The death of WoW has been predicted here many times.
Blizzard is just doing everything they can to get as many subs as possible for the last few months. There won't be another expansion for it.
Those two statements are contradictory. World of Warcraft is a cash cow in a time of severe financial stress. What company would willingly give up something like that? Especially a company often accused here as an excessively greedy one?
Next year this time, WoW will have less than 2 mil active subs.
Perhaps without a future expansion coming and maybe not. You don't say, but where do you expect the other 10 million of us to have gone by then? Oh, and I *do* expect another expansion, and I still expect it to piss people off.
1. Diablo 3 is going to have multiplayer through battle.net only (no lan support) and battle.net for it will be a fee-based service. Only Starcraft 2 users won't have to pay for it.
No weapons of mass WoW destruction here.
I may well buy Diablo 3 on strength of my WoW experience and the fact it will run on Mac, but I can't see any set of circumstances where it could be a replacement.
2. They've got a new MMO in the works. It'll probably hit beta sometime Q3 or Q4 of next year. Look for the first announcements Q1.
True. I'll try it out for the same reasons listed above. Hitting beta in Q3/Q4 2010 isn't soon enough to make it a WoW-killer. The biggest competitor to that game will be World of Warcraft as it also likely to be the strongest candidate as a WoW-killer.
The thing to look for, once they do make the announcement, is what kind of WoW tie-in does it have? ie what incentives are they giving WoWers to switch to a new game?
The one thing they have said is that it would be a departure from an RPG. I like swinging swords and hacking up monsters, or waving a wand and casting fire at enemies. I've been playing games along those lines for longer than many folks here have been alive. I don't particularly care for fighting space battles.
I've been a subscriber for over 2 1/2 years and what I see is a company that genuinely cares about its product. I don't necessarily agree with or like everything they've done. I do see steady improvement and consistent attempts to make improvement. I don't see them doing anything stupid enough to kill a wildly successful game. Certainly not before they have a guaranteed replacement in hand, as you suggest.
Blizzard likes to state that epic flight skill isn't needed, but it is required to fly special mounts that attract a lot of interest from players, specifically dragons.
Epic flying isn't required, though it's very useful. I'm not sure what's "needed" about dragon mounts. My main rides a nether ray. Those were rarely seen even in TBC days. I like the uniqueness aspect.
Do people with the oversized mounts (mammoths and dragons) who routinely block mailboxes, etc., whether they are trying to or not, really think they're impressing other players?
The Chinese government estimates that trade in virtual currency exceeded several billion yuan last year, a figure that it claims has been growing at a rate of 20% annually. One billion yuan is currently equal to about $146,000.
So what is it, hundreds of millions or hundreds of thousands? Because one is a nice chunk of change while the other is, across China's population, laughable.
The math is wonky. 1US$ = 6.83 Yuan at the current exchange rate. US$ 146 million is the correct figure.
And MS has a very strange idea of Europe. They don't even offer the special pre-order discount anywhere outside of France, Germany, or the UK. So those of us in the rest of Europe are totally fucked.
How so? Is someone pointing a gun at your head and making you buy it? Nancy Reagan was right, Just Say No.
those little monkeys that NASA used to test space equipment
Hey! I'm an ex-Nasa employee, you insensitive clod!
(I probably use escape and delete 700 times per day, I've never bothered to count)
Or think of it this way - ESCAPE is what you use in World of Warcraft to clear your target. A larger key should be helpful to us Alliance ignoramuses with fat fingers who have a difficult time finding small keys.
Trifecta! You can hate me for being ex-NASA, a WoW-er *and* an Alliance player.
so that when I'm on a keyboard I can't remap easily (which invariably does not have Emacs) I don't go hitting the caps lock key constantly.
Yeah. By far the #1 reason for Steve-based profanity in the workplace, quickly followed by, "you type the command in".
My fingers are hardcoded to emacs-style editing keys and when I have that (thank you Apple!) I can type very fast. I can be faster on Linux with Hyper & Super keys, but I haven't made those keys work in zsh, nor do I think I can make them work on my Macbook Pro.
