Congrats to Blizz on getting to the big 10 million mark, what would be a more interesting figure though would be what is the average playing time for an active account?

Are they constantly pulling in new players who stick it out for 10 months then leave never to rtuen or is it closer to people playing it year in year out?

I doubt we will see that sort of info though.

What made me leave was a combination of the focused raid intensive end game and that on the EU side Blizzard''s ISP is Telia, and frankly they are an awful choice, they always seem to have a problem somewhere and frankly I said I wasn't going to pay for a service when it was terrible week in week out.

Perhaps with all this cash coming in they could perhaps move the servers to Germany, or Holland?

Originally posted by CyberWiz

 

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Originally posted by graill

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Originally posted by Arcken

 

Hey McDonalds and WoW have some things in common it seems, theyre both selling an inferior product thats helping the worlds youth get fatter by the minute.

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omg!! Arcken, well said, well said.

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LOLOL

Either way, WoW IS a quality product and IS easy to get into.

At the time of release it was the ONLY mmorpg that was as polished and easy to learn, get into ( harder to master ).

The combat system was fast and dynamic ( compared to most others ).

The leveling thru questing system was evolutionary, borderlining revolutionary. The 5 man instances were alot of fun.

My only gripe is that as the endgame they took the hardcore raid route, instead of the RvR route they always claimed they would follow. ( Like large PvP battles between Horde and Alliance in the Open World, not instances ).

Then after WoW was released every mmo publisher and his brother tried to mimmic this success, so mister innovation was murdered.

It even went so far that nice sandbox games like Star Wars Galaxies were wowified to try to steal away some of the WoW players.
This horribly failed of course. People will never learn, they had examples from UO mimmicing EQ by releasing Renaissance ( Trammel ) and Age of Shadows ( L33T Items ), and guess what, they failed. Same goes for DAoC, they released Trials of Atlantis ( heavy PVE in a RvR - PvP game ) hoping to get some of the EQ players, and failed hardcore. I hope that by now, developpers know they have to stick to the ideals of the game and not entirely change the playground, or they get smacked.

Still WoW remains that very polished game, easy to get into, timeless graphics, wether you like cartoony or not, you have to admit that these kind of graphics hardly age with time, unlike realistic graphics, that after a few years need a major update or will otherwise be subpar compared to the rest, and lastly loads of content, for both casual and hardcore players.

The only thing I hope now, is that with all the fundings Blizzard has now, they will make an awesome polished sandbox game with quality guided content at the start ( to get into the game ) next. Because I honestly think that Sandbox games, if well done, can provide the better endgame. This does not exclude questing and guided content as a means to get max level/skill.

And there is definatly a market for it, if SWG could have 300.000+ subscribers with an unpolished sandbox game, I am sure if Blizzard makes one, millions will play it :p

WoW does have 10 million ACTIVE paying subscribers, wether you like it or not.

Greetz

Inferior?

Look at the quality of all the other mmorpgs out there and then say that again......... theres not one mmorpg out there with the polish and quality WOW has.

Why are there so many ill informed and stupid people here? So many of them can't even manage to bloody read the information giving to them, which is right in front of them....

Blizzard doesn't count "bought", "trial", nor "cancelled" accounts, in thier numbers, they are prolly the only mmo company out here giving straight numbers about how many active players they got, all others either lie or only say something stupid like "yay 4 million chars made in our mmo"....

People here just seem to hate blizzard and can't take it that WoW is such a great game and it being so succesful?

When WoW came out it was the most polished mmorpg ever to set foot on the market, it had made the best quest system, which killed the seemingly long grindmill through just killing mobs all day long, you actually got some quest that made sense and areas with history so the stuff you did actually seemed to serve a goal of fun and not just a random kill tag.

The WoW combat was alot better than any other current western mmorpg active, it had borrowed some dynamics from asian mmorpgs, who made good choice in combat gameplay and pace.

Why does WoW gather so many people? simple! They made WoW a  "wide/broad" game, blizzard try to please all the different styles of play types there are and try to adapt to how people's gameplay is, hardcore or casual, they give both things to do, they make alot of ways to gain some cool stuff. The computer req are low so even very old comps can play wow on them, which make it a game everyone can play, they have made a perfect stepstone game, where you can jump right into the fun part and then along the way you learn all the more advanced gameplay. They made the levelling not too fast nor too slow, the areas are different but still seem to fit into the whole world, even with low gfx the world looks very good, since it's artistic with easy features to make it vivid.

