Well, most of you will have known this already, but yesterday Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment confirmed what we suspected: World of Warcraft lost a number of subscribers due to the launch of Warhammer Online, but already players who canceled their subscription are flocking back to WoW
"To date, 68% of the players who listed Age of Conan as their reason for cancellation and 46% of the players who listed Warhammer as their reason for cancellation have reactivated their subscriptions to World of Warcraft."(source)
Almost half of the players who left WoW, returned less than 1.5 months after Warhammer Online has been released. Quite interesting.
Now, apparently Warhammer is still doing well, with the one million active subscribers mark close on the horizon. This can only mean that Warhammer is either gaining a lot of subscribers from other games, or that it's actually expanding the market. But it's not the World of Warcraft killer some people thought or hoped it would be.
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Warhammer Online redux
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was released last month and I feel I've now had a fair period of time to play the game. But to be fair, it seems that the game world itself is really empty. You very rarely meet people in the open, which makes it very hard to get a couple of people together for a Public Quest.
Apparently everyone is hiding in the so-called Scenarios, WAR's version of WoW battlegrounds. And it seems they are there for a reason: leveling in scenarios is a lot quicker than regular WoW-style questing. Which is a shame, because it's obvious that Mythic spent a lot of time polishing the outside world and dedicating a lot of time coming up with a good story for the many many quests, public and otherwise, in the game.
For the moment it seems I'm just playing a glorified version of Guild Wars. I'm sure most of you who actually play the game would excuse for thinking Tobold's post about WAR Light was real at first.
Anyway, the scenarios themselves are fun enough for a while. But unfortunately it seems that there's always one scenario at each tier that pops all the time, while the other two get played very rarely. So it does get boring after an hour or two.
I hope Mythic can address these issues, because there are a lot of nice features in the game and it shows a lot of promise. I'd hate for it to go down the same way as Age of Conan.
Apparently everyone is hiding in the so-called Scenarios, WAR's version of WoW battlegrounds. And it seems they are there for a reason: leveling in scenarios is a lot quicker than regular WoW-style questing. Which is a shame, because it's obvious that Mythic spent a lot of time polishing the outside world and dedicating a lot of time coming up with a good story for the many many quests, public and otherwise, in the game.
For the moment it seems I'm just playing a glorified version of Guild Wars. I'm sure most of you who actually play the game would excuse for thinking Tobold's post about WAR Light was real at first.
Anyway, the scenarios themselves are fun enough for a while. But unfortunately it seems that there's always one scenario at each tier that pops all the time, while the other two get played very rarely. So it does get boring after an hour or two.
I hope Mythic can address these issues, because there are a lot of nice features in the game and it shows a lot of promise. I'd hate for it to go down the same way as Age of Conan.
WoW patch 3.02 love
Preparation for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion has began for real now, with the arrival of patch 3.02 on the live servers. While I'm mostly joining my fellow warlocks in crying over the changes which hit the class quite hard, at least the patch brought something I really enjoy: achievements.
In an earlier post, I already commented that this new system would probably feed my OCD, and I was right. I especially enjoyed completing my "Classic Raider" achievement. Revisiting old instances is always nice, as long as it's a one-off. And for me personally, it was the first time I ever got past The Prophet Skeram in AQ40 and the first time I killed Nefarian. Nostalgia was never this good.
And of course completing achievements is a nice way of killing some time when you got nothing better to do. Obviously it's not going to last very long. I'm already running out of "easily achievable" achievements, but I'm having fun while it lasts.
In an earlier post, I already commented that this new system would probably feed my OCD, and I was right. I especially enjoyed completing my "Classic Raider" achievement. Revisiting old instances is always nice, as long as it's a one-off. And for me personally, it was the first time I ever got past The Prophet Skeram in AQ40 and the first time I killed Nefarian. Nostalgia was never this good.
And of course completing achievements is a nice way of killing some time when you got nothing better to do. Obviously it's not going to last very long. I'm already running out of "easily achievable" achievements, but I'm having fun while it lasts.
