Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Truth about WoW Subscribers
fawd
Member Posts: 367
| Guardian Posts: 531 Registered: 11-09-2004  
Reply 1 of 23 |
|
I think there is some confusion about World of Warcraft (WoW) subscribers vs. other MMOGs. I keep seeing people quote stuff like "WoW has 5,000,000 million subscribers and EQ2 only has 500,000". Well, that really isn't a fair comparison. WoW has a different pricing model in the Asian market, due to the popularity of gaming cafes. WoW can be downloaded (for 30 Yuan) and then it's a pay to play (.45 Yuan / hour). So basically, anyone who's ever tried WoW...even for like 5 minutes is considered a WoW subscriber because Blizzard doesn't know if they'll be back or not. For the EQ2 numbers, it's the current count of paying monthly subscribers. See some of this reference information: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=new&aid=9354 http://www.gamespot.com/news/6127037.html http://www.gamingsteve.com/archives/2005/11/with_all_the_ta.php WoW "Subscriber" = #of People that have tried WoW EQ2 Subscriber = #of people currently signed up for a regularly billed pay plan Since there are eleventy billion people in China, I assume a lot of people have downloaded WoW...tried it, and then never played again. Since they have an account that is pay per play, they are still listed as a subscriber. This is where the numbers skew and shouldn't be compared. A better comparison, which we won't get from either company, would be total number of people logged in to each game over a long period of time. Or better yet, total number of unique accounts that have invested X number of hours. Am I off on this notion? Bottom line: There aren't 5M people paying to play WoW at this very moment. While I too would like reassurance that EQ2 is experiencing healthy growth and will be around for the long-haul, I think all the "Chicken Littles" are raising red flags over some mis-interpreted statistics. PLEASE - I am not looking for any flame wars here, just want to make sure I understand the way these "statistics" are being put together. I'm not trying to start another WoW vs. EQ2 debate. Thanks for any thoughts! | |
Taken directly from the EQ2 forums. I thought it was quite interesting... what do you all think?
Comments
Very informative and very interesting.
However, one thing that the poster of the article doesn't do is show exactly how Blizzard counts their subscription numbers... if indeed they include subscribers as anyone who's ever tried WoW, or Blizzard could calculate it some other way that is more "standard" and "fair."
_____________________________________
"Io rido, e rider mio non passa dentro;
Io ardo, e l'arsion mia non par di fore."
-Machiavelli
I doubt they count everyone who has ever purchased the game. They dont do that in the West, theres no reason to do that in Asia.
They dont buy an hour at a time, they buy a chunk of time and burn it off by the hour. We buy months at a time, they buy hours at time. There is essential no difference. If someone has bought 20 hours they are counted as "subscribers", when they use the 20 hours then they are no longer "subscribed".
The only real difference is that someone could buy 20 hours and then never use it. Such a person could hardly be considered a "player", and such a person is not a source of revenue either. Somehow I doubt that happens very often.
wow is the biggest mmog ....try to live with it
That's why those other Oriental online games like Lineage 1 and 2 have 3+ million "subscribers" and thsoe games suck major ass.
Also these 3rd world countries hire the infamous gold farmers by the 100s to Ebay. Bulls hires poor/unemployed players around the clock farming whatever to sell for them. Like a Pimp working his tricks.
Yeap because companies NEVER lie to hype up their games to get more sheep to jump on the bandwagon.
I tend to agree that 5 million subscribers is a bit over inflated. The numbers just dont add up. In EQ1 a server would get very unplayable when numbers of players playing in any given server hit around 2500 or more. Not really sure how it works on WoW. But lets say 5 million players divided by lets say 3000 players per server. That adds up too around 1666 servers total to be able to handle 5 million or so players.
I highly doubt that Blizzard is running even 500 servers atm. So again, THE NUMBERS DONT ADD UP.
So yes, I do believe people should question those retarded inflated subscriber numbers.
Yeap because companies NEVER lie to hype up their games to get more sheep to jump on the bandwagon.
I tend to agree that 5 million subscribers is a bit over inflated. The numbers just dont add up. In EQ1 a server would get very unplayable when numbers of players playing in any given server hit around 2500 or more. Not really sure how it works on WoW. But lets say 5 million players divided by lets say 3000 players per server. That adds up too around 1666 servers total to be able to handle 5 million or so players.
I highly doubt that Blizzard is running even 500 servers atm. So again, THE NUMBERS DONT ADD UP.
So yes, I do believe people should question those retarded inflated subscriber numbers.
