Lifetime World of Warcraft retail sales via NPD - Wow...

"PVE or Serennia never winning a tournament but"

i love it when you get dirty

 

He still with SK?  ;]

 

i thought youd like this for your next article.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLr_gQxVC4s&feature=fvhl

 

someone is trolling! or maybe not...

 

I misread the title and was expecting life time subscriptions becoming available :O
The prospect of lifetime wow is ******* scary.

 

You know people would buy it, its like those lifetime Sirius subscriptions.  They could go bankrupt someday but people still buy them at like $499.

 

A life time isn't enough time for 'Limitless adventure'

 

They've already taken enough lives

 

holy **** 5,1000 copies a day

 

That ******* wrecked my head huh
Those numbers are ridiculous.

 

"I am under the impression" might be what you're looking for (Last Para).

Regardless of the sales, I'm pretty sure blizzard is content with rolling around in $173M a month from one game lmao.

Good read nonetheless.

 

I will have to agree with you Slap on the point that there may never be another MMO with numbers so large.

I honestly feel that at this point in time, MMOs that fail, fail the moment they are launched simply because they are not WoW. 

There are plenty of GOOD reasons to go out and play games like Warhammer Online or LOTR:O.  Both games are pretty damned stable and accessible these days (a major feat for Warhammer given how horrendously optimized it was at launch.  Something that has been dramatically improved upon btw).  If given the chance people would find both of them to be very fun.  But because they are not WoW they will never get close to the success they would normally receive.

 

reason not to play warhammer: that stupid lava bg.

 

Yea I wont lie and call the game perfect, but when you go point for point with WoW in my eyes they are pretty similar. 

Warhammer has "that stupid lava bg"

WoW has WSGs that never end, a horrendously boring AV, in addition to a complete lack of support or true understanding of player desire when it comes to BGs.

When it comes to just the BG argument between the two Warhammer has WoW beat by a huge margin.

 

Wasn't hating on warhammer, was just pointing out thats what turned me off to it.

 

you may not speak of tor anroc in this way.

 

I rolled a class without a knockback ;/

 

It's not rocket science why battlegrounds are not fun. Battlegrounds in WoW have objectives. From the players I have seen over the years in battlegrounds they just want to sit in the middle of the map. They do not prefer to do objectives so they lose. I say it's the player's fault for this issue. Sure there are map imbalances like in AV but they can be overcome if player's decide to do things like capture and defend nodes. Warham it's no different.

 Also the rewards for battlegrounds in general suck and the only reason people bother is because they need lot's of honor for arena pieces. Battlegrounds got left behind 2 expansions ago by better rewards elsewhere.

 

I'm pretty positive Blizzard can replace WoW with their new MMO if they market it enough and stay true to the model of succes that is related to WoW. Low-end specs, casual gameplay, lots of things to do, constantly updating content and so on. They just need to make it good enough to migrate a fairly large portion of WoW's playerbase to the new game and the people left behind in WoW will surely follow sooner or later.

Only thing I would say that worries me is their idea to create a new IP for this new MMO rather than just making it WoW 2 or something. At first I didn't think Warcraft was such a huge franchise either but I still have people (including people who were too young to remember WC3's release) asking me where they can get Warcraft 3 all the time. Nowadays Warcraft is something everyone knows of, I'd say it has easily surpassed Warhammer in popularity among the current generation of young gamers.

 

OT: Slap, The Fat Princess that got released today, is it possible to share trough psn, or do me and my brother have to buy one of our own? Also, in europe its 15 Euros, compared to american version (15 dollars), its 3 euros cheaper approximately, but can we play the american version on europe?

 

yup, comes out here today.  I know there are ways to share downloadable titles but honestly I haven't done it.  Something I should look in to.  http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/  might want to read up there and see what you come up with. 

Were you considering buying the American version via the story and playing there?  That I really am not sure how it works.  I know I could download the GT5 demo from Japan PSN and play it but it didn't use the network or have online play.

 

Yeah i was considering buying the american version and play it on europe, but probably wont work without some extra shenanigans. I will buy it regardless of the price, just making sure im not spending 2x 15 euros for nothing.

 

http://www.haxnetwork.net/showthread.php?t=4330

there is this method and being your brother I assume you can trust him.  I believe this still works as I hear people mentioning sharing downloadable titles like this all the time.

the legality of course is questionable.

 

Yes you can but you need to make an American account with American credit card details and such. I did it for SF2HD and it was a pain in the ass. I'd say the effort you have to put in to be able to buy something from the American story is worth more than the 3 euros extra you pay in the EU store. I had to make a digital credit card (forgot which site it was) and transfer money from an european credit card to that card, and doing this will make them require a small tax on the money you transfer between the two and you have to invest a certain minimum amount of money which will leave you with unused money on the digital card after purchasing your game (I think SF2HD was the same price as Fat Princess).

As for sharing the game, purchases made on PSN are linked to your console so if you and your brother have two seperate PS3's then yes you both need to buy it seperately. If you both play on one PS3 you can just make 2 different user accounts and both play from 1 purchase of Fat Princess.

 

yeah i was afraid of that credit card hussle. Oh well i guess there is no other way than buying 2 copies.

@ Slap: the legality of course is questionable.

I would assume its legal to family members at least.

 

well technically it is meant for broken PS3s, stolen ones, swapping hard drives, etc.  Honestly I don't see how its any different than copying for piracy purposes but I won't deny questionable practices on my own end at times. 

