Only 30 Percent of WoW Players Get Past Level 10

[Starke]

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.

My biggest issue with MMOs in general is that I'm an antisocial bastard in games, and in general that doesn't mesh with an MMO's play style. I'm loving the fleet actions in Star Trek Online, but, outside of that I always have done a lot of soloing in MMOs. The removal of the ability to solo in Guild Wars was one of the things that got me to stop playing it after the Korean Beta in October '04.

Wait what? Guild Wars is one of the most single-player-friendly MMO-esque game there is. You can go with henchmen and heroes from level 1 to 20, from Prophecies to Eye of the North. All areas, even some elite ones, can be accessed and cleared more or less with AI.

Yeah, early in the Betas it was, very solo friendly. After the Korean beta they ramped up the difficulty massivly. One of the examples I remember specifically was, there were a pair of monk bosses that you litterally could not kill without a highly coordinated party because they would nail you for substantial damage (so you needed a monk), they would heal any damage to each other faster than a single player could deal (you basically needed a ranger or warrior, with a mesmer messing with the other or an elemental nuking both.) And this was in one of the first post sear quests. I'm glad to hear they've toned it back down, but at launch it was a wreck. I stuck with it for a couple of months and left. Someone lured me back for a prerelease event with Nightfall, but it didn't really catch my fancy again.

Well, the point is - what stops growing, will eventually die. If they can't get new players, and they lose old ones... and it goes without saying that WoW might finally crumble under its own weight.

Crumble under its own weight? Oh come on, how do you imagine that happening? I'm sure the game costs loads to keep running, but even if it stops growing, hell even if it shrinks, Blizzard-Activision will still be raking in obscene amounts of money. It's still gonna take quite a few years till this baby is put to rest

When a game is adding constantly new high-end content, any new player who sees the game for the first time notices something:

Where are all the players? Off leveling to 80. You won't meet any teams before that. And you can't do the dungeons or end-game content from the basic version OR Burning Crusade. Basically, to enjoy WoW now you must all games, but you are buying the ones except for WotLK only for the classes. Equipment, skills, loot, dungeons, content - all useless. And WotLK will be a bit more useless after Cataclysm.

"you must have all the expansions"? Sorry, that was a little weird to parse.

 

[SyphonX]

Who cares? Seriously.

The game is ancient now, and it was ancient and flawed when it was released. I mean, 2010 people, I think we should be seeing more aside from 6 polygon cartoon characters and crippling grind-gameplay.

 

[Chaos Theory]

WoW is seriously like crack

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

 

[n00beffect]

Well,simple explanation: Only 30% of WoW players are big time,loser-ass nerds!

Others aren't as big nerds as they are.But ARE still nerds or geeks or losers, or whatever...

 

[Fearzone]

I'll believe the 11.5 million number when I see it in a formal earnings report. There has been no official mention of the WoW subscriber base, as the article says, since 2008--at least none I've seen in the quarterly reports. I'm guessing they lost some numbers for awhile and may have recovered them recently.

The 30% number isn't surprising at all. I can see many gamers casual and hard-core alike, who just want to see what the fuss is about (friends of mine included), so after spending half a bajillion hours downloading the demo then find themselves killing kobolds that die when you sneeze on them, with guidance from quest-givers but without any particular direction or grander objectives. It was confusing to me at first. Back then it took me the better part of an hour to figure out how to sell an item. If I were doing the free trial I might have easily said "meh"-- but I bought the game and weathered through it to the point, sometime after level 10, where I discovered the unique social aspect of it all and got hooked.

 

[Starke]

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.

Still not getting it? You said that 70% of WoW players can't stand playing WoW for more than 3 hours.

Actually, no I didn't that was Bandit.

This statement implies ALL WoW players.

Again, it was Bandit's comment. And yes, it does. When I rephrased it I added the word "potential" to the mix. But, life goes on.

You then gave the source for this outlandish statement as an article that said 30% of TRIAL WoW players make it past level 10.

