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World of Warcraft: Bigger than Belgium!
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In one of those 'scratch your head' kind of announcements, Blizzard Entertainment has made it known that the number of World of Warcraft subscribers now exceeds the population of Belgium. The latest numbers reveal over twelve million subscribers to what inarguably the most popular MMORPG in history.
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that the subscriber base for World of Warcraft, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game , now exceeds 12 million players worldwide. This milestone was reached in the wake of the mainland Chinese launch of World of Warcraft’s second expansion,Wrath of the Lich King, and also as global anticipation continues to mount for the December 7 release of the game's third expansion, Cataclysm.
Join the WoW nation at the official site.
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random very random
Wait, didn't they announce 13 millions 2 years ago? If so, how is reaching 12 millions again a milestone?
I'd like to know how many of the 12 million are NA and EU.
"If you're going to act like a noob, I'll treat you like one." -Caskio
Adventurers wear fancy pants!!!
lol what a coincidence, just last week they said apple has an approximatly netto income equal to Belgium both based on 1 year
whos epeen is bigger now ?:)
Good to know how many people Belgium has
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
It's like watching one of the food network shows where they show how different well known foods are made and everytime someone has to make the comment "If you place all of the X made in a year end to end it would reach to the moon and back 5 times." Good to see you wasted some guy's time on coming up with the math for that example that no one is impressed by other then how much junk food gets eaten in a year by fat America.
Guess that's my thought on it.
I'm confused. Wasn't it a a year or two ago they boasted 10 million? Is Blizzard trying to tell the world they have only INCREASED in subscriptions since then? I hardly believe it. Maybe they are counting the total amount of accounts opened. That would be much more believable.
Nope the total number of current and former accounts is somewhere around 35 million. It was in an interview a while back. This is active subcribers only and dose not count inactive, banned, trial, recruit a friend, or even accounts that have a subcription but haven't been played in the past two weeks.
But go on telling yourself it ain't so if you so desire.
Dem hibbies! Dey be wrong!
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Big deal. They just got back into China, but a recent article said that the Chinese are getting bored with MMORPGs. It's anyone's guess how long this will last, especially after people get a taste of World of Ghostcrawlercraft.
I'm betting it will be a while before Blizzard trumpets their sub numbers again, but that's just my guess.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
Know wonder Blizzard cant handle the customer complaints..Maybe the customer needs to complain to higher authority...haha
Bigger than Belgium and at least half as interesting.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Cataclysm will make some people briefely return to check out the change. I would bet that they would pick the peak they hit shortly after cataclysm and release numbers again. Then as people who just popped in to try out the change leave and they don't have any large countries to get back into, their numbers will slide down and we won't see anymore big annoucements.
A half million jump for a 6 year old game in subs? Outstanding! I bet every other mmo company would give their left nut to get even half the amount Blizzard has managed to gain with the x-pac release in China. That's just another 500,000 players in China that gave the shaft to hardcore playing style and made the switch to the casual crowd. Devs better take notice and follow suit. Hmmm well at least GW2 and TOR will be in the right camp at launch.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
With Cata coming out in December I'm betting they will be bragging about the new record high they set by Spring. Whether or not people enjoy it and stick with Cata long term, there are a LOT of people who aren't playing right now but planning on trying it out at launch.
I'm also betting they do a huge push for new players as well. It already takes very little time to hit max level and with the new stream-lined quests and zones it will be even easier to get new players "caught up" to the vets.
looking at an increase number wise is an incorrect method of judging how much has changed. You have to look at the percentage change.
If your numbers are correct then they gained 4-5%. I watched Asheron's Call's peak concurrency numbers (since they don't release subs) go up ~20% in under a year as they kept adding a lot of new additions over the course of this year (November should give another bump up, Olthoi Monster play and a new school of magic just to name a couple things going in). EQ has had periods where they've increased over 5% as well.
So games older then WoW have increased their numbers better then WoW has, what exactly did you want those other developers to note again?
FOR THE HORDE!!!!
12 millions, that's four times the population in my country (Uruguay).
Luckilty I am one of those 12 millions
As a Belgian, I feel increasingly threatened by all these statistics involving us
The time has come to bake our waffles BLOOD RED...
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
I think by making this announcement, they're threatening Belgium, possibly with some type of takeover or something.
so...
Can you dig up the interview? I just find it hard to believe. No need to fanboism me. I just would like some clarity.
But Belgium has Hercule Poirot, and I think that's much better than WOW. =P
Percentage change my arse. I'm not trying to look at WoW's percentage gains based on what outdated mmo you try to necro in the past. That is such a bogus comparison to begin with anyway. That's like me saying that if Earth & Beyond was resurrected and they gained 1 sub, they have effectively made a 100% net gain. And if they get 10 more players the follwing week they made a net gain of 1000%. Ummm no. I know how to play the numbers game.
But no matter what way you try to twist the news around, 500k players swarming from other avenues to WoW is a massive migration.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
World of Warcraft. The best and worst thing ever to happen to the MMORPG genre.
Every time gains are calculated in any form for any medium it is done in percentages. The reason is that is the only true reflection of how much better you are doing now then before. To look at it from a sub numbers perspective does not tell you anything other then sub numbers.
If a game has 50k subs and gains 50k subs they just doubled their numbers. This is significant and is truly a sign of success for the game and tells a lot about how it is doing and where it is going. If WoW were to gain 50k subs that equates out to basically holding steady which is a different indication all together. You can't look at it as 50k subs you have to look at it as how do 50k subs relate to this title.
Them getting their expansion finally approved in China and them having a huge expansion for the rest of the world due in December and only gaining 4-5% on that actual says a lot, and it isn't all fantastic news. China has 1 billion people and you finally get approval to release your expansion there and have a massive expansion a month away and your worldwide numbers only increase 4-5%? That's not that good of news. But by viewing it as 500k people it of course sounds amazingly awesome because that is a bigger number then many other MMOs even have players.
That 4-5% shows that they will gain another couple percent with the release of cataclysm and from there on it will be a downhill slide. But ignore that and focus on the wrong aspect because 500k is so cool to think about.
Lol at all the trolls who swore up and down that WoW absolutely must be on the decline and are now poo-pooing the announcement like it's no big deal. It must be hard to be continuously proven wrong.