Blizzard: Conan stole our WoW players

[MahrinSkel]

US/EU is still the main show, WoW makes considerably more from either piece of that than from the rest of it put together.  And there they have undoubtedly peaked.  That curve looks a lot like EQ's, just 20 times bigger and 5 years later.  The market keeps growing, but WoW no longer has the lock on the newbie stream for the US/EU.  And something will do the same in Asia, and fairly soon.  South America may be some compensation for that, nobody has tried to create local servers for them, and their pipes to the rest of the world suck.  But it will still be less money.

--Dave

[Trippy]

You'd have to try and guesstimate from The9's numbers to see if they've actually peaked in NA & Europe. The9 typically reports figures differently than how Blizzard is counting (e.g. The9 usually reports peak concurrency numbers instead of "monthly unique users") so it can be hard to compare. Presumably based on what Mike said they've taken a noticable hit from AoC but they could in fact still be higher in NA & Europe than they were in January when they last reported numbers for each general region.

[Numtini]

That flat curve is more people in the last 8 months for WOW than AOC's entire sales. That's not really like EQs curve.

[Venkman]

The CURVE is the same. You just need to remove the actual values from the bottom and side.

Last I hear, The9 accounted for approximately 45-50% of WoW's total worldwide success. Or roughly: US + EU = China.

Regardless of AoC's actual impact on WoW, that is was mentioned at all is also a first in this post-WoW world. No other game has done probably anything more to WoW than create a rounding error.

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

I've been curious about how this will fair over there, but I haven't felt it would do anything significant to whatever numbers they have in Q4. I imagine at this point even that Funcom is trying to find a way to get back to some semblance of the 1mil number, having shed some of their early box sale players. When was the last time AoC even reported a number?

[sinij]

What is a lot more interesting is *what* players occupy their time with. I think new players are universally start with monster bashing, then as they mature into gamers they pick up interests, such as raiding, crafting, PvP, drama, else.

WoW is in a very unique position where majority of their player base is a first-time players. Trends within WoW will closely mirror trends of "maturing" of a typical player. I think key for continued success of WoW would be adapting to evolving tastes of their player base - they need to heavily invest into PvP, crafting, sim-city, guild building aspects or risk that segment of thier player base shop around for better suited mmorpg.

AoC 'exodus' were people that liked idea of building guild cities and doing siege warfare. WAR will be about people interested in more refined GvG.

WoW's longevity will be directly correlated to their ability to satisfy 'special interest' groups. They do have a budget to pull it off, too bad they insist to run their operation as a small shop.

[tkinnun0]

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

There's something wrong with that chart, so I made my own:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pjrgRAcsw4-oRSxAiUi5QLQ

[cevik]

Thanks, I haven't really played with google charts before, yours looks much better.

EDIT:  I fixed mine now. 

[MahrinSkel]

On the other hand, it doesn't look like Funcom is keeping those, and that 700K number seems highly suspect if investors are dumping the stock (if they were looking at a $100M+ annual revenue stream).  So the theory that once people drop an MMO to try something new they just keep going looks pretty good, if Blizzard only got 40% back.  Just as the initial sales for WW2O and AO turned out to be very good news for Camelot in spite of the Scars of Velious EQ expansion, the market scenarios for Warhammer are looking good.  If the game has what it takes, something I have no opinion on.

--Dave

[Count Nerfedalot]

US/EU is still the main show, WoW makes considerably more from either piece of that than from the rest of it put together.  And there they have undoubtedly peaked.  That curve looks a lot like EQ's, just 20 times bigger and 5 years later.  The market keeps growing, but WoW no longer has the lock on the newbie stream for the US/EU. 

Do what?  How does that look like EQ's curve?  EQ shot straight up for two years, then leveled off for two years, then was all over the map for two years until WoW released and it went into a nose-dive from which it hasn't yet pulled out. 

Not that I'm disagreeing with your general analysis, WoW's growth is slowing and many many people are looking for something else to do.  But repeating EQ's trajectory, it's not.

[Rake]

One line that I find a bit peculiar from the initial comments is this:

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


There probably is enough content to keep you going if you consider grindy and dull missions as content, but what service he is on about I have no idea.

