Network now...NEWS
WoW Will Add 1M In 12 Months - Analyst
World of Warcraft will add another big chunk of subscribers on top of its 10.9 million strong player base thanks to the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, one analyst reckons.
"We expect a net addition of ~1 million new subscribers to World of Warcraft over the next 12 months, driven in part by the launch of the expansion pack, as well as by ongoing growth of the game in China," said Lazard Capital Markets' Colin Sebastian in a Tuesday research note.
Wrath of the Lich King launches November 13.
He reiterated his "buy" rating for Activision Blizzard stock following last weekend's well-attended BlizzCon. Sebastian said around 20,000 fans showed up.
Sebastian added that there was "no shortage of enthusiasm" at the event for not only World of Warcraft, but also StarCraft II and Diablo III.
The analyst noted that EA and Mythic's recently-launched MMORPG Warhammer Online is off to a strong start, with 750,000 subscribers.
But that game's success is expected to have little effect on the WoW juggernaut.
"We do not expect [Warhammer Online to have] a significant negative impact in the near-term on World of Warcraft — and note that preorders of the upcoming [WoW] expansion pack rank as one of the best selling games on Amazon.com and other retail websites," Sebastian said.
He added, "...our conversations at BlizzCon suggest limited interest in [Warhammer Online] among core WoW users."
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. In addition to playing the game itself and conversing on discussion forums provided by Blizzard, World of Warcraft players often participate in the virtual community in creative ways, including fan artwork and comic strip style storytelling. Another popular phenomenon in the community are machinima videos such as the one starring a player named Leeroy Jenkins, showing him and his guild in a staged comedic encounter.
---------------------
Lonet
WOW Gold
Jeez its not exactly rocket science on the analysts part, you don't have to be clairvoyant to say an extra 1m players of WoW is expected especially when China is a massive growing market which favours MMO's and an expansion where you go up against Warcraft III most notable villan. Its what happens after Wotlk which interests me, where do Blizz take a massively successful MMO which will now have features all the warcraft characters and killed many of them off.
On the subject of WAR it is like early WOW, it still needs to Iron out alot of the issues and add some features in but Mythic seem to be going the right way with it. In six months i suspect many people (not however hardcore WoW fans willing to pay 100$ to attend an event as the author surmises) will have played Wrath to death, realised PvE in the long run is only suited to top end guilds/players and got bored so moved to something new. WAR may be able to snare quite a few of those bored WoW players with it's PvP empathsis or other things will come out - maybe even a new Blizzard MMO?
This article is jokes and would fool a lot of people if they didn't read this carefully. He says he doesnt expect Warhammer to pull off any WoW subscribers based on blizzcon attendees ? Um 20,000 people who are hardcore into WoW to the point of dressing up as their avatars hardly count as a fair survey of the general WoW population. The other thing they haven't noted is the fact that subscription in north america is going down based on the insanity of whats going on in WoW and many people are becoming sick of WoW as it's not bringing anything inovative to the table and is lavishing in its own success to the point of being smug to its own subscribers. If the game continues to grow itll only be in China where it wasnt even released that long ago. But they pay much lower subscription costs than NA, paying around 6 cents US per hours played which is basically almost half of what a NA subscriber would pay if he played 40 hours a week (wtf). I'm glad Warhammer is out even though I don't own it, it gives WoW some competition, especially in the market where they should be working the hardest (North America).
Your post would fool a lot of people too if they were idiots - which I guess you are. 6 cents an hour sounds right, but the average monthly wage there is only about $150 USD. According to purchasing power parity, that would be equivalent to about 25 cents here, so it'd only be cheaper if you played less than 15 hours a week.
Yes, obviously you haven't played WAR. Because it's the same thing as WOW to a point of silliness. Whichever way MMORPG-players go, they end up with gaming that has been the same for almost 4 years with no major innovations. None of the games are bad, but they characterize the genre perfectly: stagnation.
wow sux balls Warhammer FTW!