by David Piner on Apr 11, 2007
Anyone who has ever seen a line chart knows about the peaks and valleys. On a line the line generally heads upwards as numbers increase and goes downwards when they decrease. This forms peaks (where the numbers are at their highest) and valleys (when numbers are at their lowest). Kind of like a row of mountains! What does this have to do with World of Warcraft? Well, if imagine the game population being printed on a line chart then we’d see plenty of these peaks and valleys.
The question at hand this week is “Has WoW Peaked?” Basically a simple question… has WoW reached its maximum population? Has WoW hit the max of its popularity? It’s a good question considering the major surge in recent players bringing WoW to an all time high subscription count. Given that when something goes up it generally finds its way back down.
Now, when we are talking about population we are talking about North America. There are many locales that WoW can branch into to bring its global subscription numbers way up. These new locales would be fresh and drawing in massive amounts of new crowds. No, we are talking about North America which has about three million current subscribers. Three million is a very high number for any MMORPG.
WoW’s growth has continued since it first started. With the release of the expansion WoW found a massive spike of both new recruits and old faces returning to fight the Burning Legion. Many of these numbers were level sixties who reopened their account to try out the new content. They had to reopen as they got through as much of the content as they could before (due to their time restraints or whatever) and are now ready to dig into the expansion. However…
The people who returned from their hiatus because of limitations in the amount of content they could chew through are not forever players. They will once again work through as much content as possible only to reach whatever limit they can find. When they reach the point where they can no longer advance they will, as always, simply quit. This means that after so long a lot of subscribers to WoW will eventually fade away and with as many servers as there is and with less and less new people you get to a point where the growth stops.
Not that it’s a concern or anything since with three million subscribers it’d take forever for them to slowly leak away. With WoW’s massive quality there is no need to panic or fret that WoW may be heading towards the zapper anytime soon. Given the numbers and the shear amount of content available I couldn’t see WoW becoming a low population game for at least three years. However, given the facts I do think it has peaked.
MMORPGs are like summer camp administrators. They can only connect with the “kids” for so long. As new generations come up they find themselves no longer to deliver what the current generation wants. The older generation (the one that connected with it) has long outgrown it leaving only the newer generation around. The newer generation of course wants something new, different, and cool. Therefore no MMORPG can last forever.
That’s why I think, personally, that WoW has peaked. It’s maximum was reached during the launch of the expansion and from here (at least in North America) it’s nothing but a VERY VERY slow decent towards the valley. I can’t see another expansion setting ablaze so much excitement and attention nor can I see massive amounts of new players continuing to flock to WoW. Not only that, but other games like Vanguard seen a mass of WoW players looking for something new. While for many Vanguard wasn’t a green enough pasture… imagine if something was?
This is all my opinion though. I don’t have the raw numbers or massive amounts of customer reviews to look at. All I have is what I can see with my own eyes. Of course, given how Blizzard works we can expect a new MMORPG that will be 100 times better then WoW within the near future. For those that find WoW to be a little boring after 4-5 years of playing then whatever new game Blizzard comes up with will be the perfect cure.