Originally posted by Fion

It's funny when Bliz says they have 9 million subscribers, barely anyone questions how many of those are ACTIVE. With dozens of near empty servers in the US server farms, I would personally bet not 1/2 of those are active. I'm a subscriber.. but I haven't had an open subscription in months and months. WoW IMHO has one of the highest turnover rates in the genre. Of all the people I know who play/played WoW, almost all of them quite within 8 months, some as few as 4, and one of those was someone who had never played the game before.

 

I'm sure subscriber count will continue to rise. Of course it will, as new people buy the box and punch in their credit card numbers. But 9 million active subscribers? I doubt it.

Barely anyone questions it because almost everyone can read.

World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

Originally posted by Airspell

rest of the world......the famed city of Atlantis perhaps.

Australia, Latin America ( I know quite alot of people who play from Brazil and Puerto Rico and im just one person), Africa etc

Mythic has already shown Blizzard how PvP should be implemented. Blizzard showed Mythic how to incorporate fun PvE with fun casual PvP. Mythic's PvP is not casual. You have to always run with at least one healer, one mezzer, and one speed class. All classes that are less than common to play. A  pvp group in Mythic's game with no healer is a group that is going to have a very frustrating time trying to do anything. In Blizzard's game you can PvP with no required classes, and that is what makes WoW so popular. You jump in, and can have fun. You don't stand LFG for hours on end like some games.

Originally posted by itzit

Originally posted by none191

 

Originally posted by itzit

Originally posted by none191

 

Very good point.  I concede many aspects to WoW are good.  But it is not a MMO for a more intelligent or mature person.  The community is mostly children and bots. 

 

 

The fact WoW has 9 million teens and bots and gold farmers playing does NOT mean it is HIGH QUALITY .  I have a more discerning taste when it comes to MMO.  I expect more. 

Once again, google it.  The average WOW player is in the mi 20's.

Average means nothing.

 

 

What is the median?

uhh. I am no brain surgeon, but I think they have the same definition.

What most people are referring to when they say the "average" of something is the mean of a set of numbers.  For example, if I have a set of ages of people who play WoW, the mean would the the number I get when I add up their ages and divide by the total number of people who play. Therefore my data set might look something like this:

(7+10+12+13+14+12+20+25+15+12+12+12+50+30+22)/15 = 17.73

Therefore the average (or mean) of the data set is 17.73

The median is the number falls in the direct middle of the minimum and maximum numbers in our data set:

7, 10, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 22, 25, 30, 50

Therefore the median is 13.

This data can be skewed in many ways.  For example, lets say that I'm trying to prove that the "average" WoW player is in their mid 20's.  I collect a data set from all the WoW players and end up with the following ages:

10, 15, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30 (This is highly unlikely but just for an example)

The mean is 24.25.  I can logically say therefore that the "average" WoW player is in there mid 20's when in fact, none of them are.

The median can also be misleading as your data set may contain the following:

5, 7, 8, 10, 15, 18, 20, 20, 60, 60, 65, 70, 75, 77, 78, 80, 82 (Again unlikely but showing for an example)

The median is 60.  Therefore I can logically say that the player group that comprises the middle point of all age groups of WoW players, is 60-year-olds.  Again, very misleading data.

I believe what the poster is looking for is actually a combination of the mean, the median, and the mode.  The mode is the number in the data set that occurs the most often.  In the first data set, the mode is 12.

Using all three methods is usually the best way to find the general data group you are looking for.  In my first data set:

mean = 17.73

median = 13

mode = 12

The only real conclusion I can draw from this data is that "most" of the WoW players are teenagers.  Anything beyond that statement is speculation, miscalculation, or misleading information that is designed to influence you one way or the other.  This also happens to be why political polls and statistics are all total BS IMHO......

Laters

so what?  seriously who cares about this stuff. so people like this game whoop de do.

Nice to see so many new chinese gold farming businesses cropping up.  