For my money, I wish they would just lay off the IBM keyboard design. Thinkpads should not have a Windows key.:)
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but the keys on keyboards that I've used in the past with ugly pictures on them make great Hyper and Super keys in emacs.
I could really use the CAPS LOCK key taken off. Completely.
I'm not sure why it's usually placed to the left of the "A" key at all. I've never used it in 3 decades of experience, except by accident. Hello?
The FIRST thing I do to a computer that I have to use for any length of time at all is turn off CAPSLOCK and make it a control key, unless the keyboard is sensible like a Sun keyboard.
Yeah, Farrah Fawcett, the red swimsuited, long blonde haired beauty in the poster that all of us older nerds had pinned up on our bedroom walls in the 70s died the same day.
She died of cancer, *not* drug overdose/addiction.
My wife is prettier than she was, but it does not kill the memory.
One of the most depressing things about aging is seeing professional athletes around your age or younger being called too old to play. Pinup girls that you (secretly) fantasized about in your youth dying of old-age type diseases is another. The latter is worse - I feel so old...
Yes, and your point is? Have you ever heard the music of TAKAHASHI Mariko, or Regine Velasquez? They have voices that sound like angels, to my ears. Sadly, Regine is headed down the same road Michael Jackson apparently took.
I heard his music and I didn't like it. My wife loves his music and there is no bloody way I'm going to kick her out of bed for that.
I liked "We are the world" the first time I heard it, though it grew tedious after awhile. It took on a whole new meaning after his trials in California, "We are the world, I sleep with your children".
I *will* feel some sadness when Regine Velasquez dies of a drug overdose or something along those lines, but I will not be surprised and neither will it bother me. It's her life as Michael Jackson's life was his own.
have you done the midsummer achievements yet (or the lunar festival ones back in february)?
Yes, on the Lunar festival ones, that was just before I finished off my Explorer achievement. No, on the midsummer ones. I'm taking advantage of the XP bonus from pole dancing to level a healer for raids.
Michael Jackson was a fairly formative musical influence to a lot of modern music.
Maybe that's why I pretty much stopped listening to American music in the early 1990s.
I thought he was a crazy, drugged-out pederast. My wife was in tears.
I'm not particularly dismayed by the reaction of some here - to each his own. I *am* dismayed that Farrah Fawcett, who died on the same day, never got any mention here.
I find it fascinating that with all his debt issues, he was surrounded by Nation of Islam financial advisors, the same as Kareem (who ended his Hall Of Fame basketball career broke).
Now, get off my lawn and take that "King of Pop" trash with you.
I have never been as pissed off with WoW travel as other people seem to be. Maybe its because I am older than a lot of players, but it seems to me that it helps pace the game properly. It is a big world, and flight paths help maintain that impression.
I agree. In TBC they introduced portal rooms which allow teleportation to any capitol city. With WotLK they removed barriers between alliance capitols in the old world. Very recently they changed the cooldown on the hearthstone (and the associated Kirin Tor trinket) to 30 minutes.
While there is some convenience involved, it used to be more fun planning your strategy around how to minimize your travel times.
It's very much a mixed bag.
I thought I was a slow, methodical player until I went after the Explorer achivement and was amazed at how truly big the World of Warcraft truly was, or appeared to be.
they even outline all the late fee's you'll incur when you re-activate your account (and if you search Google there are people who have complained about them - even guys who forgot they had stopped playing and paying and got calls from collection agencies for multi-figure bills). I defy you to find a WoW or Eve Online player that has gotten a late fee.
I don't know about Eve, but my WoW account lapsed when I had to switch card numbers last year (my gaming computer was in repair limbo at the time right after my identity got stolen). After I renewed payments, my characters were all still there and life (in Azeroth) went on.
Even when my wife did something stupid and played on a private server, the whole account didn't get deleted, only the cheat character.
I guess there are good reasons wny Blizzard has a near monopoly in the MMORPG market. But dang! I used to have such respect for Square Enix. Not any more...:-(
I've played this game since NA release and I've always known there is a monthly fee.
