BL is now H 8/8 and announced they are all quiting WOW

[Ninjapaws]

just cause these top guilds are quiting doesnt mean its the death of something. i honestly thing they are quiting because the content just isnt as challenging as it use to be, so its now just boring and repetative.

diablo 3 will have little to no effect on WoW, its not a pay per month game, and most of the people who will be playing, already play wow and have agreed to the annual commitment. diablo 3 isnt a MMO, there will be a 4 to 8 player cap per diablo 3 game(Server), no one currently knows the release date cap, BUT CURRENTLY the cap is set at 4 players per game.

the auction house is a gainer for blizzard and battle.net but i dont think it will be able to generate enough of a steam roll to create any kind of real profit. it may just cover the cost of the maintance of the game itself.

sure diablo 3 will be popular but peopel who want to raid will stick with WoW, which is a very very LARGE chunk of the wow community that plays now. Diablo 3 has (raids) like epic fights and what not but imo it will be just like a freakin heroic dungeon with like 4 people, thats not awesome, thats kinda like ehhh find for a game like diablo. if they wanted to make diablo 3 sucessfull and amazing they would create servers just like WoW, with thousands of players on 1 server, but i highly doubt they will from what ive read from beta testers and blue posts by blizzard. its all speculation now, but when i read about the speculation about the wow expansions its all about the same, alot of the speculation ive read in the past about the new WoW and upcomming patches and what not have been i want to say almost 85% true most of the time.

[Darkrytez]

not what i was getting at or the post was getting at ninja lol. i was stating that eventually wow will go free to play especially when titan comes out. by then and IF titan is better then wow most of the fan base of wow will go to titan. of course there will be a select few that will stay playing wow there will be no need to charge for wow if there is no new stuff coming out for it and the player base as dwindled so far down. Also if they want to get more people to play they will go free to play. You have to remember how many people will buy the game if it did. Theroeticly (i know i cant spell) they would not loose much money, especially with a new mmo out.

Ya diablo 3 may not be a full mmo like wow non the less its a mmo. It may be free to play but it makes up for the AH thing. You may not do it but do you know how many idiots would buy stuff with their rl money. I would say more then we both would think of. In the end there is no doubt in my mind that wow will one day become free to play. Its like trying to sell a old used up porn tape. You just wind up giving it away cuz noone uses vcr's.

[Ninjapaws]

ya i know, but titan i would not expect to come out until like 2015, blizzard is notorious for taking RIDICULOUSLLY LONG TIMES to create games, specially when they announce games WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY in advanced. they will eventually just die in development because they cant put out all the hype they announced.

[Tharia]

ya i know, but titan i would not expect to come out until like 2015, blizzard is notorious for taking RIDICULOUSLLY LONG TIMES to create games, specially when they announce games WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY in advanced. they will eventually just die in development because they cant put out all the hype they announced.

As this holds more truth than most would care to admit, I feel that you are also forgetting about other companies releasing games between now and then. Example: Skyrim. Now I know that it didn't greatly affect the WoW player base, however it DID affect it, as little as it was. So did MW3. I don't typically look at what games are being released and when or what's in development unless I've immersed myself in that particular game series. But just think of how many 'high end' games will be released between now and Blizzard's Titan game. All of which will, in their small amount, affect the player base of other, older games including, but not limited to, WoW. More so now that guilds are already clearing new content in both regular and heroic modes. Example: the PM team, as I've read, is ready to start heroic modes on new content. This is considerably faster than how the PM team progressed in Firelands from my point of view. If they keep up that pace, they'll have heroic 8/8 within 6-8 weeks tops.

[Ninjapaws]

btw...where did we read this news about BL quitting wow? ive been all over their site, and all over the internet seeking this information out, and the only place i can find any is our forums which imo isnt very reliable

[Brenstel]

their GM posted on MMO champion's forum and made several comments explaining why they were doing this

[Darkrytez]

ya i know, but titan i would not expect to come out until like 2015, blizzard is notorious for taking RIDICULOUSLLY LONG TIMES to create games, specially when they announce games WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY in advanced. they will eventually just die in development because they cant put out all the hype they announced.

