Financial Wizards Call World of Warcraft Activision's "Achilles' Heel"

[Aeshi]

Of course what everybody seems to forget is that even Achilles' Heel (his weak spot) had to be shot with Hydra-venom*-tipped-arrows before he died.

*You know Hydra Venom? The stuff that was potent enough to instantly kill Hercules (the son of a god) on simple contact with his skin?

 

[ElPatron]

A person can play GW2 and still enjoy WoW at the same time, I know I will. Its just a nice alternative since you only have to Pay for GW2 once and be able to enjoy all the main content. Yes they have a micro transaction store, but it's mostly optional.

I wouldn't have enough free time, which probably would make me stop renewing my subscription to wow.

I don't think they know the meaning of the words achilles' heel.
WOW is Blizzard's strength, so the exact opposite thing.

Let me make an analogy.

One of the advantages of the Metal Gear REX is that it's radome allows the pilot to be protected all the time. However, REX is so dependent on it's electronics that if you destroy the radome, the pilot has to expose himself.

Financial wizards call being evil Darth Vader's "Achilles' Heel."

I thought that the whole point of Star Wars was if you gave in to the Dark Side, you'd become weak without even realizing it.

 

[DaWaffledude]

Financial wizards call being evil Darth Vader's "Achilles' Heel."

I thought that the whole point of Star Wars was if you gave in to the Dark Side, you'd become weak without even realizing it.

You would be amazed how many fans don't get that.

 

[Strazdas]

I don't think Guild Wars 2 is a WoW killer per say, but it certainly will hurt WoW's subscriptions.

League of Legends was a wow killer. It took it over and instituted itself as the most popular MMO in the world.


s for the revenue, well its obviuos if you have a massive game with subscription model (which is pretty much the msot standaratized revenue factory) you will have its revenue as massive part compared to other projects. That does not mean other projects are not prfitable though. Then again, who wouldnt liek to see activision go down?

Even capcha agrees with me: by and large

Whoa, whoa. I thought they were profiting massively from yearly Call of Duty installments?

Correct, but even CoD doesn't rank up to WoW when it comes to shitting cash. ?13,- x 9 million x 12 months equals a lot of yearly revenue.

(Disclaimer: lazy and factually incorrect maths. Bite me.)

actually it kinda does. COD comes out pretty much every year. COD sells for 60 dollars. COD is bought by over 10 million people every time. So thats over 600 million a year. WOW revenue will be (by your calculations) 1404 million, so yeah, COD is almost half of WOW and is kinda important.

 

[veloper]

I don't think they know the meaning of the words achilles' heel.
WOW is Blizzard's strength, so the exact opposite thing.

Let me make an analogy.

One of the advantages of the Metal Gear REX is that it's radome allows the pilot to be protected all the time. However, REX is so dependent on it's electronics that if you destroy the radome, the pilot has to expose himself.

The problem with that anology is that destroying the vulnerable sensors on REX with a simple stinger isn't too hard.
Competitors have blown hundreds of millions of dollars on competing MMOs and have all failed, each time making only temporary dents in the WOW subscriber base at best.
WOW will simply run it's course regardless of what any competitor may try and slowly die of old age. There's simply no room for another big contender until that happens.

WOW aging doesn't have to spell the end of Blizzard's dominance. They didn't just get lucky, they also got the MMO formula down pat and put more effort in to balancing the game than anyone else.

If they have any sense, they will link the Titan project or whatever their WOW2 may be called, to WOW and get (former) WOW-subscibers on board again.
One way to do that would be to allow players to import and convert their old WOW chars to their WOW2 equivalents. For this the power curve in WOW2 would be much inflated ofcourse, so oldhands don't start too high.

 

[ElPatron]

The problem with that anology is that destroying the vulnerable sensors on REX with a simple stinger isn't too hard.
Competitors have blown hundreds of millions of dollars on competing MMOs and have all failed, each time making only temporary dents in the WOW subscriber base at best.

I agree that WOW simply won't die no matter how many silver bullets you throw at it, but now it's just age taking it's toll. Letting the radome rust.

 

[Monsterfurby]

Why are people getting so bloody passionate about this? They neither made a statement about the quality of WoW or the intellect of its players, nor about anything alse that matters or would warrant getting riled up about.

From a factual perspective, AB should just see this as a warning - WoW, like every project, won't last forever. It's already way in cash cow [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth-share_matrix] territory, and eventually will become a less profitable "dog". AB should have shifted their focus to be supported by other sources of income when that happens. Else, it might turn out to be very painful for their investors.