Only 30 Percent of WoW Players Get Past Level 10

[duckfi8]

I made it to 80 twice, I got bored of playing and haven't played in two months. But I made countless alts that I got to around level 20 then didn't feel like playing them anymore.

 

[oneplus999]

Most trial accounts are created by gold sellers who usually make up a name like lfgdg and then either:
1) send tells to characters in high level zones refering them to a website until such time that they are reported for spam and banned or

False, trial accounts are useless for this purpose because they do not have the ability to sent tells to random people, only mutual friends.

When you get a random tell, it's from a hacked account.

 

[RandV80]

Sadly, I wouldn't put it past the average person to lose interest/fail at getting to level 10 in wow. Not that it's hard, just...takes time (Not 3 hours though..).

I gotta laugh at these sorts of opinions. If they didn't like it, it must be because they're not good at it!

While I'm a long time fan of single player RPG's, and did get into a MMMORPG 10 years ago for over a year, WoW never appealed to me but I did decide to humour it at one point and give it a try. First of all let me say, it is my opinion that the main appeal of a MMORPG over a more tightly crafted singe player RPG is the Massively Multiplayer part. It's an RPG world filled with real people to interact with, rather than a whole bunch of NPC's with limited scripts.

So when you start a trial and log onto WoW? It's pretty much dead. There's a few people hanging around, but most are likely long time players starting a new character that just want to rush through this part. If there is anyone new like yourself you certainly can't tell them a part. And add to that, you don't need to interact with anyone at the start, it's easy enough that you can solo the whole thing. As for the starting location, you're dropped off in a small town with little to none story background, with a selection of fetch quests to complete and a few skills to learn and equipment to buy. It's a little challenging at first, but soon enough you gained a few levels and bought some better equipment, and can easily handle the local critters.

Eventually you've complete all the quests, leveled up, bought the new armour, got all the skills, and are direct to move onto the next town so goodbye to this place and off we go. What do you find? Same as before, the town seems to have more people but no one's interacting, and no overall story or background. There's new fetch quests to be had, new skills to learn, and new equipment to buy. When you head out into the field, the critters have been deliberately strengthened to give the same challenge as when you started the first zone, that can be overcome if you're careful and will eventually become easy as you clear the zone.

For me, it was at this point that I started asking so how long do I have to keep this carrot on a stick act going before the game becomes interesting? I've never really been able to get a straight answer out of a WoW player because they prefer to refer to the time it takes by the in game 'days', rather than something simple like 'hours' that normal people use. I get the impression though that the time and money it's going to take me to grind through the beginning of the game to get to the 'good part', I could've bought and completed several single player games sitting on my queue.

So as a non WoW player I can say I gave it a try and that's why I never got passed level 10. I have played Guild Wars, I tried the beta and got hooked on it's tactical combat, but with WoW I just couldn't bring myself to grind through the beginning following that ever elusive carrot on a stick. I can admit that 10 years ago I could've gotten into it, but once you're out of mom's basement/college and living on your own time is far too limited. And I know I'm not the only one with this opinion, and it's nothing for the hardcore WoW to get offended about that we didn't similarly fall for one of your favourite pastimes in life.

 

[Unusual_Bulge]

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

Not a recent annual report, but quarterly data for Activision Blizzard is at http://investor.activision.com/reports.cfm

Just taking a quick look at the most recent quarter, probably the sort of stuff you're after is on page 5. Quarterly revenue from subscriptions (which WoW is likely a sizeable chunk of) is $292m, with the cost of running the MMORPG listed as $55m.

This is a very simplistic glance though, and likely off the mark by some way (particularly on the revenue side). I haven't taken the time to find out if the figures are clarified later in the report, but I'd guess there will be something in there. Also, these figures are unaudited, so there's no saying they're spot on!

 

[Starke]

In fact, I can say that 70% of WoW players can't stand playing three hours of Wow.

I'd like to see a source for that assertion.

There's one here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.174642-Only-30-Percent-of-WoW-Players-Get-Past-Level-10#4922111

LOL YOU SO CLEVER.

Pity you couldn't put that great intellect into reading comprehension, specifically:

"Currently, only about 30 percent of our trial players make it past this threshold. So anything we can do to improve the new player experience is a huge opportunity for us."

