Only 30 Percent of WoW Players Get Past Level 10

[C_sector]

Warcraft: Wrath of The Lich King??? hmmmmmm

More like

ShitCraft: Wrath of the ***** King!!!

I'm sorry i just hate the idea of wasting away in a second life.

 

[Ohlookit'sMatty]

Its not like they really have anything to worry about?! Most of the people that play the game now will stick with it purely cos how enjoy the game is // Their only problem is that 90% of the fun that happens ingame is all endgame content and unless you have a guild that will help you lvl, which is also enjoy able at times, gettin to lvl80 and the endgame content can take the average person far to long, longer than they have time to spend play WoW when there is other games out there that can be finished in 15-20hours

But 11.5million players is nothin to be sneezed at and Im sure that with the new expansion more old players will be comin back and plenty of new ones will join in

-M

 

[MaltesePigeon]

I recently got my first character to 80 and I never played any instances. No one else wanted to. Most of them had lvl 80s already and were leveling an alt. The people who did play the instances had a lvl 80 running them through it. Which I didn't want to do because it seemed so cheap.

I think that this is what sends a lot of people running away from WoW. The quests you get in towns have next to nothing to do with the story. That changes in Lich King but that starts a lvl 68. So for 68 levels you are doing quests that are meaningless. Which isn't a good way to suck new players in. Especially when other players with their account bound armor are calling you a noob (yes I know I'm still one) and members of the other faction are ganking you while you are trying to do a meaningless quest.

Once I signed onto a "new player" realm hoping to find only low level people who might actually want to do the low level instances. Sadly there were a lot of lvl 80s. I just signed on to one now and typed /who 80. There are at least 49 level 80 characters on that "new player" realm (Maiev) right now.

Of course this is just my experience and in no way representative of all WoW players. But I really can understand why so many people don't stick with it.

Most of this changed with they released the instance tool, which is cross realm and lets you get instance groups together so much faster.

Interesting. I did not know this. It's only mentioned in the patch notes, it would have been nice if a big message popped up on the screen the first time I logged in after that patch. Since there are still people clogging the trade channel with lfg and lf1m messages, I never suspected it had changed.

Thanks, maybe I'll reroll.

 

[dasUnbekannte]

I'm sorry, but that's just hilarious. If they can't get folks passed level ten, they're doing something wrong. Dreadfully wrong.

Actually they're the best MMO on the market right now, all of the others are significantly worse.
WAR is slowly dying from a variety of issues, EVE has a steep learning curve... the high and fast burnout rate is just a trait of MMOs as a whole.

 

[Amnestic]

WAR is slowly dying from a variety of issues, EVE has a steep learning curve... that's the high and fast burnout rate is just a trait of MMOs as a whole.

Retried EVE recently since I was bored and decided to see what they'd changed up, I noted that the starter quests were a lot more streamlined and accessible to new players. It's still got a far, far steeper learning curve than WoW, but it's easier than it used to be.

 

[dasUnbekannte]

WAR is slowly dying from a variety of issues, EVE has a steep learning curve... that's the high and fast burnout rate is just a trait of MMOs as a whole.

Retried EVE recently since I was bored and decided to see what they'd changed up, I noted that the starter quests were a lot more streamlined and accessible to new players. It's still got a far, far steeper learning curve than WoW, but it's easier than it used to be.

I tried EVE for the first time, literally a month ago. And "more accessible" doesn't mean "accessible". I got bored after a few days because I would only log in to update my queue and then leave.
I have several issues with EVE.

 

[Insanum]

Well i got to level 46 before my stupid friends ruined the game for me.

THAT WAS MY BOW GUYS, WHY DID YOU ROLL NEED?!? YOUR A F*CKING PALADIN!?!?!

----

Although im properly Hooked on ST:O...

 

[Starke]

Well i got to level 46 before my stupid friends ruined the game for me.

THAT WAS MY BOW GUYS, WHY DID YOU ROLL NEED?!? YOUR A F*CKING PALADIN!?!?!

----

Although im properly Hooked on ST:O...

Me too... scary that...

 

[Starke]

It should probably be obvious that 11.5 million is the number of opened accounts for WoW. Accounts that are inactive, cancelled, banned or multiple accounts owned by the same person all figure into that number. As do accounts owned by real money traders.

I personally think that WoW may have lost player base recently. Judging by the media blitz for Lich King when there wasn't one for Burning Crusade. And going by the fact that many players I know, myself included, walked from the game in recent months. I can't confirm this, of course. But it makes sense to me.