Seriously though, it would be interesting to see how many of the 9 mil are actually players.  There has to be a significant portion of that 9 mil that isn't due to the sheer number of gold sites and workers.  WoW gold is becoming big business, but until they get caughty they are subscribing like everyone else is.

As for the pvp....

WoW's pvp is far more casual, more of the "jump in pvp and jump out" variety.  It isn't really meaningful, especially now when they "fixed" the honor system.  Now pvp rep is meaningless, since anyone can buy anything anytime they have the points.  No matter how many times alliance wins AV it does absolutely nothing for the alliance as a whole.

I still prefer DAoC's way of doing pvp.  Always did enjoy a relic raid.  

I'd say the amazing thing here is that people are still subscribing and giving into the hype put out by their 1 WoW addicted friend. I know everyone has that one guy who got them into the game by never shutting up about it and always saying just how awesome it was over and over again.

Then you actually played the game, and it was alright at first... And then you finally realized about a month or two later, "Hey.. this game kind of blows."

The community is shit unless you're in a big guild. Raids never happen unless they're scheduled. Everyone is doing the same thing they do with every blizzard game by looking for that repetitive strategy to spam for every fight. You could go on for a while why WoW is just not as great as the "9 million" people would make you think.

And, as we've seen in previous posts here, Blizzard defines subscribers as anyone who creates an account, more or less. Admittedly, that's a big number, and it's nothing to scoff at. However, of that 9million, how many of those accounts actually have level 70 characters? How many even got to level 30 before quitting? If you trim back all the players that aren't hardcore addicts or gold farmers, you're just left with that one hardcore fanbase that every MMO usually has. No matter what you tell them or how much you try to justify the suck of their game they always have some explaination about how you didn't play long enough for the game to be fun (serious wtf right there) or how you've never done some of the games poorly organized giant events.

It's amazing reading some of the bitter comments here.

Congratulations to Blizzard, after all, WoW isnt a part of the MMO market...it *IS* the MMO market, it has more people than all the other games put together.

I doubt a single game will ever achieve these kind of numbers again, outstanding achievement and well deserved.

Originally posted by ChrowX

I'd say the amazing thing here is that people are still subscribing and giving into the hype put out by their 1 WoW addicted friend. I know everyone has that one guy who got them into the game by never shutting up about it and always saying just how awesome it was over and over again.

Word of mouth the #1 tool all MMO's employ.

Then you actually played the game, and it was alright at first... And then you finally realized about a month or two later, "Hey.. this game kind of blows."

Some players will do that just as I did when playing EQ2 and EvE.

The community is shit unless you're in a big guild. Raids never happen unless they're scheduled. Everyone is doing the same thing they do with every blizzard game by looking for that repetitive strategy to spam for every fight. You could go on for a while why WoW is just not as great as the "9 million" people would make you think.

All subjective

And, as we've seen in previous posts here, Blizzard defines subscribers as anyone who creates an account, more or less. Admittedly, that's a big number, and it's nothing to scoff at. However, of that 9million, how many of those accounts actually have level 70 characters? How many even got to level 30 before quitting? If you trim back all the players that aren't hardcore addicts or gold farmers, you're just left with that one hardcore fanbase that every MMO usually has. No matter what you tell them or how much you try to justify the suck of their game they always have some explaination about how you didn't play long enough for the game to be fun (serious wtf right there) or how you've never done some of the games poorly organized giant events.

Do some research b4 you assume things, its 9million ACTIVE subscriptions, in that they have game time left on their account when the June/July census was taken, the 9million do not include closed, banned or inactive (no game time) accounts or trial accounts.  Sure I have issue with the china subs being counted (pay /hour not /month)  but take those away and you still got ~4 million ACTIVE subs, ~4million people handing over $15/month.

World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.

Cant people just be happy for WoW and its players no matter what you think of us, I know we are the scum of the MMO world ... leave us be.

