WAR's numbers should remain strong. WotLK took a big chunk out of WAR's subscribers, but during slow periods in WoW content I'll bet we see WAR's number rise a little bit. WotLK was new and shiny for me, but a lot of the issues I had with the game that drove me towards WAR are still present and I see myself resubbing to Warhammer very soon. Like this weekend probably.
Most people who are big into MMOs tend to play WoW and something else, right? I can't imagine any company sets out to create an MMO to compete with WoW and really has any belief they're going to outright steal away a significant chunk from WoW's playerbase.
Seriously, if it's just an RE4 palette swap like how Dead Rising is turning out, it's going to be a huge missed opportunity. I hope it's got more effort put into it, because the controls could be heavenly.
Most people who are big into MMOs tend to play WoW and something else, right? I can't imagine any company sets out to create an MMO to compete with WoW and really has any belief they're going to outright steal away a significant chunk from WoW's playerbase.
Certainly not.
300k subscribers for WAR and the millions sold is, I think, one of the best challengers to the WoW crown in recent times. Certainly from a quality standing.
The next big thing in MMOs is also an EA product. Old Republic.
Grabbing a slice of that billion dollars a year Blizzard pie will financially secure EA for a long time. They have every reason to chase it. MMOs are inherently profitable which is why so many exist, with exceptions of course.
Do it right. Star Wars has tremendous cache. Look at Galaxies. Fucking awful game but hugely popular.
WoW and WAR are different enough to the MMO player to be seen as complimenting titles. WoW has a strong PvE aspect to it and a good grasp on what makes solo content bearable (and in some cases even fun) while WAR has a great PvP focus with class balance that far outshines that of WoW and genuinely exciting world PvP with its battle for Keeps (when people decide to show up). A lot of MMO connoisseurs will play each one for it's various strengths.
The "gaming community," however, likes to see the world in black and white. WoW is bigger therfore WAR was a flop.
What's up with Conan these days? Still profitable?
I'm not sure anyone knows at this point. After the game first came out, FunCom was more than happy to tell us all about their 800k subscriber base.
Once their numbers started dropping, they switched positions to "Well, MMO developers don't usually give out subscriber numbers so we choose not to, but we're not alone or anything!"
From what I've heard, the servers are mostly barren, though.
I am to understand that about 400,000 people bought WAR but didn't bother to make an account? I mean, 1.2 million sold but only 800,000 active accounts in September? That was the launch month...the free month.
Seriously, if it's just an RE4 palette swap like how Dead Rising is turning out, it's going to be a huge missed opportunity. I hope it's got more effort put into it, because the controls could be heavenly.
Well it's not by Capcom, is it? What EA games could it be a palette swap of?
Seriously, if it's just an RE4 palette swap like how Dead Rising is turning out, it's going to be a huge missed opportunity. I hope it's got more effort put into it, because the controls could be heavenly.
Well it's not by Capcom, is it? What EA games could it be a palette swap of?
Seriously, if it's just an RE4 palette swap like how Dead Rising is turning out, it's going to be a huge missed opportunity. I hope it's got more effort put into it, because the controls could be heavenly.
Well it's not by Capcom, is it? What EA games could it be a palette swap of?
Now - Mass Effect 2 Q4 09 is something worth getting excited about.
Why not?
The entire game would have to be rebuilt to run on the Wii hardware. And I mean literally all of it. Not just a texture swap.
Maybe a Dead Space branded game, sure. Why not. But this isn't a Resident Evil 4 situation. Dead Space did not come out on Gamecube. It isn't a port job.
Look at how badly Dead Rising has been butchered just to fit on the Wii spec.
dead rising has been butchered only because it was shoehorned into an engine that wasn't designed for it at all.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
300k active accounts for Warhammer. In September of 2008 they had 800k active accounts and 1.2 million copies of the game sold. The game cratered, and knowing EA's history with MMOs; it doesn't have much life left.
