Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Wow has 11 million subs? not a chance...
tazarconan7
Member Posts: 74
We all read about the drop in subs numbers in wow during the last months. Many ppl got tired from same and same staff etc etc
I m sitting and thinking thoughall real life friends that i have which happened to play wow. From 4 close friends if mine all 4 have stopped wow during the last year.Another group of 6 guys we used to have a guild and playing in wow (not that close rl friends) all have stopped as well. 2 friens of their the one stopped permanently the other re-subs from time to time.
What is common in all these 10-12 guys i mention is the age. They are all 26-34 y old. 9 of them were playing from vanilla times, the rest 3 joined at bc.
The piece of pie as a number of 12 ppl yes its small. But its more than characteristic and its impossible to be a coincidence.
We are talking here 11 out of 12 quitted and 1 only is subbing from time to time. Its what? 92 % or something? And we talking here about ppl that were harcore raiders or arena junkies ,ppl that used to spend 6-10 hours per day for years.. it was a way of life to them not just a game..we r talking about addicted ppl i know very well here..Allthough they quitted.
Another thing. I spended 5 years in playing in defias brotherhood server. I joined from its launch day 1 and used to know very well almost all ppl inside. I had friends ( some very good friends ) inside 2-3 different guilds. I know for a fact if not all..most of them quitted..some of them in bc, many of them in Wotlk, and most of them in cataclysm. Here we are not talking about 10 or 12 ppl my friends.. im speaking a bout at least 200-250 from alliance side ppl that i know for a fact that they quitted wow.
Some will say ok some ppl quit wow some new players to mmorpg genre join (youngsters mostly) . Prob is , i dont think the join rate is that high as the quit rate in wow right now. And tbh from rl friends side i dont know anyone thathappened to joined wow last year or 2 .. but i do know 12 ppl that quitted.
Apart that i never trust numbers from statistics ,cause i believe like many other things in our life, things even way more important than a game like wow, are being manipulated and presented with lies..
So yes i dont think wow has 11 k milion active subs.
My belief is a number around 4-5 million subs right now.. and thats in best case ..
Comments
Exactly ..
Not only that but the revenue they claim on their quarterlies are fake as well. Simply because when the public release (required by law) is done that division which pretty much of late was WoW only income would require sub numbers closer to what they report.
The SEC is being paid off by this non existant sub money as well.. since they aren't investigating this case of obvious investor fraud.. In other words any publicly traded company that was making such a claim. Would be seen as trying to lure in investors with a "false positive" and that is pretty much.. illegal.
You never know... I mean obviously no one was watching all the bank fraud in recent years.
I got a chance to resub for free for 7days just couple weeks ago.
There was only a handful servers that said full and the rest were low or medium low population servers, with many of the medium population servers barely getting by and not being low.
So yes it's clear WoW is bleeding subs badly.
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
We have got to use to Blizzard's high numbers to realize something here.
Blizzard lost 1 million subs... THATS A LOT... all your friends that left, likely fit into that million. But millions more remain, lots of players are leaving. 1 Million may not sound like a lot compared to Blizzard's avg sub numbers, but it still is alot of people
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I must admit, the tinfoil hat theory was more fun. But yes, I agree with the notion we have zero clue as to what is currently going on in the sub base.
Moreover, I can't help but feel like people are actually happy to see the juggernaut weakening in any way. It is really thanks to WoW (say what you like, it really is the truth) for showing other companies that MMORPGs are a viable monkey making commodity. Don't be so quick to think ill of Blizzard people. They make good games, they don't run sweat shops run by children to make puppy slaying devices.
Clever things.
I often get reminded of this. The last time I played, I had 60 day time card and played a little bit in that time logging in maybee dozen times or so. Iv been stuck at level 63 for god knows how long, its the same character I always had since vanilla. I have all the xpaks cept the latest but in those times I did log in I wondered the areas around that level, and decided to go back to some vanilla. I did play in one group that went through the hellfire citidel instance, even that suxed though. I maybee seen dozen or so people through out that and the vanila places I visited were like echos of the past. It felt like it was so cold and desolate. I have to admit there was a group of these players that were kicking it and playing around for fun but it felt out of place and weired.
