If your business is a video-game then player count is a measure of that business. The basic takeaway is that player-count is up, breaking records and the article goes into a few factors that seem to have contributed their success (ie player-count).
Yeah, I think they’re a credible place for information, far more than IGN.
player count is a good metric, but profit is more important.
WoW could go with fewer players and make more then Square. Which they do cause of WOW tokens and other micro transactions.
"W T S spams " the last and only profession that makes real gold in wow
they could sit down and think about how to keep players but it wont make a difference, totally clueless
They will keep the players that like it this way.
For me the RPG aspect is dead. I am no longer a part of the story i am being told the story and then do some meaningless motion till the next fortnite match or whatever.
Its slowly turning into an esports game
First off if you say "As a “insert fake title” of a massive “insert fake guild” Just stop. Nothing is fine the game is dead.
Wow is a Raid or die game it always has been it always will be because the devs are raid or die gamers. Since launch casuals have been begging them not to lock story behind raids, the answer has always been to get called a scrub and told to “Git Gud”
Wow is dying it is dying because the developers are deaf, they have been, they always will be this is nothing new it’s just that folks after all these years are done with it.
People moved on because other devs see millions of people that are literally begging to shove money down their pants… if players are offered an alternative to run the raid…put the raid on farm get death threats if your rotation is missed by one button they are going to take it.
Bobby Kotick runs Blizzard, Blizzard is in a nose dive so they get less money for anything that isn’t a MOBILE GAME…That means WoW will never change they milked it all they can now it’s time to take it the the butcher to be chopped up. Were all sad about it, but it was a long time coming.
Personally I didn’t move to FFXIV for long it’s too anime for me and a huge population means lots and lots of douchebags.
I’m watching and participating what smaller devs are doing, those who are brave enough to say there is nothing massive about this, it’s a ORPG where you are not a god or hero, you can grab a sword or bow and go have an adventure with your friends, without raiding. Many more is going to follow, Blizzard will not stop the Bleeding, and no matter what they do at this point it’s too late.
Somewhere on the WoW team right now some dev is probably saying: “I know how about more poop quest?” and I just don’t think that’s the answer.
Read what I said earlier… You can play FF14 for free to level 50 and it’s an unlimited trial. More people playing != More revenue for the company. How many new FF players have spent a dime on the game or on a sub?
You won’t know that kind of information until quarterly reports. SE is a big company with tons of products, so they likely don’t even break down FF14’s numbers unless they are super good. Otherwise, they will just word salad it into all their other numbers.
And no, not really. Like I said, they are on par with CNN/FOX business pages
What bothers me the most is I love running heroics, but with 9.1 they are completely useless. There is no reason for me to run heroics unless I want to gear up a fresh 60 and even then I should just do my Korthia dailies instead… that’s a problem.
Suddenly people care about casuals?
This is a complete 180 from last month, or did those people go to FF14?
IMO - The game is no longer making people part of the story, your are watching it and doing some random stuff. The immersion into the world feels empty to me and I have zero feelings about my toon’s. To me the RPG part of wow is very weak from what it was. But that is me a lot of people are very happy with the way it is. We do live in a world where we have a choice and in this example stay or leave… Many other games are out their and no matter how much you kick and scream your not going to get that feeling back.
Don’t ruin it for the people that have that feeling…
Here’s a clue:
There is a difference between content and rewards.
Rewards are mounts, pets, aesthetics, gear.
Content is the stuf you do for said mounts, pets, aesthetics, gear.
You could have 500,000 mounts and if the only content you have are boring world quests, then it would still be a lack of meaningful fun content.
Or, you could have just 5 mounts in an expansion and if there’s plenty of fun things to do to GET those mounts, you’d have lots of content (Though some people might feel like the content isn’t rewarding enough).
EDIT: Oh, and a lot of those mounts? They are just recolors and reskins of other mounts. For example, the Kyrian cat mount, there’s what, 4, 5, 6 variants of it that are just a different color? lol
Judging by the fact that their digital shop ran out of keys to hand out last week, I’d say that the answer is more than they ever expected. You don’t need a key to play the trial. You’re right that we won’t know for sure until the quarterly reports, but games rarely sell out of digital keys if they aren’t selling well.
Last month players were in denial, chalking up the angst to the extended content drought and proclaiming that 9.1 was going to make the casuals happy. I, having read the patch notes, knew better. This month there are no more excuses for the deniers to hide behind.
This.
I make posts about my disappointment in the lack of fishing, and those posts are generally tongue-in-cheek, but I’m 100% serious.
The casual gamer in WoW participates in solo content even when his/her guildies are on hiatus between tiers.
What is solo content?
1.) Achievement grinding
2.) Mount collecting
3.) Transmog collecting
4.) Pet collecting
This is why it’s a HUGE issue that they’ve failed to give us secondary profession-related (fishing &/or cooking) achievements. This is why it matters that they let archaeology become irrelevant. This is why it matters that we can no longer solo raid content from 3 expansions back. This is why it matters when they allow pet battles or pet abilities to bug out. This is why pet week matters in the weekly rotation and why its reward/incentives matter.
Whether the mythic raid folks give a flying rip or not…that content is bread and butter in this game and in this community.
And they’re failing at it.
And they wanna just toss us some crumbs and say “here you go” when past expansions did things way better for us casuals.
And we’re supposed to be happy that they threw us some table scraps, lol.
