Blizzard: Conan stole our WoW players

[Mrbloodworth]

Players take a break to play Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

So Funcom should be commended for apparently drawing some of those WoW players away to play Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, which launched in late May.

Blizzard president Mike Morhaime said during an Activision Blizzard earnings call on Thursday, "Age of Conan released with some initial success a couple of months ago, and we did see some of our players leave to try the game. However, we've seen about 40 percent of those players return to World of Warcraft."

In about a month's worth of time, Funcom's Age of Conan garnered 700,000 subscribers, according to the developer.


Morhaime said that players that leave WoW are often drawn back because of the content and service that Blizzard provides.

"Any massively multiplayer online game that launches today isn't just competing with the amount and breadth of content that we launched with back in 2004," Morhaime stated.

He said that other MMO companies entering the market are also competing with the service and content that Blizzard has been honing within World of Warcraft for nearly four years.

Morhaime expects that when the next WoW expansion Wrath of the Lich King launches later this year, more players will be compelled to return to WoW, which currently boasts 10.9 million subscribers.

Morhaime added, "Another competitive advantage is our ability to amortize our development costs across more than 10 million subscribers spread out over three continents."

He also described the userbase as a "sales force" of satisfied customers who spread the WoW gospel.

Link

Some really interesting statements.

[Lakov_Sanite]

40% returned without wow having done anything new is more a mark against funcom than for it. I would be interested though where they come up with a number for who's left to go to aoc, do they just tally all the people who quit during the month it came out?

[Merusk]

I'd suspect that's what they do.. as well as counting the people who furiously write "I"M GOING TO AOC, BITCHES" in their exit poll.

Is this the first time we've seen a company exec admit they lost subs to another game so soon after that game came out? I can't recall it happening before. 

[Slayerik]

I don't recall any other gaming execs that wipe their asses with $100 bills either. It's good to be king.

[Mrbloodworth]

The loss must have been more significant then any other time for them to mention it. Also, 40% of what is a good question. Could be small, or large.

And unless when you resub, or subscribe, it asks if you just left for AOC, and are returning, i would suspect that some of that is potentially just an increase back to the original subscriber max.

So, i dont really take it as 40% of X returned, because we had a GPS attached to them, so we know its them.

[Musashi]

40% of less than 700k.  Prolly not a whole lot less.  That's just speculation though.  But I guess substantial majority of AoC players have WoW subs.

[Cyrrex]

I think the whole point is not so much that AOC took subs, or even that he admits it.  It's more like "yeah, they may be playing that game for a month or two, but they'll be back, and we all know it.  And then WoTLK will be out and we'll have more subscribers than ever.  Now excuse me while I go fuck my hot secretary on a pile of money."

[Fordel]

I'd suspect that's what they do.. as well as counting the people who furiously write "I"M GOING TO AOC, BITCHES" in their exit poll.

Is this the first time we've seen a company exec admit they lost subs to another game so soon after that game came out? I can't recall it happening before. 

Mythic used fancier words, but basically admitted WoW ate their lunch in regards to DaoC.

[Dren]

I'd suspect that's what they do.. as well as counting the people who furiously write "I"M GOING TO AOC, BITCHES" in their exit poll.

Is this the first time we've seen a company exec admit they lost subs to another game so soon after that game came out? I can't recall it happening before. 

Mythic used fancier words, but basically admitted WoW ate their lunch in regards to DaoC.

I have to admit that I found this press release refreshing.  He didn't pull any punches or hide the truth behind flowery language.  Everything about his statment made sense to me and I believe it.  I don't remembering having that feeling before.

As said before, their success probably awards them this honesty, but it is still nice to experience.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I'd suspect that's what they do.. as well as counting the people who furiously write "I"M GOING TO AOC, BITCHES" in their exit poll.

Is this the first time we've seen a company exec admit they lost subs to another game so soon after that game came out? I can't recall it happening before. 

Mythic used fancier words, but basically admitted WoW ate their lunch in regards to DaoC.

I have to admit that I found this press release refreshing.  He didn't pull any punches or hide the truth behind flowery language.  Everything about his statment made sense to me and I believe it.  I don't remembering having that feeling before.

As said before, their success probably awards them this honesty, but it is still nice to experience.

One could also say their honesty helps lead to their success as well.

[Venkman]

Particularly notable because afaik there's only AoC in US and EU. That's a much higher (relative) percentage of departures between the games in the markets in which they overlap.

Meanwhile, Blizzard's probably banned more players themselves than they've lost to every other game that's launched since WoW.