Wednesday, 6 August 2008
Will Age of Conan's failure influence Warhammer Online sales?
Failure is relative of course, but according to Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard, 40% of the people that left WoW for AoC, returned later on. As some people have remarked, if the president of Blizzard mentions it, it must have meant that they lost a significant amount of subscribers to Age of Conan. Which means there's a market out there for a good title. And Warhammer Online could fill that hole.
But, 40% of the leavers returned, which means those people gave something else a try, didn't like it and came back to WoW. Will this impact sales of the next new title to come along? After all, they're leaving a perfectly stable game without too many bugs, which, apparently, they still enjoy. Otherwise they wouldn't have come back. And chances are you won't really find what you're looking for in that new game either. Why take the risk, go through the whole "I'm a newbie" experience, waste time on the levelling grind again, and leave all your friends in WoW, if you already have a maxed out character and loads of friends in a game you still play with passion?
Well, some people enjoy levelling and exploring new stuff. My guess is those people would have tried Warhammer Online regardless, because it's new content. But end-game players that tried out AoC and came back, possibly won't be as inclined to give WAR a try after their AoC experience.
But, 40% of the leavers returned, which means those people gave something else a try, didn't like it and came back to WoW. Will this impact sales of the next new title to come along? After all, they're leaving a perfectly stable game without too many bugs, which, apparently, they still enjoy. Otherwise they wouldn't have come back. And chances are you won't really find what you're looking for in that new game either. Why take the risk, go through the whole "I'm a newbie" experience, waste time on the levelling grind again, and leave all your friends in WoW, if you already have a maxed out character and loads of friends in a game you still play with passion?
Well, some people enjoy levelling and exploring new stuff. My guess is those people would have tried Warhammer Online regardless, because it's new content. But end-game players that tried out AoC and came back, possibly won't be as inclined to give WAR a try after their AoC experience.
WoW Recruit a Friend program
Today's top headline on the World of Warcraft main page is their updated "Recruit a Friend" program. Previously, if you referred a friend, they started playing World of Warcraft and paid their first month's subscription fee, you would get 30 days free game time. The new program awards you with:
This new scheme limits the time you have to play apart from each other, and you can easily level up an alt in the process. If your friend gets ahead of your new alt, because you were raiding or whatever, he can easily allow you to catch up by awarding your character extra levels. Your friend will be level 70 in no time, at which point you can truely start playing together with your "mains". In the past, I've had a couple of friends who gave WoW a try. But the game was already mature at that point, I was max level and my friends got bored having to play alone most of the time and gave up. This is an excellent counter to that.
And of course the free zhevra mount will motivate existing players to actively start recruiting friends. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't surprise me if a substantial number of these "friends who start playing" will be secondary accounts of existing players who are only after the exclusive mount. If people are willing to spend more than $200 on an in-game social pet, they won't think twice about shelling out for an extra account for two months so they can get their hands on a new mount.
- As it was previously, 30 days of free play time if your friend pays for 30 days game time.
- An exclusive zhevra in-game mount when your friend pays for 60 days of game time.
- If you and your friend are grouped together, you'll both earn triple experience.
- For every two levels your friend earns, he can grant one of your characters that's lower level than your friend's character, an extra level.
- You and your friend can summon each other once every hour.
This new scheme limits the time you have to play apart from each other, and you can easily level up an alt in the process. If your friend gets ahead of your new alt, because you were raiding or whatever, he can easily allow you to catch up by awarding your character extra levels. Your friend will be level 70 in no time, at which point you can truely start playing together with your "mains". In the past, I've had a couple of friends who gave WoW a try. But the game was already mature at that point, I was max level and my friends got bored having to play alone most of the time and gave up. This is an excellent counter to that.
And of course the free zhevra mount will motivate existing players to actively start recruiting friends. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't surprise me if a substantial number of these "friends who start playing" will be secondary accounts of existing players who are only after the exclusive mount. If people are willing to spend more than $200 on an in-game social pet, they won't think twice about shelling out for an extra account for two months so they can get their hands on a new mount.
