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World of Warcraft Hits 10 Million Subscribers
technirvana writes "Blizzard Entertainment, owners of World of Warcraft, announced today that the game now has more than 10 million paying subscribers around the world. Online gameplay costs an average of $15 USD per month. Those 10 million paying subscribers include 5.5 million players in Asia, 2.5 million in the US and 2 million in Europe. The Warcraft brand was first introduced in 1994 and World of Warcraft was launched in 2001."
I've noticed a direct correlation with the amount of WoW subscribers and the amount I get laid.
Less competition for me? Let them play, boys, let them play!
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
2004.
..and making the game more interesting.
Once I hit 70, my desire to grind for 20 hours to get that shiny new +1 Int cloak gets a little tedious.
10,000,000 subcribers x $15 a month = $150,000,000 a month. $150,000,000 x 12 months = $1,800,000,000 a year. From WoW alone. I bet blizzard/vivendi are happy campers.
Dance, my little piñata-smacking monkeys, dance for me!
All the way to the bank. BFD.
The Warcraft brand was first introduced in 1994 and World of Warcraft was launched in 2001.
World of Warcraft was announced in 2001, but was launched on November 23, 2004.
see The wikipedia entry.
And they said zombies weren't real!
There's one Asian player with 5.5 million gold farming accounts.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
If they have stats as to operating systems used for gameplay... Would be interesting to see how many of those 10mil actually use Vista, XP, MacOS and Linux etc...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Only accounts for North America and European servers pay the regular subscription price. Blizzard licenses out WoW to local companies in the Asian markets. Typical subscription plans there are for X amount of hours per month, and in the case of China the average price is $3-4 USD/month. Of which I assume Blizzard only sees a small royalty from.
Ragnarok Online has 25+ million subscriber worldwide with 24 million being in asia(Gold farming is impossible so no farmers either...)
Blizzard is constantly rolling out new content for free - new dungeons, new raid zones, new quests, new factions... All sorts of new stuff. Compare this to something like old-school EverQuest where your money just kind of vanished and every single new addition was through a paid expansion pack.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
...there are going to be dozens of posts about how WoW sucks, and (game x) is so much better.
Maybe (game x) is better by some specific subjective metric, but in terms of the overall 'package', I'd have to say that in this case Adam Smith's measurement is the best objective general measure of value.
I think WoW is particularly strong in terms of ease-of-play, progression speed, reward vs. time, variety of experience, replayability, and yes, even balance. Other games might have advantages such as a better crafting system, better pvp, and better graphics but each of these involves a tradeoff that Blizzard has perhaps deliberately accepted in favor of more mass-market acceptance (in the above examples, I'd say the tradeoffs are learning curve, playability, and system requirements, respectively).
There are LOTS of specific things to complain about WoW, but commercial success on this scale is hard to dispute. They had no particular advantage in the marketplace compared to other developers (aside from a well-earned reputation), but they have come to utterly dominate the MMOG market to the extent that their 'ownership' of that market space has leaked into popular culture.
Now that WoW is so dominant, it has become the benchmark in ways nobody could have anticipated 5 years ago. They not only pull in more subscribers, they've transformed the "computer gaming" activity almost singlehandedly from nerdville to nearly-mainstream, particularly with 20-somethings and under.
Unfortunately that means they are also able to exert an influence (large, although I'd hesitate to say disproportionate) on other games - I for one believe that WotLK (the next expansion) has been done or nearly done since before the end of the year, and that they are waiting to unleash it a month or so before the 'next big competitor' (I believe Age of Conan) is released.
-Styopa
World of Warcraft Hits 10 Million Subscribers
That must hurt...
There are 10 million people willing to pay to play a game they already payed once for? And all they get out of it is to complain about gold farmers and griding hours of their life away for another item that the company can just create (which in of itself is utterly useless to the rest of their life)?
Wow! And I thought I was odd for selling fish to a raccoon to pay off my virtual house in bells... I kind of don't feel so bad because I'm not paying for it in real money each month... And I can take my DS with me...
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
I am a little curious about those numbers.
From what I have seen, the use of multiple accounts by single users is not all that uncommon. Blizzard doesn't seem to actually delete accounts after they've been deactivated. If someone cancels their subscription, their account name, their toons, everything remains (much like AOL's method of fudging their numbers). So of those 10m subscribers, I'd be curious to find out if those are individuals, or simply active subscribers, or in fact accounts created but not currently subscribed counted in that total.
Blizzard is constantly rolling out new content for free
I'm so tired of people making such statements. You get ZERO new content for FREE. You pay a monthly subscription which funds new development, among other things. You PAID for the new content. It is not free!
However I am still not going back to the game.. I quit the game a while ago.... cold turkey... I played the game from day 1 in beta, I however quit just before the first expansion came out, I was done, as were many of my guild mates, raiding the same high end content week after week after week just became too much of a chore.