 

Buying from american PSN isn't that hard, at least any more. I bought Spyro the dragon from there and it was suprisingly easy. I didn't use american credit card either; just my good old trusty Visa electron. I just made an american account (I nicked some universitys address, I think some american address is required), linked my credit card to it, went to the store and bought it. I also shared the game with my brother without problems. I live in Finland, btw.

Using common sense, the legality of this is indeed questionable. But Sony must be aware of it: they are using some kind of restriction on games such as Warhawk and GT5: Prologue, eg. games that cost more than a normal PSN title. Of course they haven't officially said anything, negative or positive, but the pros must outweigh the cons since they haven't publicly stated it to be illegal or put a stop to it.

Multiplayer games like FP are more complicated. Are they region locked or not, eg. do I have to play on US servers if I buy the american one? Also it's more like 4 euros or 6 dollars, which is bull****. Battlefield 1943 cost 13€ and 10 pounds. What's the excuse for overpricing with FP?

Legally making a copy of a bought DVD to a family member is illegal, what made you think this would be ok?

 

^ My little brother ladies and gentlemen, said the same thing on msn, but just had to write here too to show his PS knowledge.

 

I said it here before to you on MSN, plus I answered to more people than you, SIGH. And I thought other people would find it helpful as well.

PS. you talk like a *** and your ****'s all retarded.

 

stfu scrub

 

Each PSN account can have 5 consoles activated at any given time. They can be deactivated and different consoles activated. The activated consoles can log onto that PSN account and download any purchased games (other than unshareables like Warhawk). You could potentially have a group of 5 friends alternating game purchases to be able to play 5x the games you would alone.

 

You also got ot remember that they have only sold 8 million physical copies in the US. Austrailia, China, Taiwan, Europe, and digital sales are not in there. Id suspect its closer to 15 million total, when you add in all of the above. Cash Cow indeed.

The real question tho, is can they keep the playerbase around?

Anyone whos not a complete dumb**** can see that the "hardcore" playerbase is a very small minority in the gaming community, theres more Casubads and simply casuals who play games online than the hardcore people like most of us on this forum and even the wow forums are a small majority of the playerbase.

You can also see that by adding content thats simply easy for every day casual to complete, they have made the game even friendlier to people who play on a limited schedule (whos a majority of the player base) to complete all the content.

This games going to be around for probably at least another 5 years before they start combining servers and the population really dwindles.

 

 

Blizzard can repeat their success.  It wasn't a fluke.  A lot of people before WoW kind of knew it would be something special since Blizzard was doing it.  I remember there was this big back and forth between the EQ2 fanboys vs the WoW, saying how EQ2 would be better since Verant had MMORPG experience :p

Blizzard is just head and shoulders above their competitors in terms of bringing quality games that aren't riddled with bugs, and prematurely released.  Almost every other MMORPG at launch has been a more alpha/beta product, and they end up losing half the players in the first month.  Even then their development from that point on is riddled with issues usually(Funcom).

I'm not the biggest fan of Blizzards MMORPG style trying to incorporate ladder style competition into the genre, with less focus on world play, but i have to give it up to them, they make polished working games out of the box, which is a lot more than i can say for the rest of the industry.

 

And yeah those numbers are amazing when you break them down like that.  I just think 8.6 million being pretty standard, but then 5,100 copies a day?  WTF?

 

this, looks to be the same with starcraft 2, glad to see activision aren't ******* them up.

 

"Its possible but I almost think that maybe this was the right game at
the right time with low enough specs to reach a massive audience. 
Thoughts?"

That's exactly what the game was.  Blizzard isn't stupid, they know the exact economic and technological factors that push their game into 12 million hands.  I foresee a VERY highly thought-out dev process for WoW 2 that includes graphical scaling, a grind similar or maybe slightly faster than what WoW has now after the improvements in quest rewards/exp per level and a very different set of lore that has been deeply planned out.  This will match will extensive research on a perfect release date to transfer as many subscribers seamlessly to a new world filled with lore and badassery while grabbing as many new kiddos as they can.

The company has never done anything wrong, game-wise.  Seriously think about it.

Warcraft reinvents RTS, makes it approachable and colorful.  WC2 reinvents the complexity and build orders.  WC3 brings in Blizzard's incredible graphical scaling to run on very low end computers while looking bright, colorful and etc. 

Diablo 1 comes from nowhere to tickle a new take on the RPG.  Diablo 2 fixes everything wrong with Diablo 1, has a wonderful Expansion pack. 

Starcraft brings in the idea that a RTS game can perfectly balance 3 completely different sides with vastly different playstyles.

WoW uses Starcraft's "any game can be balanced" idea and applies it to the MMO.  The path hasn't been without stumbles:  Warlocks before Death Coil.  Warriors at the top end of gear for their level.  Rogue damage/control balancing.  And so forth, the point is they have at any time from the beginning of TBC on a game where any class fighting any other class has a chance to win.  Almost every class is viable in some comp in every bracket.  Ming made a good point about this in a recent blog.

Whatever they come up with next, it will stand on the shoulders of everything they've learned of game design, low-end to high-end scaling, learning curve, artwork and every other aspect of the games they produce.  Sorry for rambling, I'm on vacation in Sunnyvale, CA - life is tough sitting by the pool with my MB Pro and surfing the web.