back in WoD when they stopped talking about sub numbers and instead focused on MAU’s. It’s because China doesn’t have a sub system like the US and EU
Um, I don’t see how that’s possible. I don’t know a single person who has even purchased something from the store. Servers and staff cost money and people buying mounts in an online store couldn’t pay for those costs.
They have strict laws on how long people can play too so daily logins is how they can play at a similar pacing to western audiences.
Time gating benefits that type of daily playstyle more so than playing huge chunks of hours at a time on a weekend for example.
Back in their last quarterly statement they didn’t make that qualification:
Monthly Active User (“MAU”) Definition: We monitor MAUs as a key measure of the overall size of our user base. MAUs are the number of individuals who accessed a particular game in a given month. We calculate average MAUs in a period by adding the total number of MAUs in each of the months in a given period and dividing that total by the number of months in the period. An individual who accesses two of our games would be counted as two users… In addition, due to technical limitations, for Activision and King, an individual who accesses the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would be counted as two users. For Blizzard, an individual who accesses the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would generally be counted as a single user. In certain instances, we rely on third parties to publish our games. In these instances, MAU data is based on information provided to us by those third parties, or, if final data is not available, reasonable estimates of MAUs for these third-party published games.
Not only is Blizzard including trial accounts; they are double counting players who play multiple Blizzard games. Do you play both WoW and Hearthstone? If so, they’re counting you as two MAUs. Whatever rumors you heard back in WoD no longer apply.
MMOs better then FFXIV
WoW, GW2 and ESO
The only mmo FFXIV is better then is SWTOR but every mmo is better that 
Its Toyota being number one all over again!
I don’t know about Final Fantasy; it certainly looks good.
I’ve played WoW without cancelling two subscriptions since 2004, but this year I’ve been playing Valheim with all the obsession and love I once had for WoW.
It makes me sad.
All of those are good except sliders.
I DO NOT WANT 3 Foot tall ‘cutesie’ Nightelfs.
Me searching the internet for a Blizzard or Square Enix post showing their current sub count
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That data also says people are actively playing Wild Star. That’s very odd, considering their servers were shut down.
Anyone else want to post random inaccurate numbers that are impossible to give accurately?
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I got a question for the question…is this the new insert random lgbt agenda topic in my wow because reason fad?
Because now daily its ff this ff that…
Seems general wow forums about anything but…
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True, but sliders don’t have to be that extreme. Some games just have insane sliders. FF14 seems to have sliders that are maybe too tame, from what I’ve seen. I’m sure there’s a middle ground that wouldn’t land WoW on an episode of Monster Factory. But, I’m not worried. Blizz would never put in that kind of effort for customization.
Oh God no. That’s what I can think up off the top of my head.
All of it can be summed up in one sentence: “You think you do, but you don’t.”
i have no data other than ffxiv feels a lot more alive. less servers maybe. my friends list in wow is empty except for people playing tbc.
so pretty much nothing
Says you, just you.
WoW’s issue is that it is still trying to “split the baby” between the casual/non-competitive players like me, on the one hand, and the competitive, ‘core’ players, on the other. You can’t please both playerbases at the same time – in a world of limited resources and design decisions which will always lean one way or the other in terms of whom they favor, you can’t please both equally well. That will put you, as the dev, at odds with some part of your playerbase 100% of the time, because the part of the playerbase that is disfavored by your design (casual players, in the case of SL) will be pissed at you, hate on you, and badmouth you because your design sucks for them. Who is doing that depends on which way the expac leans.
Right now you have an expac that leans heavily towards raiding and competitive PvE play and away from casual players – so the casual players are very pissed and are leaving for a game that caters more to their style of play – FFXIV. And they’re being loud about it because they are pissed. Fair enough. I am a casual player, too, and I have played FFXIV too and I see its good and bad sides – I prefer WoW for quite a few reasons, even though by my “profile” as a player I should prefer FFXIV – I just can’t get into the world and the story very much, and I prefer WoW’s character feel and combat. But FFXIV is a good game, and in the context of a WoW expac that leans very heavily towards the competitive players at the expense of the casual ones, I can see why the exodus is happening.
At this specific point in time, it can lead to an exaggerated sense of what is happening in WoW. We are in a content drought at the same time that TBCC released. So retail is less busy than it was 4 months ago. The reasons for that are several at once: (A) competitive players taking a break until 9.1, (B) people going to play TBCC for a bit (very crowded over there atm), and (C) players leaving for other games, especially FFXIV due to the hype. All three of these things are taking place at the same time right now, and it makes sense given the design of SL and the slowness of the updates, but it overstates the case to say that this in itself is an indication of WoW’s precipitous decline. WoW is declining, but that isn’t new. The decline began in 2012 and has continued since then, and will continue until WoW is sunsetted. There is no permanent precipitous decline taking place right now, there is a confluence of factors that are leading players to play something other than retail during SL and/or during this content drought within SL, and other games are certainly benefiting from that, as is to be expected.
Finally, even though I am not myself a competitive player, I do think WoW would be more healthy, as a game, if it picked one thing to focus on more and really didn’t focus on the rest of it. That is, if they really, really focused on the competitive game and kind of dropped any focus on the rest of the game. SL is steps in that direction, but not really, because the “world” of SL took a lot of resources and time to build and populate and it’s really just a sidelight in the grand scheme of things – dungeons and raids are the clear focus of the entire thing. So I think WoW would be better off focusing on that, and really not the rest of the game – they would lose the casual players (or a good amount of them), which is why they are not doing it. But in trying to please everyone at least a little bit, all they are doing is pissing off everyone somewhat, and really, how happy are the casual players now anyway? One thing FFXIV does right is that it focuses like a laser beam on being what it is: a story-oriented game for story-oriented players, with some very hard savage competitive content for the tippity top added in. WoW would do well to be FFXIV in reverse – a competitive instance game for competitive instance players with some story content for the small remaining amount of casual players they would retain with that design. They are scared to do this, I think, because they doubt they could retain a large enough playerbase that way – so instead they design a game that is 80% oriented that way, anyway, and end up attracting the casual player only to alienate them, and then have them haul off for FFXIV while loudly complaining about WoW. Of course, Blizzard has already been paid at that point … nothing like greed for motivation.
I must have been really grumpy about waiting for 9.1.5 when I made this post.
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It happens Syl. Don’t stress about it.
geez and you necro’d a 5 month old thread to comment on your state of mind when you made a post…