118310-we-dont-need-wow-numbers

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It really boils down to one thing, do you want a smaller and reasonably sized dedicated community as a sub based game, or do you want hundreds of thousands of self entitled players that don't pay a cent and scream and yell and complain about every single thing in the game?
 
It's a good point that Mark Jacobs made (creator of DOAC) when making his up and coming game "Camelot Unchained" as he stated, he would rather have 10,000 dedicated and passionate players then 100,000 that don't give a cupcake about the game playing it.
 
I think that is a big take away from what Wildstar & Carbine should be looking at. NO MMO is ever going to achieve WoW numbers again and theres a massive pile of corpses lying at its feet that tried to chase that dream, but before WoW came along and make that legacy MMO's were happy with smaller sub based communities. EQ, EQ2, UO, SWG, they were all great games with smaller bases (compared to WoW numbers) that were thriving and had dedicated player thats loved their games. Not self entitled leeches that screamed and yelled and refused to pay a penny for the game.
 
I am a huge WS lover and I'm coming to realise I love Carbine just as much because of proven actions. Lets be frank, alot of promises were not delivered from the Frost era, but you can see now they are pouring their heart and souls into turning this game around and actions speaker louder then words and that is exactly what they have done. Drop 3 was testament to that and its only the beginning.
 
EVE online is a fantastic example of a smaller sub based community that is dedicated to its players and thus the players are dedicated to the game (yes CCCP has had its major screw ups too no arguements there) but the point is that game is solid and they can rely on each other. They never tried to be WoW in sub numbers and thus never fell victim to it and were not added to the long list of other games that impaled themselves trying to chase that dream.
 
All in all I'm happy with WS not having millions of sub, but just content with WS being a great game with a great and dedicated community like RIFT used to have, before it went F2P and set sail for whale hunting and nickel and diming you at every turn.
 
Heres hoping some others out there feel the same. I would rather game with the people here now that actually care about the game then a 100,000 more that do not.	
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			TLDR past first paragraph, but i hate to point out that our community already kicks and screams over every little thing :( But i cant begin to imagine how much worse its going to be if it was f2p.	
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You're right, WildStar doesn't need the WoW numbers of players, but it does need to be designed to handle the niche player base it will have.
Dual Factions, Giant 40 player raids, every increasing amount of 20 player quests, and heavily que divided PVP is not how you design a niche game.
 
My best suggestion to Carbine is to figure out how to bust down the factions and allow dominion and exile to coexist and fight the strain/Entity as a single force(Get rid of dual factions, it's destroying the player pool), Put all its practice BGs in the same pool and have the maps rotate, Rated BGs should do the same.
In essence they need to pull as many players together as possible and stop divining people down the middle with their faction divide.
 
The fact that I sat in Que for 4 1/2 hours yesterday for ANY vetern dungeon and didn't get a single que pop, and a few days before that I waited for 2 hours got 1 que pop and 1 person was AFK.
 
That's a huge problem, and even more of a problem with a divided player pool.
 
There's a lot that WildStar needs to do, and should do to save it's skin, so it doesnt need massive numbers to survive.
 
In short, WildStar needs to retool and revamp to work with a niche player base.	
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Just had to log-in to sign that post.
Now looking at the ncsoft sales report is for me (as former GW1 and GW2 player) that GW2 generates basically the same amount of money than W* does. So either W* isn*t that bad or GW2 is a flop - what'd you say? (i am huge fan of GW1 would say the latter)	
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It really boils down to one thing, do you want a smaller and reasonably sized dedicated community as a sub based game, or do you want hundreds of thousands of self entitled players that don't pay a cent and scream and yell and complain about every single thing in the game?
 
It's a good point that Mark Jacobs made (creator of DOAC) when making his up and coming game "Camelot Unchained" as he stated, he would rather have 10,000 dedicated and passionate players then 100,000 that don't give a cupcake about the game playing it.
 
I think that is a big take away from what Wildstar & Carbine should be looking at. NO MMO is ever going to achieve WoW numbers again and theres a massive pile of corpses lying at its feet that tried to chase that dream, but before WoW came along and make that legacy MMO's were happy with smaller sub based communities. EQ, EQ2, UO, SWG, they were all great games with smaller bases (compared to WoW numbers) that were thriving and had dedicated player thats loved their games. Not self entitled leeches that screamed and yelled and refused to pay a penny for the game.
 
I am a huge WS lover and I'm coming to realise I love Carbine just as much because of proven actions. Lets be frank, alot of promises were not delivered from the Frost era, but you can see now they are pouring their heart and souls into turning this game around and actions speaker louder then words and that is exactly what they have done. Drop 3 was testament to that and its only the beginning.
 
EVE online is a fantastic example of a smaller sub based community that is dedicated to its players and thus the players are dedicated to the game (yes CCCP has had its major screw ups too no arguements there) but the point is that game is solid and they can rely on each other. They never tried to be WoW in sub numbers and thus never fell victim to it and were not added to the long list of other games that impaled themselves trying to chase that dream.
 
All in all I'm happy with WS not having millions of sub, but just content with WS being a great game with a great and dedicated community like RIFT used to have, before it went F2P and set sail for whale hunting and nickel and diming you at every turn.
 
Heres hoping some others out there feel the same. I would rather game with the people here now that actually care about the game then a 100,000 more that do not.
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You're right, WildStar doesn't need the WoW numbers of players, but it does need to be designed to handle the niche player base it will have.
Dual Factions, Giant 40 player raids, every increasing amount of 20 player quests, and heavily que divided PVP is not how you design a niche game.
 
My best suggestion to Carbine is to figure out how to bust down the factions and allow dominion and exile to coexist and fight the strain/Entity as a single force(Get rid of dual factions, it's destroying the player pool), Put all its practice BGs in the same pool and have the maps rotate, Rated BGs should do the same.
In essence they need to pull as many players together as possible and stop divining people down the middle with their faction divide.
 
The fact that I sat in Que for 4 1/2 hours yesterday for ANY vetern dungeon and didn't get a single que pop, and a few days before that I waited for 2 hours got 1 que pop and 1 person was AFK.
 
That's a huge problem, and even more of a problem with a divided player pool.
 
There's a lot that WildStar needs to do, and should do to save it's skin, so it doesnt need massive numbers to survive.
 
In short, WildStar needs to retool and revamp to work with a niche player base.
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There are a lot of people that cry and complain in this game, yes. They are loud, in everyone's face and in many cases their words are contagious. However, for every loud negative nancy, there are several quiet, happy players. 
 
I love this game and I have 0 intention to leave. I have been looking for a game to give me a house and good PvP since UO. No game has been able to get me away from wow, which I've played since beta, until Wildstar. This game has supplied the above and completely has my heart now. 
 
Getting some queues at non peak time would really make the happiest person alive tho. Just sayin'.	
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The people that want to see this game fail are the F2P leeches frothing at the mouth to play it but aren't willing to pay a single penny.
 
Need proof, go read just about any forum on the internet.
 
Every single one says the same thing. "HUR HUR, THIS GAME LOOKS AWESOME, WAITING FOR IT TO GO F2P THEN I'LL DEFINITELY TRY IT"
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snip*
It's a good point that Mark Jacobs made (creator of DOAC) when making his up and coming game "Camelot Unchained" as he stated, he would rather have 10,000 dedicated and passionate players then 100,000 that don't give a cupcake about the game playing it.
snip*
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I wish there was a white knight that would not blame the players. I mean you can just flip that argument right back on you and it is the small "hardcore" that they are being catered for here that ruined this game. Do you look after the 5% or the 95%... if you want to be successful in business you cater for the 95% unless the 5% pay a @#&* tonne more.
 
 
FYI 10,000 dedicated players = US$150,000 per month, against that you have to pay for overheads and peoples salaries, lets say you pay a nice round number of US$10k per month that means 15 employees (and no money for paying for servers)... 
 
I get you like the game, I get you realise it doesn't need 6million subs and probably won't ever hit 1million unless it becomes wildly successful in Asia but your first line is why so many people are enjoying seeing this game fail because it is the players fault for being entitled.
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While I don't pay attention to the internet trolls on Massively and other websites a lot of the F2P leaches as you so eloquently put it in the W* forums are actually doing it not so that they don't have to pay for the game but so there are more people to play with. Not all of the F2P leaches want it to go F2P so they don't have to pay to play it, but want it to go F2P in the hopes it will bring more people in, because of things like battlegrounds not popping, arenas not popping, dungeons not popping. An MMO that doesn't have enough people to do things expected from an MMO and/or use key features that were advertised for such as WARPLOTS.
 
While I play on Warhound and do not know what the population is like on Entity, the fact that things don't pop is either a sign of (a) not enough population for content to occur or ( B) population does not want to do said content. These F2P leeches as you so eloquently put it would provide more population for more content to be done, some of them may sub, some of them may use some other game services to Carbine in the end it could potentially mean:
More revenue for Carbine and NCsoft
More players playing (and therefore more fun content happening like dungeons, and PVP)
No real consequence to subscribers they may get some more benefits - but now have even more people to play with
While the Q3 numbers met their 9billion beat their posted market budget, I would be highly surprised if that was not spurred by a large CREDD sales at the beginning of Q3 (CREDD came out of the end of Q2), but at least short term it has a reprieve - but I would be highly surprised if there are over 200k subs or even over 130k subs. You can quote the articles all you want but Carbine used the term "active players" to describe the quantity of players and that does not mean people subscribed or paying with CREDD necessarily and may or may not include other groups of players or peoples whose subscription elapsed in a certain time before that quote.
 
Maybe Carbine can significantly increase the player base without going F2P but without going to Asia and being successful that will be hard in my opinion because a lot of those people bashing Wildstar in those websites could have been potential customers once upon a time, gosh those darn leaches!
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But according to carbine they are around 250k subs. Which isn't really all that high for an mmo. But to put that into perspective thats 3.7 million a month. Now add in the people that buy name changes and CREDD for plat. I think they make a healthy amount.
 
Also consider that they have around 60 in office... if they are paying out around 4k a month per employee which they probably aren't unless management or higher.... Thats 70k rounded up a month in paychecks... hardly a big chunk out of that 3 million + in sub money.
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Will be interesting to see what NCsoft puts for 2015 budget, to be honest looks like in general they sand bag the budget in terms or revenue and need to cut people to keep costs down as budgeted.
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Look at this: once again WrathMagic is misinterpreting numbers to go on some sort of pre-emptive anti-F2P rant. And wildly misinterprets them too.
 
The NCSoft Quarterly summary that was released shows that the less than six months old Wildstar is being outperformed the two year old Guild Wars 2. Furthermore, Wildstar has suffered an over 40% decrease in revenue from last quarter to this quarter. The summary makes sure to point out Wildstar's decreased numbers while pretty much stating everything is hunky dory on all other fronts.
 
Quite simply you cannot develop an MMO for $60+ million, plus monthly operating costs beyond that, and have it be profitable solely on the revenue generated from a niche-market subscriber base: even a 200k monthly sub number would mean that the game would only be generating about 9 million US per quarter (plus any box sales, which will slow to a crawl over time; as they do for any game) versus Guild Wars 2's 20 million US (I did the currency conversion and based the numbers on the summary report for this quarter); after operating costs the game would probably be only just above breaking even. NC has spent a lot of money here trying to have a break out hit in the Western market to combat the perception that they can't do it (because they haven't yet), and that is not happening right now. Between plummeting revenue and constant bad press, Wildstar is gigantic embarrassment for NCSoft right now (they couldn't even sell this game to competitor right now if they wanted to because no one will touch it); and make no mistake about it, they're not going to let that continue much longer.
 
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Want to see how well your theory works? Go look at that chaotic mess currently spiraling out of control called Archeage.
 
Or this model, which is states SWTOR is STILL LOSING MONEY even after going fail2play with those darn leeches (you mispelled it like 5x in your thread)
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/11/08/eas-quarterly-net-revenue-is-up-apparently-in-spite-of-swtor/
 
Or do you mean this company that started the Fail2play market in NA and is currently losing money on all their MMO's
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/11/05/warner-bros-plans-more-layoffs-through-early-2015/
 
You see the difference between me and you is I actually back up what i'm saying with FACTS. Yours is nothing more then your own speculation, hyperbole and theories you come up with as you go along. So when you can actually back up what you say (like that nice made up theory about CREDD) then we'll talk. Until then I'll respond to other people that actually don't make it up as they go along.
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Facts you say? Let's look at the facts in your sources.
 
The quarterly report does not state that SWTOR is losing money, it says revenue is down. It does not state anything other than revenue is down in several big name franchises that have not seen new content for quite some time: SWTOR moreso than the others, which is not surprising due to the fact it is a continuously provided product and the others are periodically provided product.
 
Warner Brothers is laying off people. Yes, they own Turbine, which produces Lord of the Rings Online, the third largest Western based MMORPG (and that just happens to be F2P); but they also own DC Comics, so should we start saying that Superman and Batman are about about to be canceled? Maybe "The Big Bang Theory" is about to get pulled off the air, despite being the highest rated sitcom on TV? WB owns a lot of stuff, so layoffs during corporate restructuring say very little about Turbine's profitability.
 
As I've said before, in one of your threads on this very subject that use the same articles to "prove" your claim that free to play doesn't work, numbers without context or analysis are meaningless.
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If Arenanet spent half as much time on their actualy game as they do on their cash shop I'd still be playing it and it would be a good game, but we all know that doesn't happen.
 
2 year old game.
 
no new classes
 
no new trades
 
no new professions
 
no new races
 
no expansion
 
only one single new ZONE in TWO YEARS (laughable)
 
BUT HEY, LOTS OF NEW SHINY'S IN THE CASH SHOP!
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You're right, WildStar doesn't need the WoW numbers of players, but it does need to be designed to handle the niche player base it will have.
Dual Factions, Giant 40 player raids, every increasing amount of 20 player quests, and heavily que divided PVP is not how you design a niche game.
 
My best suggestion to Carbine is to figure out how to bust down the factions and allow dominion and exile to coexist and fight the strain/Entity as a single force(Get rid of dual factions, it's destroying the player pool), Put all its practice BGs in the same pool and have the maps rotate, Rated BGs should do the same.
In essence they need to pull as many players together as possible and stop divining people down the middle with their faction divide.
 
The fact that I sat in Que for 4 1/2 hours yesterday for ANY vetern dungeon and didn't get a single que pop, and a few days before that I waited for 2 hours got 1 que pop and 1 person was AFK.
 
That's a huge problem, and even more of a problem with a divided player pool.
 
There's a lot that WildStar needs to do, and should do to save it's skin, so it doesnt need massive numbers to survive.
 
In short, WildStar needs to retool and revamp to work with a niche player base.
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While i agree that not every MMO needs to set out for WoW numbers and still be considered a successful MMO
 
However Wildstar to its core did try to aim for that region
40 man Warplots
40/20 man raiding
Sabotage being 15v15
20 man quests being implemented
 
Again.. you don't need millions of subs to be succesful, however alot of the games compelling endgame was intended for this. So naturally when numbers started dropping some of Wildstar's biggest shouting points became abit unstable
 
Also.. one of your comments said that GW2 hadn't added a single zone in 2 years...
They have added 3 new zones in 2014	
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If Arenanet spent half as much time on their actualy game as they do on their cash shop I'd still be playing it and it would be a good game, but we all know that doesn't happen.
 
2 year old game.
 
no new classes
 
no new trades
 
no new professions
 
no new races
 
no expansion
 
only one single new ZONE in TWO YEARS (laughable)
 
BUT HEY, LOTS OF NEW SHINY'S IN THE CASH SHOP!
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While i agree that not every MMO needs to set out for WoW numbers and still be considered a successful MMO
 
However Wildstar to its core did try to aim for that region
40 man Warplots
40/20 man raiding
Sabotage being 15v15
20 man quests being implemented
 
Again.. you don't need millions of subs to be succesful, however alot of the games compelling endgame was intended for this. So naturally when numbers started dropping some of Wildstar's biggest shouting points became abit unstable
 
Also.. one of your comments said that GW2 hadn't added a single zone in 2 years...
They have added 3 new zones in 2014
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Also.. one of your comments said that GW2 hadn't added a single zone in 2 years...
They have added 3 new zones in 2014
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I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Aion, another NCSoft game that went F2P over 2 years ago.  The game was dead just like Wildstar is before the F2p model. Now there are more people running around the main city on one faction in Aion than there are total players on on both NA Wildstar servers combined.  lol  The community is BETTER now than when it was P2P. 
 
 Wildstar needs to go F2P ASAP.
 
 
 
 	
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I love how you try to belittle facts when you bring absolutely none of your own ROFL
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Maybe you can't read graphs, but WS made more revenue in the last 2 quarters than GW2 did. A loss is expected quarter to quarter following a launch. I don't think a gain has ever happened. Next quarter will show how stable the game has become.
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I agree OP,
 
The community in WildStar is big reason why I continue playing the game. I absolutely love all the people I met in the game so far, and we've got a lot of dedicated players who actively try and make the game a better experience for everyone else (Talking about events like ThaydFest, Warhound's Christmas events , etc) 
 
Also, I have my thumbs up on the dev interaction. We see them post daily on forums, twitter and even appear on player streams.. And not only the CM. That's pretty fun and awesome!
 
Now... About the numbers. I do agree that a smaller, dedicated playerbase IS better than a  large playerbase that don't care much about the game and consisting of 65% trolls, but it's pretty obvious WildStar haven't reached its "ideal" population yet.
This "ideal" would be enough population to make the servers appear more lively (more people leveling and questing) and have queues pop up a lot faster. Not necessarily instant, but I think around 10-15 minutes is fair for a DPS queue. (Around the same time or faster for pBGs)
 
I strongly believe Drop 4 will help the queue times with the addition of dailies and more content for people to resub, and hopefully stay subbed as well. 
 