Blizzard gets about as personal to it's customers as a Pest Controller does to his Roaches and has about as much respect for them too.

I'm pretty sure the fact that AoC is blowing it's own feet off with buggy patching and non delivery of promised content is probably contributing to some bored fuckers still logging in to WoW, or people who just forgot to actually cancel their subs, but it would have to be some stretch of imagination to think that anything service related is bringing anyone to WoW or any Blizzard game.

My prediction is that once the western worlds subscriptions start dipping noticeably, then the Chinese will follow suit rather quickly.
Of course I'm not suggesting that it has anything to do with gold sales, but just a feeling that it will follow this trend.

[Triforcer]

Other games having to compete with "four years of content" cuts both ways.  I played WoW the first couple years, but I'd never go back.  Why?  I still like it in the abstract- polished, colorful, fleshed-out world, easy leveling, etc.  But things are too mature now.  Getting to 70 doesn't get you anywhere- compared to the mature 70s, you might as well be level 30.  Once a game has too large a gulf between the new and the old, it becomes a considerable barrier to entry.

THere's really nothing WoW can do about this- its simply a function of a game being around long enough. 

[Miasma]

Other games having to compete with "four years of content" cuts both ways.  I played WoW the first couple years, but I'd never go back.  Why?  I still like it in the abstract- polished, colorful, fleshed-out world, easy leveling, etc.  But things are too mature now.  Getting to 70 doesn't get you anywhere- compared to the mature 70s, you might as well be level 30.  Once a game has too large a gulf between the new and the old, it becomes a considerable barrier to entry.

THere's really nothing WoW can do about this- its simply a function of a game being around long enough. 

Well the new expansion will completely eradicate the long term level 70's power, just like BC did.  The first green quest drops in BC blew away everything the raiders had poured all that energy into, the expansion essentially reset everyone to zero.

With AoC one of the things I was worried about was that the small percentage of players who left WoW for it would represent a huge percentage of AoC's user base.  For example (just pulling nice round unrealistic numbers out of the air here) if 10% of WoW's players left for AoC that would probably make up 50% of AoC's total subscribers.  When those WoW players find out not everything is like WoW and leave en-masse that would just cripple the server populations.  Any new MMO that wants to get subscribers from WoW is going to have to worry about that now.  They will be forced to launch with enough servers to accommodate all the WoW people and then when most leave be forced to merge them.

[Venkman]

It's the same problem all the time: predicting those who come versus those who will stay. Smart companies don't make five-year commitments for infrastructure based on continually growing from a huge launch 

[Musashi]

I think the service aspect of it is drastically underrated as well.  Sure we'd like more frequent WoW updates, but the service we get is undeniably better than anything.

[Merusk]

There probably is enough content to keep you going if you consider grindy and dull missions as content, but what service he is on about I have no idea.

Blizzard gets about as personal to it's customers as a Pest Controller does to his Roaches and has about as much respect for them too.

Can't say that I've ever had a problem with WoW's CS, which is the service he was talking about.  The only folks I've known to bitch endlessly about it were guys who gave GMs attitude because they were the ones reported.  All my experiences and those of the guild mates I've had have been positive, even friendly and pretty timely. (As friendly as CS can be.)  This covers things from forced renames to losses due to account hacks.

Other games having to compete with "four years of content" cuts both ways.  I played WoW the first couple years, but I'd never go back.  Why?  I still like it in the abstract- polished, colorful, fleshed-out world, easy leveling, etc.  But things are too mature now.  Getting to 70 doesn't get you anywhere- compared to the mature 70s, you might as well be level 30.  Once a game has too large a gulf between the new and the old, it becomes a considerable barrier to entry.

THere's really nothing WoW can do about this- its simply a function of a game being around long enough. 

Well the new expansion will completely eradicate the long term level 70's power, just like BC did.  The first green quest drops in BC blew away everything the raiders had poured all that energy into, the expansion essentially reset everyone to zero.

