Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Aradria

There's not a single MMO I can think of that regularly releases its subscriber numbers. Even WoW hasn't released subscriber numbers for about 9 months and that was during the christmas/expansion spike. And most of the numbers the site does have are from completely dodgy unofficial sources.

pre2009

Ncsoft released sub numbers

www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

every 4 months  -- in their quarterly reports

 

for Lineage,  Lineage 2, City of Heroes

 

dont believe me ?  

go look at any of the financials I linked -- for 2008 and prior

 

 

 

That is correct, even tho lately they are less open, they still give usefull information in their quarterly reports.

Originally posted by a_name

There is no way to tell for sure. Lots of companies will spit out numbers but for all we know they lie. It is in their best interest since ppl like you want to know right?

Wow goes around spouting off numbers and forget to tell you that their servers can only hold so many players, not like you'll be playing with 10m subscribers, nope, more like the 20k range at best. But since they have 2 factions split that in half since you can only connect with your side. It's classic bait and switch and ppl fall for it daily.

Here's an example of a chart ppl send info to from the /who so it counts characters, not accounts. Yet, wow advertising wants you to believe there are millions around... mmm hmmm sure are - spread out around a bagillion servers and half of em or more you can't talk to and a good percentage are bots.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/realmstats.php

Take a smaller place like LOTRO - yes, there are less subs but you encounter more ppl sometimes because they aren't spread into more servers. LOTRO has less than 10 servers if I remember right.

Those charts and xfire are not reliable stats either. Heck the hype on this site is no good either, I've never voted for one thing yet of course, I have opinions. I rarely run xfire when playing and I never saw a poll from the site that claims they know sub counts asking me if I still play x game.

 I can't find the link but I saw some info once about server farms in wow and I thought they stated between 2k - 6k max players on a server. Don't quote me on that because I need to refind the data lol

From their own website

http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?080122

"WORLD OF WARCRAFT® REACHES NEW MILESTONE: 10 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS
Subscriber base for Blizzard Entertainment®'s massively multiplayer online role-playing game now exceeds 2.5 million in North America, while Europe passes the 2 million mark "

Now... if 2m are europe and 3m are north america then how many does that leave that aren't either, so convenient to not talk about those - the majority of their players won't even speak english in all likelihood.

Read this if you like and get your mind around the difference of subscribers and what they don't advertise, well no game does.

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=2943#d49dd

That article is pretty biased and incorrect

Yes Blizzard does get alot less money from the Chinese subscribers, but that is not only because the Chinese pay less, but also because Blizzard is not allowed to run online games in China by itself and has to use expensive Chinese providers to run the game for them.

That is also why Blizzard changed from the The9 to the Netease provider, because they would get more royalties.

According to the Gamasutra article here : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23230 Blizzard will get around $140 million in royalties annually, at the time China had around 5 million subs. ( 6,5m subs for Asia ). $140m devided by 5m chinese players equals $28, devided by 12 months equals $2,3. Blizzard gets around 55% of the royalties, so the average Chinese player pays around 4,5€ per month. That is assuming the royalties are calculated on the total revenue, otherwise it could be even more. 

$4,5 per month may not be much to our standards, but you have also to take into consideration that employees in China are alot cheaper, so thay have less operational costs compared to the EU or US.

If you go look at the source Wolfsheadonline used : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24657 then there it is clear that the 6% revenue is because of the 22% royalty deal with The9 ( as in Blizzard gets only 22% of the money made from the Chinese players ), this actually results in $1 royalty per month per Chinese player, which is consistent with the other article, because if the royalty is more than doubled ( from 22% to 55% ) then we get around $2,5 doubled again to get the total of $5 per Chinese player.

These are rough calculations, and it probably varies between $4 and $5 per month per Chinese player, but it certainly is not $0,6 like Wolfsheadonline claims.

So imho the Blizzard numbers are pretty valid, even the Asian part.

Originally posted by LynxJSA

Originally posted by Aradria

There's not a single MMO I can think of that regularly releases its subscriber numbers.

 

CCP relays their sub numbers every year at Fanfest.

CCP even provides me with numbers directly, this includes all monthly subs, monthly trials and monthly peak concurrent users, going back to when the game was released.

Originally posted by thinktank001

Originally posted by Magnum2103

Well, WoW has 11.5 million subscribers which is over is 10X the amount of subscribers of all the other P2P games except Aion (which I think had around the 6-7 million mark).  It's possible WoW has more subscribers than all the P2P MMOs combined.  Kind of sad really.  Still, I think it's a pretty accurate reflection of the quality of MMOs we've been getting lately.

 

 

There is not even an official source saying aion has 3.5 million.    I would be surprised if they had even that amount of players.   Although I thought there was an official number posted on the max number of players per server.  I can't seem to remember where or when I saw it.

A full Aion server handles around 7000 peak concurrent users, which is quite high. If you know that WoW China has a 1/5 PCU to Player ratio and Aion currently has 239 servers, you can see they sure have alot of players. 7000 on a server means a full server tho, and not all server are full anymore (  a full server means you have to queue to get in ). 

Still they never had 6-7 million players, I estimate around 3,6 million now with the European and US release included.

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by thinktank001

Originally posted by Magnum2103

Well, WoW has 11.5 million subscribers which is over is 10X the amount of subscribers of all the other P2P games except Aion (which I think had around the 6-7 million mark).  It's possible WoW has more subscribers than all the P2P MMOs combined.  Kind of sad really.  Still, I think it's a pretty accurate reflection of the quality of MMOs we've been getting lately.

