Warlords of Draenor - WoW

[Baaja]

Haven't read all of your posts, just been following Blizzcon this weekend and I also might come back for this, especially for the lore setting and Outland again! They are on their track again, they just need to streamline the game more and get back to the roots, which they pretty much are doing. However, I am having a serious issue with all this "time traveling" and "alternate reality", feels weird, but I guess it was the only logical explanation for this expansion!

WoW had lost 100k subscribers this last quarter staying at 7.6 million subscriptions. With 5.4 already deployed and the reveal of WoD, I wonder how the subscriptions will fluctuate the following time until the release of WoD. Interesting times are ahead.

 

[DaRkOwNs]

Couldn't tell ya, but 7.4 millions the lowest it's been in a long time.

 

[Deathshot]

Couldn't tell ya, but 7.4 millions the lowest it's been in a long time.

This should boost it up to at least 10mil again. Maybe more since it deals with before WoW completely.

 

[Viper]

I wonder if they're going for another fall release with this one.

 

[Baaja]

With Project Titan out of the way, and stating they are not working on any content inbetween the current version and the expansion I do believe that they are aiming for a much sooner release of the expansion. I've read somewhere that they've actually doubled their team in a short amount of time and are still looking for more skilled workers. Yes, the figures of approx 7.5 are the lowest they have been for a while, but do note that we are talking about a 10 year old game, with a monthly subscription and all kinds of other services attached to it.. and if we compare it to GW2, FF XIV ARR or any other type of MMORPG, WoW is actually more active than all of them put together. Of course there is a decline in demand, as the products life cycle is maturing and will soon start to decline more rapidly than before, however I see this happening in 3-4 years depending on if the later expansions suck or not.

 

[DaRkOwNs]

While that's true, Blizzard has pretty much grew around World of Warcraft. Or so I would imagine. It's a high number compared to other MMO's, but I would think that even a little lower than that number would mean they're breaking even, even factoring in the paid services. Of course, I know Blizzard wouldn't be in trouble any time soon and Diablo continues to sell pretty well. Don't have to worry about WoW going f2p.

What was Project Titan? I heard a bit about it in the last couple years, then it kinda just dropped out of existence.

 

[pumadace2000]

I'm quite sad I never got a hold of the original warcrafts, not even back in my pirate days. Always assumed they wouldn't work on windows XP.

Would any of you say they still hold out even today?

Wasn't titan something to do with Starcraft? I thought speculation was that it would be something like 'World of Starcraft'... but obviously not with that name.

 

[DaRkOwNs]

Warcraft 3 is still an awesome game. The previous two are a little dated.

 

[pumadace2000]

Yeah but the assumption is that it would be a HD version of some sort so it may improve on their looks. Assuming that would be the case, would they be worth trying out?

 

[Baaja]

While that's true, Blizzard has pretty much grew around World of Warcraft. Or so I would imagine. It's a high number compared to other MMO's, but I would think that even a little lower than that number would mean they're breaking even, even factoring in the paid services. Of course, I know Blizzard wouldn't be in trouble any time soon and Diablo continues to sell pretty well. Don't have to worry about WoW going f2p.

What was Project Titan? I heard a bit about it in the last couple years, then it kinda just dropped out of existence.

Reading this article from 2008, it seems that Blizzard has a tremendous profit margin on WoW and I actually think that each expansion covers it's own development cost + more and has the benefit of prolonging the life of the original released product. I think we all underestimate Blizzard sometime and how important WoW has been for the company's growth. Also, Diablo 3 is actually doing very well as well with record sales and the overhaul that is coming with RoS will surely have good effects on the games replayability.

I haven't played WoW since mid MoP and I hope to come back with WoD. World of Warcraft is a fantastic game, history books material, but like I said I hope they succeed in streamlining the expansion and tighten up all loose ends. I was very positive towards the change in raiding composition, it didn't make sense to have RF, Flex, Normal 10 & 25, Heroic 10 & 25 etc!

Had no idea what Project Titan was, but the gist was that it was actually a totally new IP and not a World of Starcraft, however after 4-5 years in development the team responsible were not happy with the direction and started to re-work it from scratch, but after a few months even that got scrapped and development was flushed back into MoP 5.3+, WoD and probably also RoS!

 

[DaRkOwNs]

Eh, WoW -was- a fantastic game. It's pretty much the cookie cutter build of mmo's now. I still love it, but I really love it for the same reason I love Mario despite it being the same game for 20+ years. But I also stopped playing a little after MoP so I haven't tried any of the new additions.

But Garrisons do sound pretty cool. And I'm glad stat farming is finally being revised. I'm not giving them much credit for World PvP because that should have been implemented in Cataclysm. Not just those half-assed "zones" like Tol'barad and Wintergrasp. More like how it used to be in the Outlands, but to a greater extent.