What he said.  Yeah, come back now and you're fodder.  In a few months, the 10+ levels and gear level difference means it's a whole new ballgame for everyone.  It's not EQ-land where those raid items are the be-all end all until the next raid instance boss.  The purples will last a bit longer, but still be replaced by L80-dungeon blues.

[Venkman]

They've got a careful balancing act for sure. On the one hand they could make faster expansions. On the other though, they risk going just fast enough to make people question the relevance of achieving the endest of the endgame. This was the Naxx-to-BC problem for the majority of players (why bother, it'll all be obsolete in a month anyway).

I think two years is too long between expansions, but the EQ1 every-six-months too frequent. It's also a question of content too. Sometimes raising the level cap ISN'T a good idea. Why waste all that unused content? If there was no cap raise in BC for example, but still a casual gearing up, more players could have seen the pre-BC endgame zones that BC made largely irrelevant save for the folks who need to witness story arcs and resolution.

But that's another trap WoW is in. It's so easy to hit the cap, the only way attract back lapsed players is to give them that singular thing to shoot for.

[Sparky]

Can't say that I've ever had a problem with WoW's CS, which is the service he was talking about.  The only folks I've known to bitch endlessly about it were guys who gave GMs attitude because they were the ones reported.  All my experiences and those of the guild mates I've had have been positive, even friendly and pretty timely. (As friendly as CS can be.)  This covers things from forced renames to losses due to account hacks.

I've only ever had to petition a WoW GM once, he was polite and helpful even though the issue was my own damn fault.  Had an add on running which was supressing the bind-on-pickup box for some quest random drop item.  After I'd disabled the add on and logged back in my very next kill dropped the required item again, which was above and beyond the call of duty if it was the GM's doing.

[Trippy]

They've got a careful balancing act for sure. On the one hand they could make faster expansions. On the other though, they risk going just fast enough to make people question the relevance of achieving the endest of the endgame. This was the Naxx-to-BC problem for the majority of players (why bother, it'll all be obsolete in a month anyway).

I think two years is too long between expansions, but the EQ1 every-six-months too frequent. It's also a question of content too. Sometimes raising the level cap ISN'T a good idea. Why waste all that unused content? If there was no cap raise in BC for example, but still a casual gearing up, more players could have seen the pre-BC endgame zones that BC made largely irrelevant save for the folks who need to witness story arcs and resolution.

But that's another trap WoW is in. It's so easy to hit the cap, the only way attract back lapsed players is to give them that singular thing to shoot for.

Badges, I mean Achievements will help this.

[CharlieMopps]

WOW has over 10 MILLION subs... I mean really.. graveyard? LOL

They could lose 90% of their playerbase and still be king (as long as you don't count browser based crap)

I think they only reason they lost anything to AOC is graphics. They seriously need to work on WOW FX engine. It looks pretty outdated. Hell, it looked outdated when it was released.

[Evildrider]

WOW has over 10 MILLION subs... I mean really.. graveyard? LOL

They could lose 90% of their playerbase and still be king (as long as you don't count browser based crap)

I think they only reason they lost anything to AOC is graphics. They seriously need to work on WOW FX engine. It looks pretty outdated. Hell, it looked outdated when it was released.

WoW's graphics were a great move for them, although I personally hate the graphic style.  You didn't need a high end machine and you opened up your game to a larger player base.  The higher your system requirements are, the more you are going to have people that can't even play.  I have a few friends that just don't have the money to update their machines every time something new and shiny comes out.  The requirements from AoC kept alot of them from even trying the game.

[Tarami]

WOW has over 10 MILLION subs... I mean really.. graveyard? LOL

They could lose 90% of their playerbase and still be king (as long as you don't count browser based crap)

I think they only reason they lost anything to AOC is graphics. They seriously need to work on WOW FX engine. It looks pretty outdated. Hell, it looked outdated when it was released.

And here I'm thinking graphics (or rather, HW requirements) were a major reason to why Conan didn't last. Out of the gaming people I know, only two have computers enough to even start Conan but all of them got enough horse power to raid in WoW. Maybe better graphics would attract even more (different) people, but it'd come at a high price of current subscribers. Conan's level of detail is not the way to go to attract massive numbers.

