Anyone that says that WoW should go f2p is an example of how humans fail to understand and comprehend large numbers.
7 million subs. That is more than the entire population of Honduras.
They have lost more subs (and that's concurrent subs, not total subs ever) than almost every other MMO has ever had.
I'm saying that if Blizzard has two subscription MMOs out, their fanbase will choose exactly one to pay for. Telling me that FFXI and FFXIV happily coexist ignores the economies of scale for a publisher like Activision/Blizzard, a company of their size won't tolerate a fanbase simply divided amongst two pay services, their aim is growth in the market and nothing else. A two-subscription model will hamstring that growth.
Dunno whether to post it here or make a new thread but Ghostcrawler has left the building.
As long as Kalgan doesn't take back over, good riddance.
I highly expect 2.2 to provide a real large raid tier. If it doesn't then I'll join you in the chorus complaining. 4 bosses wasn't nearly enough and I'm baffled they thought it would be. But seriously, you can't complain over their patch schedule when they're aiming for double the content patches of this game even with 6 month raid tiers (which hopefully they'll fix to not be a backwards progression every other patch by 2.3 so we'll get 3 month raid tiers). It's only an extra month or two over WoW anyways.
This is the second Greg Street game I've taken very seriously, he's been in charge of balance in both.
Both have been among the most hilariously unbalanced multiplayer games ever to enjoy any level of success.
Also if Titan is 1/100th as bad as XIV, blizz will step out of the mmo market and let WoW carry its banner until the next big thing in gaming shows up. XIV is straight up wow with a different skin, inferior combat, and no content whatsoever.
I think I've said this a bunch of times in WoW threads here, but those numbers include their asian 'subscriptions', which aren't subscriptions at all. IE: asian players that might spend under a dollar to play for a few hours a month are included as individual subscriptions, and even an hardcore asian player is going to pay much less than the $15/month fee NA players do.
Blizz stopped releasing numbers by region, but the last time they did (I think it was like 3 years ago?), asian subs were about 50% of their total, and I'd venture to guess it's much higher now, since it's far easier to retain that type of 'subscription'. Without inside information, it seems difficult to tell how well WoW is really doing.
I was under the impression they didn't count China in the subscription numbers we see.
They definitely do. So much so that they stretch the definition of 'subscriber' to fit the chinese model of WoW monetization. Anybody with an active account that has logged in for an hour in the last 30 calendar days is a 'subscriber' by their model.
Yes, but all this annoyance from a brand new game. WoW has the "excuse" of not only having a billion subs, but also of being old and set in its ways. WoW doesn't HAVE to try to up the other guy, because they ARE the other guy. If SE has to try and trump the big boy on the block, waiting as long as the big boy to release content (of whom the big boy is already suffering lost subs from employing that strategy and even remarked that its trying to improve on that formula), how can they legitmately expect to retain a chunk of the subs?
Its like opening a new gas station next to a long-established and very popular one, and then adopting the exact same pricing for gas, only slightly less quality (ARR's bugs and annoyances compared to WoW's established streamline), yet expecting to haul a large share of the customers in that area. If you do the exact same thing as an established juggernaut - to include the undesirable things - how can you expect to hold large portions of their numbers?
It makes no sense.
Regardless, gimmie that 24-7 AV. I want I want I want.
I'm sorry but your analogy is pure shit. I can get the same amount of inventory in my store that the old one has in the same amount of time as they restock. This is no where close to true for game design or software in general. You can't expect any new game ever to pop up with 7 years worth of content. That's just ignorant.
It's as casual as WoW for sure, but the class system is completely different, main story is an actual story, and has slightly less content then WoW did at launch, but whatevzzzzzz.
Also glad Ghostcrawler is leaving, I havn't kept up to date on the pvp situation since that new guy took over, so can't comment on that, but class balance was fucking terrible. I guess FoTM rerolls is what keeps people chugging along in between patches. "Oh shit (x) class got buffed last patch, time to lvl that up, until next patch when (y) class will be the new all-star".
He played a Holy Priest? I had always thought it was a mage.P.P.S. I play a Holy Priest.
I dont see the game ever going f2p for reasons people have posted, but wtf @ cash shop? Also you can just boost any class to 90 in the next expansion from what ive heard???? While that's great in terms of never fucking having to do Outlands again, its gonna fill the game with even more bads, like what FATEs do to XIV.