I went to the WoW offical site and counted 123 total servers. So that means in each server if all were equally divided by its 5 million subscribers that means each server would have to hold 40,650 players at one time.
That would be 1666 servers needed if every subscriber in the world was to play at the same time.
Which of course they don't.
There is about 140 servers available in Europe and a porported 2 million subscribers. That would average at around 14,000 subscribers to a server. Eve servers have 20,000 concurrent players, I bet WOW doesn't have anything close. My guess would be more like 3,000 (but I have no Idea it could equally be 2, 6 or 10 thousand for all I know).
So heres my approximation. 2,000,000/140 servers = 14,084 subscribers per server.
For this (wildly inaccurate) guesstimate of the figures to tally with Blizzards figures, 8/10* subscribers would have to be offline at anyone time (even primetime). Next time you log on, count the active players in your guild to give you some idea as to a proportion of players with active accounts that play at the exact same time. (some people have alts in the clan, so like all our other figures we have nothing too precise to run on).
(*)3,000 estimated server capacity/ 14,084 estimated subscribers per server = 0.21 of estimated active subscribers logged in simultaneously.
I have no firm idea about Blizzards figures although I see no particular reason to doubt them. I'm sure if it was exactly 4.742583 million they would round it up to 5 mill rather than down to 4.5
I note that WOW has been on the best sellers top shelf of PC games shops for almost a year here now. I understand that people who buy it don't stay indefinitely subscribed. Millions of units have been sold in my country alone. I think it's still growing in Europe as they have been adding servers.
If I was a betting man, I'd bet that Blizzard has 5 million subscribers.
There are three official sites, Europe, Asia and the U.S. each have their own set of localised Servers.
The chances of all subscribers logging on simultaneously is remote in the extreme.
So a server capacity can feasably be much less than the number of active subscribers it supports.
There are three official sites, Europe, Asia and the U.S. each have their own set of localised Servers.
The chances of all subscribers logging on simultaneously is remote in the extreme.
So a server capacity can feasably be much less than the number of active subscribers it supports.
So do they have 1000+ servers to handle those numbers? Murphy's Law
There are three official sites, Europe, Asia and the U.S. each have their own set of localised Servers.
The chances of all subscribers logging on simultaneously is remote in the extreme.
So a server capacity can feasably be much less than the number of active subscribers it supports.
So do they have 1000+ servers to handle those numbers? Murphy's Law
On average between all the MMO's about 10% of there player base is online at a time. I played WoW and can tell you sometimes you have to face queues of 500-1000 people. I think 5000000 subscribers is true. If WoW was such a success in America (1-1.5 million subscribers) I would imagine in Asia (the heart of video gaming) it would hit triple that. Remember WoW is availible in the 3 most populated continents in the world.
Kekule
I think they have 400 plus servers to handle these numbers.
For Eve online, that would be enough for 8 million people+ to play SIMULTANEOUSLY. So even that wouldn't be outside the realms of what is currently technically achievable in MMO's. (WoW is no Eve online).
NB Active Subscribers does not = Concurrent server population.
14,000 subscribers do not need a server capable of holding 14,000 players since they wil all play at different hours of the day, on different nights of the week, in different timezones. Although Eve online can handle 20,000 players in the server at the same time, it has many more than 20,000 active subscribers.
No, the diablolike ones legend of mir 3 and mu has both FAR more subscribers, like 10 times as many. They are using hourly rates which is why they do not show up in mmo charts.
Webzen has announced mu having 54 million players. Oh, btw, the free, global server of mu has only 2 million players. The rest of the players are in Muvietnam, Muthai, Mukorea, Mujapan, Muchina etc
Guess which mmo company cooperating with microsoft on bringing mmos to xbox 360. Its not Blizzard. It's webzen, who developed mu.
Also, those charts are based on press releases, so they are relying on arbitrary information given by the games companies.
World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.
I don't see Blizzard defining a customer very different than any other mmo company.
census
A single WoW server can hold over 30k accounts. The lowest pop one has just under 10k.
EvEs "record" they keep setting is people on the same server. The reason other games never break this is because they run multiple game worlds ( servers ) but in eve all eve players play on the same "server". Having 20k people playing an online game at one time isn't a major achevment, having them all in the same game world ( same server(s) where they could run into each other ) is.
Does it really matter how many people they have playing though ? You're never going to be on the same server as 90+ % of those 5 million so who really cares. The only stat that should really matter is, how many of them on your server are not stupid little trash talking 14 year olds, that couldn't fight thier way out of a wet paper bag in real life.