Eat WoW, not rice (WoW at 3.5 million)

[HRose]

Spotted by Krones (http://plaguelands.com/?p=144) but already publicized on the main page of the game.

WoW collected in China another 1.5 million of subs, to be added to the 2 million of Europe+Korea+North America. Total = 3.5 Million.

IRVINE, Calif. - July 20, 2005 - Blizzard Entertainment®, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has surpassed 1.5 million paying customers in China - just a month following the game’s commercial launch on June 7, 2005. The critically acclaimed World of Warcraft has now achieved another significant milestone as the largest MMORPG in the world, with more than 3.5 million global customers.

“World of Warcraft’s success in China has quickly exceeded our expectations, and seeing Chinese gamers respond so enthusiastically to the game has been extremely gratifying,” said Mike Morhaime, president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We thank the players for embracing World of Warcraft, our partner The9 for helping to make all of this possible, and the Chinese authorities for their support of Blizzard Entertainment.”

The 1.5 million paying Chinese customers now join the two million players in North America, Europe, and Korea who are already paying to play World of Warcraft. With a worldwide customer population of more than 3.5 million, World of Warcraft is now by far the largest MMORPG in the world. Blizzard plans to continue expanding World of Warcraft with upcoming launches in Taiwan and other parts of Asia.

World of Warcraft’s Customer Base Definition

World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players having accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or canceled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.

[Creole Ned]

All other PC game companies may cease the manufacturing and selling of new games now.

[Fred]

1.5 million are nightelf pallys, 1.5 million are undead rogues. 0.5 million are priests because they were forces to so that someone would heal the pallys and rogues.

[Gordon Cameron]

I made a priest alt thinking it would be a hot commodity. But everyone and their grandmother has a priest alt these days it seems...

[Rywill]

1.5 million are nightelf pallys
Haha! Your weary cynicism must come from long experience with the game.

[Jackstar]

Playing a Priest is easy, and levelling one to 60 is far more fun (and faster) than some people claim.

What's in demand are Warriors. Because doing that job well is actually difficult.

[Marcus]

Playing a Priest is easy, and levelling one to 60 is far more fun (and faster) than some people claim.

What's in demand are Warriors. Because doing that job well is actually difficult.

Yeah priests are easy and can be a lot of fun. My main is a priest but my alt which I found was even more fun is a rog.

[WinterRose]

Hey! My highest character was a pally!

At least I didn't suck playing my paladin though. Sheesh. I hated grouping with other paladins cause they gave ME a bad name by association.

[Wholly Schmidt]

1.5 million are nightelf pallys, 1.5 million are undead rogues. 0.5 million are priests because they were forces to so that someone would heal the pallys and rogues.
If that's true, how do we snarkily explain the horrible horde/alliance unbalance?

[Creole Ned]

Rather than discuss the game mechanics for the nth time, how about answering this:

Is the gargantuan success of WoW good or bad for the PC game biz?

[Marcus]

How could it be bad?

[Dave Markell]

How could it be bad?

Easy. If all those customers buy fewer total games than they normally would have because they are instead locked in to a single title for months/years, overall gaming revenues would decrease even while Blizzard's shoot through the roof.

[Rywill]

It could be bad because more people playing WoW all the time = fewer people buying games. For example, I stopped buying games for seven months after WoW came out. When fewer people buy games, obviously there's less game development, it's harder to make niche games, and whatever games get made will tend to have lower budgets than they otherwise would. I think there are very good arguments that WoW's runaway success could hurt the overall gaming industry, even though it really helps one company.

[Supertanker]

I'm another example of WoW's overall negative effect on game revenue. Of the last five games I bought, three are still in the plastic (and the other two have hardly been touched), so I stopped buying games a few months ago. My game spending dropped from $150 a month to $15. I even told my family not to buy me games for my birthday, which defied at least 20 years of me asking for nothing but games.

[Andrew Mayer]

Now that you've quit smoking you can use the money you save to get that keen surfboard you've always wanted!

Although Supertanker's story makes me think that MMO farming could be lucrative.

[Sean Tudor]

Is the gargantuan success of WoW good or bad for the PC game biz?

Bad because it means I haven't purchased/played any other games. The only new game I have purchased in the last 4 months or so was GTA:SA. And the only reason I bought that was so I could apply the Hot Coffee mod for hot sex scene action !

