Although Blizzard is merging into Activision, Vivendi (Blizzard parent) is gaining control (52%) of the resulting company. Vivendi is actually the one doing the buying.
Activision's probably paying too much. WOW is well past its prime.
you may want to get word out on a larger scale.. new subscriptions continue to break records every month. Someone isn't informing the masses about the loss of appeal, apparently people still are willing to pay for it.
you may want to get word out on a larger scale.. new subscriptions continue to break records every month. Someone isn't informing the masses about the loss of appeal, apparently people still are willing to pay for it.
With William Shatner and Mr. T as spokesman how can they not gain customers?
you may want to get word out on a larger scale.. new subscriptions continue to break records every month. Someone isn't informing the masses about the loss of appeal, apparently people still are willing to pay for it.
I predict fewer players for WOW by the end of 2008.
At the last count of 9 million plus boxes sold, its going to be a long time before their subscription rates get even close to their closest competitor.
not to mention thats also more than 12 months away. on a game that has been out 3 years already thats still a long way to go.
oh and another really big expansion planned soon.
Nah, ill say it, I think you are flat out wrong. I think WoW may not have even peeked yet.
I'm detecting you don't/didn't care for the game much. That's cool and all, but are you implying the game isn't a success?
I predict fewer players for WOW by the end of 2008.
I predict that the new expansion will prove your prediction incorrect. WoW isn't the best game ever, but the thing that keeps most people playing MMOs is the fact that they have friends playing it. WoW has more 'friends' than any other MMO, so the casual market isn't likely to abandon it anytime soon.
At the last count of 9 million plus boxes sold, its going to be a long time before their subscription rates get even close to their closest competitor.
not to mention thats also more than 12 months away. on a game that has been out 3 years already thats still a long way to go.
oh and another really big expansion planned soon.
Nah, ill say it, I think you are flat out wrong. I think WoW may not have even peeked yet.
I'm detecting you don't/didn't care for the game much. That's cool and all, but are you implying the game isn't a success?
Much less the fact that UO and EQ are still slogging away so even if WoW becomes passe it will enjoy a long and ripe retirement.
It apparently had 9 million members in July, now it has 9.3 million in December by the sounds of it. That appears to be a plateau, despite market penetration in China. The expansion, according to previews, is not to offer new player content but high level content. For that reason, I'm sticking to my guns that WOW will have fewer than 9.3 million subscribers worldwide by this time next year.
Yes, it is a success, shattering MMORPG standards, but when you pay a premium for a company, you expect strong growth in revenue and profits. Not declining revenue. I don't see that upside in WOW. It's looking very long in the tooth, and there's only so much they can do to the old slot machine feedback principle. Starcraft 2 will be another matter, if it comes out in 2008.
Yes, but after 4 years, neither UO or EQ had any growth.
But they also didn't have a fragment of the current user base of WoW. If I as Blizzard could know that I would keep 10 percent of them for the next 10 years,even if the newest and latest passed me by, I would be happy.
Blizzard has been very conservative in how they are spending the money they are raking in, not going crazy with a dozen projects etc. I am curious to see if WoW become the plowhorse to pull the combined company along though or if they leverage it in other ways (Activision has some majorly hot titles, but more console based than online). Also curious to see if it spawns a console based Warcraft variant/versioning (which I have been expecting for a long while as they push into other markets).
WoW is not about to plateau. It will be another two or three years before it starts to weaken and anyone has a minor chance of competing. Its mass appeal is just too good. Remember that the people on this board are hardcore gamers compared to most of the populace--WoW is drawing in lots of people who otherwise do not play video games, and I think it will continue drawing those people in because its reputation is so well-established. Even if another game comes along that does everything WoW does and more to gain mass appeal, it won't have the established reputation--it won't have William Shatner and Mr. T (and no doubt other washed-up celebrities, soon) doing commercials--it won't be able to draw in non-gamers. So it won't beat WoW.
On a side note, Activision Blizzard is a really terrible company name. But can't create a totally new one, because then you wouldn't have brand recognition.
It's unfortunate WoW is so popular. It's not even half the game EQ was. An entire generation of gamers under the impression that WoW is the gold standard. This will lead to nothing but bad new MMO's for years.
I remember when EQ was dead, after SOL.. PoP, ect.
Keep telling yourself that.
edit: Korthuran I think you're remembering a differnt EQ than I am. For the time it was good, sure I had great times in EQ with friends overcomming the odds and bugs(pulling in hate O.o)
I still have just as much fun with them in WoW.
according to yalums list, if i counted correctly, eq is at 16 in the rankings. seems like its going pretty good still, and thats not counting the fake games like second life.
eq although buggy, is still better then wow though, i couldn't even get interested in the game, and i did have some friends that played.
It's unfortunate WoW is so popular. It's not even half the game EQ was. An entire generation of gamers under the impression that WoW is the gold standard. This will lead to nothing but bad new MMO's for years.