Sunday, 3 August 2008
WotLK Beta - Built-in threat meters and more stable slots
This morning I had to download a new patch before I was able to log in to the beta. It wasn't too big, about 22.5MB in size, but it still contained a few things that'll make people excited.
The first highlight is the fact that stable masters now have an additional two slots, for a total of four slots for hunter pets. The first new slot costs 50 gold, the second 150g. I have a level 70 hunter myself, and personally, I think this is long overdue. I always suffered from not having enough pet storage room while levelling up, especially when training new pet skills. Currently you have to tame a certain beast in the wild before you can learn a spell. This means that you have to stable your regular pet if you want to get a new skill or the next rank of a skill for your companion.
Ironically enough, they're doing away with this system in the expansion, all skills are now learned via visiting an NPC trainer or via the new pet talent system. So I guess the extra stable room is actually a little less needed in the expansion than it is right now on live servers. Oh well… Better late than never I guess.
A second important addition in the patch was Blizzard's own "threat meters" system. There have been third party addons that measure the amount of threat you have on a mob for quite some time now, pretty much ever since certain bosses in Blackwing Lair, in pre-TBC WoW, made them a virtual necessity.
And now Blizzard is coming with their own implementation, but contrary to what they usually do when incorporating popular addon functionality, they went for a totally different approach. Instead of a separate window, showing a list of players with the most threat on a particular mob, they now only show each player how much threat only they themselves have, as a percentage. It's added to the combat text, so for each of the mobs you're fighting, you'll see these numbers popping up each time you do damage to them or if you heal someone or…
The problem with this is, it makes it very unreadable, and sometimes you don't know what your actual threat is, because the numbers keep popping up constantly. Especially when you have a lot of DoTs on the target, you see lots of numbers on screen at the same time (see screenshot). I don't know about the rest of you, but it sure confuses me.
A very different approach and certainly not what I was expecting. We'll see if it catches on, but for now I prefer the system the third party addons use.
The first highlight is the fact that stable masters now have an additional two slots, for a total of four slots for hunter pets. The first new slot costs 50 gold, the second 150g. I have a level 70 hunter myself, and personally, I think this is long overdue. I always suffered from not having enough pet storage room while levelling up, especially when training new pet skills. Currently you have to tame a certain beast in the wild before you can learn a spell. This means that you have to stable your regular pet if you want to get a new skill or the next rank of a skill for your companion.
Ironically enough, they're doing away with this system in the expansion, all skills are now learned via visiting an NPC trainer or via the new pet talent system. So I guess the extra stable room is actually a little less needed in the expansion than it is right now on live servers. Oh well… Better late than never I guess.
A second important addition in the patch was Blizzard's own "threat meters" system. There have been third party addons that measure the amount of threat you have on a mob for quite some time now, pretty much ever since certain bosses in Blackwing Lair, in pre-TBC WoW, made them a virtual necessity.
And now Blizzard is coming with their own implementation, but contrary to what they usually do when incorporating popular addon functionality, they went for a totally different approach. Instead of a separate window, showing a list of players with the most threat on a particular mob, they now only show each player how much threat only they themselves have, as a percentage. It's added to the combat text, so for each of the mobs you're fighting, you'll see these numbers popping up each time you do damage to them or if you heal someone or…
The problem with this is, it makes it very unreadable, and sometimes you don't know what your actual threat is, because the numbers keep popping up constantly. Especially when you have a lot of DoTs on the target, you see lots of numbers on screen at the same time (see screenshot). I don't know about the rest of you, but it sure confuses me.
A very different approach and certainly not what I was expecting. We'll see if it catches on, but for now I prefer the system the third party addons use.
Thursday, 31 July 2008
WotLK Beta - Borean Tundra and The Nexus
Today, I managed to unlock two new achievements
This means I've now officially "completed" Borean Tundra, one of the two starting zones in Wrath of the Lich King, the other being Howling Fjord. Or near enough anyway. Apparently you don't need to complete every single quest in the zone, because I still completed four more quests there after I already got the achievement unlocked. Furthermore I've also managed to clear the only non level-80 dungeon, The Nexus. At the end of the zone, I was level 73 and 30% into the next level, with minimal rest XP.