WoW is fun, addictive, and has saved me a lot of money. :wink:

[mtkafka]

The 3.5 million isn't that much. Sheesh.

etc

[Qenan]

It's a lot for a game with a monthly fee, and I think we can presume that a lot of WoW customers in the US are coming out of the "hard core gamer" pile.

[Mike Hussey]

Surely the theory is that if one company has a runaway success it makes other companies try harder to win back their market share.

Not that I've seen much evidence of this, I was getting a bit tired of WoW and trawled round the local game stores and found that there hasn't been anything that's come out since the European release of WoW in February that I'm particularly interested in. Imperial Glory looked interesting, but a quick read of a couple of web reviews put me off. So I resubscribed for another month.

[Qenan]

Psychonauts is pretty good. But it's more naturally a console game.

[Mike Hussey]

Yes I've been reading about it, but it doesn't appear to have been released yet over here in the UK. or if it has, it's not reaching the shops.

[Mark Asher]

I know Lineage had more subscribers (at least I think they did). but surely WoW's subscriber base represents more revenue.

Like Supertanker, I've hardly touched other games since I've been playing WoW. Even games I'm interested in I now think I might as well wait until they get discounted heavily because I'm in no hurry to play them. I would guess WoW is having an impact on game sales.

What I wonder is about the trickle-down effect? How many WoW players will migrate to other MMOs? Eventually the MMO market might benefit from WoW, even though now I'm sure games like DAoC have been hurt by it.

What's scary is that WoW hasn't even had an expansion yet and expansion typically boost subscriber levels of popular MMOs.

[Enidigm]

I never subscribed to WoW. I played my free month + 10 days and haven't gone back.

But then, i haven't played Guild Wars past the Shattered Ascalon level. I never played Far Cry past the aircraft carrier. I think the futhest i've ever gone in a single player campaign in IL2 was about 12 missions (although i'm flying online again). There just isn't a game that keeps my attention...

I still fire up Dominions 2 occasionally. Can't make it past turn fourty though....

Now i'm watching a DVD - its just taking me about 4 days to get through it :). I guess i'm the ADD gamer.

[Michael Fortson]

I'm another example of WoW's overall negative effect on game revenue. Of the last five games I bought, three are still in the plastic (and the other two have hardly been touched), so I stopped buying games a few months ago..

I made up for this buy recently buying Catacombs and reopening my subscription (made a new one actually... classic servers rock).

[Shadari]

Is the gargantuan success of WoW good or bad for the PC game biz?
Both.

Surely it's extremely important for every platform to have a really high-profile title that generates a mountain of praise. WoW is that game for the PC. I'm sure there are a number of console-only folks that have taken notice to all the buzz surrounding WoW and have been at least slightly tempted to see what it's all about.

OTOH, I can certainly believe that WoW's success has come at the expense of other PC games.

The question I'd like answered is which of these two factors will be more important in the bigger picture when it comes to the PC games industry.

[Sean Tudor]

In the grand scheme of things it won't make much difference. There are a lot more gamers than 2 million WoW subscribers in western markets.

There are also a lot of people who refuse to pay monthly subscription fees and continue to play games - PC or console - that are free to play after the initial purchase. The subscription cost was a big hurdle for me when I first started playing WoW.

What I do know is that everyone I have introduced to WoW and has decided to subscribe and play regularly has not touched a PC game since. In a depressed PC game market WoW might be having a slight effect.

[LarryLard]

(cultural stereotype inc) They got 2 million Chinese people to pay for software? WOW indeed! :oops:

On a side note, how is the playing space segregated? I am guessing there are Chinese servers, Korean servers, NA+Europe servers, and so on, with the territory you buy the box in determining which serverset you can access? Or is it that anyone can play on any server? That would be hard, I think...

[Mike Hussey]

Currently which set of servers you can access is determined by which edition of the game you bought. Blizzard have said that they hope to allow European and American players to access each others' servers, but I assume their first priority was solving the queueing problems on both and there is no imminent sign of this happening

[Kunikos]

They won't because that would mean having to ensure that all the clients could read the character sets the other ones are working in, and I'm pretty sure that most people don't edit WoW Lua code for mods in UTF-8...