EA has run and shut down the following MMOs:
Motor City Online: October 2001-August 2003
Earth and Beyond: September 2002-September 2004
The Sims Online: December 2002-August 2008 (renamed EA Land prior to closing)
This chart rather accurately sums up the ridiculousness of calling 300k subscribers a bomb.
Look at wow. Look at it. You know what any real statistician would do with an outlier like that? Throw it out. Shoop. Out the window, ignored.
Look at that solidly in the middle. Lookin good mythic.
Honestly. (Yes I'm aware its not in that chart, I'm showing averages here, not current subscriptions.)
Earth and Beyond/ Motor City online, according to wikipedia, had just under 40k max.
40k = 600,000 per month in income (not profit, I don't know how much gets taken out by maintenance costs)
300k = 4,500,000 per month in income (again, not profit)
That's a crater?
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Also Morninglord that graph with WoW on it is probably the most hilarious chart with actual real world numbers I've ever seen. WoW just coming through "oh, hey, excuse me, sorry, I'm your God now, bye~..."
In stats tests, where you were scored on chucking them out. It's pretty amusing to see how cramped it makes the rest of the market seem.
I thought you primarily threw out outliers because of incorrect data.
That's one reason you might, but even if the piece of data that corresponds to the outlier is correct and factual, it can still screw up your conclusions if you consider it, so it's often more appropriate to just toss it out.
Imagine that you've got 30 male college students in a room and you want to try and find the average height of the student body's males based on this sample. The average you get from this group is probably going to be pretty close to the average height of the entire student body... unless you happen to have a 7'1" basketball player in there. Your sample size is kinda small so that one guy's height being in the sample might skew your results significantly. It's appropriate to throw his data out, even though he clearly exists and it's clearly correct that he's over seven feet tall.
Now - Mass Effect 2 Q4 09 is something worth getting excited about.
Why not?
The entire game would have to be rebuilt to run on the Wii hardware. And I mean literally all of it. Not just a texture swap.
Maybe a Dead Space branded game, sure. Why not. But this isn't a Resident Evil 4 situation. Dead Space did not come out on Gamecube. It isn't a port job.
Look at how badly Dead Rising has been butchered just to fit on the Wii spec.
That's what happens when you port on the cheap and have like, 5 guys do it.
I think there was a total of 3 guys that ported Okami to the Wii.
I remember hearing when the Wii was announced that EA was going to have teams of about only 5-10 working on Wii projects. Oh man, did they ever call that wrong.
Yeah, WAR is doing fine, fix the trollish title. 300k is a lot of people. It's been aiming at a niche from the beginning and they did specifically say pre-release that they had no intention of competing with WoW.
300k sounds about like a decent target, but definitely won't be dethroning WOW anytime soon. If they can keep or modestly grow the subscription base they will definitely make some decent cash out of that franchise.
It's worth noting that WoW's numbers are bit inflated. The Asian market does their subscriptions differently and it allows for some pumped up numbers. Consider this: Asia alone counts for more subs than NA and EU combined.
In stats tests, where you were scored on chucking them out. It's pretty amusing to see how cramped it makes the rest of the market seem.
I thought you primarily threw out outliers because of incorrect data.
That's one reason you might, but even if the piece of data that corresponds to the outlier is correct and factual, it can still screw up your conclusions if you consider it, so it's often more appropriate to just toss it out.
Imagine that you've got 30 male college students in a room and you want to try and find the average height of the student body's males based on this sample. The average you get from this group is probably going to be pretty close to the average height of the entire student body... unless you happen to have a 7'1" basketball player in there. Your sample size is kinda small so that one guy's height being in the sample might skew your results significantly. It's appropriate to throw his data out, even though he clearly exists and it's clearly correct that he's over seven feet tall.
Like the Cap says Sporky, it messes with means, and means are the most important part of statistics. You mark them as outliers, you acknowledge they exist, but for all intents and purposes you just ignore them. A single huge number like that just isn't representative of the overall market. There's no point in determining an average that 90% of the sample can never reach.
Five average big mmos, lets say at 200k, 150k, 200k, 300k, 100k. (Yes, this is big)
The mean of this sample is 190k.