I know, I know. Reading is hard

Aww. You really love me?

Anyway, yes, that is what that statistic is basically saying. 30% of players who try to play the game continue playing to level 10.[Footnote]Which we're operationalizing as 3 hours in. In defense of your argument, I never played WoW, so I don't know if that number is genuinly accurate. Also in the interests of fairness I kinda don't care if it is three hours or not. The time to reach level 10 only slightly tweaks the original statement[/Footnote]

Operating off that statistic the inverse is true: 70% of new trial accounts stop before they reach level 10.

If you operationalize percent of trial accounts as distinct players.[footnote]I know this is ignoring gold farmers.[/footnote] Then the statistic holds up. 70% of prospective WoW players can't stand playing the game for three hours.

 

[MasTerHacK]

The first time I played it took me about an hour to get to lvl 10. I stopped playing because I didn't find the game interesting, but still, those numbers are pretty bad for Blizzard. Ah, well.

 

[londelen]

Their stats are skewed by the spambots.

 

[Xanadu84]

30% is really, really high. I would have expected it to be much less. This is talking about people who are on trial accounts, not people who buy the whole game. And given WoWs size, every person and there dog has likely at least played the trial version. A few people have likely played the trial a few times. How many trial accounts do gold spammers go through? How many people play the trial version to level 6, then go out and buy the full version? How many are not potential new customers, but give the trial a shot just to be able to say that they gave it a chance? How many people bypass the trial all together, and just buy the game after trying it out on a friends account?

As for it stopping growing...well, at a certain point, you have exhausted your customer base. This isn't such a big deal for an MMO. Your base will likely buy the expansion, and they will give you money every month. And after you make that content, it's a lot easier to just keep that content running from month to month. If its stopped growing, I really don't think that's a cause for concern. It's still gargantuan, and maintaining that size is the truly titanic task.

 

[BaldursBananaSoap]

Yeah I played the trial until level seventeen just yesterday. It felt like a complete chore and I figured that if it takes this long to get to the fun stuff (raiding dungeons for hours on end or something) its just not worth it. Plus the combat was utter piss. I really don't see the appeal in this game other than being in a world with other players.

 

[Amnestic]

*snip*

I even bolded it for you.

Trial players.

Some people don't try the trial before buying the game. I didn't. My brother didn't. My friends didn't, either because of trust in Blizzard's continued quality games or because we've played it on a friend's account beforehand and liked what we got.

 

[DirgeNovak]

I got to level 14, got bored and replayed KotOR instead. Now my month is over and there's no way I'm paying 15 bucks to play for another week before getting bored again.

 

[Starke]

In the interests of fairness, and because I didn't see this post before replying, here you go. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98245-Only-30-Percent-of-WoW-Players-Get-Past-Level-10]

70% of trial players =/= 70% of WoW players.

Try again.

*snip*

I even bolded it for you.

Trial players.

Some people don't try the trial before buying the game. I didn't. My brother didn't. My friends didn't, either because of trust in Blizzard's continued quality games or because we've played it on a friend's account beforehand and liked what we got.

Did not realize that the WoW trial was a different game. I appologize. Here, all this time, I assumed those $1.99 disks they were selling were a taste of the same game. But now that you've explained this to me so articulatly, I so apparent. All my life up to this moment is a waste.

Unless you're trying to say that WoW players are some different speicies, that you can only devolve to after you pay $40 to sell your soul to Blizzard. Given the "WoW players" I've seen elsewhere on the internet, there's some legitimacy to that claim I guess.

EDIT: anyway, let's nip this in the bud now. We operationalize "WoW players" as anyone who has played WoW. That includes trial players. The original poster's comment stands.

 

[In Limbo]

People have already pointed out that this is for trial accounts; the headline and early information are misleading. Presumably he was saying that is the percentage of players who make it past level 10 before the trial expires (10 days). The quote isn't very specific about what they consider to be "sticking with the game for a long time." He could be referring to the number of trial players who subscribe, or the number who subscribe and maintain a subscription for X months.

