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Blizzard Unfazed by Conan, Warhammer
Blizzard president Mike Morhaime wasn't shy in calling out competing products during a Wednesday earnings call, as he pointed out how players may leave World of Warcraft for other MMOs, but they often come right back.
"Age of Conan launched toward the end of the June quarter, and Warhammer Online came out in mid-September," he pointed out.
"To date, 68 percent of the players who listed Age of Conan as their reason for cancellation, and 46 percent of players who listed Warhammer as their reason for cancellation have reactivated their subscriptions to World of Warcraft."
Blizzard announced last week that the worldwide player base for WoW has exceeded 11 million players. With the expansion, Wrath of the Lich King coming in November, Blizzard expects more players to reactivate their accounts, and new ones to join the fray.
Wrath of the Lich King is the top pre-order on Amazon.com for all videogames, and Wal-Mart told Blizzard pre-orders were very strong on Wal-Mart.com.
The game is still going strong despite originally launching in 2004. The first expansion, The Burning Crusade, launched in January 2007 and sold nearly 2.4 million copies in its first 24 hours.
During the quarter, WoW managed to accumulate 1.5 million more players than the same time last year.
Blizzard also launched the game in Russia and Latin America during the third fiscal quarter.
The company expects to exceed $1 billion in revenue this year for the second year in the row.
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
at this point, the only thing that could phase World of Warcraft is a suicide bombing of their servers.
Or another gnome sit-in...
I would imagine these good numbers have WOTLK and only WOTLK to thank.
Absurd numbers of people are interested in playing the new areas, skills, and Death knight class.
Still, I quit after a rather short time because every tweak, every alteration to the game mechanics was for the betterment of multiplayer and to the detriment of single-player. And from what I've heard, the newest update continues that trend.
I have a couple of friends who worshiped daily at the altar of WoW for years, and they're so pissed about the recent changes, they quit in protest.
Totally anecdotal, but what if WoW sees a massive exodus after the furor over WOTLK dies down?
I supppose Blizzard has to respond to any concerns investors may have with competitive products, but it's pretty unseemly willy-waving from a company that's in the undisputed top slot and has the cash to buy a developing country and rename it 'Azeroth'.
Regarding 'grindiness' though, I'd say WAR has the least grind of all the major MMOs. Instead, It's focus is on occupying your time with RvR. Ironically, this focus could hurt it the most in the long-term. Personally, I think it will struggle if it can't offer something meaningful to players for getting involved in RvR and maintain the high pop levels required for it on all the servers.
Once they enter the pointless grinding stages of those other MMOs, people might find that grind is universally the same on all games. Then they will of course come back to WoW, because it's the biggest game and they already invested too much time there. Grind away your life in WoW and you can at least feed yourself the lie that you are a hero to 10 million players by owning whatever piece of loot. Grind away your life in Tabula Rasa and you will quickly realize how pointless it is what you are doing.
Outside of that obsessive competitive grinding, most MMOs aren't really good games by any standard. If they had not that MMO feature to blind you, they would be pretty mediocre compared to other games of their genre.