It is a simple inversion of the provided statistic. If 30% continue to play, then 70% don't.

ALL WOW PLAYERS =/= WOW TRIAL PLAYERS

Do you see the difference now?

No, but maybe if you scream louder and use more condecending and or prejorative language I might. Better yet, don't. Calm down, go get some coffee, preferably decaf. Take a couple minutes, and decide if screaming at someone who was, by his own admission cracking jokes is really worth arguing with. I get that this is something you feel deeply about. But, that doesn't mean you have to come across as an ignorant lout online in its defense.

Right. You can operationalise that distinction, and I'd agree with you. The 30% number is only applied to the trial players though. What it implies is that 30% of people who get trial accounts go on to become paying customers, not that 30% of WoW players (which includes paying customers) get to level 10.

Are you being deliberately ignorant?

Amnestic, after a little thought, I appoligize. At least you were being mature about this and didn't deserve me snarking off at you the way I did.

 

[silver wolf009]

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.

that argument is all the way valid because i got a trial account and got to level 25.

 

[Premonition]

Such as realizing the game doesn't appeal to them? Realizing that MMORPGS are a waste of time? Thinking that it doesn't deserve a spot in their monthly bills? Getting bored when there's a quest that doesn't involve shooting someone in the head with a sniper? (I have to mock FPS fans yo make some balance).

I haven't played WoW myself, but I know some brief details from my friend who played until he got hacked. It's not appealing to me because I am more interested in a rich fulfilling game experience that works just as well alone as with friends. I think I might have been one of those who didn't get to level 10.

Edit: Also I am a firm believer in paying for games once and own them for all eternity.

Though its definitely not necessary to get to 80 by playing with friends.

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.

I'm just glad to get in to a meaningful conversation, even debate, with someone on the internet. Maybe I go a bit too far sometimes tho. Otherwise all I do is joke around

I know, its just stu-

Oh wait, over 10 million players. They must be doing something right - not that I can see why over 10 million people would want to play an MMO.

I doubt it'll die any time soon though.

1) in total
2) Over numerous years
3) plus you need to disregard the multibox accounts, new accounts because the old one got hacked, left for dead accounts and hell, even the pre-leveled accounts (from people that level characters in unique accounts for a living.) Because I highly doubt they'll stick around without admin wrath. (They will probably be added to the total though)

Still impressive, but after so many years, the cracks of yesteryear are as wide as the grand canyon now and people are starting to realize the real deal with this game. (And no, I'm not going to go deeper on that subject.)

 

[katsabas]

My, my. That's surprising. Seems like the 'Join 10 million players' thing has gone stale. Happy about this. Got tired of seeing WOW boxsets in book stores. You do not make any major difference when playing the game. Along with you, there are about 100 people in the same server, doing the same thing. What's special about that? Never understood why the game got so popular in the 1st place. WOW III was a lot better.

 

[James Raynor]

Also gold farmers are probably counted too.

 

[ma55ter_fett]

But...level 10 takes like three hours to get to. If that. That's probably slow actually.

The game is just boring. I tried giving it a shot 3 times already, the longest I could handle the game was 3 hours, got to level... 13 or 14, didn't bother to play anymore.

Cataclysm will give them a jump in numbers. Completely revitalising the Azeroth will likely bring back old customers *coughlikemecough* as well.

Well, the point is - what stops growing, will eventually die. If they can't get new players, and they lose old ones... and it goes without saying that WoW might finally crumble under its own weight.

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.

And all those Chinese players simply switched to Taiwan servers, like my old roommate did when he lived in china.

 

[RandV80]

Woah there bub, take a deep breath and realize I wasn't dissing anyone with that statement. I know _plenty_ of gamers who don't like wow. Plenty. In fact, irl, I think I know more non-wow gamers, than those who do. One would assume that you'd realize whether you do or don't like WoW after 3 hours. Doesn't take long to suck you in, or..for that matter, turn you off.

