Official burning crusade release date announced, WoW now has 7.5 million players

[schild]

.Again, I've underestimated just how low a bar the masses will accept.  WoW is a decently polished Diku experience... for most of us, that's nothing to expect 7 million subs from.  Except from Blizzard.

FIFY.

/weak, I know.

[Ironwood]

I'm still waiting for Raph to run in and tell us again how Habbo Hotel is more important than WoW.  Because it isn't.  It really isn't.

Well, that depends on how he defines 'important' of course.

[Nebu]

There's important from a creative standpoint and then there's important from a financial standpoint.  Occassionally the first leads to the second.  Currently, WoW has forced game developers to focus almost entirely on the second... which I think is a mistake with regard to future income potential. 

[jpark]

I love Blizzard for taking 7.5 Million people and keeping them the fuck away from me.

You still maintaining these numbers do not represent an expansion of the MMORPG market and only involve previous Blizzard fanbois? 

[Ironwood]

I hope not.  That's an insane argument, even from Schild.

[schild]

I'm actually on the fence. The massive success is due to Blizzard and the Blizzard polish. I've always said persistant online gaming IS THE FUTURE and alll that. But does it represent a growth of the MMORPG market? Not sure anymore. Maybe. When 7.5M people filter into other persistant online games, ok, it was growth. If 5 million people join every other game put together though and 7.5 or even 8 million are playing WoW than people would probably argue it's an industry of 13M players. I'd still say, no, it's 5M players and Blizzard.

In other words, impossible to judge anymore. I think think there's a more important question though. In any reasonable amount of time, can any other company make a game with as much polish as Blizzard based on a new or established license, enough so that the Blizzard population has a higher attrition rate than churn?

No, they can't. The rest of the industry - at this moment - are filled with a bunch of blubbering fools caught with their thumb up their ass. So it doesn't matter whether it's expansion or not seeing as no one is taking any noticeable amount of players away from WoW and they won't be any time soon. Conan, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa - good or not, they're - combined - not going to dent WoW.

In other words, I don't know. It's impossible to tell. But who gives a shit anymore. But somebody better get SOMETHING SUBSTANTIAL out before World of Starcraft gets formally announced or Diablo Online shows up (at all).

[Simond]

In other words, I don't know. It's impossible to tell. But who gives a shit anymore. But somebody better get SOMETHING SUBSTANTIAL out before World of Starcraft gets formally announced or Diablo Online shows up (at all).

Yeah, that makes more sense.

WoW isn't (just) popular because it's Blizzard, it's popular because it's the best game* in it's particular part of the MMOG market in much the same way as EQ was the benchmark for years - there was no other game with broad appeal that did it better.

*at what it does, natch.

[jpark]

I'm actually on the fence.

I just loved this opening in the context of this thread.

Not trying to insert a polemic - but it's like Bush admitting 3 years after the fact that perhaps things are not going as well as intended in Iraq 

[schild]

Not really.

It's entirely possible that this "market growth" never moves beyond Blizzard. Thus being the growth of Blizzard's fanbase, exclusively.

It was obvious, from day 1, that things weren't going as intended in Iraq.

When I start seeing bumperstickers that say "MMORPGS AND VIRTUAL WORLDS ARE AWESOME" instead of WoW memes, I will officially say "I was wrong." Until then, I'm totally not wrong, and every other MMORPG company is still scraping leftovers off the floor. That should be more clear. Though, I'll reiterate - there's no way to tell right now.

[Lantyssa]

Eventually it will spill over into other games.  Maybe not the entire market, but WoW is a gateway.

My friend for example.  She barely played any games at all, but tried the WoW trial and has subscribed on and off for some time.  (She did this on her own, before anyone else she knew got into the game.)  It got her interested in trying other games.  CoX, D&D, SWG... most don't hold her interest for long, but now she has to try them and is anticipating LoTR (the poor dear).  If she can find another casual friendly game that touches on her interests she will definitely play it.

I doubt she is the only one.  We still don't consider her a gamer as we normally think of the term, but games are so ubiquitous now that they are a part of everyday existence, just another form of entertainment alongside TV, radio, and books.  And WoW was her introduction to this medium.

[Rasix]

8 million now.

[WindupAtheist]

WoW players won't spill over into other games in signifigant numbers until other games stop being cheap unfinished pieces of shit.  So never, basically.

[tazelbain]

CoV, DDO, GW, AA?  Its been a slow 2 years.

[naum]

WoW players won't spill over into other games in signifigant numbers until other games stop being cheap unfinished pieces of shit.  So never, basically.

/ditto

[Ironwood]

WoW players won't spill over into other games in signifigant numbers until other games stop being cheap unfinished pieces of shit.  So never, basically.

/ditto

/signed

[Jayce]

8 million now.

-An Corp Thread-

BTW, my wife pointed out some fun facts:

8 million is approximately 1/100 of the population of earth. 
That figure is also pretty close to the number of people with college degrees.

[tazelbain]

much closer to 1/1000 than 1/100

[trias_e]

Heh, it's not quite that widespread.  8 million would be 1/1000 the population of the earth.

Still, if you consider the amount of people that have regular internet access, either at home or at a 'bang', it's a very impressive number.


edit:  Dammit, I was supposed to be the smart one!