[Kirth]

spread the WoW gospel

 

[Ingmar]

spread the WoW gospel

 

Eh, if some new gamer asked me "Hey Ingmar, what MMO should I play?" I'd tell them WoW. There's nothing else out there that has as much universal appeal or approachability. I'd certainly not want to dump someone into Eve or something.

[MahrinSkel]

This is actually pretty normal.  That they got 40% back again says that they lost 60% of those that jumped to begin with.  That doesn't meant that AOC retained all of the remainder, but it's probably pretty close, and it gives us a baseline for AOC's retention that is only slightly below the standard 70%.  It means WoW has officially peaked, and the remarks that WotLK will put it back on track are whistling past the graveyard.  There's a good chance they'll see a temporary resurgence with that expansion, but it will be their final high-water mark.  AOC, and/or some other game, will be the "new shiny" that pulls in the newbie hose, and as lower levels are depopulated this will set off a slow cascade of depopulation.  And only a tiny fraction of those that haven't come back by now ever will, they are now happy AOC players and will probably go on to some other game rather than return to WoW.  They'll be rolling in money for a long time, after all UO and EQ1 are still profitable to operate, and WoW hit a hell of a huge "high-water mark".

This was an earnings call for a publicly traded company, they have to be truthful because WoW is a huge chunk of their earnings and regulators from 3 continents are involved.  Before this, the only company putting out hard numbers was NCSoft, because Sony was so large that SOE was lost in the noise (ditto for EA). The rest were privately held.

--Dave

[cevik]

Eh, if some new gamer asked me "Hey Ingmar, what MMO should I play?" I'd tell them WoW. There's nothing else out there that has as much universal appeal or approachability. I'd certainly not want to dump someone into Eve or something.

I'd tell them Horizons.

[Ingmar]

Eh, if some new gamer asked me "Hey Ingmar, what MMO should I play?" I'd tell them WoW. There's nothing else out there that has as much universal appeal or approachability. I'd certainly not want to dump someone into Eve or something.

I'd tell them Horizons.

Yeah but you're a dick.

[kildorn]

I'd point them at WoW, but only so my EVE server isn't so crow.... I can't finish that with a straight face :(

[Riggswolfe]

I'd tell a newbie to try WOW as well. It's still the most fun I've had in an MMO and if level 60 didn't turn into an EQ grindfest I might still be playing it.

You guys think they can print money now? When they release World of Starcraft (and you know they will) they will literally own South Korea.

[Brogarn]

I'd point them to WoW and also give them my mother's in game name and tell them to contact her for any questions. That sentence says a lot more than just what's at face value I think.

[cevik]

It means WoW has officially peaked, and the remarks that WotLK will put it back on track are whistling past the graveyard.  There's a good chance they'll see a temporary resurgence with that expansion, but it will be their final high-water mark.

I originally started this reply to agree with you, mostly based on the 10.9 million subscribers number (as opposed to the last several announcements, which have all been an even million number of subcriptions) and the fact that it's been 8 months since 10 million was released.

So then I decided to google for a second and see the trend.  Here is what I got (feel free to correct me):

12/15/2005 5m
3/1/2006     6m
9/7/2006     7m
1/11/2007     8m
7/24/2007     9m
1/22/2008     10m
8/1/2008     10.9m

So basically, since the 5 million mark, we're looking at 3 months, 6 months, 4 months, 7 months, 5 months, and 8 months between announcements, with each announcement, except the last being 1 million new subscribers.  Assuming the last is actually realistically close to 900,000 subscribers (which we should not assume, but it's the only data we have), we're looking at close to 8 months for close to 1 million subscribers.

Looking at the numbers, it appears that WoW grows much slower during the summer and faster during the winter.  There is an xpac thrown in the mix there, but for the most part we're seeing 3, 4 and 5 months in the last 3 winter cycles to acquire 1 million more subscribers, and 6, 7 and 8 months to grow by 1 million subscribers in the last 3 summer cycles, with the final 8 month cycle only growing by a max of 900,000.

I suspect you are wise to think that the curve has died off, it appears we've been in a long flattening of the curve, yet it hasn't yet reached it's peak.  From the numbers above, I don't see a true end to the curve, though the noise here is tremendous since we don't know if the "10 million subs" announcement truly marked 10 million or if it marked 10.8 million, which obviously drastically affects the curve.

Right now I'll say you are probably right on, but until the next round of numbers I'm going to say "eh, maybe". :)

P.S.:  If you read this far, I'm sorry.

[Mrbloodworth]

Particularly notable because afaik there's only AoC in US and EU. That's a much higher (relative) percentage of departures between the games in the markets in which they overlap.

Meanwhile, Blizzard's probably banned more players themselves than they've lost to every other game that's launched since WoW.

Your forgetting or are unaware of Russia, coming soon. But yeah, currently, thats it.

