@deftangel, Since the issue is not just skeleton characters, but also "city raid", one of the interesting feature of WoW, I think the issue could potentially be very big (removing a characters should be doable and insignificant changes to gameplay, but removing city raid should be much more difficult and possibly gameplay breaking). Since I didn't play WoW, this is my opinion as non-player.
Someone else who played WoW wanted to comment on skeleton characters and city raid ?
Ok, first things first; I'm on public record as being short on this stock; mainly because I feel there are question marks over what is to be considered a "sale" of Lich King in China (For the previous expansion, existing subscribers simply got it free).
Anyhow, this is potentially big news as China must account for at least a third of that 11.5m active subscriber base if not two fifths. Clearly, it's very much in Blizzard's interests to get this sorted given the numbers but there have been a lot of noises coming out of China lately about "doing something" about online games and one suspects the powers that be are not keen on making things easy for The9 here.
JLM Pacific Epoch reports the Chinese government "has rejected two applications by the second expansion for World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King since China's Spring Festival (January 25 - February 1)." Considering Blizzard has removed "skeleton characters" from WoW in the past and the supposedly gold farmer-free million plus player count for WoW in China, we're willing to bet Blizzard (and its licensing partner in China, The9) will find a way to release Wrath of the Lich King yet.
Sales for blizzard games tend to be very very long-legged. Sales of Warcraft III Battlechest still appear in the charts. Copies of Starcraft Battle chest are still sold every month, and the latter has been out for a decade.
WoW may have "peaked" but just like Diablo II, and starcraft there will almost always be an audience for this. People still play Ever quest, and Ultima Online. The biggest question is when WoW calls it quits is it going to be a slow death, or fast death?
Bugs plague any developer of computer software -- even when you think your code is perfect and it's been seen as such by everyone in the company, you'll still have your users find bugs faster and more frequently than you ever thought possible. And Blizzard is no stranger to bugs -- though they have a reputation for quality releases, they've always had a few bugs sneak through. As big a game as World of Warcraft is, there's always bound to be something not working quite right.
When Burning Crusade launched in China, it was bundled with the CD-Key (i.e. activation) for the main game.
So any new players post Burning Crusade launch would automatically have access to the BC expansion.
However, and this is a big however IMO, if a player already had a CD-Key fo WoW, they would not have to purchase another one for the expansion. Even if they had not played WoW for a while. Presumably this move was designed to retain and re-attract old players.
If this situation is extended to the Lich King (and I've seen no confirmation of this, I just expect it to be) then 13.5m registered accounts would never have to purchase a CD-Key for the expansion but any new subscribers that get into WoW would automatically have "bought" it.
Now for sure, if you are expecting 4-5m new accounts in the region post the expansion's launch (i.e. double existing subscribers with new players) there's every right to be bullish on this but it's litterally going to take that many just to reach 12m or so even if you assume 70% of WoW subscribers everywhere else make a purchase (as China seems to represent approximately 1/3 of the userbase.)
As well as The Lich King expansion has done, it's only sold 500k more in it's first month or so than Burning Crusade despite the number of current subscribers being 11m vs 8m. Now that's not necessairly as straight-forward as it sounds, there maybe a few caveats to it but it's the only real solid data point that we have at present.
@zukaus, "The BC expansion is packed in with the main game" When did this started to happen ? IF this "packed-in" things also happen with WoLTK in the future, all bets are off.
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Since the issue is not just skeleton characters, but also "city raid", one of the interesting feature of WoW, I think the issue could potentially be very big (removing a characters should be doable and insignificant changes to gameplay, but removing city raid should be much more difficult and possibly gameplay breaking). Since I didn't play WoW, this is my opinion as non-player.
Someone else who played WoW wanted to comment on skeleton characters and city raid ?