World of Warcraft might not be immortal after all

This is according to http://www.mmodata.net/

The reason is of course that WoW has been laid to rest in China by the Chinese Gov...

The question is, when it gets back, will chinese players start to play again? WoW in China is changing host away from the9... A horrible MMO hoster. But the result is that all people in china who wanna play WoW have to make new characters.

I couldn't imagine the outrage if it happened in America or Europe. People would be furious, sue, go crazy, send death threats.

I am glad to see a game like Aion climbing the ladder, and giving competition to WoW(Competititon is good) but I am sad that it had to happen this way. By a feudal goverment forcing Blizzard to it's knees.

If these chinese players return to WoW, I think it will really show a turning point for the dedication and love for the game. If they leave, it might be the beginning of the end of WoW as the nr. 1 MMORPG in the world(subscriber wise).

I also heard some chinese players are starting on Taiwanese servers. But it's hard to say. I think there are around 4-5 million Chinese Wow Players in the world.

 

Another factor is due to WotLK, I know I and several others quit since its release and changes, and I doubt we were the only ones

 

Yup same, well I quit a bit before...noticed my guild tried WotLK and I tried to play again. Kinda lost all the goodness for me. I really enjoyed just WoW and BC but WotLK couldn't draw me in

 

Most likely a new expansion is coming soon to "fix" this problem. Though Blizzard said they are working on a new MMORPG (and you can also see on their page that they are hiring programmers etc for their new games and "next gen mmo" is right there).

Can't wait to see what happens when Final Fantasy XIV launches. @_@

 

Wow, how can a MMORPG chart that starts in 1998 not have Everquest on it?

 

If you look at this one though, It's WoW Asia that's going down the most.

 

Did you all noticed(on the graph)? 3 MMORPG games popularity decreased after 2008. Lineage and Lineage2 and WOW(most serious) got decreased in popularity. However, the aion, dofus and runescape seems raising in popularity, maybe they are new?
SAY NO TO MMORPG. LOL. JOKE.

@irishhensin,
all my friends has quited WOW last year all together. It is like chain effect. 1 stop then another stop and it continues.
My prediction,
1 friend stop playing influence the other(friends) stop playing and it spreads. Eventually, affects the whole continent.

 

hehe that's actually how it started with all my real friends in the end. When I returned none of my friends wanted to...so i didn't really want to stick around.

 

Everquest never got over 400,000 subscribers though.

 

I'm not a WoW defender, but I think there's a lot of variables not being put in there. We know there's been a big snafu over in China with Blizzard changing WoW's local distributor, and the new distributor has been unable to re-launch the game. It's been down for much of the summer now. That hit the active subscriptions of course.

 

If for argument's sake we assume WoW is evenly distributed in % popularity in each corner of the globe, cutting China or Asia would effectively cut the most customers since they have the most people on the planet >.> I don't want to generalize, but I'd suppose Asians like WoW just as much if not more than Americans or Europeans.

Also, nothing lasts forever anyways, WoW included. Once Blizzard decides to launch something new & shiny(assuming they do), WoW will start its decline.

 

Well, considering the mean (avg) number of players over that time frame was probably about 9 million x $15/month over 5 years = over $8 billion gross. That is an unbelievable amount of money for a single game even with expansions.

Time to move on to something different anyhow. I never understood WoW anyhow. I'm looking for an MMORPG with beef.

 

Ya, WoW has served me well these past years....but I think i'm gonna finally cancel it. Thought Aion was ok but not enough to play full time so I cancelled my pre-order.

Now I just play Age of Conan with a few friends, fun game for me since the bugs have been ironed out. Plus playing with friends is always a plus

 

I play Age of conan myself (subscriber since launch) what server are you playing on?

 

Ironspine, PVE server.

 

damn i play set pve and tyranny pvp. Look me up on set if u ever switch lvl 80 assassin zmgp

 

the subscription is cheaper in china. and it's back online now. some of my friends here are hooked so i know.

 

I don't think it's fair to say WoW is not immortal based purely on subscription loss in Asia, given the circumstances.

 

i was one of those -1 marks ....

 

Think about it that way . People who play WoW played WC3+TFT . They were familiar with the WC lore . Nowadays gamers have other choices of games , we have several more MMOs , new RTSs and so on . Plus considering how much stuff happened in WoW in these 4 years its very hard for a new person to start playing it . Also , gamers who started 4yrs ago slowly stop playing . Perhaps they are getting older and mature .

Thus its harder and harder to attract new players and old are retiring ( either for a new MMO or they just quit ) .