I have to say, without spoiling too much of the zone, that I thouroughly enjoyed my adventures here. There are a lot more storylines in this zone, compared to for example Hellfire Peninsula, the starting zone of The Burning Crusade. There's also a little more variety in the quest types, although obviously the vast majority of quests still has you collecting X number of enemies of a certain type, collecting Y number of drops from mobs or picking them up from the floor, or a delivery quest that sends you to the next quest hub. The zone also introduces you to a few new major races, each one having their own interesting storyline. You also have to help an old enemy race, including one very enjoyable quest, which will probably become an instant favourite of most players.
All in all a very enjoyable zone, it rates much higher than Hellfire Peninsula in my opinion, and most of the quests seem bug-free at the moment. The one thing that The Burning Crusade did better was, when you first enter the new zone, you immediately see Alliance and Horde forces, battling it out with huge demons, which made for a very impressive opening of the expansion. This is somewhat lacking. Although you are immediately dropped in the middle of a siege, it misses the same epic feeling.
The Nexus itself is a very atmospheric dungeon, although it remains a conventional dungeon crawl. It has four bosses and the two last bosses have an interesting mechanic to them that I hadn't seen before. Especially the last one has a nasty trick up her sleeve that might not get noticed in the heat of the battle. At least 3 out of 5 people in my party didn't notice it, and we only just managed to kill the boss.
All in all, it took us about one hour to clear the dungeon, but my group kind of overgeared the instance. It's a level 71-73 instance, and I was the lowest level player there at 73. The tank and another warlock were level 75 and all of us had tier 6 or season 3 gear, so it went quite smoothly.
Well, this zone sure wet my appetite for the remainder of the expansion. Hopefully the rest of the game is as enjoyable as Borean Tundra.
This means I've now officially "completed" Borean Tundra, one of the two starting zones in Wrath of the Lich King, the other being Howling Fjord. Or near enough anyway. Apparently you don't need to complete every single quest in the zone, because I still completed four more quests there after I already got the achievement unlocked. Furthermore I've also managed to clear the only non level-80 dungeon, The Nexus. At the end of the zone, I was level 73 and 30% into the next level, with minimal rest XP.
I have to say, without spoiling too much of the zone, that I thouroughly enjoyed my adventures here. There are a lot more storylines in this zone, compared to for example Hellfire Peninsula, the starting zone of The Burning Crusade. There's also a little more variety in the quest types, although obviously the vast majority of quests still has you collecting X number of enemies of a certain type, collecting Y number of drops from mobs or picking them up from the floor, or a delivery quest that sends you to the next quest hub. The zone also introduces you to a few new major races, each one having their own interesting storyline. You also have to help an old enemy race, including one very enjoyable quest, which will probably become an instant favourite of most players.
All in all a very enjoyable zone, it rates much higher than Hellfire Peninsula in my opinion, and most of the quests seem bug-free at the moment. The one thing that The Burning Crusade did better was, when you first enter the new zone, you immediately see Alliance and Horde forces, battling it out with huge demons, which made for a very impressive opening of the expansion. This is somewhat lacking. Although you are immediately dropped in the middle of a siege, it misses the same epic feeling.
The Nexus itself is a very atmospheric dungeon, although it remains a conventional dungeon crawl. It has four bosses and the two last bosses have an interesting mechanic to them that I hadn't seen before. Especially the last one has a nasty trick up her sleeve that might not get noticed in the heat of the battle. At least 3 out of 5 people in my party didn't notice it, and we only just managed to kill the boss.
All in all, it took us about one hour to clear the dungeon, but my group kind of overgeared the instance. It's a level 71-73 instance, and I was the lowest level player there at 73. The tank and another warlock were level 75 and all of us had tier 6 or season 3 gear, so it went quite smoothly.
Well, this zone sure wet my appetite for the remainder of the expansion. Hopefully the rest of the game is as enjoyable as Borean Tundra.
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