One of the reasons WoW had 14 million subscribers

[Sneakaboo]

I like the Final Fantasy fans.
The game is pretty much WOW lite with less content and polish.
They are loving it and rally to the forums to defend SE.
You're basically saying Themepark based mmo's like WOW are fun, as long as they aren't WOW since it's uncool to like it.
Hell even a lot of abilities are similar and so are the raid elements, but hey if you enjoy it game on.

But if you like this response, you might enjoy WOW as well.
Just put on your download so your ms hits 450+, same thing with a bit more content.

[Kitya]

Actually XIV has more active player than WOW now (1m vs 500-600k)
http://www.wowprogress.com/realms/rank/us

WOW is dying

This confuses me. Your link shows multiple realms with thousands of people all down the list, but your screen shot is a couple hundred realms in. There are dead realms, yes.... But there are plenty of over-full realms, too. There just happens to be a lot of realms. >.>

[Rialle]

The reason that WoW managed to become an anomaly as far as subscriber numbers is because it was the first major MMO that was accessible to casual players. It succeeded through a combination of having a decent UI, questing system, and relatively low system requirements. It was far easier for a player to get into WoW than it was to get into games that preceded it.

Other MMOs jumped in and tried to copy WoW, but most did not offer a good enough improvement to make it compelling to switch. This is why Blizzard held onto millions of subs for years. While WoW is in decline now, it still has sub numbers that any other MMO would kill to have.

[Jinko]

I love this one. Let me remind you why SE nor Blizzard will never HAVE to go F2P. When a company makes a game they have to have investors to help foot the bill. If the game isn't a huge success and the said company is not making enough money to support its employees, servers, teams and the big one INVESTORS the company has to go F2P. F2P is great for short term burst of Income, because the typical F2P player will come in, spend a couple hundred dollars then leave a month later. However, here we have Blizzard and SE. Neither, need investors to make their products.

You do realise that these large companies at the mercy of shareholders don't you ??

If they loose too much money they have them to answer to at the end of the day, its not quite as simple as you make it out to be.

For example I believe Sony own 20% of SE.

Blizzard and Activision have merged so they can't do as they please any more either.

[dontcare]

One of the reasons WoW kept its subscribers over the years was indeed its fluid and responsive combat. UI addon support was a big one too. Two things this game doesn't have and desperately needs.

[Kitya]

Blizzard and Activision have merged so they can't do as they please any more either.

Actually. What happened is that Vivendi, Blizz's parent company, bought Activision. And, rather recently, Blizz bought itself out from Vivendi. I'll let you do the math there. Also, Blizz still had majority say over Vivendi when it came to WoW and Activision didn't really have any. I hate when people spout this nonsense without looking into it because someone started a rumor years ago.

[Jinko]

One of the reasons WoW kept its subscribers over the years was indeed its fluid and responsive combat. UI addon support was a big one too. Two things this game doesn't have and desperately needs.

We are getting add on support in 6-8 months, of course it won't be anywhere as open as what WoW uses and from what I last heard its programming language is flash /puke

Actually. What happened is that Vivendi, Blizz's parent company, bought Activision. And, rather recently, Blizz bought itself out from Vivendi. I'll let you do the math there. Also, Blizz still had majority say over Vivendi when it came to WoW and Activision didn't really have any. I hate when people spout this nonsense without looking into it because someone started a rumor years ago.

Copied from Wiki
Activision Blizzard is a video games world leader, with a revenue of 4.76 billion dollars in 2011, notably based on the success of some of the studio's franchises such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. Vivendi owns a controlling stake (63%) in Activision Blizzard.[4] As of July 25, 2013, Vivendi has reached an agreement to sell off 429 million shares of Activision Blizzard. The deal is set to conclude in September 2013, leaving Vivendi with only 83 million shares (12% stake) in the company; thus making Activision Blizzard an independently owned public company with majority of the shares being owned by the public.

I couldn't care less who owns them, the fact is they still have shareholders.

[Naunet]

We are getting add on support in 6-8 months, of course it won't be anywhere as open as what WoW uses and from what I last heard its programming language is flash /puke

So we have to wait 6-8 months for something that they should have supported from the beginning, and when we do get it, it's going to be more of a pain than other add on systems. Not to mention that due to the delay in implementing it, I highly doubt XIV will develop a robust add on community. This is something you have to nurture and be open to. SE could take notes from Carbine in terms of how to properly release a game with add-on support. In the past closed betas, WS was completely open to add on creation, the devs created guides for people and actively interacted with add on creators.

More and more it feels like SE is just stuck in 2002.

[Kitya]

Copied from Wiki
Activision Blizzard is a video games world leader, with a revenue of 4.76 billion dollars in 2011, notably based on the success of some of the studio's franchises such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. Vivendi owns a controlling stake (63%) in Activision Blizzard.[4] As of July 25, 2013, Vivendi has reached an agreement to sell off 429 million shares of Activision Blizzard. The deal is set to conclude in September 2013, leaving Vivendi with only 83 million shares (12% stake) in the company; thus making Activision Blizzard an independently owned public company with majority of the shares being owned by the public.

I couldn't care less who owns them, the fact is they still have shareholders.

I'm a little confused. Where did I say they didn't have shareholders? My point was that Blizz has majority say in their game over Vivendi and Activision just like Activision has a majority say in their games over Blizzard. And this was in reply to you saying "Blizzard and Activision have merged so they can't do as they please any more either.", no where in this did you mention shareholders so I was not talking about them at all.

[Reslin]

I will leave this here.. http://www.forbes.com/sites/keldjens...eholder-value/