The, doesn't take 3 hours thing, was simply a side comment. It doesn't take 3 hours to get to level 10, my roommate got to 26 in his first 6 hours playing, Pre-BC (Burning Crusade). Long before they watered down the leveling system. To say nothing of the ease of travel with getting faster riding skill earlier than in years past.

So, yeah, sorry if I came across in some provocative manner.

Not a problem, actually there's been a couple of people suggesting that people didn't get past level 10 because of some sort of inadequacy, so I was just poking fun at that and your's was the latest post. And what followed wasn't any sort of rant in response, but rather my actual response to the thread topic. As I'm one of those people who tried the trial but quit around level 10, I thought I'd add a detailed response as to where it lacked value and why I quit.

To give some comparisons, if you look at Shamus' new article playing through Lord of the Rings Online, that MMORPG starts you off with a very direct story line. Similarly, with Guild Wars at the start your tossed into a kingdom under siege. While WoW may blow these games away with the end game content after you put in 100+ hours or whatever, the beginning is extremely shallow. While the above two examples don't exactly blow you away right off the start, they're at least fairly interesting.

 

[insectoid]

I don't see the 30% number as being surprising at all, really. But just imagine if that 30% was a much higher number, instead of 11.5 million players, they'd be looking at something more in the region of 30 million.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

I smell another Warcraft expansion pack.

 

[The Bandit]

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.

Still not getting it? You said that 70% of WoW players can't stand playing WoW for more than 3 hours.

Actually, no I didn't that was Bandit.

This statement implies ALL WoW players.

Again, it was Bandit's comment. And yes, it does. When I rephrased it I added the word "potential" to the mix. But, life goes on.

You then gave the source for this outlandish statement as an article that said 30% of TRIAL WoW players make it past level 10.

It is a simple inversion of the provided statistic. If 30% continue to play, then 70% don't.

ALL WOW PLAYERS =/= WOW TRIAL PLAYERS

Do you see the difference now?

No, but maybe if you scream louder and use more condecending and or prejorative language I might. Better yet, don't. Calm down, go get some coffee, preferably decaf. Take a couple minutes, and decide if screaming at someone who was, by his own admission cracking jokes is really worth arguing with. I get that this is something you feel deeply about. But, that doesn't mean you have to come across as an ignorant lout online in its defense.

Right. You can operationalise that distinction, and I'd agree with you. The 30% number is only applied to the trial players though. What it implies is that 30% of people who get trial accounts go on to become paying customers, not that 30% of WoW players (which includes paying customers) get to level 10.

Are you being deliberately ignorant?

Amnestic, after a little thought, I appoligize. At least you were being mature about this and didn't deserve me snarking off at you the way I did.

I sincerely hope you morons are not arguing over my trolling attempt. That would just be pathetic.

 

[Silva]

This news is good in my view. The fact that these statistics conversely mean that 70% of people know that getting a second job that looks like a game and paying for your time to play it is a bad deal, or else got bored enough not to go on and didn't expect things to change later, gives me increased faith in humanity.

 

[robbajor]

That probably has something to do with experiences similar to the one I had with WoW. In which case one would download the 10 day trial, play it for a few hours and decide that it's not that great.

 

[Starke]

I sincerely hope you morons are not arguing over my trolling attempt. That would just be pathetic.

You got your trolling all over my snarking.

EDIT: That wasn't an attempt, it was a complete success.

 

[Abedeus]

But...level 10 takes like three hours to get to. If that. That's probably slow actually.

The game is just boring. I tried giving it a shot 3 times already, the longest I could handle the game was 3 hours, got to level... 13 or 14, didn't bother to play anymore.

Cataclysm will give them a jump in numbers. Completely revitalising the Azeroth will likely bring back old customers *coughlikemecough* as well.

Well, the point is - what stops growing, will eventually die. If they can't get new players, and they lose old ones... and it goes without saying that WoW might finally crumble under its own weight.

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.

And all those Chinese players simply switched to Taiwan servers, like my old roommate did when he lived in china.

All 6,5 millions, on what... 3-4 Taiwan servers?