Add wow and it becomes 1,825,000.
Nearly 2 million, just by using wow.
Rather than following some arbitrary mathematics rule in this case, what you do is use your human brain, with its capability of judging 1.8 million to be a ridiculous number, and throw out the one causing the problem. Stats comes down to human judgement in the end. You have to think about what you are measuring or you come up with silly meaningless numbers that lead to stupid conclusions.
For example, by using wow you would be statistically correct to say every single mmo other than wow is performing below average.
And that's retarded.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I don't know, dropping from 800k to 300k is a huge hit to the bottom line. Have they started merging servers already? 300k is a good number but it's noteworthy as it could mean that the game is in a down-turn.
I do, however, remember quite clearly arguing with people that said you can't tell the difference between a 360 game and a Wii game on an SDTV.
See, here is the problem. There has been so many wrong predictions during this generation, that we shouldn't really discuss them. Because we can dig lots of moronic stuff about everyone, and if we do that, things get really retarded.
You missed the big news. The results are so bad EA's laying off more people, and they're delaying several games to move them out of the current fiscal year, including Dragon Age and Sims 3.
But this business model works because EA had 6 games in november's and december's NPD 20!
I don't know, dropping from 800k to 300k is a huge hit to the bottom line. Have they started merging servers already? 300k is a good number but it's noteworthy as it could mean that the game is in a down-turn.
It's only been out for 4 months. I don't think it'd at all be a stretch to assume that the following two factors are in play:
1. People who bought it, played the free month, decided they didn't wish to stick with it
2. Bored Warcraft players who unsubscribed from Warhammer once Wrath of the Lich King released
I could certainly see those two events removing 500k players from the playerbase. I guess the bigger question is if it stays stable around 300k from here on out. For now, though, it'd be hard to call the game anything but a rather decent success.
I don't know, dropping from 800k to 300k is a huge hit to the bottom line. Have they started merging servers already? 300k is a good number but it's noteworthy as it could mean that the game is in a down-turn.
It's only been out for 4 months. I don't think it'd at all be a stretch to assume that the following two factors are in play:
1. People who bought it, played the free month, decided they didn't wish to stick with it
2. Bored Warcraft players who unsubscribed from Warhammer once Wrath of the Lich King released
I could certainly see those two events removing 500k players from the playerbase. I guess the bigger question is if it stays stable around 300k from here on out. For now, though, it'd be hard to call the game anything but a rather decent success.
Bah. If the can maintain 300k for a year then I'll consider them a success. 4 months is nothing. Hell, it takes a few months for most mmos to get over their launch issues.
Plus I'd be interested to see the fluctuations in their playerbase after every large content upgrade to WoW, be it an expansion or a patch.
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Seriously, if it's just an RE4 palette swap like how Dead Rising is turning out, it's going to be a huge missed opportunity. I hope it's got more effort put into it, because the controls could be heavenly.
Certainly not.
300k subscribers for WAR and the millions sold is, I think, one of the best challengers to the WoW crown in recent times. Certainly from a quality standing.
The next big thing in MMOs is also an EA product. Old Republic.
Grabbing a slice of that billion dollars a year Blizzard pie will financially secure EA for a long time. They have every reason to chase it. MMOs are inherently profitable which is why so many exist, with exceptions of course.
Do it right. Star Wars has tremendous cache. Look at Galaxies. Fucking awful game but hugely popular.
The "gaming community," however, likes to see the world in black and white. WoW is bigger therfore WAR was a flop.
I'm not sure anyone knows at this point. After the game first came out, FunCom was more than happy to tell us all about their 800k subscriber base.
Once their numbers started dropping, they switched positions to "Well, MMO developers don't usually give out subscriber numbers so we choose not to, but we're not alone or anything!"
From what I've heard, the servers are mostly barren, though.
Well it's not by Capcom, is it? What EA games could it be a palette swap of?
Medal of Honor and Godfather.
It would be like a more violent Space Channel 5.
See, I was joking but now you've actually sold me.
dead rising has been butchered only because it was shoehorned into an engine that wasn't designed for it at all.
