Blizzard, with the addition of the Russian marketplace this month, is now very nearly everywhere but South America and Africa, where they quite simply can’t find a market until economic conditions there change.

Mythic, with WAR, will only be in: North America, Western Europe, and Oceania.

Bliz has less than 5 million accounts in those areas. The majority of Blizzard’s accounts are now in Asia, where Mythic is not setting up shop.

So if Bliz has 4.5 or 5 million accounts in the relevant marketplace, and Mythic grabs 1 or 2 million of those, or even half, and along with non-WoW customers manages to surpass Blizzard’s subscription numbers IN THAT MARKET, then Mythic has “killed WoW” in the West. But ONLY in the West. And ONLY if you accept that what people mean, when they say “killed WoW”, is simply surpassing WoW’s subscriber number.

Blizzard’s been getting a pass on sub numbers for years. When you hear people talk about the massive numbers a game like Lineage gets, they always qualify it with “well they’re mostly in Korea”. But these days, it is fair to say that Blizzard’s subscribers are “mostly in Asia”. Yet nobody ever points that out.

Interesting times.

The Lich king expansion seems to be a double edged sword. Although it sparks interest in some for people like me it just means a longer grind. I think blizz wants to make it as long as possible so you don’t see how boring endgame can be. I never like leveling(mostly because all<70 did not matter at all) and i certainly don’t like raiding. The only thing i like about wow is the 4 bgs and arena which have gotten old from grinding them to death. Would be nice if they had any world pvp. Yes i heard about the pvp zone in the expansion but i think thats just going to turn into another bg and with no other bgs being added that brings the count up to 5. 4 of which i’m totally bored of. If i’m going to have to level grind might as well be in a new world that i haven’t seen before.

War will definetly be my wow killer(if not screw mmos i’m not going back) assuming that it lives up to what mythic promised. From what i’ve heard from beta testers it seems it has. Preview weekend is tomorrow, i can’t wait to get a first hand look at the game.

You will be dealt with accordingly foolish mortal.

Jason (resident drunken idiot of Channel Massive)

If you say “yes”, you’re probably setting yourself up to fail.
If you say no, well, why would they fund it.

Yes, I understand that not all investors and publishers definitely refuse to fund something that won’t be #1. That’s the nature of investment. You want to maximize your profits, and that’s how it is. However, when you’re up there in the AAA, the proposition changes and you can’t happily tell your investors that, no, what you’re really aiming for is 2nd, 3rd, 4th or less and make do with what you have, because who wants to dump a hojillion dollars on the second guy? Shit, if we’re gonna dump a hojillion dollars anyway, let’s try to dump it on the guy that will come first.

There is a lot of pressure on the publisher side to come up with WoW killers. It doesn’t make much financial sense otherwise, investing on the guy you know will lose.

‘Nuff said!

I’m still not sure it’s a valid measurement anymore, though it certainly provides lazy pundits with easy writing material, as Chas said. There are far more MMOs out now than there were when WoW was released, and the category itself has widened to include more non-fantasy themed games. On top of that, I know lots of the players around my age (let’s just say, over 30) now often subscribe to more than one game at a time, which further dilutes the purity of the numbers.

I don’t know why I’m still commenting (apart from the fact that it’s a fun subject to kick around). My main concern with games coming out now is that they be profitable regardless of how they stack up to anyone else. If they get WoW’s numbers, good for them, but fortunately that’s not actually the yardstick a game needs to use to gauge overall success or survivability. A game that does well (even if it doesn’t have 10 million subs) will hopefully continue to get attention and development time, so that I can continue to play it.

I think most people would think WoW is an Everquest killer, even though everquest is still around