That's a very colorful reply there, Cupertino.
However, taking your own post into context, you cut out at least 5 million from China alone.. A bit large, but whatever. That leaves 4 million or so players between the US and the UK/EU regions. Now, none of these numbers are anything unimpressive. It's a world record and a precedent for an online game to garner that much popularity and following, but the interest is rapidly waning.

Sorry if this insults you, but it's kind of like myspace. It's an internet trend that suddenly caught on to every variety of person with internet access and exploded into a massive business upon itself. For a while, all people would talk about is myspace, and how much they use myspace, and how great it is. Eventually, the hype died down though, and it went into it's regular cycles.

Speaking in a business sense, it's summer time. Of course subscriptions will jump up. But, come school time, I can almost guarantee that active subscriptions, by Blizzard's definitions, will plummet again. Now, factor in the whole gold farming crisis. Say Blizzard finally makes a stand on this, and there is legal action. That cuts back a huge chunk of bot accounts, duplicate accounts, and all of the other exploits that surround WoW.

WoW gained popularity, which led to exploitability, which turn, leads to their continued success, as far as the sheer number of subscriptions go.

Now, no one has condemned you for playing, but what I feel a lot of people here are getting at is that Blizzard's success with WoW is mired in a lot of digital sludge, as it were. Good for you if you enjoy the game and all of that, but 9 million subscriptions isn't your accomplishment. We're not going to celebrate something that is potentially rotten to the core.

Originally posted by ChrowX

That's a very colorful reply there, Cupertino.
However, taking your own post into context, you cut out at least 5 million from China alone.. A bit large, but whatever. That leaves 4 million or so players between the US and the UK/EU regions. Now, none of these numbers are anything unimpressive. It's a world record and a precedent for an online game to garner that much popularity and following, but the interest is rapidly waning.

Even I don't agree china subs should be added to western subs as they are 2 different subscription methods.

Sorry if this insults you, but it's kind of like myspace. It's an internet trend that suddenly caught on to every variety of person with internet access and exploded into a massive business upon itself. For a while, all people would talk about is myspace, and how much they use myspace, and how great it is. Eventually, the hype died down though, and it went into it's regular cycles.

But WoW is 2.5  years old, does hype last 2.5 years? Hype lasts a few months if that.

Speaking in a business sense, it's summer time. Of course subscriptions will jump up. But, come school time, I can almost guarantee that active subscriptions, by Blizzard's definitions, will plummet again. Now, factor in the whole gold farming crisis. Say Blizzard finally makes a stand on this, and there is legal action. That cuts back a huge chunk of bot accounts, duplicate accounts, and all of the other exploits that surround WoW.

If anything subs go down in summer, I play much less in summer what with the sun and all,.

Gold farming crisis? gold farming is just as bad as any other MMO, just so happens WoW has 450 servers in the west where as other MMOs are lucky if they have 10 servers so yes WoW has more bot farmers overall but per server I dont see it being any worse than others.

WoW gained popularity, which led to exploitability, which turn, leads to their continued success, as far as the sheer number of subscriptions go.

Not easy to exploit WoW, WoW probably has the toughest cheat/exploit catcher around, its called warden, a program that scan computer memory, window titles to look for exploits. 

If an exploiter is caught hes banned, the account is banned and not counted in the numbers, the exploiter will probably buy a new sub but hes still only 1 subscriber.

Now, no one has condemned you for playing, but what I feel a lot of people here are getting at is that Blizzard's success with WoW is mired in a lot of digital sludge, as it were. Good for you if you enjoy the game and all of that, but 9 million subscriptions isn't your accomplishment. We're not going to celebrate something that is potentially rotten to the core.

But I am part of the machine and a proud cog in the wheel of WoW

The only reason for this number is that the Chinese just got the expansion last month so they are not tired of it yet.  The important numbers for the European and US are down.  Asian players account for less than 25% of the income as they do not pay on a monthly basis, but on a use basis and at a far lower rate.

So basically the number is decieving as their income is down.