A Starcraft MMO could be HUGE...I remember how disappointed I was when I realized that Gamespot's April Fools of last year was to tease about such a game :)
Starcraft had a huge following around the world (and still does), well above anything the Warcraft RTS series had. If it's done right, I think it could be an amazing seller...as long as the MMO market isn't oversaturated. Then again, has a non-spaceship MMO ever grabbed a large audience?
It is being reported as fact that blizzard is going to announce a starcraft mmo in Korea on May 19th. Blizzard has said they will announce a game there that day.
You are not starting over because you don't have to delete your original character. Many, many people find it fun to have alts and want to see the new low level quests zones as well. They may not level that character all the way up to 70 but they will play those zones and mess around with the new content. Recent changes to some of the "forgotten" classes has created a demand for people to start an alt and check them out (Pallys, Druids, warriors are next). Jewelcrafting is another reason. There is a lot more to WOW than being in a raiding guild. Almost every guildy I know has an alt of some kind on our server and on different servers.
@LiquidJ, I don't know if many people are buying BC to start over as a Blood Elf or Draenei. It's a huge hassle with nearly no benefits. The only reason to do this is to add a Pally to your Horde guild or Shaman to your Alliance guild. In that case, your guild will probably just take turns power leveling the character.
I think most guilds already prepared for this, hence the pre-sale load we saw.
For someone low-to-mid level, this is only enticing if you aren't happy with your character and want to start over as a blood elf or draenei...which I think is lower probability.
The benefits of BC is definitely for more veteran players who have at least had one end game character....but this has all been grounded out previously in this forum.
I think the main factor for sales is not something internal to the game, but the China market as others have noted.
BC has content for both sides of the coin. The beginning and the end stages of the game. Because Blizzard lets you have multiple characters and most players have at least two this expansion is attractive to everyone regardless of how far they are in the game.
I'm not sure if this was mentioned but BC is now available as a download at least in NA. Which makes it that much more accessible to people currently playing the game or those considering trying it out again.
Just posted an article with comprehensive rankings.
"Instead of selling 1.4 million copies domestically, the expansion pack sold a much more modest 141,000 units, just ahead of the original World of Warcraft."
It looks like sales were extremely pre-sale heavy and exactly what was predicted here.
The next catalyst for this stock would be unexpectedly high sales in Chinese language regions.
Good point zukaus, I did not know that about China. I am also wondering how many of the Chinese subscribers will be far enough in WoW so that when BC releases there they will have a reason to buy it. Given the nature of mmorpg's I think most people who would buy BC already have. Don't get me wrong though I think BC will reach its current price within 3-9 months.
Well you have to take in to account that at least 3.5 million WoW players are in the Chinese market according to Blizzard. Over there the Burning Crusade expansion has yet to be released which means right now there actually only 5 million available buyers.
With 3.5 million copies already sold this means an amazing 70% of available buyers have already purchased BC within two months of it's release.
Assuming 70% of the Chinese market also picks up the expansion (0.7 x 3.5 million) you can add 2.45M on top of the current 3.5M sold for a total estimate of 5.95 million sold not taking in account any future growth.
Of course it is always possible China rejects BC but that seems unlikely to me. How much farther this can go is anybody's guess, WoW is truly a global phenomenon.
As zukaus posted WoW reached 8 million subscribers ~Jan 11, and farther back on March 1 2006 it had reached 6 million at that time. Now I don't know how long it would on average for players to reach the point in WoW (how far they are in the game) where BC becomes relevant to buy. But I'd wager it takes atleast a few months and maybe even a year. We can safely say that 500,000 subscribers probably will not have a reason to buy BC for a while and that upwards of 2.5 million may [emphasis], not for a few months. Correct me if I am missing something here.
So we have 8.5 million subscribers to WoW and the expansion having content that might not appeal to all current players. Therefore, we needed 82% of current subscribers to buy BC in order to meet the current price. And as of March 7th, 3.5 million have, roughly a little over 50% of that 82% (41.117%). So we need the remaining 5 million subscribers to buy 3.5 million copies. It may take a while for that to happen because many of them may be new to WoW or realize they don't have the time to invest in it. I think we can get a better read on how fast it might reach the stock price if we know how long ago it reached its last sales milestone for the original game WoW. I'll research that.
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Starcraft had a huge following around the world (and still does), well above anything the Warcraft RTS series had. If it's done right, I think it could be an amazing seller...as long as the MMO market isn't oversaturated. Then again, has a non-spaceship MMO ever grabbed a large audience?