But I remember distinctively thinking to my self how it felt more along the lines of warhammer then something like a rift.
I think it still does have 11 million, likely still going down, but if we're going to base it on personal experience, then I would have to say WoW didn't lose anybody.
1. I recently went back to wow after 6 months and the amount of high vs low realms is hardly any different than a year ago.
2.I know 3 real world people that have recently joined wow, none that left.
3. My main realm of Whisperwind isn't any less full than before, in fact none of the realms I play on have dramatic population loses.
4. Right now about 1/4 of the US realms are high, another 1/4 are low, and the rest is medium, during mid day...however I noticed at night about 10:00pm-1:00am pst there are a lot more full realms...I don't know why, but still...this is not unusual at all, unless the only time you played was when cataclysm just started.
5. You know, just because there are a lot of old players leaving, doesn't mean a lot aren't still coming in. I started playing in late BC, when Icecrown dungeons were just coming out, half the friends I met in BC were gone, by the time Cata was about to come out 90% of the people I met in BC were gone. However the amount of friends I had stayed about the same, why...because I made new ones.
There is no doubt that WoW pop is decling, but saying it lost more than 5 million is silly.
"Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security." -Norman Vincent Peale
Exactly. I find a link to Rift as well. WoW looses a million subs, Rift supposedly sports about a million subs. Coincidence? I dont think so.
If the OP is suggesting that WoW bled more around 5 million where did they go? Did they just stop playing mmos altogether?
"MMORPGs are a viable monkey making commodity"
Hah! I like that WoW monkeys.
Here at Blizzard we make em! After all even a monkey can push a button!
I don't claim to know much about this whole subscription endeavor, but I will comment and say that I have experienced not only a friends-list wide exodus from WoW, but a 100+ member guild exodus as well. From the last few months of time I played the game, the players I had encountered were either hardcore epeen stroking raiders, clueless "newbies", and very angry PvPers.
You could, of course, say that that's most of the player base regardless, but at least back in the day I had a great number of people I wanted to be friends with and hang out with in-game. Now I can hardly stand to talk to anybody for more than a few minutes. /shrug
There isn't much to 'know' really.
Public companies aren't allowed to 'lie' else you get jail time (ie Enron) so what they say has to be 'true'.
Their financial statements are also public which states what an 'active' sub is.
'only 30% of the playerbase get above level 10' - Blizz CEO
The exodus / player leaving has been around since vanilla but it has been countered by a larger number of new people playing till now. As far as I know, Cata did what it was intended to do which was to increase that '30%'. It didn't have that injection of new people as expected though which is why WoW subs have decreased.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
A publicly traded company can not lie or just make up fake sub numbers every year. They canget into serious trouble for doing that. but nay sayers will always find an excuse to make Blizzard look like liers.
even when they report losing 4 milion subscribers, people will still scream "WoW has 11 million subs!".
It is ironic since Blizzard was the only MMO company that stated clearly what their definition of an 'active sub' is.
In layman terms it is 'gave us money the last 30days'.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
A friend of mine who worked for Blizzard told me the numbers are true. They don't fake it.
However a NA/EU sub does not equals how they count subs in asia.
1milion of players lost in Asia doesn't mean $15 milions are lost monthly.
I find it hilarious that the actual number of subs WoW has keeps so many people awake at night.
and the amount of WoW subs matters why?
That really is the point. For anyone that would post on these forums why would it matter. Its not like this is a forum for share holders and they are the only ones outside of employees that should care.
My other reply was simply because this same exact thread pops up way too often.
Then again I never talk about subscriber numbers becuase I have no idea. Its just easy to see the legally required public disclosures and do some math.
Just a little fun fact. Alot of servers still after 7 years have queues around 18-22:00 CET. So ye, thats just a little fun fact.
The other thing people fail to realize is just how ´casual´ a lot of players are in WOW. The reason WOW got as big as it is is because there are a ton of people playing it that never heard of another MMO, never read any type of forum like this and really don´t care about being elite.
So yes.. your guild if 200 people who played DAOC, then all went to WOW, then all quit WOW... might be factual.. but you are far and away the ´minority´ of the typical WOW player... and your ´mmo friends list on xfire´ is really insignicant when it comes to WOWs population.
