WoW - Suffers More Losses

Couchpotato

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MMO-Play has a new article with information that World of Warcraft has reportedly suffered a 54% drop in revenue in the past 7 months.

Troubling news for Azeroth's inhabitants; World of Warcraft has reportedly suffered a 54% drop in revenue in the past 7 months.

The Blizzard giant is well known for its unrivaled, long-lasting success, and has won awards and reported huge success for nine years, still gathering critical acclaim as recently as last year for its Mists of Pandaria expansion. However, with the dawn of free MMORPG games upon us, basing their revenue on sheer traffic and micro-transactions, the subscriber-oriented MMO is beginning to wane.

The audit, carried out by Superdata Research indicated a drop at the end of financial Quarter 1 of $93million, down from $204million, following the launch of Mists of Pandaria. It's fair to say that the Pandaria launch would have spiked income, but a drop of $111million shows that it may lack sticking power, despite its rave reviews.

More information.
 
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So does a 54% drop in revenue means a 54% drops in players?
 
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So does a 54% drop in revenue means a 54% drops in players?
It's probably more like a third of players. I don't feel sorry for them they made back almost ten times what it cost to develop, and maintain the game already.

Frankly I'm surprised millions still play this game almost eight years later.O_O I gave up after a few months.

Anyway F2P is more likely every month with the steady decline. Blizzard already mentioned it's a possibility.
 
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Don't play WOW and couldn't care about it in the slightest but this saddens me as it's just on more feather on F2P's cap.

We inch closer to a F2P dominated gaming world.
 
We inch closer to a F2P dominated gaming world.

That scares the crap out me and it looks like it will be since we keep hearing the cloud is the future from publishers now.:wall:
 
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They want to provide services, not products (blame Oracle's boss for the idea too).
 
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so is DDO the WoW killer? Who would have thunk it after their disasterous launch and even their lawsuit with their rights owner.

Going F2P was an act of desperation. But what it needed was the big name and careful management of how to do it right.

F2P is not a bad deal as long as its done right. The market tends to take care of this (note the near collapse of the Facebook game market) but the current trend in the effectiveness of lockboxes (ie. online gambling) scares me.
 
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I wouldnt mind if this genre would simply dry out and disappear like space sims or adventure games did ten years ago. Decade without wow would be just fine. But I guess thats too much to hope.
 
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WTF is mmo-play? This site finds the most random crap to link. WoW isn't losing revenue because of F2P. F2P is utter shit for MMORPGs. WoW is losing players because they've dumbed their game down so much they're driving away even the sheep. Plus, it's been a long run, and even with losing players they still have more players than the next few MMORPGs in line combined.

WoW has had a freakish run with numbers dramatically higher than competitors, so returning to something more normal was bound to happen eventually -and bliz will still make piles of money since they don't give players squat for their sub buck.
 
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So does a 54% drop in revenue means a 54% drops in players?
No, the article is basically completely bogus. If you go to the actual source of the whole thing:
http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/wow-microtransactions/

You'll find that they're comparing revenue from last September ($204M) to revenue from this April ($93M). Yeah, well, the current expansion (Mists of Pandaria) was released last September. At $40 a pop. So this is just obvious, and a complete non-story. Probably put out to get page views or something.
 
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I wouldnt mind if this genre would simply dry out and disappear like space sims or adventure games did ten years ago.

Why ? Genres dying out just narrows down diversity in game genres. Right now Jump & Run has nearly died out, as have God Games, and economy simulations.

The PC platform is already so much degenerated that it is almost entirely dominated by shooters, Action-RPGs (not story-RPGs) and RTS war games.
 
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No, the article is basically completely bogus. If you go to the actual source of the whole thing:
http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/wow-microtransactions/

It also links towards an article regarding MMOs in Europe : http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/european-mmo-market/

Europe & MMOs - the thing no-one invests in. Because they are not English.

Germany is the largest European client-based MMO market with €474MM in 2012 sales, more than double the size of the UK market (€281MM) and France (€222MM).

LOL, and Turbine recently axed translation for the German and the French clients, plus EA/Bioware axing forum moderation & forum representatives for both languages in SWTOR ...
 
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Why ? Genres dying out just narrows down diversity in game genres. Right now Jump & Run has nearly died out, as have God Games, and economy simulations.

The PC platform is already so much degenerated that it is almost entirely dominated by shooters, Action-RPGs (not story-RPGs) and RTS war games.

I agree. I'm not playing any MMOs at the moment, but I did enjoy immensely my time in EQ1 and City of Heroes. MMO is not the problem, the problem is what MMOs have turned into since WoW came out, a "Look for ! signs, click through boring quest text, run to the quest area, kill X stuff, go back for rewards, move to next town". That's where the problem is.
 
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Not even that is a problem.
The problem is that MMOs turned into a not fun eyecandy. And games are supposed to be fun.
Also the audience is filled up with frauds, false advertising and con jobs. If something is pure grinding then stop calling it endgame content for example, just call it grinding. MMOs rape the language by finding positive names for negative stuff.

I'm not saying MMO lovers will cease to exist. If that was possible, noone would watch soap operas today. But the majority will simply stop playing them if they remain in current state.
 
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Frankly I'm surprised millions still play this game almost eight years later.O_O I gave up after a few months.

I tend to be a gamer that likes variety (and single player RPGs) I've played WoW since day one and I've always tended to play for 2-3 months, soak up all the new content. Quit til the next expansion. I like the universe Azeroth is in. I like occasionally playing RPGs with other players. This went on through cataclysm. I had zero interest in Pandas and I don't expect anything else will draw me back in. I will admit my interest is peaked in ESO subscription and all, being on the Mac is an extra perk since my daily driver laptop is a Macbook Pro.

But by and by WoW's had a damn good run for an MMO, it's time for even the hardest of core to move on.
 
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I agree. I'm not playing any MMOs at the moment, but I did enjoy immensely my time in EQ1 and City of Heroes. MMO is not the problem, the problem is what MMOs have turned into since WoW came out, a "Look for ! signs, click through boring quest text, run to the quest area, kill X stuff, go back for rewards, move to next town". That's where the problem is.

This. Vanilla WoW, with all its warts had a real sense of exploration. The kind rarely found in an MMO experience anymore. Even Skyrim was a little too hand holdy for my tastes.
 
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I'm sure the Free To Play craze was a huge factor, but this talk of the "critically acclaimed" Mists of Pandaria with its "rave reviews" somewhat irks me. Because I know several people, myself included, who probably would have gone back to WoW for a little while if the expansion had been the least bit interesting. But... pandas? They made the joke race playable, for both factions? No thanks, I've got plenty of other games to play.
 
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The PC platform is already so much degenerated that it is almost entirely dominated by shooters, Action-RPGs (not story-RPGs) and RTS war games.

I just can't agree with this at all. The pc has a ton of diversity.

Unless, your only talking about AAA games and anyone only playing AAA games on the PC is really missing the bulk of what the PC platform has to offer.
 
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