Mists of Pandaria discussion

[Lissa]

Your comments show you obviously don't understand. The point is to watch the trends, not the number of subscribers, but the trends of subscribers. Hell, throw in Legacy as another one to look at, it was the "King" until about halfway through Vanilla with over 3 Million subscribers, but it too followed the trend, after 5 to 6 years, it started losing subscribers. The biggest thing to take away is this: the loss rate that WoW is seeing is far higher than the loss rate seen by those other MMOs, those other MMOs didn't loss 8% of their subscriber base in 6 months after their peak. Sheer numbers is not a useful statistic here, percentages and loss rates is a better thing to look at and WoW is simply losing its subscribers faster than previous MMOs that peaked.

Leaving aside the obvious disagreement with the whole setup (WoW is just an other MMO, rates are the key to understanding), let's look at the argument.

You claim that MMOs go through 5-6 year life cycles, then start to lose subscribers. This is (per your argument) our base rate, our expected result. WoW gained subscribers until 2009, stayed steady at 11.5-12 million, at then declined slightly. So, in other words, WoW is a normal MMO. No need to invoke some special "B team failure," it's just what we expect from games as they get old.

But what about rates of loss, you say? Well, let's look at Lineage*, which (you say) is a good comparison. Lineage peaked at about 3 million in 2002, and began its decline in 2004. By 2005, it was down to 2 million, a loss of 33%. By mid-2006, it was down another 20% to 1.5 million. By 2007, 1 million. That's three times as fast as WoW is declining. Of course, they were competing against themselves, Lineage 2 having entered the market.

When Everquest was beaten by WoW, it lost almost half its player base in a single year - and that includes EQ2. Ultima Online lost over 20% of its player base between 2004 and 2005. Final Fantasy XII lost 33% of its subscribers, 2009-2010. Other major competitors, like Aion, Warhammer, and Age of Conan spiked and crashed within one year, losing 30-90% of their peak players. I don't know why you think 8% is unprecedented, but it's not even large. When most MMOs die, they die quickly.

So, I don't quite know how else to say this, except that you're wrong. If we don't use your logic, you're crazy to compare the most successful game ever by a factor of 4 with its competitors, as if they were the same. If we do use your logic, practically every game ever to exist contradicts your claims about WoW. Either way...

The other factor that needs considering is that the total MMO market has not grown since 2009. That means more direct competition, less dynamic competition. If WoW has only dropped 8%, that means new entrants have not yet taken much share from them. Remarkable, really, for a 7 year old game in a stagnant market.

(For data, I'm using mmodata.net.)

-Jester

* I assume by "Legacy" you mean "Lineage." If not, I'm not sure what game you mean.

I was referring to Lineage. However, every single game you just noted lost it's subscribers when? Every single one was up against WoW coming into the market and I'm sure you can see those subscribers that left most of those MMOs went to WoW. What is WoW competing against that would have caused it to lose 8% of it's subscribers in 6 months? Look at your statistics, when is the drop occuring with all of those MMOs and what was available? Each one of the successful MMOs (UO, Lineage, EQ) all lost subscribers when WoW came out. And your own statistics shows that WoW was fairly constant from 2009 to late 2011 because the market was stagnant. And at present, the market is still stagnant, yet WoW has lost 8% of it's subscribers in 6 months where as all those other MMOs lost them when the 800lb gorilla entered the room. WoW has no 800lb gorilla to go against and is losing people at a hefty rate.