There surely HAS to be something on the front of the box. For example, I'm looking at the WotLK box and it has on the bottom left side: "Requires full versions of World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade to play." And on the bottom right side: "Internet connection required, additional online fees apply".
I cannot possibly believe Square Enix kept something like monthly fees a secret.
when signing up for the initial content ID that it costs $12.95 per month
Not bad. Cheaper than WoW unless you go for the 6 month-at-a-time plan.
This person's pissed because he didn't want to pay for a game he was playing and then got penalized for basically stealing from the company providing the services.
I think the problem may be in the rules. I've only played two online games (WoW and DDO), but they are based on a prepaid model and you cannot "steal" from someone on that basis.
My expectations would be to pay X units of money for a certain time period and if I didn't pay, I couldn't play. I certainly would not expect additional (as in interest and penalty) charges to apply, but if they did I just wouldn't play the game. If any of the charges do stick in court, I would expect it to be something like that.
When I stopped playing (and paying) for DDO Stormreach they offered me free time and leveling bonuses to lure me back in. I like playing grinding games, but once I lose a character for any reason it's Game Over and I don't go back. It sounds very much like a losing business model if Square Enix is charging interest and penalties to returning players (and deleting character data).
From what I understand If I don't pay my FFIX account they bill me anyhow, and it eventually send it off to collections and it goes against your credit record. Oh and they delete your character
Citation please. That is idiotic policy if true.
For a company that makes truly *good* games[1], I just can't believe it.
[1] My experience with Square Enix doesn't go beyond handhelds.
These people deserve to be sued. You don't have a contract to keep paying on a timed account.
While most of the items listed in the suit are bogus, interest payments and late payments certainly do sound suspicious.
I'm rather surprised this is coming from Square Enix. *Everything* I've purchased from them has been of fairly high quality and worth the money. It's not like they produce buggy games (hello Konami!), or games that crash when you do something that you have to do to complete the game (hello EA!).
Blizzard is very cool with the subscriptions.
Yeah. It's dead simple - you pay, you play; you don't pay, you don't play. You want to stop playing for awhile? Fine, your character data is still there when you start back up. I wish they had a better way of dealing with families, but nobody is perfect.
That and, why the hell is some washed up, potentially pedophile, pop-star dying more important than anything else in the world right now?
What does it matter to you? Just asking.
I'm rather sad that Farrah Fawcett's passing didn't get a mention. I, for one, welcomed my beautiful blonde, swimsuited overlord by having her poster up in my bedroom when I was in jr. high school.
(I used to live in Orange County). For me it was location, location, location. One of the two best places I ever went to meet people was a small bar near my apartment in Kobe Japan, small == capacity 30ish. Quite often I was in the situation of talking to young women who ditched their dates just for the chance to sit next to me and practice their English. Another great place to meet people (in Japan) are karaoke bars. Learn how to sing songs in Japanese and *everyone* will talk to you (but you'll need to know some conversational Japanese too).
Another tip in Japan, pick some young lady out at a train station that you want to meet. Stand near her, look in the direction of the nearest subway map and look as confused as you possibly can. Sounds dumb, but it worked every time I tried it.
I met my wife one afternoon while walking my dog on the beach in Mindanao.
I found plenty of opportunity overseas, very little in California. I second the suggestion of someone else to try international singles organizations if you don't wish to travel. There's no stigma attached to computer work.
Nobody expects the Libertarian Inquisition. Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to Ayn Rand, and nice autographed pictures of Dr. Ron Paul.
Slashdot Mirror
WoW is on its way out.
The death of WoW has been predicted here many times.
Blizzard is just doing everything they can to get as many subs as possible for the last few months. There won't be another expansion for it.
Those two statements are contradictory. World of Warcraft is a cash cow in a time of severe financial stress. What company would willingly give up something like that? Especially a company often accused here as an excessively greedy one?
Next year this time, WoW will have less than 2 mil active subs.
Perhaps without a future expansion coming and maybe not. You don't say, but where do you expect the other 10 million of us to have gone by then? Oh, and I *do* expect another expansion, and I still expect it to piss people off.