[Miasma]

I expected WoW to have a massive jump in subscriptions after Burning Crusade launched as a lot of the people with lapsed accounts came back to try it.  I thought that there would be millions of people resubscribing but that didn't happen, it just continued with its slow growth.  Either WoW has a remarkably high retention rate so there weren't many people to resubscribe or those that leave have very little interest in coming back to see the new content it seems.

[Teleku]

Yeah, they are about to release both a Latin American version and a Russian version of WoW as I recall.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yeah, they are about to release both a Latin American version and a Russian version of WoW as I recall.

I was referring to AOC.

Russian version of Age of Conan coming in Q4

[Simond]

This is actually pretty normal.  That they got 40% back again says that they lost 60% of those that jumped to begin with.  That doesn't meant that AOC retained all of the remainder, but it's probably pretty close, and it gives us a baseline for AOC's retention that is only slightly below the standard 70%.  It means WoW has officially peaked, and the remarks that WotLK will put it back on track are whistling past the graveyard.  There's a good chance they'll see a temporary resurgence with that expansion, but it will be their final high-water mark.  AOC, and/or some other game, will be the "new shiny" that pulls in the newbie hose, and as lower levels are depopulated this will set off a slow cascade of depopulation.  And only a tiny fraction of those that haven't come back by now ever will, they are now happy AOC players and will probably go on to some other game rather than return to WoW.  They'll be rolling in money for a long time, after all UO and EQ1 are still profitable to operate, and WoW hit a hell of a huge "high-water mark".

This was an earnings call for a publicly traded company, they have to be truthful because WoW is a huge chunk of their earnings and regulators from 3 continents are involved.  Before this, the only company putting out hard numbers was NCSoft, because Sony was so large that SOE was lost in the noise (ditto for EA). The rest were privately held.

--Dave

Quoting this so I can find it again a year from now. 
Also, I expect Aion to hit WoW's numbers harder than anything else in the forseeable future (i.e. until the arguements shift to Starcraft Galaxies vs KOTORO).

[Ingmar]

It is hard to draw any conclusions from WoW's year by year population growth because a lot of it comes from opening up new markets. They may continue to get huge jumps up even if the population flattens or shrinks in NA/EU just by virtue of the upcoming Latin America and Russian localizations.

[Yegolev]

So then I decided to google for a second and see the trend.  Here is what I got (feel free to correct me):

12/15/2005 5m
3/1/2006     6m
9/7/2006     7m
1/11/2007     8m
7/24/2007     9m
1/22/2008     10m
8/1/2008     10.9m

So basically, since the 5 million mark, we're looking at 3 months, 6 months, 4 months, 7 months, 5 months, and 8 months between announcements, with each announcement, except the last being 1 million new subscribers.

Can you put that into a chart?  My eyes aren't as young as they used to be.

[cevik]

Can you put that into a chart?  My eyes aren't as young as they used to be.

Sadly I already had, but it was a flat line and uninspiring so I didn't post it:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pRey7_cjA8QxKu04pz_uxMw

[Ingmar]

Can you put that into a chart?  My eyes aren't as young as they used to be.

Sadly I already had, but it was a flat line and uninspiring so I didn't post it:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pRey7_cjA8QxKu04pz_uxMw

Man that is kind of scary.

[cevik]

Man that is kind of scary.

That I use my free time to make google charts about WoW?  I agree.

But I would point out that I made the chart while crafting the post, not at some point earlier than that.  And I got the data via google as I created the chart while crafting the post.  I'm not obsessed, I promise.

[Ingmar]

Man that is kind of scary.

That I use my free time to make google charts about WoW?  I agree.

But I would point out that I made the chart while crafting the post, not at some point earlier than that.  And I got the data via google as I created the chart while crafting the post.  I'm not obsessed, I promise.

No I mean the kind of inexorable straight line borg-like growth of WoW is scary, even as I am happily helping it along by recommending it to my friends. I'm the kind of person who makes spreadsheets to weigh the plusses and minuses of the costing of D&D minis figures, a little spreadsheet wankery doesn't frighten me.

[apocrypha]

No I mean the kind of inexorable straight line borg-like growth of WoW is scary, even as I am happily helping it along by recommending it to my friends. I'm the kind of person who makes spreadsheets to weigh the plusses and minuses of the costing of D&D minis figures, a little spreadsheet wankery doesn't frighten me.

It's not really a straight line though is it because those dates aren't evenly spaced? Unfortunately in my hungover state I am incapable of operating spreadsheets.

[Trippy]

Chart!

[Fordel]

One MMO to rule them all 

[Ratman_tf]

One MMO to rule them all