As this holds more truth than most would care to admit, I feel that you are also forgetting about other companies releasing games between now and then. Example: Skyrim. Now I know that it didn't greatly affect the WoW player base, however it DID affect it, as little as it was. So did MW3. I don't typically look at what games are being released and when or what's in development unless I've immersed myself in that particular game series. But just think of how many 'high end' games will be released between now and Blizzard's Titan game. All of which will, in their small amount, affect the player base of other, older games including, but not limited to, WoW. More so now that guilds are already clearing new content in both regular and heroic modes. Example: the PM team, as I've read, is ready to start heroic modes on new content. This is considerably faster than how the PM team progressed in Firelands from my point of view. If they keep up that pace, they'll have heroic 8/8 within 6-8 weeks tops.

thats what I was getting at lol

[Darkrytez]

ya i am on mmo everyday just to see IF anything new pops up. I havent seen it , yet anyways. either way its to be expected. A buddy of mine told me last night the CM is also falling apart. Like ninja said just because guilds are falling apart doesnt mean its the end, but its undeniable proof that the game is slowly very slowly crumbling apart.

[Dotmatrics]

It wouldn't be cost effective for them to go free 2 play. When have you ever seen blizzard give anything away that was free? Seriously? I curious? Running servers cost money. And like was mentioned earlier, even if the subscription level plumetts it is still income. Blizzard is not a charity, and would not like to be seen as such. Basically, as subscribers decreases, you will see numerous merges of game servers, and free server changes etc. While this is happening, they will start re-allocating their servers towards their other offerings. Re-provisioning them where needed. Re-allocating staff to support other games, etc. Ultimately the decision to carry on or change games comes to the consumer, but like also was mentioned earlier, there will be a fan base, and an income and when either of them drop below the profitable marker, that will officially be the end of WoW.

[Darkrytez]

ever play d2? their servers were free. how did blizzard make as much money back then? i understand the profit but to get more people to play/buy the game it would be more beneficial to go free to play. look at dc universe.

[Tharia]

ever play d2? their servers were free. how did blizzard make as much money back then? i understand the profit but to get more people to play/buy the game it would be more beneficial to go free to play. look at dc universe.

Same thing with Warcraft 2/3 as well as Diablo (original) and Starcraft 1 and 2. All were/are free to play online. Yet Blizzard made enough money through the sales of the games to maintain the servers. The subscription cost to players, in my honest opinion, is a greedy grab by Blizzard to fill their pockets and buy Lamborghini's or $20M houses on a 500k acre property or some crap like that.

I totally agree, it does cost money to maintain servers and service levels. What I'm getting here is that you believe that these costs are astronomical. They really aren't, not even close.

Blizzard claims over 8 million people play WoW, in monthly subscriptions alone that brings in $1.2 BILLION per year. That's at $12.50/month per person at a count of 8 million people (this number is likely higher for those who buy time cards which works out to be $15/month -> same with those who purchase 1 month at a time from the blizz store). Let's factor in cost to buy the game, plus the expansions.

Classic WoW: depending on where you buy it will go for $20-$30 by itself

Burning Crusade: same as classic WoW, but these 2 can be purchased as a battle chest on blizzard store site for $20 as a digital download - we'll use this for vanilla/bc even though many people don't have viable credit cards to purchase from the blizzard store.

Wrath of the Lich King: retails at $40

Cataclysm: retails at $40

So, to factor this in, we are looking at another $100 per person... but really it should be more like $160 as the battle chest and reduced vanilla/bc prices weren't really introduced until near the end of WotLK. That's another $800 Million but really is more like $1.28 Billion.