But back to the OP.. WOW definitely has 11M subscribers ( using their definition).. people can guess at the breakdown from China.... but the really interesting thing about this downturn is subscribers is that it came along with an INCREASE in revenues.. which, to me, indicates that the losses were from the lower paying markets like China, and not the US.
Also, as other have mentioned.. there are still a lot of servers that end up with queues fairly frequently. Compare that to Rift that already has closed half their servers and has a few dozen more as ghosttowns.
Just curious OP as to why you care so much about WoW's sub numbers, it's not like anyone is able to play with lets say 11 mil. people, it's not even possible to play with 1 mil people at the same time and knowing them. So why are some so intrested in sub numbers, obviously they want a game to play that has people in it, but seriously making a topic to debunk WoW sub numbers as if.....
This is a classic example of what I call Bill Gates syndrome. Deep down inside everyone and their dog wishes they were Bill and made more money in a year than some countries do. Since they are not Bill though and will most likely never even come close they automatically have to hate and troll on everything Microsoft related. Its kinda like highschool all over again, you want to know who the most popular kid is, you see how many losers are wishing they were them and wanting to stab them in the back at the sametime.
Frankly I dont see why some of these people waste so much time on shit like this. You dont like WoW or Blizzard? Fine already, we get it. No one is forcing these people to play Blizz games. So why dont you all just stfu and go play wtfever you want and the rest of us will do the same.
People hate on WoW and Blizzard just to do it. There doesnt have to be any rhyme or reason to it at all for them. For petes sake Blizz could make a game that brings about world peace and people would still think up SOME reason to troll them. Thus is the price of fame and prosperity sometimes.
WHAT!? People are still throwing this around? Goddamn.
According to Launch Day Rift Server List!- 31 NEW SERVERS 03/01/11 they had 58 servers for NA and 41 servers for EU (99 total).
According to http://www.riftstatus.com/servers.php as of...today it's showing 35 servers for NA and 21 for EU (56 total).
How do a million plus accounts fit on Rift's 56 servers? Let me spell it out and in different languages in case it doesn't sink in: fixty six, cincuenta y séis, cinquante-six, zes-en-vijftig.
WoW has 241 servers for all of the Americas, 264 EU, 33 Korean, 46 Taiwanese and *drum roll* 365 Chinese giving it a grand total of 949 servers. All taken from us.battle.net/wow/en/status and the rest from the drop down menu right above the T-for teen rating sticker at the bottom of that page.
Now check how many accounts can fit per WoW server. Big difference eh?
What we need to take into account now is:
A. the maximum number of players that can be logged in at a given time. (it was estimated to be 5k for WoW, no more than 2k for Rift)
B. the maximum number of accounts that the realm can store. (Even if WoW easily surpasses Rift at #A, Rift has more #B?? No.)
Looking at the numbers, it is pretty damn possible that WoW has or had 11 million plus accounts at one point. I'll believe that.
I have some friends that were burnt by MMOs before.
One played Earth and Beyond. Another played Matrix online etc.
Guess what they play now and will never leave? Yep, WoW.
While I am 100% sure OP just wants to troll and this is not the reason why the OP 'cares', there are some reasoning why some players do care about the numbers.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
What was the point of this thread other than to be another troll against WoW?
I want to like the community on this site....
The mods need to make it illegal to even MENTION WoW at all. 11 million people play and enjoy the game... The rest of them apparently come to this site heh.
It's a good game... blizzard has no reason to lie... and everybody and their GRANDMOTHER knows what WoW is. How many people on the street 8 years ago could you walk up to and ask "Do you know what Everquest is?" or "Ultima"
Almost no one. WoW brought MMORPG to the world as a whole. Maybe they ruined it for the "old school" people... Who knows. Stop flaming/trashing the game. You are wrong numbers and popularity prove it.
Did anybody take into consideration the fact WoW now has an unlimited free trial? Pretty sure that could make the servers seem more populated then they really are...
I honestly don't care about WoW anymore I have no plans to play ever again and declined their 7 day invite to return.