Looking Ahead – World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 11 September 2012 / 11,224 Views
Welcome to the “Looking Ahead – World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria” article. This article will contain the changes in the newest expansion to one of the most popular MMORPG World of Warcraft, how well it is expected to sell at retail, as well as the sales from the previous expansions at retail.
Changes in Mists of Pandaria
Here are a few of the changes that are occurring in the new expansion. First off, the expansion is adding Monks, Pandaren, the new zones, new instances and raids, new levels, new quests, and even the new talent system. The level cap has been raised from 85 to 90. New races include the Pandaren, Jinyu, Hozen, and the Virmen.
Secondly, there are changes coming to the PVP meta game. The first change with PVP is that players appear to do around 30 percent less damage to another player, when compared to fighting a mob. Two new stats have been added called PVP Power and PVP Resilience. PVP Power gives the player a chance to cause more damage to other players and PVP Resilience increases a player’s defense. PVP gear is getting changes as well. It will no longer be able to be used to jump content and the queue system like it was in Cataclysm.
The quest hubs are also changing. Users are used to the majority of quest hubs being faction specific. However, in Mists of Pandaria this is now the exception. Users can now expect to see Alliance and Horde questing side by side.
There are also changes coming to tanking. Tanks at least in the beta were putting out a lot more damage. Tanks now use a new active defense model. Players who play as a tank need to watch their resources and cool downs and be more active in mitigating damage. Blocking now occurs as a separate roll after an attack hits or misses.
Mana is getting some changes as well. Classes now get a set amount of mana. There is no more increase in the mana pool based on the intellect level. Intellect now only increase a players spell power, or how much your spells damage or heal someone.
World of Warcraft Expansions Sales History
In the chart above, the World of Warcraft expansions have sold 11.12 million units at retail. The first two expansions, The Burning Crusade and the Wrath of the Lich King, have sold almost the identical amount. They each sold a just under four million units each. They were also released just 22 months apart. Cataclysm which was released 25 months after Wrath of the Lich King sold 3.15 million units. This is a decrease of 0.83 million units.
Looking at the bar graph above it is easy to see that sales for the World of Warcraft expansions have declined with Cataclysm. Sales in North American retails have declined even further compared to the rest of the world. The Burning Crusade sold 2.57 million units. Wrath of the Lich King declined 0.16 million units to 2.41 million units sold and Cataclysm declined 0.77 million units to 1.64 million units sold.
Sales Expectations for Mists of Pandaria
Mists of Pandaria sales are expected to keep the downward trend in the World of Warcraft expansions. Taking a look at the pre-orders in the USA the game has just 138,189 pre-orders with just three weeks until release. That would put the final pre-orders between 200,000 to 225,000 units. This is a drop of more than 50 percent when compared to Cataclysm. Cataclysm sold 677,636 units in its opening week in the US, while Mists of Pandaria is most likely going to sell between 300,000 and 350,000 units in the US.
Cataclysm ended up selling 1.53 million units globally in its first week. That would put Mists of Pandaria first week sales globally between 675,000 and 775,000 units. The game will most likely sell between 1.5 million and 1.8 million units lifetime.
As a reminder all sales figures are for retail only, and do not include digital sales.
Contact VGChartz at wdangelo@vgchartz.com
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no point in getting pandamania when GW2 is out and every wow expansion is rinsing and repeating what was already done.
so the retail sales for the warcraft expansions declined as blizzard moved more towards selling the expansions digitally, that is weird! Next there will be some crazy survey suggesting that the sale of ps2 games declined slowly after the ps3 came out...
Mana is getting some changes as well. Classes now get a set amount of mana. There is no more increase in the mana pool based on the intellect level. Intellect now only increase a players spell power, or how much your spells damage or heal someone.
WHAT THE HELL!!