This chart rather accurately sums up the ridiculousness of calling 300k subscribers a bomb.
Look at wow. Look at it. You know what any real statistician would do with an outlier like that? Throw it out. Shoop. Out the window, ignored.
So lets do that.
Reality!
Look at that solidly in the middle. Lookin good mythic.
Honestly. (Yes I'm aware its not in that chart, I'm showing averages here, not current subscriptions.)
Earth and Beyond/ Motor City online, according to wikipedia, had just under 40k max.
40k = 600,000 per month in income (not profit, I don't know how much gets taken out by maintenance costs)
300k = 4,500,000 per month in income (again, not profit)
That's a crater?
Also Morninglord that graph with WoW on it is probably the most hilarious chart with actual real world numbers I've ever seen. WoW just coming through "oh, hey, excuse me, sorry, I'm your God now, bye~..."
In stats tests, where you were scored on chucking them out. It's pretty amusing to see how cramped it makes the rest of the market seem.
I thought you primarily threw out outliers because of incorrect data.
That's one reason you might, but even if the piece of data that corresponds to the outlier is correct and factual, it can still screw up your conclusions if you consider it, so it's often more appropriate to just toss it out.
Imagine that you've got 30 male college students in a room and you want to try and find the average height of the student body's males based on this sample. The average you get from this group is probably going to be pretty close to the average height of the entire student body... unless you happen to have a 7'1" basketball player in there. Your sample size is kinda small so that one guy's height being in the sample might skew your results significantly. It's appropriate to throw his data out, even though he clearly exists and it's clearly correct that he's over seven feet tall.
That's what happens when you port on the cheap and have like, 5 guys do it.
I think there was a total of 3 guys that ported Okami to the Wii.
I remember hearing when the Wii was announced that EA was going to have teams of about only 5-10 working on Wii projects. Oh man, did they ever call that wrong.
fuck
Like the Cap says Sporky, it messes with means, and means are the most important part of statistics. You mark them as outliers, you acknowledge they exist, but for all intents and purposes you just ignore them. A single huge number like that just isn't representative of the overall market. There's no point in determining an average that 90% of the sample can never reach.
Five average big mmos, lets say at 200k, 150k, 200k, 300k, 100k. (Yes, this is big)
The mean of this sample is 190k.
Add wow and it becomes 1,825,000.
Nearly 2 million, just by using wow.
Rather than following some arbitrary mathematics rule in this case, what you do is use your human brain, with its capability of judging 1.8 million to be a ridiculous number, and throw out the one causing the problem. Stats comes down to human judgement in the end. You have to think about what you are measuring or you come up with silly meaningless numbers that lead to stupid conclusions.
For example, by using wow you would be statistically correct to say every single mmo other than wow is performing below average.
And that's retarded.
Remember those lovely days when our lovely posters, including Pancake, claimed that Wii couldn't succeed at all, because it lacks HD-resolutions?
I never said that.
I do, however, remember quite clearly arguing with people that said you can't tell the difference between a 360 game and a Wii game on an SDTV.
See, here is the problem. There has been so many wrong predictions during this generation, that we shouldn't really discuss them. Because we can dig lots of moronic stuff about everyone, and if we do that, things get really retarded.
But this business model works because EA had 6 games in november's and december's NPD 20!
It's only been out for 4 months. I don't think it'd at all be a stretch to assume that the following two factors are in play:
1. People who bought it, played the free month, decided they didn't wish to stick with it
2. Bored Warcraft players who unsubscribed from Warhammer once Wrath of the Lich King released
I could certainly see those two events removing 500k players from the playerbase. I guess the bigger question is if it stays stable around 300k from here on out. For now, though, it'd be hard to call the game anything but a rather decent success.
Bah. If the can maintain 300k for a year then I'll consider them a success. 4 months is nothing. Hell, it takes a few months for most mmos to get over their launch issues.
Plus I'd be interested to see the fluctuations in their playerbase after every large content upgrade to WoW, be it an expansion or a patch.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW