Are you comparing the 12m vs the 4.7m? If so, that's not 6* less for one. And secondly, you do realize that WOW maintained over 10 million subscriptions in 2012, right? WOW has sold many, many more copies than D3, which I understand and agree that it isn't a fair comparison (8 year old game vs 2), but the concurrent players is the part I want to emphasize; after a year the concurrent users for D3 has dropped to around 1m, less than 10% of their initial player base. WOW only recently dropped to 8.3m after 8 years.
If your definition of success is only sales numbers, then yes; Diablo 3 is very successful. My definition is different and takes into account the player-base over time, and I don't find it to be successful.
FYI - I love Diablo 3; it's a great, fun game. I just don't think it's successful.
Ater a year the concurrent users for D3 has dropped to around 1m, less than 10% of their initial player base. WOW only recently dropped to 8.3m after 8 years.
Now you're just making up numbers. Nowhere have you mentioned a game with 4.7M in sales. The games you mentioned, Brink and SWTOR, both had 2M attached to them.
Take another look at that best selling list. How many of them still have 1M concurrent daily players? How many games released last year have that? It's a small number. From a raw numbers perspective, 1M daily players is still very much a success, regardless of the size of the potential base.
Your FYI is hard to believe, as if it were any kind of true, that would be the kind of disclosure you drop at the beginning of an argument. Now you're just trying to legitimize yourself not with facts, but "look guys, I like the game, so if I'm saying this, it must be true."
Like I said very near the beginning of this "debate," I don't go dumping on what you like, so why do you insist on constantly trying to piss in peoples' cereal? Do you have nothing better to do?
You're comparing two completely different types of games and online environments. WoW is built byte by byte to keep people in game, engaged in a persistent world, chasing a carrot, and subscribed. D3 is a much more lightweight experience; you can stop playing for months at a time, come back, and jump right in same as ever. I think it's designed more to give players something to 'always come back to'; the gameplay/loot style doesn't support "play this game consistently forever and ever" in any Diablo clone/game imo.
I feel the same way. The only way I would even contemplate playing this game again is if my friend wanted to play HC and no AH. I literally have more fun doing house work than I do playing softcore.
Haven't played much lately... 30 minutes here and there. I made it to paragon 88 and don't have it in me right now to get my DH all the way to 100 with the way the game is.
I want to try a monk, but want my DH at 100 before I pick up another character.
I'm really hoping some new buffs for the DH come out soon, and some new itemization / skills too.
this game is dead, needs expansion badly...nothing is selling
Stopped playing months ago... Only reason I kept playing was for money -- sad. Then everything stopped selling for me and I lost access to the phone to reactivate my real-money AH account.
I've finally given up on this game. I made it to Paragon 20-something with my monk and somewhere in the teens with my demon hunter, but it's just too boring to go any further. I'm not interested in the auction house, and selling things seems to be the main motivation most people have for playing.
And THIS is what's wrong with the game; people are starting to stop playing because they can't make MONEY. Doesn't even matter if it's fun or not.
And THIS is what's wrong with the game; people are starting to stop playing because they can't make MONEY. Doesn't even matter if it's fun or not.
I played as little as a month ago and went from about 500M and a 100k DPS barb to 2B+ and a 200k DPS barb and 200k DPS monk in just a matter of weeks after having not played in about a year. Don't tell me things don't sell or the market isn't moving just because you aren't any good at doing so.
Diablo and all it's clones are not games worth playing for extended periods of time imo. At least not without breaks in between. They just don't have deep enough gameplay; which is no sleight to the games but it's just inherent to the genre. When you make the "fulfilling" part of the game the item the drops rather than the process of obtaining it, it's inevitable.
Why are you still in this thread? There's plenty of forum for you without having to drop into a thread intended for people PLAYING the game.
Take your piss somewhere else, please. Or just, you know, stop being a dick.
I don't play the market at all, so if that point was directed at me it falls on deaf ears. I'm talking about the general player-base; I see it a lot in the forums on Blizzard and it's apparent here too.
There would have been more longevity to the game without that AH I still think; at least even Blizzard admitted to being in the wrong on it.
I feel quite confident in saying the general video game player base (especially people who actually post on Blizzard forums) are by and large [economically] incompetent lol. All my friends are the same way; only one other guy I play with is able to make money off the AH. And it's not because it's hard or because the AH "isn't working" or because the economy has "died" but rather because he and I put in some marginal amount of effort; it's as simple as trial and error even. Just because the general populace assumes they're using it correctly though but not being successful doesn't mean something is wrong.
It's like asking them to drive a manual car and then the user complaining that the car is broken when it keeps stalling.
If by longevity you mean "players would be doing all the same activities except their numbers would be lower" and therefore still have a relatively 'longer' gear chase ahead of them, then yes. To me, all "no AH" would do would be to take everyone's imaginary 1-100 gear score and cut it in half. But the fact that players care more about what color their item text is than gameplay/content (why do people want an expansion? more items.) and developers are willing to simply meet that requirement rather than really expand or build upon it is just a systemic problem of the genre itself. Players just want gear, and gamemakers can get away with skimping on 'real' content because of it.
I think the AH actually has expanded the longevity of D3 in a sense because it makes it easier to obtain the gear necessary for certain builds, thus making them viable. Some WD builds need X piece Zunimassa, some DH builds need X piece Nats, and lots of builds for each class rely heavily on critting often to be effective; all of which would be much more difficult to assemble without the AH than with it.
Yeah, I think a large part of the "problem" with the AH is just perception. By taking down the curtain between "real money" and "video game money", I think it became very difficult for people to separate the two because now it's something that anyone can convert legitimately and it's no longer 'taboo'. Thing is, if you think about playing D3 strictly in terms of dollars and cents, it's essentially an extremely poorly paying job and pretty unrewarding. Monetizing something you like to do is touchy because it can quickly become something you don't like to do when you now feel obligated to do it for the money. I think it's a fair point that in that sense, the RMAH may have been damaging to the game. Though on the other hand, gold selling was and is so rampant it may have been too much for them to ignore anyway.
I still play the game. Maybe you should read all the posts after I stopped posting on the 16th and see that it's not just "my opinion".