Mists of Pandaria discussion

[Lissa]

Aion has been around for longer than WoW's decline. WoW was still on a slight increase when Aion came into the picture. And if anything, Aion more likely has affected FF12 and 14 more than WoW where those two (FF12 and 14) had a primarily Asian subscriber base. Also, did you bother to note that Aion has lost over 1 million subs since it's peak in late 2009/early 2010?

We agree players are leaving the market. The overall numbers are down by about a million. But the entrance of Rift into the market is increasing, not decreasing the total picture, because it had zero players prior to 2011. It is "down" relative to its peak, but still a net gain of half a million players that had to come from somewhere. Most weren't from outside the MMO market, because the market has shrunk by a million. Hence, WoW looks to be a prime candidate.

Aion's decline from 4 to 3 million does not necessarily mean WoW players aren't moving to it. It could be (for instance) that Aion players are leaving the market entirely, but WoW players are giving Aion a try. There are plenty of permutations, and these subscription figures are just aggregates - they don't show us inter-game flows.

Regardless, this is all beside the big point, which is that WoW is not experiencing any historically unprecedented decline. Not in speed, not in scale, not even in absolute numbers. If people are leaving, that's to be expected, because the game is a full seven years old. What is remarkable is not the speed of their departure, which is not yet very impressive, but rather the length of their endurance. What other 7 year old game has remained on top of its genre? Has that ever happened? Even once?

I think you're not looking at the data in the proper light. You throw out the data points, then failed to properly analyze those data points trying to point that when various MMOs lost people, it was after their peak by more than two years.

Hunh? Show me where, because I'm starting to wonder if you're looking at the data at all... most MMOs have big declines very quickly after their peaks, because most MMOs are flash-in-the-pan games that fail to compete with WoW. Warhammer. Age of Conan. Rift. Lord of the Rings. Even Aion, although even after peaking and falling, it's still the 2nd largest ever. Even longer-running games, like EQ, Lineage, Final Fantasy XI and Ultima Online had large, single-year drops of over 20%, directly from their top "plateau" levels.

So, what you're saying fits... no games. Can you name me even a single game that bled to death, a few % at a time, over multiple years? I can't. Lineage is the closest, and we've already been over those numbers.

There's a huge difference in losing 30% two years after you peak because another MMO has entered the market that has pulled people away with definite game play that was better at the time and losing 8% of your subscribers in 6 months after a new expansion with no real competition.

You keep saying "no real competition." This is manifestly false. The market is nearly as large as it has ever been. MMOs compete.

Next week, we'll get to see the 3rd quarter results for Activision-Blizzard and we'll see what the subscriber loss looks like then (but looking at how Blizzard was reacting during Blizzcon, it's going to be bad).

We'll see what happens. But I'll tell you this: No matter how bad it is, it's going to still be a historically unprecedented number for a 7 year old MMO.

-Jester

Really Jester, did you at all bother to actually look and analyze the data you pulled up off of MMO.net?

Here's the 1 Million+ subscribers ranging from 1998 to mid-year 2011



Here's the 150k+ to 1 MIllion subs ranging from 1998 to mid-year 2011



Now, sit down and actually analyze the data.

Every single MMO out there with 150k+ subscribers has lost subs in 2011 except Eve and Dofus. And the number of gained subscribers in both Eve and Dofus do not account for the loss of subs in Aion nor WoW (and Rift is losing subs, not gaining them). If WoW was losing subs because of competition, why have they lost so many (almost 1 Million) in the 6 months following the release of Cataclysm if it were really due to competition?

Come on Jester, I know you can analyze way better than you have been in this post so far. There is no good reason to see why WoW has lost 800k subscribers when every MMO out there has been losing subs since right around June of this year with the exceptions of Eve and Dofus (which don't account for those lost subs, and again, look at Rifts, it jumped to 500k at it's launch or shortly after, but has already lost 100k before June hit).

Look at the data again Jester, look at how Blizzard reacted at Blizzcon, they're losing subs and they have no real competition to blame for those losses.