November Concurrency Numbers

Post by **Rollie** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 3:23 pm

<a href='http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/acti ... .htm'><img src='http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/acti ... age001.gif' width='300' height='200'></a>

It's that time of the month again and we have calculated the November concurrency numbers provided by the <a href='http://www.warcraftrealms.com/censusplu ... susPlus</a> UI Addon.

Well it looks like the introduction of patch 2.3 and Arena Season 3 was enough to bring many players back out of the woodwork and back in game. Concurrent players for both EU and US were up in November. The increase for US players was much higher than that of EU which was only up slightly.

The question now becomes, will this new content be enough to keep the majority of players interested in playing until <a href="http://www.wrathofthelichking.com">Wrath of the Lich King</a> is released? The release date for Wrath of the Lich King is highly speculated, but for me personally, my bet is on summer of '08.

Hybuir · Post by **Hybuir** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 3:31 pm

I'd say summer to pre-halloween. You gotta get them for the release then a big push for xmas

Eyeball-Dragonmaw · Post by **Eyeball-Dragonmaw** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 11:04 pm

You also have to figure in when Warhammer sets an official release date. I think that will have a huge factor in determining their release of things. If they want to maintain their current player base they better release WotLK 3-5 weeks before Warhammer to get people locked in to staying, and not trying Warhammer.

I think though the only player base WoW will lose with Warhammer is from the PvP servers since Warhammer is all about PvP, not just stupid BG's. Even Warhammer isnt rushing their release, and keep pushing it back which tells me its gonna be good when it comes out. It has to be. With Wow putting every other MMO in history to shame with 100+ servers just in the US the next gen MMO has to be exactly like WoW, but with stuff players want that Blizz hasn't offered.

I can't wait....

Alanthus · Post by **Alanthus** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 8:18 am

TheDeamon wrote:
Eyeball-Dragonmaw wrote:I think though the only player base WoW will lose with Warhammer is from the PvP servers since Warhammer is all about PvP, not just stupid BG's. Even Warhammer isnt rushing their release, and keep pushing it back which tells me its gonna be good when it comes out. It has to be. With Wow putting every other MMO in history to shame with 100+ servers just in the US the next gen MMO has to be exactly like WoW, but with stuff players want that Blizz hasn't offered.

I can't wait....
NDA's make it hard to call on that one, I've heard plenty of grumblings about Warhammer, and most of it wasn't positive. We still get to wait and see on that front, and maybe they're listening to the beta testers feedback which is further driving the delay? *shrug*

If people were not grumbling about the beta they wouldn't care

Bottom line is WAR is the biggest thing in the pipeline, it's from a company that knows how to launch a successful MMO, has the same access to resources Blizzard has, an even more powerful marketing arm etc. so it's definately going to be a game Blizzard watches with great interest both for marketing purposes, game ideas for patches and simply because most of the devs at Blizzard still being gamers they will be as interested as you or me

We'll see how they succeed with the game when it's out, I personally like the changes they made to beta a lot since it sounds like they slaughtered the holy cow of "no DAOC2" and instead are going for a solid Warhammer IP game with some of the features that still make DAOC end game shine in comparison to others.

I do think it will initially mainly appeal to people on PvP servers but a lot of people I work and know in real life play on PvE servers not because they don't enjoy a good fight against another player but because they simply didn't enjoy getting a) ganked while levelling, usually while afk or distracted by a family member b) ganked by people in gear from a part of the game they will never even see c) ganked by an invisible enemy while at 10% life or similar things that speak more to poor game design than actually not enjoying the potential of PvP. WoW is a PvE game with PvP thrown in late in the development cycle. WAR will be designed from the ground up for PvP/RvR. I for one hope it will succeed in doing for PvP what WoW did for PvE, from what I hear so far about no stealther class, the chicken factor and so forth they are making a lot of effort to make PvP enjoyable rather just frustrating for casuals.