However, they still own a majority of the MMO market, mainly due to a lack of real competition.

11.5 milling players, each paying $15 a month, plus the price of the game and expansion packs themselves (about $120). WoW will be fine.

As Sir John already mentioned, that isn't the real formula. The 11.5 million number is total accounts ever, so that's not how much they're actually making. It's sort of like that figure a while back where they boasted about how many boxes of product they'd moved, while neglecting to mention that they were including game card sales in those figures. That said, yeah they're fine. WoW isn't going anywhere for the forseeable future. Optimistically it's got 10 years of life left, and that's a hell of a long time, especially for an MMO, or ANY PC game really.

I can tell you that you and sir john are 100 percent wrong about the subscriptions. 11.5 is the number of active subs currently. Blizzard has made the precisely clear on several occations. Inactive, cancelled, and trial account are not counted at all. WoW alone was the source of 40% of activision's revenue this past quarter, as well. It's quite lucrative.

Granted, most of the money being made is going towards development of Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, their new IP, general upkeep and salaries, and Activision itself.

The more you know, I guess. My bad. I remembered a report from fuck if I know where a couple years ago that debunked their 11.5 figure. Though, I'll admit, I'm kinda floored that Activision is actually making money off anything else at the moment.

 

[acturisme]

Might it be that 60% of accounts are just gold farming? You know like in China.

 

[tetron]

Wait is it 30% of subscribed and trial players or 30% of trial players. Because their are tons of trial accounts made purely for selling gold, scamming, selling characters, etc. And none of these ever need to get past level 1 to do any of that.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

I find that way to hard to believe. Considering that the best gameplay occurs at the level 10+ range.

It's just kinda strange to me. If the statistics are true, then out of 11 million players, only 3 million make it past level 10.

 

[Asehujiko]

Instead of breaking out the "wow is dooooomed" signs again, i suggest you take a second to gander at their situation: They retained an equal amount of players despite having their main market cut off, the bad economy media scare, 75% of all gaming related prejudice directed at them, people holding out on buying the game before the next expansion and actishit's meddling. I'd say that they are doing really well in situations that would end many other companies.

 

[Hobo Joe]

Wow that's an odd statistic; probably true though - a lot of people struggle with the early levels, get frustrated and never play it again.

 

[Admiral Stukov]

WoW is seriously like crack

I used to play it....it was very hard to stop playing ill admit. XD

Oh yes, been there. I gave it more than four years prior to finally stop playing it.

 

[Nemu]

Not remotely surprising.

WoW needs to reinvent itself in order to pull new players in.

Also: WTB: Blizz deleting all of those old, never-going-to-be-played-again toons with muled names. Seriously, they need to do something like CoH/CoV does: hold toons for a limited time, then server-delete (or wotever it is that they technically do) them. If you choose to come back, your toon is still there, but you run the risk of your name being taken by someone who has been ACTIVELY playing.

 

[leviathanmisha]

While a 30 percent rate of retention may seem low, keep in mind these are for the trial accounts... the accounts that are not necessarily considered active, as they are not subscribed. If you think about it... 11.5 million accounts, and those only being roughly 30 percent of those who have given it a shot... That's still incredibly impressive, and in my opinion, makes it even more so.

Do I have to use a hammer to get it inside of people's head that WoW doesn't have 11,5 million accounts anymore? Not since they closed the Chinese servers?

There are more or less 6 millions of players in WoW.

Read the OP. Morhaime said the game still has 11.5 million. The game is facing troubles in China, but Morhaime confirmed it was still operational.

Re: The 30% statistic... I'm honestly surprised, though it IS just Trial accounts. But WoW is probably the most newbie-friendly MMOG on the market (short of games like FreeRealms), so I'd be curious to see how these numbers hold up against other MMOGs.

Not to mention that Rob Pardo said that the game's TOTAL lifetime subscribers were two to three times the current subscriber base, so that's 22-33 million not counting Trial accounts. The game's certainly not immune to churn.

What I wouldn't give to take a plain look at Blizzard's balance sheets. There'd be so much interesting information there.

I'd really hate to break a bubble...but I don't find WoW to be newbie-friendly at all...I watched a friend play it once and then dove back into PWI...that is a newbie-friendly game...

 

[Zeroresistence]

Its not that hard to level in that game got to 10 in thirty minutes

 

[ninjajoeman]

so most of the 11.5 millions the chinese, trial accounts, and gold farmers (wait i said chinese)...