Looking at the press release Vivendi’s 19% increase in revenue, and the above noted population of World of Warcraft, are probably due to the release of Burning Crusade in China. Also note the usual caveats of different revenue models in the US, and eastern countries like Korea and China. A subscriber is not a subscriber is not a subscriber.
At this point, I think that dropping a nuclear bomb on the whole enterprise, would only make it stronger, Godzilla style.
This is somewhat amazing too:
“The company also noted that its subscriber base has continued to grow from the 9 million mark it celebrated in July to more than 9.3 million, which it says is up more than one million subscribers since December 31 of last year.”
Up a million subs in less than a year, for a mature game. A million subs must be more than all the other NA MMOs have combined. Lich King is around the corner too – first half of '08 I’m guessing. I think WoW will crack the 10M mark in 2008.
It may just continue to grow as it gets more tie-ins (card games, movies, books) and the game continues to get refined. I can see Blizzard finally adding a true PvP server around the time Warhammer is ready to release. We’ll see new hero classes too that will generate interest. Lich King has a tank hero, clearly designed to help with grouping for instances, so I bet we see Blizzard add a healer hero without waiting for an expansion.
I am surprised they are still gaining subs too, the content had gotten pretty stale. 2.3 helps, obviously. 2.4 is going to be post Christmas though and that will be the last content patch before the next expansion I imagine.
Aren´t you contradicting yourself?. For new users there is still a lot of content ahead (like everything), so no wonder more people is getting in.
Wacky. People are still buying and playing this because their friends are playing, etc. But certainly everything in the game is new to them when they get it. A game can’t be stale if you never played it before.
Cool, so now you can fly by Griffin over Bruxelles?
It grew so slowly in the last year that it almost stopped, considering also the expansion in the middle.
I bet they got half a million just from last patch. The development surely slowed down as well. They said they had so many people working on the game, yet patches become much more sporadic and with less content overall. I guess the most work goes to the next expansion.
The content may be stale for some, but there is so much content I’ve never even seen when you factor in the instances. I’ve seen a bit of Molten Core but not all the bosses, and nothing of Blackwing Lair and Naxx and anything else besides ZG, and only a few bosses there. I haven’t even done half of the Burning Crusade instances. And I haven’t really done much with the Alliance side since beta, so there is a ton of content there that would be fresh to me.
What I have exhausted is the solo content I want to do – I could still rep grind, but that is about it for soloing.
Oh, and I haven’t really done Arena stuff yet either.
There’s a lot I could do, but I’m not sure there is much left I want to do.
Who cares about new games if you’re enjoying the one you’re playing now?
Well, people who like new games, obviously.
Oy! Last I checked, there were more than 10 millions of us Belgians.
You ruined your own lands. You will not ruin mine! Time to die a Horde_Player_001!!!
:P
Wendelius
9.3 million is not enough to annex us damnit. Maybe when we split our country… We are with 10.6 million at the moment.
9.3 million is already more than twice the population of my home country.
You just had to mention that, didn’t you? Not such a great time to be Belgian. :/
Wendelius
I’m quite sure nobody knows what this is about, except maybe people living in the Netherlands/France/UK/Germany. Belgian politics isn’t something that makes mainstream world news…
Try just using Europe - we still care (and think you’re somewhat crazy).
But if you do split up then try for a sponsorship and split into Horde and Alliance.
They started it!
But hey, at least we settle our disputes in political ways. I don’t care if I’ll be Horde or Alliance, as long as I’m on a fast server.
I dont think I am. They are gaining subs because the new customers outnumber the cancels, right? My point was that, because of stale content, I figured the cancels would have begun to outpace the new customers.
Ok I would argue that since you havent done those 40 mans at this point, it was stale to you (maybe stale isnt the right word, undesirable, whatever) long ago. And even if you all of a sudden wanted to run MC and BWL, you would likely have a very tough time getting enough people together to actually clear the place, there is no material incentive to do it and so most people wont.
I gess what I am trying to say is that, I am surprised they are still gaining customers, at a clip that outpaces their cancels, despite being so slow to add things for people to do. Months between content patches and all of that.
Your Walloon politicians introduced a measure to remove bilingual status for French primary speakers living in traditionally Walloon areas. And the Walloon and French groups have yet to form a government, even though this is already the longest its taken to do so since the War. And some other stuff that I really didn’t pay attention to, but read anyway when it showed up in the Economist recently.
And if I recall correctly, Germany didn’t need nine million to capture you guys in WWI :-P
By Walloon it seems you mean Flemish (the Walloon being the French speakers) but I’m suitably impressed. You did catch quite a bit. :)
There are fun issues around Brussels and the outlying towns , Language used in Flanders, Accusations of extremism flying around, … But this is really not the place for this discussion. Plenty of other places where we Belgians can vent about this. :)
And to kinda get the thread back on topic: When Germany invaded, we weren’t trained by years of FPS’s and raiding in high end instances. Bring the WoW players on, I say! :)
Wendelius