The same can be said for Everquest (I did not really get into eq2). The problem as I see it, is that they develop a game, in the lifecycle plan for the game, I am almost positive they already have a project plan for the expansion before the game is even initially released. And they release the game, with the mechanics that are designed to hopefully satisfy people till the expansion comes out. But they under estimate the users every time, within the first few months, possibly even weeks, you have groups of users that have maxed out their character level, and sure it fun getting shiny new toys for the first year, but it then becomes a chore, and is tedious, and at that point is where the game developer has failed. This is of course my opinion, but having played both everquest, and then wow, for many years (same high end raiding guild for both games), I believe I have some insight into the problems that can occur over time.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
There is this massive influx of returning players. I can tell you that from seeing it happen in my own guild. At least 10 accounts have been re-activated in the last month. I can't explain why, other than people missed the friendships that have been made.
This is quite possibly a good reason for the 10 million mark reached.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
To be honest, the current end-game isn't bad. They've got enough avenues in there to suit most degrees of committment to the game and general temperaments, even if some of these are more developed than others.
For the casual players, there are the five-man instances - first the regular versions and then, when you've got your gear from those, the heroics. Heroics are an interesting twist; they aren't, as I was expecting, just tuned-up versions of the regular instances. In many cases, despite the superficial similarities, they need very different tactics. There's also a nice progression here; a group in all blues wouldn't have too many problems with Botanica or Black Morass, while even full-epic groups can find Durnholde Keep or Arcatraz tricky.
Battlegrounds are a popular way of killing time for the casual PvPers. Even if you have awful gear and suck at them, you will still get your rewards - it'll just take a bit longer. The relative ease with which you can get your PvP rewards, combined with the low time input required, has led to them being branded "welfare epics". Of course, they don't really stand up against the high-end raiding or arena epics, but I know plenty of casuals who are content with this. Over time, the lower end arena drops get pushed down into Battleground rewards anyway.
The hardcore PvPers have Arena, which really is a cut-throat environment (and is the only form of PvP in the game where getting killed is any more than a momentary annoyance). Ironically, it doesn't actually take particularly long each week - the main challenge here is putting in the time to get the gear so you can participate effectively. The top end season 3 arena gear is almost on a par with the top-end raiding epics, although with the new personal rating requirements for some pieces, it isn't necessarily easy to get.
Finally, you have raiding, which is the favorite hardcore PvE end-game activity. This is where, to my mind, Blizzard have really made strides since the Burning Crusade hit. Rather than having a 40 man raid as the entry-level point, a la Molten Core, Karazhan was a nice, relatively easy 10 man raid, which many non-hardcore guilds were able to switch to quite quickly at level 70. With the addition of Zul'Aman in the 2.3 patch, you can more or less work your way through about 2/3rds of the end-game gear progression without ever setting foot in a 25-man raid. For the genuinely hardcore who do push into the 25 man raiding scene, there's a definite progression tree with 6 different instances to work through. The difference from most of the pre-expansion end-game is dramatic and impressive.
In short, Blizzard have delivered as reasonable an end-game experience as could reasonably be expected and continue to add new content at a decent pace. At the same time, they've refined the experience for lower level players and those levelling up alts, with the new Dustwallow Marsh quests and the dramatic reduction of the amount of xp needed to level up (you can level 1-60 in WoW now faster than you can in the fully-offline Final Fantasy XII). Of course, things are far from perfect, and I can see a few dark clouds on the horizon.
The most significant of these is that, as a former Final Fantasy XI player (where the level cap never went above 75), I must confess to being a bit worried by Blizzard's intention to slam the level cap up with 10 with every new expansion. What this essentially means is that any end-game gear you acquired before the expansion hit is immediately obsolete. Green is suddenly the new Purple. Effectively, this amounts to a complete end-game reboot every 12-18 months. While beneficial in some respects (shaking up the scene, letting newcomers get a foot on the ladder), in the long term it is just going to drive people away and kill the end-game scene for a few months before an expansion hits.
"The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards."
What part of "excludes expired or cancelled subscriptions" don't you understand? Subscribers are people who are currently paid up to play the game, or just bought it and are in the free month.
People keep spewing off this nonsense about how the numbers are fake with absolutely no evidence to back it up. The game really is as popular as they say it is. Anybody hitting a queue while trying to login in the last month despite there being something like 200 servers in the US alone.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
It's not really a good idea to just up and abandon an old MMO to go create a new one thereby invalidating 10 million subscribers hard work and effort. Anywyas both WoW and Eve (The biggegst MMOs I know of) are hardly the game they were when they were first released and are constantly changing and expanding.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
No Asian players play for fun? Please. Blizzard's games have been huge in Asia for ages, more successful than they ever have been in the west. Starcraft is practically a religion in some Asian countries.
So they're giving you for free what you paid for. :)
They could make you pay again for what you already paid for or just not give you anything. It's been done before. At least the players get an evolving game.
(Never played any MMRPG though since the few glimpses I got always made they seem horribly tedious to me, but to each his own)
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
They could charge additional money for the content if they wanted to, and you're still paying a monthly fee even if they don't provide content updates.
Quick Math:
/. and Kotaku: WoW is nearly a household name now. Congrats to Blizzard for bringing MMOGs to the mainstream.