WoW has also along the way become a social hub, it's a perfect virgin mmorpg player, which even can collect those who you would never have dreamt of playing a mmorpg, WoW simply is a mass social game now, it has something for everyone, young or old doesn't matter.

I honestly didn't expect WoW to reach 10 mill already but that's just a nice surprise i guess, even though i don't play wow much these days.

EDIT:  also why does so many racist pricks keep the typical asian farmers term? Don't you know that the mmorpg market is alot bigger in the East compared to the west? You don't see many of the asian mmorpgs here, because the companies there only focus on the asian market (language ect.), so half of people here prolly don't know some of the larger mmos there anyway.

The Asian mmorpgs were imho better untill WoW came around, the western were mostly a complete bore in the combat gameplay, many of the new mmorpgs you see here on the western side have key combat feautres, which some old asian mmorpgs had long ago, the bad thing with asian mmorpgs were mostly just the large amount of mobgrind along with some hacks.

So don't just ditch the Asian market just because you are a racist white trash, thank you very much.

To come back to this levelig speed... are you speaking about the number that comes when you type /played in-game or in real life 24h days with nights and days?

If /played then it can easily be done with 4 days if you concentrate on leveling instead of money/professions/community.

You can do it in 4 real-life days too if you A)Sleep in winters

                                                                           B)Got Absolutely no life and share the character with someone in different time-zone who will play with your character while you sleep.

GZ for Blizzard for 10mil ticker.

Originally posted by kxmode

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@heeroya -- Plain english - Only active subscribers, game room players (pay by hour) who have logged in the last 30 days, and those still currently on free trial.

Yes to all. No to "logged in the last 30 days." My account was active, and I was paying every month, but I hadn't logged in until only recently. Even though I didn't log into the game my account was still active and paying. Regardless Blizzard counts that as an active account regardless of whether I log in or not.

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Just a little note that you missed the phrasing on what was said. He stated that GAME ROOM players are the ones that need to have logged on within the last 30 days. The rest of your post is pretty much spot on though.

(*note: after some further reading I withdraw my comment that I thought to be fact based in regard to Asia*)

Originally posted by Kalmarth

WOOT thats 4.5 Million Players in the US and Europe and 5.5 Million Gold farmers supporting them, so really if you take out the gold farmers then its more like a real number of PLAYERS.

They also post Active game cards as an account, does that mean all the Cards they have printed that are on shop shelves, as those are active cards ?

How do 5.5 million Asian accounts provide gold to Western accounts, when these are completely seperate from each other?  You cannot transfer gold between US, EU or Asian accounts.  You never have been able to and probably never will.

So you're either being ignorant or you're being racist by saying that Asian players are gold farmers.  Either way, you couldn't be more incorrect if you tried.  As for your question, well, what part of "Active Game Cards" is difficult to understand?  Hint:  read the first word.

Denial is an ugly thing but if it drives people to write thoughtless drivel like this, one wonders about the chances for survival of the Human race.

"Over 10,000,000 Served"

Sounds like a busy hooker

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Originally posted by replicant

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Originally posted by Sovren1

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Originally posted by saduce
thats not a big shock considering from what ive heard you can take a lvl one to the max level in a day or two using all the cheats for it. Guess if i had nothing better to do id do it too.

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Ya, me too...I had to lol when I read this. I THINK the fastest time from 1-70 is like 6-7days played time meaning a total of 6-7 complete days with a guide that tells you how and when to pair quest up and finish them with limited grinding (run on sentence, but oh well). That's a few 12 hour shifts and can be done in 99% of the MMO's out there. At least in the majority of the ones I have played.

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The fastest currently from 1-60 is 1d 20hrs using a Frost Mage to Instance PL. From 1-70 is just a little over 3 days played using the same method, but switching 60-70 to a Blood Furnace PL'ing team of 2-4 people. People are finding ways to PL other characters very easily and it will only become easier. Quite a few people are already sub 5 days /played 1-70 just soloing.

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Ok, i've found vids of warriors pling to match the time of the mage you speak of and only since 2.3. I guess I was speaking from the point of view of a few months ago when I believe 1-70 solo was about 6 days played. Think since 2.3 it's down to 4+ by the same person. At least thats all I could find anyway.

