NPD Reveals World of Warcraft's Lifetime Sales in the US

[Amnestic]

quotesnip

Yes but many people have more than one account, how can they be certain that every account is one person?
Regardless i understand, if the western society cannot embrace the Eastern design then there will be chaos.
All i know is that Aion looks decent and the PvP is waaaay more balanced than WoW's current PvP situation.

That argument works both ways. How do you know Aion doesn't have multiboxers/people with more than one active account as well?

and PvP in WoW has, and always will be a minigame. If you think it'll ever be balanced stop deluding yourself. Not while both PvE and PvP are still so linked together like a person and their cancer tumour (with Raiding being the person and PvP being the cancer, in this simile)

 

[Zeldadudes]

You are all forgetting that there are only 5mlns of players left after Chinese servers were turned off.

So it was never more than 5000000x$15, as the Chinese company hosting WoW in Asia was taking about 80% or more of the cash, giving only a small amount of profits to Blizzard.

I have yet to see a single reputable source on the matter. Just some guy pulling numbers out of his ass on a blog, as far as I can tell.

I'm merely looking at Statistics gentlemen.
I've looked at how many Korean people are currently PLAYING Aion, its a total of 3 and a half million +. Whereas WoW has 11 million subscribers, not players. Aion hasn't even been released in Europe yet.
Yes i am dreaming but i Aion will make a dent in WoWs community base, i've already convinced half of my ex-WoW guild
I'm not saying you guys are not right though, pessimistic.

Subscribers = players. There's no difference.

Also, keep in mind that Aion is a NCSoft RPG, and that Korean gamers have much different tastes than Western ones. Lineage and Lineage II were huge in Asia, not so much in the West.

Yes but many people have more than one account, how can they be certain that every account is one person?
Regardless i understand, if the western society cannot embrace the Eastern design then there will be chaos.
All i know is that Aion looks decent and the PvP is waaaay more balanced than WoW's current PvP situation.

Because the name and credit card data would be the same? And the percentage of players with more than one account is actually pretty small.

PvP only appears balanced because gamers haven't had time to break it yet

Indeed, you both are right.

All i can do is hope......................................

 

[skeanthu]

I hope they are pouring, say 15%, back into skunkworks development. Get the next-gen games going guys!

 

[Eric the Orange]

Well Mario and Wii sports have higher numbers, but I don't count them because they come packaged with there systems. but 3rd highest sales with 31.38m is the original Pokemon games. WoW ranks 26th.

Of coarse with it's monthly fee it's probably made more money.

 

[Lizmichi]

I would have to agree, yes Aions graphics are better than wows and they have some good ideas like the in flight combat; however its far more complex than wow and not in a good way. I like to pick and play my class when I start the game, not have to go through 10 lvls then pick your true class. Its pointless and you dont learn your class for the first 10 lvls which is when players get to know that game. Its like dating someone then 10 days later you pick between two people that are just like that first person you saw the days before. You have to get to know them again and Im not one for repetitiveness.
Also, the quests are easy as hell and they have a build in quest helper; mind you this coming from someone that never will use a quest helper for wow or any other MMO. I just dont see the point of having something tell you where to go for a quest when it gives you a basic idea. Its part of the fun is figuring out where to go and what to do. Im not saying quest helper is bad, I just like more of a challenge in a game Im paying a monthly fee for. If I wanted something easy Id buy some kids game or play checkers with a dumb blind chimp.
One other thing that pisses me off ago Aion is you buy the game then have to pay for a month of game play right after that. WoW at least gives you a free month when you buy classic wow and if you did what I did and start with a 10 day trail then use your free month you have 40 free days. That pays for classic wow in and of its self. Im starting to really regret preordering Aion. I think Ill just stay on WoW. There goes $50. All and all Aions looking more like a copy and paste of Guild Wars that copied bits of wow just so it could say Hey Im pretty and so not like guild wars because I copied wow too. Yay! Hell this is just my opioin after being a long time wow player and being in Aion beta. If Im wrong *shrugs* oh well.

 

[SilentHunter7]

Woooooooot I am one of the subscribers to WoW ! I enjoy every second of the game, excellent but I got to say a bit pricey !

How is 15 a month pricey? Average gamer buying a game per month spends 60.

I always hated this argument. Believe it or not, some WoW players do actually like to play other games from time to time. So it would be more like $75 a month for these people.

 

[hypothetical fact]

Woooooooot I am one of the subscribers to WoW ! I enjoy every second of the game, excellent but I got to say a bit pricey !

How is 15 a month pricey? Average gamer buying a game per month spends 60.

I always hated this argument. Believe it or not, some WoW players do actually like to play other games from time to time. So it would be more like $75 a month for these people.

And the gamers that don't just play sham-WOW actually get some variety for their dollar.

 

[Spleenbag]

I'd do the math, except that obviously it hasn't had 14 million subscribers from the get-go. I'll do it with what I think are reasonable figures:

$258 million in boxed sales + $180/year(3 million) + $180(6m) + $180(10m) + $180(12m) + $120(14.5m) [the $120 is for 2/3 of this year] = 258m + 540m + 1080m + 1800m + 2160m + 1680m =

$7,518,000,000 USD. Holy shit. Obviously, that's just pure money, not factoring in expenses for running the game and such, and my figures are guesses with a couple minutes of Googling only, but I'd bet money that I'm not terribly far off (as in, definitely in the billions without factoring expenses).

P.S. And that's just US sales of the boxed game (although it's average world figures for the subscription fees). Mind = blown, even though my math is probably shit.

 

[clericwithnolife31]

proud owner of a talking murloc doll.

 

[jmdin83]

the thing is, that as a business, they also divide their employees into teams for efficiency, thus they have teams for level design, game mechanics design, art, etc. for each project they have going on. the problem here is that they ignore the art department altogether it seems, when you could just pay 2-3 artists per patch to come up with just 1-2 new ideas for each set of Tier gear. not that hard.