1. Diablo 3 is going to have multiplayer through battle.net only (no lan support) and battle.net for it will be a fee-based service. Only Starcraft 2 users won't have to pay for it.
No weapons of mass WoW destruction here.
I may well buy Diablo 3 on strength of my WoW experience and the fact it will run on Mac, but I can't see any set of circumstances where it could be a replacement.
2. They've got a new MMO in the works. It'll probably hit beta sometime Q3 or Q4 of next year. Look for the first announcements Q1.
True. I'll try it out for the same reasons listed above. Hitting beta in Q3/Q4 2010 isn't soon enough to make it a WoW-killer. The biggest competitor to that game will be World of Warcraft as it also likely to be the strongest candidate as a WoW-killer.
The thing to look for, once they do make the announcement, is what kind of WoW tie-in does it have? ie what incentives are they giving WoWers to switch to a new game?
The one thing they have said is that it would be a departure from an RPG. I like swinging swords and hacking up monsters, or waving a wand and casting fire at enemies. I've been playing games along those lines for longer than many folks here have been alive. I don't particularly care for fighting space battles.
I've been a subscriber for over 2 1/2 years and what I see is a company that genuinely cares about its product. I don't necessarily agree with or like everything they've done. I do see steady improvement and consistent attempts to make improvement. I don't see them doing anything stupid enough to kill a wildly successful game. Certainly not before they have a guaranteed replacement in hand, as you suggest.
You heard it here first.
This is blizzard trying to channel more money because they are losing people.
My first thought is that they are finally addressing factional imbalances on servers.
I suspect that will be easier to do than any other thing to get Wintergrasp balanced.
Blizzard likes to state that epic flight skill isn't needed, but it is required to fly special mounts that attract a lot of interest from players, specifically dragons.
Epic flying isn't required, though it's very useful. I'm not sure what's "needed" about dragon mounts. My main rides a nether ray. Those were rarely seen even in TBC days. I like the uniqueness aspect.
Do people with the oversized mounts (mammoths and dragons) who routinely block mailboxes, etc., whether they are trying to or not, really think they're impressing other players?
The Chinese government estimates that trade in virtual currency exceeded several billion yuan last year, a figure that it claims has been growing at a rate of 20% annually. One billion yuan is currently equal to about $146,000.
So what is it, hundreds of millions or hundreds of thousands? Because one is a nice chunk of change while the other is, across China's population, laughable.
The math is wonky. 1US$ = 6.83 Yuan at the current exchange rate. US$ 146 million is the correct figure.
And MS has a very strange idea of Europe. They don't even offer the special pre-order discount anywhere outside of France, Germany, or the UK. So those of us in the rest of Europe are totally fucked.
How so? Is someone pointing a gun at your head and making you buy it? Nancy Reagan was right, Just Say No.
those little monkeys that NASA used to test space equipment
Hey! I'm an ex-Nasa employee, you insensitive clod!
(I probably use escape and delete 700 times per day, I've never bothered to count)
Or think of it this way - ESCAPE is what you use in World of Warcraft to clear your target. A larger key should be helpful to us Alliance ignoramuses with fat fingers who have a difficult time finding small keys.
Trifecta! You can hate me for being ex-NASA, a WoW-er *and* an Alliance player.
so that when I'm on a keyboard I can't remap easily (which invariably does not have Emacs) I don't go hitting the caps lock key constantly.
Yeah. By far the #1 reason for Steve-based profanity in the workplace, quickly followed by, "you type the command in".
My fingers are hardcoded to emacs-style editing keys and when I have that (thank you Apple!) I can type very fast. I can be faster on Linux with Hyper & Super keys, but I haven't made those keys work in zsh, nor do I think I can make them work on my Macbook Pro.
On some keyboards, such as my MacBook, the backspace key is actually labeled as the delete key
Off with your head, the Mac keyboard "delete" works as Richard Stallman intended it to work!
(I don't particularly have a problem with it, the only issue I've ever had is when remote logging into Solaris boxes for whatever reason).