Originally posted by Arcken

Hey McDonalds and WoW have some things in common it seems, theyre both selling an inferior product thats helping the worlds youth get fatter by the minute.

I occasioanlly eat McDonalds and play WOW. I weigh 176 pounds. I don't consider myself a fatso. You suck Arcken.

World of Warcraft keeps adding servers and there is a queue on a lot of them, unlike 6 months ago.  I'm meeting more new players daily.  Maybe it is the Christmas spike, but Blizzard seems to have the best membership retention numbers if statistics are to be believed.  That says something.

This thread in a nutshell:

Woot nice Blizz!

How many of those are active?

Lawl such a lie WoW sux!!

All accounts are active, if they are inactive they don't count.

WoW sux!

Is this information credible?

This is amazing I'm glad this happened!

Haha half are gold farmers!

Yeah but its like all asians lol

All accounts are active, if they are inactive they don't count.

All accounts are active, if they are inactive they don't count.

All accounts are active, if they are inactive they don't count.

All of you saying this isn't true are stupid.

stfu.

I can't believe how ignorant people are!

And there you have it folks.

lol people still play wow. WoW is old now cmon people move on

Originally posted by AbIeL

lol people still play wow. WoW is old now cmon people move on

Until something decent comes along, there's no real point unless you've played the game to death.

Who cares if WoW dosent have 10mil players out there? Its still the most successful MMORPG out there...

Here's an interesting comparison.  Back in Jan, 2007 WOW's sub breakdown looked like this.

Asia 3.5 m

EU - 1.5 m

US - 2 m

And with the most recent numbers the breakdown is now:

Asia 5.5 m  (30% gain)

EU 2 m  (25% gain)

US 2.5 m  (20% gain)

So the game continues to gain ground in all markets, though the lion's share of the gains came from Asia.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Here's an interesting comparison.  Back in Jan, 2007 WOW's sub breakdown looked like this.

Asia 3.5 m

EU - 1.5 m

US - 2 m

And with the most recent numbers the breakdown is now:

Asia 5.5 m  (30% gain)

EU 2 m  (25% gain)

US 2.5 m  (20% gain)

So the game continues to gain ground in all markets, though the lion's share of the gains came from Asia.

 

Keep in mind that in Jan 2007 the TBC expansion was hitting in NA and Europe. Asia didn't get it, and experience the related surge, until months later.

Does it really matter how many subs WoW has? Wouldn't it be much more relevant to know how many subs are active?? Like, how many accounts have been active for more than 3 months??

Wouldnt suprise me that these numbers are this high as there isnt that many games that keep adding this much content and is so easy to play. LOL, 4yr olds can play WoW and level a toon. Alot of the MMORPGs that have come out have been rushed out to the public so companies can get there hand on some of the easy cash so none have been very good in the last little while. With the coming of some more hyped games like Warhammer online and Age of Conan, you may see the numbers shift here soon as long as those companies have done there research. Grats Blizzard .

i ve played wow for two and a half years on and off ( currently am having a break from it ) . i ve tried most other mmos on the market ( just about to try dark age of camelot ) . thus far i ve found nothing to match it . thats not saying the likes of lord of the rings and city of heroes arnt great games but they all lack the scope of warcraft . lots focus simply on pve or have very limited pvp options . some have no ingame ecconomy etc . warcrafts not perfect , i d like to see the option of player built towns etc and more meaningful world pvp . but bottom line is warcrafts fun to play . with the absence of any real competition with mass appeal it does nt suprise me warcraft is still rising in popularity .  i ve been hopeing something will come along to challenge only to be disapointed by the like of vanguard ddo etc . i have hopes that warhammer and conan might busrt blizzards bubble but i m not holding my breath .

I'm pretty sure Blizz will try to release WotLK at the same time with WAR and will totally dominate the market for at least 2008 and 2009.

I'd like to add to the reasons why this game is so succesful, the lore and background games (warcraft III). WoW does have an extensive lore that has years of development since warcraft I back in 1994 (?). That adds a solid background, the game is solid what can you say.

And the arena is becoming slowly some sort of e-sport, I'm sure it will grow a lot during 2008.

Usually a new player will want to try the best out there and the best out there is WoW. That's why they get new players everyday.