The population will always fluctuate like any other MMO on the market, especially before and after patches... That's the reality of it. Ideally, it should only be small bumps instead of big roller coaster-like dips... So, we'll see! It's just a matter of time. 	
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Nonsense.  EQ had 80 man raids and they weren't aiming for millions of players at all.
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I don't know what brought this topic on, or why the TC feels the need to tirade over it (especially with her primary source being Massively/Joystiq--quite laughable at best), but I do agree that I would prefer this game not to go f2p. That said, I think the reality is more likely that it will. That isn't necessarily automatically bad, though... it depends on what model they go for. Something like Rift would be highly sustainable because it is so player friendly. Something more like DDO would probably not save this game, because it verges so closely to p2w. It's all a balancing act.
 
That aside, as long as people who continue to sub are not negatively effected, it should be more or less beneficial for the game's long-term health. So why don't I want it? It creates a disdainful relationship between players, who want to enjoy the game, and devs, who seemingly just want money rather than focus on the game. It makes the game about money rather than the game for the players too.
 
On the other hand, I find the TC's apparent hatred for f2p players to be disgusting. They aren't leeches, many of them do spend money on the games they play, and not wanting to pay an upfront cost for the game ON TOP OF a sub is a completely rational attitude. Imo, this game could just drop the "purchase" of the game altogether and make it just require a sub (without going f2p) and probably gain a lot of new players. Back to the people who wait for games to go f2p, it's completely reasonable to expect that a game which can't sustain it's subs will eventually do this.
 
It's hard to maintain a model that doesn't go f2p when it must compete with other, viable f2p models--some of those games being, for the most part, just as good. If a game wants to stay sub-based, it needs to offer more than its competition. Wildstar has a lot of promise, but it really needs some "oomph" to realize that potential. Another game that has promise, but fails to deliver--and subsequently was forced to go f2p--was Firefall. Because they were too slow to move and give players the experience they were looking for, relying on subs became unsustainable.
 
I'm sure some of you have seen various online articles about how "MMOs don't work in the US" (a quote from Strauss Zelnick of Take Two), and while I disagree with his conclusion, I agree with his premise: only two MMOs have enjoyed record success in the States, EQ and WoW. However, there are dozens of other MMOs who enjoy some degree of success and are profitable. What S.Z. was referring to was that they had to go f2p, and it's because of this corporate attitude toward games that has creeped into the industry in the last decade. It used to be that game devs treated their projects like fine art, and made the best products they could. Money came naturally because the products were so high quality (for their time). Look at how popular the original Warcraft/Starcraft/Diablo franchises were. Now look where they are. Starcraft 2 is the only half-way respectable one left. Perfect Dark? Then PD: Zero. Just sad. A more recent example: The makers of the wildly successful Halo franchise, Bungie, essentially sold out and produced... Destiny. What a disappointment. All that potential wasted because they spend so much time/money hyping the game up that they forgot to make the game.
 
Player standards have risen, but game standards have not. Why? Money. They only focus on money. Few game developers--and fewer publishers--worry about the quality as much as they used to, and today's MMOs (even WoW these days) all feel like a wild cash grab rather than an authentic gaming experience. This leads into a topic that I could write for pages and pages about, but the bottom line is that most studios have their priorities in the wrong place. If the quality is there, you won't have to worry about money, because it will come naturally.	
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I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Aion, another NCSoft game that went F2P over 2 years ago.  The game was dead just like Wildstar is before the F2p model. Now there are more people running around the main city on one faction in Aion than there are total players on on both NA Wildstar servers combined.  lol  The community is BETTER now than when it was P2P. 
 
 Wildstar needs to go F2P ASAP.
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Back in the day, we would do 80 man content on EQ, with very little population, that's just false, people who stay will do the content. The problem is that if you have a low population, you will have to squeeze their wallets if you want to release new content for your niche players (normally -- Freemium). So while the game doesn't need WoW numbers, it certainly needs players before it starts feeling like a complete moneygrab, like SWTOR is for example.
 
Development costs are much bigger nowadays than 10-15 years ago. Mark Jacobs is just spoiled by the kickstarter.
 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CbWr0zO7Ac
 	
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			I don't think any game needs WoW numbers as I feel like WoW is now an MMO of it's own. It has a huge fanbase for Blizzard and it's really built something over the last decade. I don't think there is ever a set number of players an MMO should aim for. I think they should focus on content and community events that make players interested in logging on. Right now WildStar is at a weird state and I am on a server where even in the city I do not see but a handful of players. I hope to see this improve over the next few months and see the game a little more lively.	
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I agree with most of what has been said here... BUT
 