The cost of running all the servers, wages, customer service etc is somewhere in the region of $50 Million per year (source ($200 Million over 4 years -> 2004-2008, everything included)). Don't get me wrong, the amount of servers for WoW are exponential in comparison to that of Diablo 1/2, SC 1/2 and WC 2/3. But really, the numbers speak for themselves. Blizzard is making money hand over fist and laughing all the way to the bank and back. The cost to run Diablo servers were easily covered by the retail purchases of the game, and will do so again. Same for the other mentioned games.

So, I hope this light shed on the costs vs income for Blizzard has dissolved any illusion the media may have placed before your eyes.

Also, as for WoW being paid vs. F2P - it's more likely that Blizz will discontinue that service once the player base drops below a certain point. I would imagine somewhere around half a mil or less players. However, I can see the private servers being around for a long time afterwards. Those are always free to play and usually are grossly hacked versions.

[Dotmatrics]

Development costs are also pretty high, normally close or exceeding costs of movie production. They are recouping those fees as well.

Greed is only perpetuated by those willing to allow it. There are 8 million people perpetuating blizzards greed. All subscribe for what seams like a reasonable fee. Good for Blizzard for taking advantage and making money. Profit isn't a bad word by the way. Quite the opposite. What they spend their profits on is their business, and if you think it is your business you are sadly and completely mistaken.

Also, this isn't an attack, just food for thought.

[Dillweed]

They really need to put wrath of the lich king in the battle chest. Its ten levels that go by faster now and old content for 40 dollars. That's a little much.

[Tharia]

Development costs are also pretty high, normally close or exceeding costs of movie production. They are recouping those fees as well.

Agreed, but I'm pretty sure Blizzard hasn't had any real development costs since the release of vanilla. Most of the work is done for them, all they have done since then is added small bits here and there and changed a few things along the way as well... at least when it comes to WoW, anyway.

[Ninjapaws]

Saying Warcraft 1,2,3 and starcraft and Diablo 1 & 2 being f2p is a different story, it was a different time during those releases plus they are different types of games. RTS has a limited amount of content to it, same with Starcraft and Diablo, where WoW is constantly evolving regardless if those changes are good or not they cost money and time.

the RTS games like Warcraft and Starcraft have little upkeep to them, just minor changes, nothing like Wow do where they host servers that actually need to do something. See the thing with these RTS are the Servers we speak of arent actually playing servers they are "chat" servers all that happens on these servers are converstations between people, the actual games where hosted by the players, nwo your saying WHAT WHAT!?!?!?! its true, most of these "servers" are actually virtual servers set up by the game to be hosted by the player. hense when the "host" dropped out of a game all the players would either get disconnected or the game would attempt to switch the host to another player, but most of the time it just disconnected everyone.

i believe same with Diablo, their were not actual servers, but "games" hosted by players.

all this hosting of servers by players = low cost to keep the game up as in the game is actually be run by the players.

wow...is different you ahve thosands of players on 1 "server or game" meaning you need ALOT of computing power something that warcraft, starcraft and diablo didnt need because its only 1-10 players to a "game". all that computing power....you ahve MILLIONS of players playing at once you need more power! that costs alot alot of money to keep up. the bills pile in, if they made WoW F2P the company would prolly lose all of its profits due to the population size that plays the game. a player can not host a wow "server/game" liek they did back in the day with the old blizzard games and even Starcraft 2 because it wouldnt be playable, the world is WAY TO BIG and it requires a dedicated server computer/rack to operate.


nwo i know your going to say it...GUILD WARS F2P!!!!!! yes that is true...but they also dont have anywhere near the population WoW does, and i belive the in-game store, where you can buy ingame items for real Money, like our wow store, BUT they are selling content, skills expansion packs. yes you can technicly play guild wars for free BUT you will be getting the basic skills and gear and content, each expansion pack has its perks hense why they are able to run on f2p, players are competative and they are playing off that, people want to be #1 in a game like guild wars were its mostly about PVP, you playing F2P guild wars is liek playing WoW Vanilla for free, you will see more content but have no access to it. ive seen estimites of their population at lil over 100,000