But also: the 30 percent is not retention rate. Retention rate would refer to the percentage of people who have ever subscribed that are still subscribed, or perhaps the percentage who retain their subscription for a set period of time. From the quote, it's not even conversion rate (trial to sub). He's saying about 30% of trial players are much more likely to stick with the game. There's no way to know from this what the actual conversion rate is; if "much more likely" means 60% of those that get past level 10 in the trial subscribe vs. 10% of those who don't pass that threshold subscribing, that would come out to a conversion rate of 25% ((60% of 30% = 18%) + (10% of 70% = 7%)). But we have no idea what those actual numbers are from the quote.

True. The numbers are nonsense. Media bait, probably. It's certainly worked here.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I don't remember when I quit, but I know it was around the 10 area. I think this just shows that MMORPGS just aren't for everyone, like every other genre of gaming.

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

Well it took me 3 non-stop days to download World of Warcraft and update it. Which incidentally led to my last PC's death. So I got 7 days of trial instead of 10. I played as Undead, and discovered that really....these starter places are completely devoid of characters.....I wandered for a day or two before I found another person. Mind you, I was on a PvP server because it had less people on at the time so I can only assume people were up in the frozen north teabagging corpses.

 

[DownOnTheUpside]

It may seem low, but i'd like to see numbers on how many other games keep players on there trial after the same Threshold.

The only other MMO I can think of that has been around as long as WoW and is still growing is EVE, which will have nowhere near 30%, though it kinda doesn't work on the leveling system, but I doubt 30% of trials get picked up, what with the notorious learning curve.

This better shows the curve.

 

[Starke]

People have already pointed out that this is for trial accounts; the headline and early information are misleading. Presumably he was saying that is the percentage of players who make it past level 10 before the trial expires (10 days). The quote isn't very specific about what they consider to be "sticking with the game for a long time." He could be referring to the number of trial players who subscribe, or the number who subscribe and maintain a subscription for X months.

But also: the 30 percent is not retention rate. Retention rate would refer to the percentage of people who have ever subscribed that are still subscribed, or perhaps the percentage who retain their subscription for a set period of time. From the quote, it's not even conversion rate (trial to sub). He's saying about 30% of trial players are much more likely to stick with the game. There's no way to know from this what the actual conversion rate is; if "much more likely" means 60% of those that get past level 10 in the trial subscribe vs. 10% of those who don't pass that threshold subscribing, that would come out to a conversion rate of 25% ((60% of 30% = 18%) + (10% of 70% = 7%)). But we have no idea what those actual numbers are from the quote.

True. The numbers are nonsense. Media bait, probably. It's certainly worked here.

Media bait or fanboy bait? I mean the latter has worked here pretty well. Just look at the posters who are trying to tear down Bandit's gag line. They're asking for f'ing external citations for what this article just said.

In fact, I can say that 70% of WoW players can't stand playing three hours of Wow.

Quoted in case Bandit would like to respond, or, you know, know that I'm quoting him.

EDIT: SharedProfit, spitballing the overall retention rate based on the available posts in the OP, they come out someplace around 33.5 million accounts total. 11.5 active at present. 6 if we accept that 5.5 of those accounts are gone until China decides what to do with WoW. At 6 it's about 15%, at 11.5 it's about %30, but, for retention both those numbers sound unreasonably high.

 

[KeyMaster45]

*snip*

A large majority of that wasn't directed at you actually, it was really only the first paragraph.

To each his own I suppose, I found the first 10 levels fun when I first started the game but once the initial excitement wore off I started to look at it from a design perspective, since your original post seemed like a statement about the design of the starting areas that's what I organized my post around.

No offense was meant I assure you, I'm a happy paying customer of WoW for 4 years running now.

 

[Abedeus]

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

Misinterpretation.

It only takes most people ten minutes to figure out they don't like mmorpgs.

I love MMORPGs. Those with quests, like Guild Wars or City of Heroes/Villains. Also those with grind, like Ragnarok Online. I like those with PvE, like Champions Online. I also like those with PvP, like WAR.

Warcraft? I couldn't swallow. Too easy, to shallow, and to play the actual end-game stuff with other people (not like we can solo dungeons...) I must buy all three games, and level to 80 ASAP. Doesn't seem like much fun.