[Venkman]

AoC's graphics "problem" were sort of the same as Crysis: perception. You can play AoC (and Crysis) on lower end machines. And both hold up pretty well (much better than EQ2 or VG did anyway). The problem though was that everyone read some article about how much of a resource beast these things would be and therefore not worth shelling out the cash for unless you bought a computer in or after summer 2007.

But both Funcom and Crytek (and SOE and Sigil) did it to themselves. That's the risk of advertising a game for its cutting edge graphics.

WOW has over 10 MILLION subs... I mean really.. graveyard? LOL

In the world of publicly-traded companies, you're not rewarded for how well you are sustaining. You mostly get credit only for growing. WoW is having problems continuing the pace of growth they enjoyed through 2007. Everyone knows they'll eventually peak, they just don't know when. It's important because when it does happen, the game will no longer be able to continue to get growth funding. It'll get maintenance funding only, pop out some more expansions, and all of the hype and much of the internal creative energy will go to the next growth opportunity (SC MMO probably). Timed and done right, Blizzard as a company will continue to be the cat's meow through the next launch. Done wrong and they'll end up with an EQ2 against some new sheriff in town.

Badges, I mean Achievements will help this.

How good are the rewards? I haven't been following that side much beyond the just-like-LoTRO surface stuff. Do they give actual useful rewards? Or is it more lateral customization (ie, no power gain but you get a cool title)?

[Trippy]

In the world of publicly-traded companies, you're not rewarded for how well you are sustaining. You mostly get credit only for growing. WoW is having problems continuing the pace of growth they enjoyed through 2007.

Not really. Through the first 8 months of 2007 they gained 1 million "subscribers". Through the first 8 months of 2008 they gained 900K subscribers. For the full year of 2007 they gained slightly under 2 million subscribers. With WotLK coming out this year and the new regions the game is launching in there's a very good chance they'll match that figure as well.

Edit: to put it another way some of you are reading the fact that WoW lost some subscribers to AoC as evidence the game has peaked. I don't see any evidence to support that claim. Sure the game might not be growing quite so fast (though the numbers so far through 2008 don't support that either) but that doesn't mean it has completely stopped growing.

[slog]

In the world of publicly-traded companies, you're not rewarded for how well you are sustaining. You mostly get credit only for growing. WoW is having problems continuing the pace of growth they enjoyed through 2007.

Not really. Through the first 8 months of 2007 they gained 1 million "subscribers". Through the first 8 months of 2008 they gained 900K subscribers. For the full year of 2007 they gained slightly under 2 million subscribers. With WotLK coming out this year and the new regions the game is launching in there's a very good chance they'll match that figure as well.

Edit: to put it another way some of you are reading the fact that WoW lost some subscribers to AoC as evidence the game has peaked. I don't see any evidence to support that claim. Sure the game might not be growing quite so fast (though the numbers so far through 2008 don't support that either) but that doesn't mean it has completely stopped growing.

He's talking about earnings really.  Stock prices are generally set by traders who look at potential growth of earnings streams.  Exceed that growth rate, and the stock goes up.  So for Blizzard (Vivendi) they would need to maintain the growth rate of X%.

They have to have more subs added each quarter than in the previous quarter to maintain that rate.   A flat 1,000,000 a year growth isn't going to cut it.

[Simond]

I think they only reason they lost anything to AOC is graphics. They seriously need to work on WOW FX engine. It looks pretty outdated. Hell, it looked outdated when it was released.

It's impressive how much better the game looks with just the pseudo-lightsource shadows added in beta.

[CharlieMopps]

I didn't say "OMFG MAKE WOW DX10!!!" I just said improve the graphics.

Just implementing HDR would be a huge boost, and would have no impact on performance. They could even hide the the option to those people that didn't have HDR compatible vid cards.

Also, simply opening up more advanced video options to people with cards that are less than 5 years old. Has anyone tried the graphics macro that extends your visual range and foliage counts? The game looks tons better and I didn't even lose a single Frame per second. Why do you have to run a macro to improve FX quality? Just make a slash command /Myfxcarddoesntsuck

[Fordel]

That's the thing, they do improve the graphics. Just at their standard glacial Blizzard pace. Which in this instance, matches up nicely with current mass hardware trends.