WoW is basically the culmination of all previous "1st-2nd Gen MMOs" based on fantasy/rpg style genre, as far as design goes. While its debatable how good or how bad it is, the game itself has been wildly successful due to its design implimentation.
Trying to compare EQ and WoW really does not work, given that the games really present different design Philosophy to the Genre. Both games have very good ideas/implimentation as well as extremely bad ideas/implimentation. Saying wow is half the game EQ was, is really an injustice, as in many aspects wow is a better game then EQ ever was.
I enjoyed EQ up to the Scars of Velious expansion, and eventually gave up due to the absurd time constraint requirements required to play at the top level. EQ was a very good game for its day, but it had massive failings that never really allowed more then a handful of people to experience the game to its fullest.
I also played WoW up until the summer before Burning crusade came out, as well as a lengthy stint in beta. The game was extremely enjoyable for many reasons, and had an appeal that EQ lacked in some respects. Many people bash wow, But my overall experience for wow was as good as it was in EQ. Personally, the game had resolved many of the problems i had with EQ and still presented enough challanges ,notibly in instanced dungeons for people willing to try things, rather then just sit back.
I think a large part of that was due to the fact that i was and still am involved with a group of gamers who tries to push the envelope, and actively seeks out challanges where we can. One of the big things i hear or read about is how easy wow was and is, but the thing is most people take the path of least resistance then complain about it. When WoW released there were plenty of challanges for a group if they went to seek them out, rather then waited for everything to come to them.
EQ is and will remain the game that I remember most fondly... after all, I did play it for 8 years.
I remember the feeling I got from the original game, minus expansions... I started a tree-diver, got lost in Gfay many times, orcs and PK's (I played on Rallos Zek for my first year) seemed to be around every corner. Cracked Staves were $$ and mino axes (when imported to Antonica) or rubicite (when imported to Faydwer) could make you rich. The first trip on the boat was awesome, the next thousand or so were tedious. Kithicor Woods was still safe to walk around in at night. Priests of Discord had an odd fashion sense, and would wear almost anything they were given. I saw Mayong Mistmoore laying face-down in the courtyard pool.
Then came along Kunark, just after I switched from a druid to a rogue (and switched servers from RZ to Prexus). It was all about getting keys. I leveled up, got my keys, and got an invite to a Sebilis group despite being "too low" for it, simply because I was a rogue. I did the entire Plane of Fear and Plane of Hate thing eventually, and for a while wielded a Burning Rapier and Eyerazzia (and later the Ragebringer and Burning Rapier).
Next was Velious. I froze my ass off with everybody else, killed some giants, killed some dragons, killed some dwarves, and generally played around with my factions. It was towards the end of this era that I joined a true raiding guild, got a private audience with Firiona Vie after a GM event (the first of many that I participated in, and the first of many that my team won (in the case of scavenger hunts), I placed second in (in the case of the melee half of a pvp FFA), or got loads of gems (in the case of a riddle game)), and generally really started to experience a side of the game that casual players never saw.
Luclin came next. Not really much to say about that expansion, except that the original version of Grieg's End was a blast and the Nexus made a once-grand world small. It actually kinda made me sad.
PoP came after, and this was more of the same... except that raid encounters were moving from simple beat-downs to things that required strategies (albiet primative ones). The game was changing, I was having loads of fun. I was happy.
The next few expansions were kind of lackluster, though I have to admit that the OoW raids were pretty dang fun. The encounters had become even more complex, with many MMORPG's following suit in years to come.
Depths of Darkhollow was the first expansion in a long time that I enjoyed even the group content, and I was happy again. Mayong had designs on becoming a god (he must have been saved by the castle's lifeguard), and his new castle/demi-plane was awesome. It practically dripped "Castlevania".
After that, my playtime waned, I started playing WoW because my girlfriend did, and, though I still love EQ, I simply had to choose between the two. It wasn't an easy decision. I even payed for a couple months of EQ, only logging in a few times. But, as they say, 'What's done can't be undone." WoW, and every other game that follows it, will never match the experience that I had with EQ. I lost my MMOGinity to it, and it will always have a special place in my heart.
I remember vividly a lot of the parts about EQ that made that game suck balls until they finally started hacking away at the tentacly bits of The Vision and make it less of an ordeal and more of a game. WoW has it's problems to be sure, but my god, I'd never go back to the agony of EQ's 'suffer fun' policy.
Amen to that. I played EQ for like 6 years and I have more fun on any given day of WoW than I did most weeks of EQ.
I do regret that I stopped raiding in EQ after PoP. If only because I heard about all the Mistmoore stuff in a couple of the expansions and I never got to see it. I always loved Mayong and his "ripping off Castlevania" ways. And I didn't get to see where it ended up.
Trolo said:
On a side note, Activision Blizzard is a really terrible company name. But can't create a totally new one, because then you wouldn't have brand recognition.