I am still on a trial and must decide if i want to play this game. Numbers are not everything i agree with that. But dead servers are not good either. I wanted to try pvp but gave up after an hour queue. Its sad because one of the selling points that got me to try was that we could play the WAY WE WANTED. Good im a huge pvp fan so i want to level doing pvp. Sadly this isnt going to happen. On the 8 hours i spent yesterday trying the game and exploring zones, going to the main city i saw a crazy number of 15 players. 15 gents. Servers are dead. It is so dead that i seem to be unable to access basic content other than questing. Will i play the game ? I don't know. To be honest i would play it without questions asked but i'd hate to invest time in a dead mmo. Correct me if im wrong.	
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Wildstar needs as many numbers as it can get if they want to keep this operating as a subscription mmo, which I'm sure we all want to see. The game will never see close to even a fraction of WoW's subs, not even if they rereleased WildStar with everything perfect because ActiBlizz products sell themselves thanks to their hype machine. (hence why garbage like D3 can sell over 10mil)
 
It need not go f2p though; SE has proven that you can take a game that is utter trash on the throes of its deathbed and that you can turn it around into a huge success simply by giving the people what they want. Things don't look great for WildStar currently, but this game is just a better mmo than pretty much any other at its core and if Carbine were to listen to the feedback of their players; I have little doubt that they could turn this game into something really special. A lot of us have been playing mmo's for over a decade and we have seen what works and what doesn't; whether they use our feedback or not is their problem.	
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			We don't need it no, but I sure wouldn't mind it either. 	
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Holy necro Batman!
 
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I don't think there is ever a set number of players an MMO should aim for.
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The Dominion faction doesn't seem to be as popular as the Exile faction and PvP servers have suffered.
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FYI 10,000 dedicated players = US$150,000 per month, against that you have to pay for overheads and peoples salaries, lets say you pay a nice round number of US$10k per month that means 15 employees (and no money for paying for servers)... 
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What game studio pays all its employees $150K  a year?  Carbine probably has a legion of unpaid interns and a fair number of minimum wage employees as well.  I'm sure someone is taking home 6 figures but that 15 employees number is a little silly.
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What game studio pays all its employees $150K  a year?  Carbine probably has a legion of unpaid interns and a fair number of minimum wage employees as well.  I'm sure someone is taking home 6 figures but that 15 employees number is a little silly.
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I'm going to guess that they don't have a lot of minimum wage folks.  For starters they're located in a fairly high cost-of-living area of the US.  Regardless, you don't go off base salary.  Where I've worked we used what's known as "loaded rate".  That figure rolls together salary, benefits, management, R&D, facilities, office computers, office supplies, etc.  150k is a pretty good rule of thumb when talking about software production.
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Yes we do, but we have  RIGHT TO, because we are PAYING for a service. F2P leeches do not. They are not paying for anything.
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Technically F2P players pay way more per month then sub players pay. But I suspect you meant those who come in leech and then leave without paying into the system.
 
Either way WoW has 2.7mil subs right now. An MMORPG can survive with much less then that. EQ has 650k subs Can't remember haven't looked at census for that in a very long time, and EQ2 has about 400k
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I mentioned that earlier, and I'm glad you brought it up, Meya.
 
The non-sub f2p players usually end up spending a lot more than those who sub. Let's just look at DDO as an example.
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Players who don't sub don't have access to:
-Monks, Druid, Favored Soul, or Artificer
-Drow, 1/2 Elf, 1/2 Orc, Warforged or Iconics (4 more races that start at level 15 and must take 1st level as a specific class)
-about 2/3 of the game (must pay for adventure packs or guest passes)
-Shared bank, expanded inventory and bank, expanded bag deposit box (a shared bank for crafting supplies)
-Harper enhancement tree (a skill tree that any class can use in addition to the 2 or 3 that comes with their class)
 
There are also 2 expansions to buy, and f2p players level much more slowly due to several interlocking systems in how the game works.
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Technically  F2P players  pay way more per month then sub players pay.   But I suspect you meant those who come in leech and then leave without paying into the system.
 
Either way  WoW has 2.7mil subs right now.   An MMORPG  can survive with much less then that.  EQ  has 650k subs Can't remember haven't looked at census for that in a very long time,  and EQ2 has about 400k 
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Technically  F2P players  pay way more per month then sub players pay.   But I suspect you meant those who come in leech and then leave without paying into the system.
 
Either way  WoW has 2.7mil subs right now.   An MMORPG  can survive with much less then that.  EQ  has 650k subs Can't remember haven't looked at census for that in a very long time,  and EQ2 has about 400k
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Um more like 10million current, and they've never dropped below 7 million since the milestone.
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Would love to see a source to back this up.
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http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/19/7250737/world-of-warcraft-warlords-draenor-10-million-subscribers
 
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/4526-WoW-Up-to-10-Million-Subscribers
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Yep we don't need WoW numbers, we could do amazingly with a slight fraction of WoWs populations. Kinda stating the obvious eh? Plus small community doesn't = close knit group of lovestruck people happy with the game. Plenty of people that actively play WS have much to complain about, and do. And "entitled" (freaking hate that word as a label) people will never be absent.
 
