Ok I've done a little more digging. You do have to "upgrade" your account to play the expansions so in one sense, it could be argued that is a "sale" just like downloading a game. Fair enough.
However;
Reading the WoW forums, it seems to be that you need to have upgraded to the Burning Crusade to upgrade again to the Lich King. If that's true (delighted if a player can confirm) then the GLS for the Lich King can not possibly be more than for the Burning Crusade (which topped out around 10m I think).
Regardless of that even, I stand by my original comment of subscribers != sales. I came across a Forbes article which suggested Blizzard expected "half" of subscribers to upgrade to the expansion. That's under 6m as it stands. Certainly not every single account will upgrade. Some people have more than one to play with lower level friends. Even the latest PC charts have the vanilla game at #7 so some of these new subscribers are buying WoW just to play the core game, not the expansion packs.
It is ridiculous to assume that every WoW subscriber will upgrade their account. Currently we're predicting 1m more than there are total subscribers to the entire game. I've no idea of WoW's shelf life but let's be generous and suggest 75% of people will upgrade BOTH expansions ( that's high, IMO ). Blizzard would need to have over 15.5m subscribers for that to work out, again assuming 3/4 of all players decide to jump in.
The expansion packs are mainly aimed at those players with high level accounts. How many players have put the hours in to get up to the level to make it worthwhile? I certainly can't find any kind of PR that the first expansion sold 10m. I'd have thought we'd have heard something about that no?
75% of the current total subscribers is around 8.5m , that's a little more acceptable but the mindset on the exchange seems to be more or less every subscriber will buy the expansions and WoW will keep growing. I don't think there is any compelling evidence to support the former and WoW subs might be growing still but a lot more slowly than they were.
We've yet to see what StarCraft II sales are going to do to WoW subs, especially in Asia. That series is monumentally huge over there.
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Ok I've done a little more digging. You do have to "upgrade" your account to play the expansions so in one sense, it could be argued that is a "sale" just like downloading a game. Fair enough.
However;
Reading the WoW forums, it seems to be that you need to have upgraded to the Burning Crusade to upgrade again to the Lich King. If that's true (delighted if a player can confirm) then the GLS for the Lich King can not possibly be more than for the Burning Crusade (which topped out around 10m I think).
Regardless of that even, I stand by my original comment of subscribers != sales. I came across a Forbes article which suggested Blizzard expected "half" of subscribers to upgrade to the expansion. That's under 6m as it stands. Certainly not every single account will upgrade. Some people have more than one to play with lower level friends. Even the latest PC charts have the vanilla game at #7 so some of these new subscribers are buying WoW just to play the core game, not the expansion packs.
It is ridiculous to assume that every WoW subscriber will upgrade their account. Currently we're predicting 1m more than there are total subscribers to the entire game. I've no idea of WoW's shelf life but let's be generous and suggest 75% of people will upgrade BOTH expansions ( that's high, IMO ). Blizzard would need to have over 15.5m subscribers for that to work out, again assuming 3/4 of all players decide to jump in.
The expansion packs are mainly aimed at those players with high level accounts. How many players have put the hours in to get up to the level to make it worthwhile? I certainly can't find any kind of PR that the first expansion sold 10m. I'd have thought we'd have heard something about that no?
75% of the current total subscribers is around 8.5m , that's a little more acceptable but the mindset on the exchange seems to be more or less every subscriber will buy the expansions and WoW will keep growing. I don't think there is any compelling evidence to support the former and WoW subs might be growing still but a lot more slowly than they were.
We've yet to see what StarCraft II sales are going to do to WoW subs, especially in Asia. That series is monumentally huge over there.