I'm all for getting rid of insert, delete, home, and end.
Good God, man! Where is my GOLD key? I've been searching for it for years!
For my money, I wish they would just lay off the IBM keyboard design. Thinkpads should not have a Windows key. :)
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but the keys on keyboards that I've used in the past with ugly pictures on them make great Hyper and Super keys in emacs.
I could really use the CAPS LOCK key taken off. Completely.
I'm not sure why it's usually placed to the left of the "A" key at all. I've never used it in 3 decades of experience, except by accident. Hello?
The FIRST thing I do to a computer that I have to use for any length of time at all is turn off CAPSLOCK and make it a control key, unless the keyboard is sensible like a Sun keyboard.
Yeah, Farrah Fawcett, the red swimsuited, long blonde haired beauty in the poster that all of us older nerds had pinned up on our bedroom walls in the 70s died the same day.
She died of cancer, *not* drug overdose/addiction.
My wife is prettier than she was, but it does not kill the memory.
One of the most depressing things about aging is seeing professional athletes around your age or younger being called too old to play. Pinup girls that you (secretly) fantasized about in your youth dying of old-age type diseases is another. The latter is worse - I feel so old ...
Have you ever even heard his music?
Yes, and your point is? Have you ever heard the music of TAKAHASHI Mariko, or Regine Velasquez? They have voices that sound like angels, to my ears. Sadly, Regine is headed down the same road Michael Jackson apparently took.
I heard his music and I didn't like it. My wife loves his music and there is no bloody way I'm going to kick her out of bed for that.
I liked "We are the world" the first time I heard it, though it grew tedious after awhile. It took on a whole new meaning after his trials in California, "We are the world, I sleep with your children".
I *will* feel some sadness when Regine Velasquez dies of a drug overdose or something along those lines, but I will not be surprised and neither will it bother me. It's her life as Michael Jackson's life was his own.
have you done the midsummer achievements yet (or the lunar festival ones back in february)?
Yes, on the Lunar festival ones, that was just before I finished off my Explorer achievement. No, on the midsummer ones. I'm taking advantage of the XP bonus from pole dancing to level a healer for raids.
Michael Jackson was a fairly formative musical influence to a lot of modern music.
Maybe that's why I pretty much stopped listening to American music in the early 1990s.
I thought he was a crazy, drugged-out pederast. My wife was in tears.
I'm not particularly dismayed by the reaction of some here - to each his own. I *am* dismayed that Farrah Fawcett, who died on the same day, never got any mention here.
I find it fascinating that with all his debt issues, he was surrounded by Nation of Islam financial advisors, the same as Kareem (who ended his Hall Of Fame basketball career broke).
Now, get off my lawn and take that "King of Pop" trash with you.
I have never been as pissed off with WoW travel as other people seem to be. Maybe its because I am older than a lot of players, but it seems to me that it helps pace the game properly. It is a big world, and flight paths help maintain that impression.
I agree. In TBC they introduced portal rooms which allow teleportation to any capitol city. With WotLK they removed barriers between alliance capitols in the old world. Very recently they changed the cooldown on the hearthstone (and the associated Kirin Tor trinket) to 30 minutes.
While there is some convenience involved, it used to be more fun planning your strategy around how to minimize your travel times.
It's very much a mixed bag.
I thought I was a slow, methodical player until I went after the Explorer achivement and was amazed at how truly big the World of Warcraft truly was, or appeared to be.
they even outline all the late fee's you'll incur when you re-activate your account (and if you search Google there are people who have complained about them - even guys who forgot they had stopped playing and paying and got calls from collection agencies for multi-figure bills). I defy you to find a WoW or Eve Online player that has gotten a late fee.
I don't know about Eve, but my WoW account lapsed when I had to switch card numbers last year (my gaming computer was in repair limbo at the time right after my identity got stolen). After I renewed payments, my characters were all still there and life (in Azeroth) went on.
Even when my wife did something stupid and played on a private server, the whole account didn't get deleted, only the cheat character.