I'm sure any dev would prefer to get away with a tiny number of people that adore the game being enough, but I'll take a mil subs with 99% of the pop not caring any day (a misnomer in itself, you'll always have a portion of the population that cares far more than the rest, with any sub base size, bigger base is always better), I'll find my group of friends, have short Qs and people to do stuff with just the same.	
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http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/19/7250737/world-of-warcraft-warlords-draenor-10-million-subscribers
 
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/4526-WoW-Up-to-10-Million-Subscribers
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Yes, those are two examples of the types of articles I was referring to. 
 
*edit* To be fair, at least the mmo-champ piece had a link to a Blizz press release and a cool homemade graph. The Polygon article didn't even have that.
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			Why is everything so white and black. You need a healthy amount of people so the community can self perpetuate itself with the new players. You don't have that right now.	
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			It'd be interesting if they retain those numbers but I don't see how WoD would retain players that left during MoP originally, is there something different that'd keep bored players that mainly are there to see the new content? I watched the raids and the content seems fairly stale as well, I'm not sure how it'll hold up for them but we'll see.Good news is though, if WS expands it should most likely do fairly well especially if they start on the drop 4 version.	
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Yes, Wildstar does need the WoW number, or at least closer to them.
 
Why did WoW do so well for so long? Casual Players. Those people who would log on, play for a couple of hours, do a few dungeons, and go about their buisiness.
 
Wildstar has lost those numbers, because of the Hardcore Only raiding options at then max level. You hit 50, and the only way to go is up, though a TON of hardship and work just to be 'allowed' to even start raiding.
 
My suggestion is to have some casual and mid level dungeons and raiding options for those folks who are not interested in spending a work week worth of hours just prepping to do a raid. Keep the high end dungeons where they are, but require people to be 'Attuned' to access them. Then open up endgame content that is for the 'UnAttuned", so they can do dungeons, and mini raids. Have the 'Unattuned' dungeons and raids do away with the Copper/Silver/Gold (imo) nonsense, and leave that for the Attuned players seeking to finely tune their game.
 
WoW has survived being the MMORPG that it is because it was carried along by the casual gamers, which allowed the Hard Core raiders to enjoy content as well.
 
When Wildstar has endgame available for all types of players, then it will continue to be a health game. Because when people get to 50, and go "Well, there's nothing I want to do now because it's only hardcore raiding", then they lose subsciptions and money, and the game dies.	
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Yes, Wildstar does need the WoW number, or at least closer to them.
 
Why did WoW do so well for so long? Casual Players. Those people who would log on, play for a couple of hours, do a few dungeons, and go about their buisiness.
 
Wildstar has lost those numbers, because of the Hardcore Only raiding options at then max level. You hit 50, and the only way to go is up, though a TON of hardship and work just to be 'allowed' to even start raiding.
 
My suggestion is to have some casual and mid level dungeons and raiding options for those folks who are not interested in spending a work week worth of hours just prepping to do a raid. Keep the high end dungeons where they are, but require people to be 'Attuned' to access them. Then open up endgame content that is for the 'UnAttuned", so they can do dungeons, and mini raids. Have the 'Unattuned' dungeons and raids do away with the Copper/Silver/Gold (imo) nonsense, and leave that for the Attuned players seeking to finely tune their game.
 
WoW has survived being the MMORPG that it is because it was carried along by the casual gamers, which allowed the Hard Core raiders to enjoy content as well.
 
When Wildstar has endgame available for all types of players, then it will continue to be a health game. Because when people get to 50, and go "Well, there's nothing I want to do now because it's only hardcore raiding", then they lose subsciptions and money, and the game dies.
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This is just a band-aid for the real issue: Attunement is awful. The only thing that should keep people out of raids is the difficulty of the raids.
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A game doesn't need WoW numbers and i don't know the exact amount of players or incomes needed to be healthy and operational. As a player, i need from a mmo the required population in order to:
 
1. Have stable and operational guilds. Able to find replacements when needed etc
2. Meet ppl in the lvling zones
3. Have a working ingame Economy and an active AH
4. Find groups for open world content, like Bosses, Events, Group Quests etc
5. Queue in LFG and find ppl for PvE & PvP content like Dungeons, Adventures, BG's, Arenas, Warplots etc
6. Find Raid Pug groups if you don't have a raid spot in your guild (even only for a week) or cant raid the specific time with them etc
 
If these things happens in a mmo then it doesn't matter the population number, as the game works as intended. If not, then imho its not a real mmo but more of a single player game.	
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It really boils down to one thing, do you want a smaller and reasonably sized dedicated community as a sub based game, or do you want hundreds of thousands of self entitled players that don't pay a cent and scream and yell and complain about every single thing in the game?
 
