able to do it and will want it nerfed more.

Nothing makes it more obvious than TBC as far as casual demands are concerned. All of them claimed "oh we just want to see the content and great lore!". Bullshit, they wanted the loot with less effort. Every so often you would see an old world content raid spring up, but for the most part Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Qiraj and Naxxramas sat empty. Where were the hoards of casuals that just wanted to see the wonderful content that was now completely accessible to them? Casuals would stare at a fucking wall for 4 hours straight if it opened a loot window with something purple in it when it was done. Oh wait, it's not a wall - they call it a "badge vendor" now. Doing the modern equivalent of Stratholme a few times now nets them the modern equivalent of Ragnaros loot.

Casuals don't really want things too easy, they want things just easy enough that they can beat them but too hard for anyone else below them. It's hypocrisy. The very same people that screamed "Kael'Thas and Lady Vashj needs nerfing!" are the same people that yelled "learn2play" to lower level guilds that still struggled on them. This was after acting all offended when the hardcores told them "learn2play" when they demanded the original nerf. Now they don't even have to demand it - they know full well that every time a new point release comes out the tough bosses will get nerfed by default.

[Wheeler]

http://i28.tinypic.com/zlvm9d.png


Yeah, the instant gratification formula is working amazingly well. :rolleyes:

[Wheeler]

Actually, nevermind, I for some reason included WotLK on there when it was still TBC. Regardless, point still stands.

[Clementine]

The truly sad thing is that I highly suspect that a high percentage of the accounts created in Mid-Late BC are not new accounts, they're just 2nd/3rd/so forth accounts. I know a lot of my friends created alternate accounts during Sunwell for nights when they were sitting outside the instance.

Most people that are new joiners do so immediately before and after an expansion. it'd be nice to have Blizz actually compensate for that in their subscriber figures.

[Warp]

Lol good ol runescape still chugging along.