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MMORPG Subscription Numbers
donjn
Member UncommonPosts: 816
EDIT: I adjusted these numbers because Xfire is only for the US.
We all know that XFire is not reliable. But polls are used for a reason. If you can get a sample size of 5%, you can usually estimate total numbers. Think about presidential polls and Nielson Ratings. These are not done with the majority of numbers. It is an average.
I know Xfire has been discussed to death but I saw some things that looked interesting. Because World of Warcraft has 11 million subscribers I divided that number into the players that played that day to get a 115.34 ratio. Turning this around and multiplying that to other games, well, here is what I got:
Guild Wars: 600k
Eve Online: 400k
SilkRoad Online: 320k
Warhammer Online: 275k
Lord of the Rings Online: 200k
Age of Conan: 100k
Runescape: 40k
Everquest II: 30k
Now, I did not obviously list everything; I just listed what came to mind. The numbers actually look pretty good except for Everquest II. I would think they would have closer to 100k but perhaps they are really down to 50k? Maybe the recent amount of PMT has hurt them? Also I listed Guild Wars and Silkroad for fun. I know they are free.
Does anyone feel these numbers are close?
Remember, it does matter how reliable Xfire is. The Xfire petree dish does not change so it can be compared to petree dish A, B, C and so on.
Your scale could show you that you weight 20 more pounds than other scales, but if you lose weight, it will still show you how much you lost...
Comments
That's pretty cool. Thanks! Interesting.
Although yea.. Xfire isn't reliable. Unfortunately, probably the best source we got.
Thanks man. I know we will get some negative "Xfire sucks" posts, but if you look at these numbers, they may be pretty accurate within 5 to 10%..
The only one I can say for sure is way off is eve-online. They have closer to 200k subs.
Not so sure about Guild wars having that many either?
Everything else looks pretty spot on. Interestng...
Very interesting.
This shows that a higher percentage of people use Xfire with Eve Online. So, why do so many Eve Online players use Xfire?
This discussion could be very cool, lets keep it going that way.
Actually Eve is much higher. They broke 200k in November of 2007. Its been more than a year. PLUS they released a MAC and Linux client.
Main problem with this is that you are taking WoW numbers from the entire world whereas xfire only registers accounts from the Europe and US. So if you want this to be accurate you need to take WoWs western population which is around the 5M subs mark.
a your numbers are way off. LMAO look what you put for eve alone
then what are the exact number smarty pants?
EvE currently has 270,000 subscriptions to it so id say your number for EvE need adjusting
Another great example of Moore's Law. Give people access to that much space (developers and users alike) and they'll find uses for it that you can never imagine. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates 1981
ITs hard to use Xfire for very accurate information......isnt it usually associated with FPS games?? I dont play them but I have never had Xfire come with any MMO I have bought.......Also it seemed that Xfire was more popular with the younger crowds (18-29) than with the older gamers......ALso you'd have to consider tiem of day and otehr factors when using that data....games like WoW and EQ2 are heavy raiding games and quite a few of the players just log in to play during raids........Also like someone said only 4.5M to 5M of WoWs subs are n the NA/EU areas....Does Xfire cover the Asian countries??
The only way those numbers could be off is if players with active subscriptions are more likely to show up on Xfire for some games than others. And I'll bet that's not merely true, but to a spectacular degree. Indeed, if any of those numbers happen to be off by no more than 5%-10%, that would be best attributed to an odd fluke.
X-Fire stats will never give you a good foundation to extrapolate subscription numbers. Every games community is different and some may be more attuned towards X-Fire than others. What X-Fire can tell you is a games trend. Right now the game I play is LOTRO. While I can't tell you how many subs the game has I can tell you that it's X-Fire numbers show the game is quite steady. Whatever the percentage of the population that uses X-Fire, LOTRO's community is a healthy one. Now if the subs are 250k, 500k or even a million, that info is very hard to come by. Data gathered here or there only let us know that the game has a very solid niche population and that it's well ranked among MMOs.