10 million * 15.00 * 12 = 1.8 billion a year
+ 10 million * 30 = 300 million a year for the box + expansions (I'm eyeballing this one, but Blizzard did say they wanted an expansion a year)
$2.1 billion. Not bad for a single game! Maybe someone more in-tune with the WoW world can tighten up my estimate of the price of the box + expansions. How much up front? How much for expansions? How frequently?
Frankly, WoW's success shows beyond
Also,I love that Shatner commercial.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Title should read:
Games: World of Warcraft Hits 10 Million Virgins
You'll definitely notice. The reduced amount of XP needed to level along with all the new mid-range quests makes hitting Outlands so much easier. Whatever you do, make sure to give Duskwallow a second chance. There is an exciting new questchain in Theramore that I won't spoil, and they even added roads to Tabetha's house, so she isn't so much of a pain-in-the-ass to find.
"We have exactly as much freedom as we are willing to demand and as we can defend."
...how long before M$ starts their own MMORPG, and then finds a small company that holds a patent on something in WoW, fronts them the money to sue the pants off Blizzard, while licensing the use of the patent-holder's IP? Or just goes the easy route and sues under anti-trust?
First of all, your post is idiotic. Blizzard *sells* PCs copies of Windows for Microsoft, and Windows is more profitable than WOW is anyway. (I would guess, if you consider all factors.) And Microsoft doesn't pay Blizzard a thin cent for the marketing either.
Secondly, in addition to your post being idiotic, you're an idiot. Microsoft ran Asheron's Call and Asheron's Call 2 for years. They sold it to Turbine after awhile, but they ran it for a very long time as part of their MSN Gaming Zone business.
Comment of the year
I was curious how this compared to various national populations, and this data may be a bit old, but... Countries by Sorted by Population This means that WoW has more players than 112 countries have people. Ten million is of course much larger than the populations of Vatican City, Tuvalu, Monaco, Luxembourg, etc. But also bigger than Uruguay, Costa Rica, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Israel, Austria, Laos, and many more.
"Politics is for the moment, an equation lasts eternity" -A. Einstein
WoW is a friggin' phenomenon that crosses so many demographics unlike any other game I've played over my 25 years as a consumer. My guilds have had husbands and wives playing together, parents and children, mothers playing with babies on their laps (hi Bitters!), and even grandparents. I'm a lifelong addict and I had to FORCE myself to cancel my account to focus on renovating my house.
Yet, there's still some confusingly high number of negative posts on Slashdot from people slamming the game. Yes, it has flaws, but nothing even close to other games I've played. My BF2142 installation crashes with BS memory and driver errors about 1/4 rounds. As a software engineer, I appreciate the design behind the game; efficient bandwidth usage, very few bugs which are addressed very quickly for a game, the well thought-out UI design and API, efficient code, a user-friendly interface. Blizzard has done a remarkable job on so many levels.
Maybe they're pissed that no one wants to play D&D anymore, who knows? But, please, at least concede that WoW is a GREAT game!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
What has impressed me over the time I've been playing, since December 2006 (about a month before BC was released) is how much attention to detail Blizzard pays to every facet of the game.
To name one recent example, they changed the rules for leveling recently to make experience gain higher from completed quests, experience required for a new level lower (one of those is between levels 20 to 60 and the other 30 to 60, I forget which) and at the same time changed the vendor discount for reputation - revered and exalted now have bigger discounts and removed most of the outdoor elite monsters in the Old World. What do those changes mean to the game play?
Leveling to 20 remained unchanged. It's quite difficult to avoid learning how to do that already. The worst grinding was nerfed out of the game. It's now possible to do most of the quests solo (because finding someone to level with you has become all but impossible), the experience gain is rapid enough to not be particularly painful (in my n00b opinion) and between the added vendor discount for rep and added experience, you want to and can do most of the quests quickly by yourself. The main side effect of this change has been that "leveling services" are out of business. Good going Blizzard. They also want to get most of the more recent players into Outlands before the next expansion. That will happen.
Sadly, another side effect of BC is that there's a relatively huge grind to get the epic flying mount due to the amount of gold involved. You can either grind for it or purchase it from a gold seller. The grinding has led to the absurd situation that crafting seriously sucks due to the high price of raw mats in the auction house that are being sold at prices higher than the finished goods they can be used to make which just makes it all the more worthwhile to buy gold for the few items you need to craft along the way. I expect Blizzard to attempt to balance the economy, though I don't know how they're going to do it.
If you spend any time reading the WoW forums and don't play the game yourself, you would get the impression that people are quitting in droves. Obviously they are not as the community continues to grow. Certainly I will be one of those purchasing the next expansion on the day it's released.
WoW III will be coming out in the forthcoming months. It will be called either 3.0.x or 2.5.x.
Incremental change to huge gaming infrastructures will be the wave of the future, not brand new games with the same genre. The only way I could see that playing out differently would be if someone published a game where the characters could be moved about freely between different games and still communicate with others that play the previous games. That would be hard to do right, but could resolve the problem to an extent.
Zul'Aman was never promised as part of the expansion, and neither was the upcoming Sunwell, or the massive amount of daily quests(which they are making more of when Sunwell comes out), or the improved Dustwallow Marsh area.