“Why are you dissing 9.1? It has so much stuff for casuals!” … yeah, 9.1 is better than 9.0 … but that’s like saying a bland piece of bread is better than a turd.
Or it could have been a million other things that caused them to do so. Let me also mention this: They are now putting in an anti-afk system to log you out out after 30 min. This is to help reduce server strain and queues. This sounds like it’s strictly there to combat F2P accounts, seeing how you get put into a queue on them, while paid accounts usually get login priority in almost all cases, unless they’re capped on those as well.
I’m one who defends 9.1. As patches go, it’s a good one. It’s a really good one for a .1, especially. The problem with 9.1 isn’t the patch. It’s the length of the drought and the uncertainty about when 9.2 will come.
The problem, as you stated, is with 9.0 when it comes to casual content. I disagree with a LOT of the whining on these forums. When super casual (read: more casual than I am…because I’m not hardcore) players start bleating about gear progression, I get upset because they’re wrong and they’re missing the point. There is PLENTY of gear progression for the non-raider in Shadowlands. There’s more than there ever has been, and the gear level achievable through solo content is like Disneyland good. Steering clear of gear, which I consider a massive success in SL, I’ll just go over the things I think SL has utterly failed to provide/capitalize on.
1.) The Professions are not meaningful or fun. There aren’t enough “fun” items in professions, and there aren’t enough relevant pre-raid BiS types of gear produced by them. There aren’t enough mounts, pets, & mogs unique enough and high-demand enough to get people engaged in and excited about professions. Every expansion, the community begs for this, and every expansion they promise they’re going to do it…and every expansion, they don’t do it.
I don’t know what it is here that the dev team doesn’t get. Look at MoP. That’s the last super successful profession expansion in my memory. Why don’t we have that every time? I don’t get it.
2.) The Secondary Skills have been given both jack and squat. Fishing gave us nothing. NOTHING. Archaeology is totally out. There’s nothing at all for Archaeology. Cooking has nothing relevant and fun. There are a few “hidden” recipes showing up in Korthia, but they don’t do anything and are not funny, interesting, collectable, or attached to stories and achieves. First Aid was ripped away and made utterly irrelevant instead of developing it into something with achievements or fun skills.
There are no new factions to grind, items to earn, or collectibles to play for in any of the secondary skills…and the continued neglect of these parts of WoW is a massive blow to casual play. The success of fishing and engagement with it during MoP and Legion…what don’t they understand? The excitement archaeology had for its pets and mounts at the start. Why did that stop? First Aid could be so much more than bandages, and it could have achievements, toys, and titles associated with it. There are mountains of cloth in the last two expansions that go unused and have zero AH value. They could have all kinds of things added to First Aid (medic tents dropped in combat that work like old-fashioned lightwells, medical transmog, or fun RP toys like the Bastion stretcher…trust, those would get use on Moonguard) Etcetera. Why don’t they foster this kind of thing anymore? They used to. It makes no sense.
3.) Raid Farming has been made impossible. The solo player’s joy used to be going back to expansions with content we missed to solo the raids, watch the cinematics, flesh out the story, complete the rep grinds…and farm the raids. They promised they wouldn’t jack this up, but they did. And they’re not fixing it.
These are the primary issues I see in SL, and they are expansion-wide, not the fault of 9.1.
I think there are lots of players who disagree or have different beefs with the current state of the game than mine, but as a player is genuinely enjoying Shadowlands, these are my concerns. I don’t think I’m alone in them.
I think Shadowlands is Legion levels of good. It has serious potential, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. That said, it has left a lot undone, and since it took 8 months for them to give us the .1 patch, I was hoping they’d do a lot of the undone stuff. They didn’t.
Most of the appeal of mounts have been some combination of rarity or effort to achieve. Now feels less like rewarded effort than… I dunno, an overweight cat just sitting in front of a dry catfood dispenser.
Hi. I am a causal player. Not leaving.
We should just swap the term casual player for roleplayer, Blizzard may be having a problem with keeping some people who love being part of an RPG. Not everyone likes to collect items, earn achievements, or repeat the same instanced content repeatedly in search of better gear. Some people, would like to have more adventure in different lands. Random encounters would be lovely, have a GM pop in and start terrorizing a city every now and then, something, anything really. Build temporary zones every now and then, create adventures for people to go out on that don’t reward anything other than a story and perhaps fun stuff. Give people player housing, so they can spend time decorating and sharing their homes with others. There is so much out there that could keep people glued into the game.
Wow is like a drought for some of us, we get our bowl of water every two years and gulp it down, and then are left with … well… this.
We may be the minority though, I mean we are kind of boring to most people.
Did you play BfA?
You could earn Heroic iLvl Conquest gear from doing world events and unrated PvP.
In the final patch, you could earn gear 5 item levels below Mythic raiding through Horrific Visions.
Your post seems well written and well intentioned, but it is unfortunately incorrect about gearing. In Shadowlands, casual and solo players are intentionally kept at lower power levels than they have ever been at. Game developers think that it is good to inject elitism into the game, but it is clearly costing them millions of subs.
Super-casual characters are currently stuck in the 200s or 210s iLvl range unless they have been playing Korthia like a full-time job. They are more than one patch behind in power levels.
All that game developers have to do is add competitive gear drops to Torghast, then I would rest my case. It is asinine that Torghast is designed like a dungeon, but it does not offer gear drops because you can solo it.