[Venkman]

Has anyone tried the graphics macro that extends your visual range and foliage counts?

What is this voodoo of which you speak and where can I get me some of that?

[Ratman_tf]

And here I'm thinking graphics (or rather, HW requirements) were a major reason to why Conan didn't last. Out of the gaming people I know, only two have computers enough to even start Conan but all of them got enough horse power to raid in WoW. Maybe better graphics would attract even more (different) people, but it'd come at a high price of current subscribers. Conan's level of detail is not the way to go to attract massive numbers.

How hard is it to scale graphics? I ran Planetside way underspec, and had to turn everything off. And it looked like crap on a crap cracker. WoW with stuff turned down still looked decent enough.

Man, as long as the textures look nice and the poly count means I'm not playing in cubeland, I'm a pretty happy camper.

[pxib]

Has anyone tried the graphics macro that extends your visual range and foliage counts?

What is this voodoo of which you speak and where can I get me some of that?

/console farclip 777
/console horizonfarclip 6226
/console groundeffectdensity 256
/console groundeffectdist 140
/console smallcull 0
/console skycloudlod 3
/console characterambient 0

(thank you google)

How hard is it to scale graphics? I ran Planetside way underspec, and had to turn everything off. And it looked like crap on a crap cracker. WoW with stuff turned down still looked decent enough.

This. More than just having low graphics requirements, the WoW team made sure things still looked good with everything turned off.

[Venkman]

Thanks! Lazy.

I expect WoW to do an EQ Shadows of Luclin someday. Or they'll just replace it with SC MMO and hope to drag everyone over. Because history never repeats itself in this genre...

[CharlieMopps]

I expect WoW to do an EQ Shadows of Luclin someday. Or they'll just replace it with SC MMO and hope to drag everyone over. Because history never repeats itself in this genre...

Yes, you have a point. The SOL thing was terrible... I, by no means, want them to adjust the graphics in such a way that it raises the minimum system requirements... SOE were idiots for that. I installed SOL and canceled my subscription a week later.

[MahrinSkel]

Raph just linked to a survey by Unity 3D.  Nearly 1/3 of the million computers they checked have some version of Intel's on-mobo graphics.  Nearly all support pixel fill rates of under 2 giga-pixels per second.  That's really low by the standards of a modern card, nobody even manufactures a card that slow anymore as far as I know (only the Intel on-board is going to be that slow on a new system).  Which means the overwhelming majority of people are running on the graphics that came with their computers, and those are at least a couple of years old.

When you're talking about an MMO for the mass market, that's what you're looking at for a tech target.  Ugh.

--Dave

EDIT: And anyone thinking to make a DX10 game is really aiming too high, half the tiny fraction of computers with DX10 cards are not running Vista.

[CharlieMopps]

/console farclip 777
/console horizonfarclip 6226
/console groundeffectdensity 256
/console groundeffectdist 140
/console smallcull 0
/console skycloudlod 3
/console characterambient 0

Oh, and btw... back up your config file before trying this. The only way to turn it off or on is via the macro... if the improved settings bring your system down to 1FPS or something, I've heard that it's basically impossible to run the macro. So you either need to restore the config file, or reinstall the entire game

So, seriously, back up your config file first.

[CharlieMopps]

Raph just linked to a survey by Unity 3D.  Nearly 1/3 of the million computers they checked have some version of Intel's on-mobo graphics.  Nearly all support pixel fill rates of under 2 giga-pixels per second.  That's really low by the standards of a modern card, nobody even manufactures a card that slow anymore as far as I know (only the Intel on-board is going to be that slow on a new system).  Which means the overwhelming majority of people are running on the graphics that came with their computers, and those are at least a couple of years old.

When you're talking about an MMO for the mass market, that's what you're looking at for a tech target.  Ugh.

--Dave

EDIT: And anyone thinking to make a DX10 game is really aiming too high, half the tiny fraction of computers with DX10 cards are not running Vista.

that survey is based on an engine used in designing browser based games...