I guess there are good reasons wny Blizzard has a near monopoly in the MMORPG market. But dang! I used to have such respect for Square Enix. Not any more ... :-(
I am not willing to pay for a game that I must pay in perpituity to play. I will pay for a game ONCE. Only Once.
More power to you. Why do you sound so threatened at something tens of millions of us find fascinating if it has no personal interest to you?
I've played this game since NA release and I've always known there is a monthly fee.
There surely HAS to be something on the front of the box. For example, I'm looking at the WotLK box and it has on the bottom left side: "Requires full versions of World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade to play." And on the bottom right side: "Internet connection required, additional online fees apply".
I cannot possibly believe Square Enix kept something like monthly fees a secret.
when signing up for the initial content ID that it costs $12.95 per month
Not bad. Cheaper than WoW unless you go for the 6 month-at-a-time plan.
This person's pissed because he didn't want to pay for a game he was playing and then got penalized for basically stealing from the company providing the services.
I think the problem may be in the rules. I've only played two online games (WoW and DDO), but they are based on a prepaid model and you cannot "steal" from someone on that basis.
My expectations would be to pay X units of money for a certain time period and if I didn't pay, I couldn't play. I certainly would not expect additional (as in interest and penalty) charges to apply, but if they did I just wouldn't play the game. If any of the charges do stick in court, I would expect it to be something like that.
When I stopped playing (and paying) for DDO Stormreach they offered me free time and leveling bonuses to lure me back in. I like playing grinding games, but once I lose a character for any reason it's Game Over and I don't go back. It sounds very much like a losing business model if Square Enix is charging interest and penalties to returning players (and deleting character data).
From what I understand If I don't pay my FFIX account they bill me anyhow, and it eventually send it off to collections and it goes against your credit record. Oh and they delete your character
Citation please. That is idiotic policy if true.
For a company that makes truly *good* games[1], I just can't believe it.
[1] My experience with Square Enix doesn't go beyond handhelds.
These people deserve to be sued. You don't have a contract to keep paying on a timed account.
While most of the items listed in the suit are bogus, interest payments and late payments certainly do sound suspicious.
I'm rather surprised this is coming from Square Enix. *Everything* I've purchased from them has been of fairly high quality and worth the money. It's not like they produce buggy games (hello Konami!), or games that crash when you do something that you have to do to complete the game (hello EA!).
Blizzard is very cool with the subscriptions.
Yeah. It's dead simple - you pay, you play; you don't pay, you don't play. You want to stop playing for awhile? Fine, your character data is still there when you start back up. I wish they had a better way of dealing with families, but nobody is perfect.
That and, why the hell is some washed up, potentially pedophile, pop-star dying more important than anything else in the world right now?
What does it matter to you? Just asking.
I'm rather sad that Farrah Fawcett's passing didn't get a mention. I, for one, welcomed my beautiful blonde, swimsuited overlord by having her poster up in my bedroom when I was in jr. high school.
I feel very old right now.
I'm 33, male, live in Orange County, CA.
(I used to live in Orange County). For me it was location, location, location. One of the two best places I ever went to meet people was a small bar near my apartment in Kobe Japan, small == capacity 30ish. Quite often I was in the situation of talking to young women who ditched their dates just for the chance to sit next to me and practice their English. Another great place to meet people (in Japan) are karaoke bars. Learn how to sing songs in Japanese and *everyone* will talk to you (but you'll need to know some conversational Japanese too).
Another tip in Japan, pick some young lady out at a train station that you want to meet. Stand near her, look in the direction of the nearest subway map and look as confused as you possibly can. Sounds dumb, but it worked every time I tried it.
I met my wife one afternoon while walking my dog on the beach in Mindanao.
I found plenty of opportunity overseas, very little in California. I second the suggestion of someone else to try international singles organizations if you don't wish to travel. There's no stigma attached to computer work.
'So basically, anyone that built their hosting infrastructure on VI... is now totally in the sâ".'"
Emacs wins!
The Libertarian Inquisition will see you ...
Nobody expects the Libertarian Inquisition. Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to Ayn Rand, and nice autographed pictures of Dr. Ron Paul.