[tazelbain]

0.0012307692307692307692307692307692

[Righ]

We're only at 6.7 billion on this planet. The ratio of WoW players to people alive on the planet is still increasing.

[Jayce]

0.0012307692307692307692307692307692

Bingo.  My [wife's] bad.

Still, as you say, pretty impressive considering the non-third world population has to be a relatively small percentage of that.

[Bstaz]

Third world is going to catch up fast..


http://www.laptop.org/

[Nebu]

So, how many people eat at McDonalds or shop at WalMart?

I'm not so sure that being massively successful says much about your product beyond that it touches the appeal of the masses.  Congrats to Blizzard on their money hats.  I'll play my little niche game over in the corner.

[Trouble]

So, how many people eat at McDonalds or shop at WalMart?

I'm not so sure that being massively successful says much about your product beyond that it touches the appeal of the masses.  Congrats to Blizzard on their money hats.  I'll play my little niche game over in the corner.

I like McDonalds =(

[Jayce]

So, how many people eat at McDonalds or shop at WalMart?

I'm not so sure that being massively successful says much about your product beyond that it touches the appeal of the masses.  Congrats to Blizzard on their money hats.  I'll play my little niche game over in the corner.

Nobody's stopping you.  I might even join you (in a general sense, I don't really know what game you play) when my friends stop dragging me back into WoW.

Not that it's too difficult a task.

[Morat20]

So, how many people eat at McDonalds or shop at WalMart?

I'm not so sure that being massively successful says much about your product beyond that it touches the appeal of the masses.  Congrats to Blizzard on their money hats.  I'll play my little niche game over in the corner.

Elitist bullshit. Always crops up from some snob. It's either when their favorite genre or band goes "mainstream" it means that must have sold out -- heavens forbid you share tastes with the dirty masses.

Massively successful mean you're sellling something a lot of people like. It could be really fucking good (iPods/iTunes as an mp3 player/mp3 service), really fucking cheap (Walmart), or simply really accessible -- but it's weird how quick some people are to assume it's cheap or low-class.

It's really best seen in the resteraunt industry and the music industry, which appears to be it's natural home. There seems to be this built-in snobbish belief that if lots of people like something, it really can't be that good. How else can you feel superior to the dirty uncultured hordes if you can't show off your superior taste and discrimination by indulging in things they don't like?

Me? I'm always glad to see things I like go mainstream -- whether it's music, food, or videogames. And for the record -- not a big fan of McDonalds, feel EVE is a superior game to WoW right now, but possibly not to WoW after WoW has 4 years of development in it, and try to judge things on their individual merits and not by whether or not it lumps me in with the commoners.

[Nebu]

Elitist bullshit. Always crops up from some snob.

Brittney Spears has sold millions of albums and I don't like her either.  I probably should have mentioned that too... just so you know what a true elitist I am. 

[Azazel]

So did the Beatles, and Elvis, and Black Sabbath for that matter. The Doors, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails... that Mozart guy. That Shakespeare guy seems to have sold al ot of theatre tickets, and books of his plays. Not to mention Henry Miller for someone a bit more recent.

Fucking sellouts, the lot of them, right?

[Calantus]

Isn't what Nebu said basically that something can be popular without being good (or at least, good for him)? I didn't get the vibe he was saying anything popular must therefore be crap.

[Morat20]

Elitist bullshit. Always crops up from some snob.

Brittney Spears has sold millions of albums and I don't like her either.  I probably should have mentioned that too... just so you know what a true elitist I am. 

If I jumped the gun on that, I apologize. I've been hanging out with music snobs way the fuck too much lately, and it's colored my opinion rather heavily. (My brother is a musician, and he's one of those fucking music snobs. I like him a lot, and he's quite good at what he does, but it doesn't mean I don't get sick of that crap sometimes).

I'm a bit tetchy about that argument simply because it seems a lot of people equate "good" with "Something I know about and most people don't". Since I know a lot of those people, I tend to see where people aren't actually saying it. (And I've heard that argument a LOT about WoW -- generally from old-school EQ1 catasses that equate "skill" with "the ability to remain logged on for 12 hours waiting for your turn on a spawn".).

[Azazel]

Isn't what Nebu said basically that something can be popular without being good (or at least, good for him)? I didn't get the vibe he was saying anything popular must therefore be crap.

Actually, he really does come off in the post above much more on the side of "popular is crap" to my reading. With the masses and all that. (And Britney used as an example.)

So, how many people eat at McDonalds or shop at WalMart?

I'm not so sure that being massively successful says much about your product beyond that it touches the appeal of the masses.  Congrats to Blizzard on their money hats.  I'll play my little niche game over in the corner.

[Trouble]

Just because WoW is not your type of game doesn't mean it's bad.

[Jayce]

Just because WoW is not your type of game doesn't mean it's bad.

... and my point is that one person can like both.  It's called making your own decisions, not letting what's popular color whether you like it, or whether you don't like it. 

[Calantus]

Something can be subjectively bad. I think parmesian cheese is the most rank stuff in existance but a whole lot of people love it. It's not objectively bad, but subjectively I could call it so. So if WoW is not your type of game you could still label it as "bad".

[Samwise]

To say that "being popular doesn't make it good" does not imply that "being popular makes it bad".

Or, if you prefer:

~( ~( P -> G ) -> ( P -> ~G) )

(I think.)