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Currently Playing: Lord of the Rings Online since original Open Beta, Atlantica Online
Waiting On: Knights of the Old Republic, Aion
Played: World of Warcraft (3 years), Ultima Online (2 years), EvE Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, Perfect World
I feel that it should be pointed out that since SOE released its Sation Launcher early last year, XFire hasn't been able to record when games are played through it.
The XFire devs were notified of this in July 2008 and haven't fixed it yet - I even told them how! lol
Eve-Online have "quarter of a million" subscribers (http://www.eve-online.com/pressreleases/default.asp?pressReleaseID=52). So your numbers in EvE-online is off about 264%. Pretty "unreliable method"... though you are likely getting better estimates than stock analysts. From those numbers you could say that "EvE-Online is bigger than Star Wars Galaxies", but you can't reliable say that "EvE-Online is bigger than Warhammer Online". Maybe, "It is possible that, EvE-online bigger than Warhamer Online"....
"I know I said this was my last post, but you my friend are a idiotic moron." -Shadow4482
The reason Eve's xfore numbers are so out of balance is because CCP ran a big Xfire promotion during the holidiys.
I think those numbers mostly look pretty darn accurate. I like your idea. Considering we don't have accurate stats, these are the best we can do for now.
Guild Wars doesn't have subscribers. You can calculate active users with guildwars but not subscribers.
Financially, from Arenanet perspective, it would be best if people just bought their games and never play them.
Also missing from your list are a number of very popular asian games. Lineage 1, L2 and Ragnarok Online each have far, far more subscribers then Silkroad Online. L2 is probably the number 2 at the moment globally.
That's very closed-minded thinking. They'll want those people playing the game as that means that there is a much greater chance of those people purchasing expansions and sequels.
And the OP said that he/she knows Guild Wars has active users, not subscribers.
Ryzom shows as having 4k
personally, thats fine by me
doesnt matter what game is
or what the subs are
as long as there's enough people playing it
EQ2 fan sites
We should have another poll showing how many of every MMOs users are likely to use Xfire. I probably think that the average WOW player is less likely to use it than for instance an EVE player, which would explain the discrepance.
You have to weight in a few facts:
- EVE had a big promotion to X-Fire, so the numbers are way off the official numbers (around 250k by CCP themselves)
- Some of those games have a very large mature (25+ years) gamer playerbase that don't care or don't know about X-fire enough for its numbers to be completely unreliable. Games like SWG, LOTRO and EQII
- Guild Wars is not subscription based.
I made an adjustment to the subscription numbers because 11 million as a base for WoW is too high as we should only use the 7 million from the US and Europe.
These numbers look better:
Guild Wars: 600k
Eve Online: 400k
SilkRoad Online: 320k
Warhammer Online: 275k
Lord of the Rings Online: 200k
Age of Conan: 100k
Runescape: 40k
Everquest II: 30k
I already mentioned that I threw Guild Wars in there for fun.
You need a subscription to play Guild Wars.
If you mean, "free" then yes. But if that is true, why no mention of Silkroad? Also please note my original post when said I listed Guild Wars for fun...
Yeah that promotion has killed my EvE Online estimate. 250k is about right.
Everything else looks good though.
You are still overestimating the US and Europe subs for WoW. US and Europe have never comprised more than half of the games worldwide subscriptions since release in Asia. The number is more along the lines of 5 to 5.3 million.
This was the press release in Jan '08:
"World of Warcraft now hosts more than 2 million subscribers in Europe, more than 2.5 million in North America, and approximately 5.5 million in Asia."
45% of 11.5 million current subs (Dec '08) = 5.175 million
Also, just like Eve Online promotions have influenced X-Fire numbers so has WoW's X-Fire promotions. There have been major X-Fire promotions in the past with regard to WoW.
Ultimately X-Fire is simply not an accurate measure of subscriptions for other MMOs.
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Currently Playing: Lord of the Rings Online since original Open Beta, Atlantica Online
Waiting On: Knights of the Old Republic, Aion
Played: World of Warcraft (3 years), Ultima Online (2 years), EvE Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, Perfect World