It's a good point that Mark Jacobs made (creator of DOAC) when making his up and coming game "Camelot Unchained" as he stated, he would rather have 10,000 dedicated and passionate players then 100,000 that don't give a cupcake about the game playing it.
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WoW has survived being the MMORPG that it is because it was carried along by the casual gamers, which allowed the Hard Core raiders to enjoy content as well.
 
When Wildstar has endgame available for all types of players, then it will continue to be a health game. Because when people get to 50, and go "Well, there's nothing I want to do now because it's only hardcore raiding", then they lose subsciptions and money, and the game dies.
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 I mean you can just flip that argument right back on you and it is the small "hardcore" that they are being catered for here that ruined this game.
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Ok so this is the first post i have ever put up on here, I've just been enjoying the game since beta and not paying attention to the forum BUT i am getting annoyed with 4 hour waits for dungeons.
 
like seriously the only thing that will kill WoW is WoW the very first WoW MONTH period of release they made 12 million dollars and covered development budget and started making money. that literally means that nothing will kill WoW but itself WoW has made 2 billion dollars a YEAR for 10 years.
 
Blizzard does not care about other games 12-200 million dollar budget because they will throw out a new raid group content and other goodies the second they hear another game is going to launch therefore noone will check that game out it's a great plan and they can do it so literally no game other than WoW or by sheer insane perfection will be able to kill it other than the game itself.
 
Wildstar is an amazing game and me and my best friend have played DAILY since launch we love it we love the hell out of it it's a ton of fun.
but there is a simple point that every single person here has pointed out, the game is not doing well they are in the gasping for air phase and the next expansion can give them a life raft and help them to either go on and gain more subs and maybe even get a real boat and do well OR they might get that raft and shove a harpoon gun into the floor and sink the next time or the expansion will fail and they will drown and the game will disolve into a forgotten lost cause.
 
I do not know how well or bad some games are doing because frankly i do not care what i care about is being able to play. now all this being said and yes i have said a ton WoW will be top dog until it gives itself a frontal lobotomy other games i have played and loved and watched fall into p2w or f2p or buy to win or they just fell into disrepair are rift,swtor,tsw,poe,aoc, lotro,maplestory,gw,eq,sto,lineage2,D&D,perfect world,silkroad online,tera. the list of games i have played and loved and watched die such as rift die because they have gone f2p i do not care if i wait 3 hours for a dungeon as long as i know all the other people there are just as excited for the dungeon and love the game as much as i do.
 
But ending my first ever post on here and my rant i will say i hope this game can keep going and if not well stop pushing it faster there by pushing any type of f2p system the game will die instantly in my opinion. the only thing f2p will bring will be bots spammers horrible content and the death of the last hope the game would have. i do not ever look back at a game or will i ever look back at a game that goes f2p because it is a lost cause at that point. content community and every other detail of the game will go down at that point. 	
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I do not know how well or bad some games are doing because frankly i do not care what i care about is being able to play. now all this being said and yes i have said a ton WoW will be top dog until it gives itself a frontal lobotomy other games i have played and loved and watched fall into p2w or f2p or buy to win or they just fell into disrepair are rift,swtor,tsw,poe,aoc, lotro,maplestory,gw,eq,sto,lineage2,D&D,perfect world,silkroad online,tera. the list of games i have played and loved and watched die such as rift die because they have gone f2p i do not care if i wait 3 hours for a dungeon as long as i know all the other people there are just as excited for the dungeon and love the game as much as i do.
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I m all for P2P in mmo's but i m just wondering...how long can you play a mmo when you cant queue for dungeons, bg's and arenas? When you lvl up in empty zones? When you cant find a group for open world content like bosses, events, group quests etc? When economy and AH are semi working? When your guild is struggling to find members or replacements? When there aren't any pug groups for almost anything?
 
I m 40 years old and i m used to pay for my mmo's for more than 15 years. I m paying a sub for the massive multiplayer aspect of these games. If i cant find things like the ones i mentioned above, then i m sorry this isn't a real mmo and in my eyes it doesn't justify a sub.
 
So imho the real question isn't if a mmo needs WoW numbers or a P2P / B2P / F2P system, but if you can find ppl to play its content and in the current state of WS you just cant.	
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