Pacific Epoch World of Warcraft (WoW) Survey

From Pacific Epoch: WoW Survey (free; registration required)

"World of Warcraft (WoW) is the world's hottest online game, and has broken sales records in North America, Europe, Korea, and every other country where it has been launched. WoW was one of the most anticipated games in China in 2004. Industry analysts and competitors expect the game to be a success when it launches in China soon. Pacific Epoch decided to conduct a small study of the market for World of Warcraft in China. We spoke with 64 gamers in Shanghai and discussed WoW's future."

Conclusion of the study:
"Pacific Epoch's study indicates that World of Warcraft will be popular, but will not have the amazing initial success that many people expect. WoW will not create a large amount of new MMORPG gamers. Rather, it will cannibalize gamers from other MMORPGs, notably Sina's Lineage II. WoW will not record historic peak concurrent user numbers due to the lack of hardware. After the initial surge in users, WoW's user growth will depend on new PC sales." Read more