 

 

There is not even an official source saying aion has 3.5 million.    I would be surprised if they had even that amount of players.   Although I thought there was an official number posted on the max number of players per server.  I can't seem to remember where or when I saw it.

 

A full Aion server handles around 7000 peak concurrent users, which is quite high. If you know that WoW China has a 1/5 PCU to Player ratio and Aion currently has 239 servers, you can see they sure have alot of players. 7000 on a server means a full server tho, and not all server are full anymore (  a full server means you have to queue to get in ). 

Still they never had 6-7 million players, I estimate around 3,6 million now with the European and US release included.

 

I like how u just updated your site with this new info.

Edit: and by new info i mean the one 2 or 3 posts up debating that article, quoted the wrong one :)

Originally posted by coffee

Originally posted by AKASlaphappy

Originally posted by a_name

There is no way to tell for sure. Lots of companies will spit out numbers but for all we know they lie. It is in their best interest since ppl like you want to know right?

Wow goes around spouting off numbers and forget to tell you that their servers can only hold so many players, not like you'll be playing with 10m subscribers, nope, more like the 20k range at best. But since they have 2 factions split that in half since you can only connect with your side. It's classic bait and switch and ppl fall for it daily.

Here's an example of a chart ppl send info to from the /who so it counts characters, not accounts. Yet, wow advertising wants you to believe there are millions around... mmm hmmm sure are - spread out around a bagillion servers and half of em or more you can't talk to and a good percentage are bots.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/realmstats.php

Take a smaller place like LOTRO - yes, there are less subs but you encounter more ppl sometimes because they aren't spread into more servers. LOTRO has less than 10 servers if I remember right.

Those charts and xfire are not reliable stats either. Heck the hype on this site is no good either, I've never voted for one thing yet of course, I have opinions. I rarely run xfire when playing and I never saw a poll from the site that claims they know sub counts asking me if I still play x game.

 I can't find the link but I saw some info once about server farms in wow and I thought they stated between 2k - 6k max players on a server. Don't quote me on that because I need to refind the data lol

From their own website

http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?080122

"WORLD OF WARCRAFT® REACHES NEW MILESTONE: 10 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS
Subscriber base for Blizzard Entertainment®'s massively multiplayer online role-playing game now exceeds 2.5 million in North America, while Europe passes the 2 million mark "

Now... if 2m are europe and 3m are north america then how many does that leave that aren't either, so convenient to not talk about those - the majority of their players won't even speak english in all likelihood.

Read this if you like and get your mind around the difference of subscribers and what they don't advertise, well no game does.

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=2943#d49dd

 

 That has always been one of the things I have always though funny about Blizzards commercials when they report there numbers, they never tell you that a bunch of them are chinese.

On the topic at hand I have never liked those chart sites for one reason, some of the companies that make MMOs are privately owned. So they never ever have to release there sub numbers to anyone, so where is ever one getting there data. For example I have seen turbine tell people over and over again that they do not discuss there sub numbers with anyone. Now publicly held companies have to release everything to the public so I can see where people can speculate based on there profit and loss statements. So to me any chart that holds a privately held companies sub numbers is automatically bogus.

 

 

Wotlk sold 4million copies in the first month of release (only avaliable outside of china), Wotlk and WoW has been in the top 10 monthly sales spots since... thats all we need to know.

And how is the numbers sold of a game a accurate representation of subs? I played WoW for almost 5 years and I know many people that dual boxed and a bunch that quad boxed. So quoting sells numbers mean nothing unless you absolutely know how many people are playing more than one account. As a example, in the last guild I was in there was 5 people that I became friends with that dual boxed. The only way to know for sure how a company is doing is to look at there profit loss release statements every three months. Of course that only works for publicly traded companies.

Originally posted by LynxJSA

CyberWiz has picked up maintaining the charts. His site can be found here: http://www.mmodata.net/

Thanks.  I'd been wondering for a long time if somebody had picked up the ball on this.

---

Originally posted by Magnum2103
Well, WoW has 11.5 million subscribers which is over is 10X the amount of subscribers of all the other P2P games except Aion (which I think had around the 6-7 million mark).  It's possible WoW has more subscribers than all the P2P MMOs combined.  Kind of sad really.  Still, I think it's a pretty accurate reflection of the quality of MMOs we've been getting lately.

---

Naturally there are going to be people with multiple accounts as well. I did like when EQ did have server counts, however in time if companies continued to use server counts their competition could easily keep tabs on them.

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by a_name

There is no way to tell for sure. Lots of companies will spit out numbers but for all we know they lie. It is in their best interest since ppl like you want to know right?

Wow goes around spouting off numbers and forget to tell you that their servers can only hold so many players, not like you'll be playing with 10m subscribers, nope, more like the 20k range at best. But since they have 2 factions split that in half since you can only connect with your side. It's classic bait and switch and ppl fall for it daily.

Here's an example of a chart ppl send info to from the /who so it counts characters, not accounts. Yet, wow advertising wants you to believe there are millions around... mmm hmmm sure are - spread out around a bagillion servers and half of em or more you can't talk to and a good percentage are bots.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/realmstats.php

Take a smaller place like LOTRO - yes, there are less subs but you encounter more ppl sometimes because they aren't spread into more servers. LOTRO has less than 10 servers if I remember right.

Those charts and xfire are not reliable stats either. Heck the hype on this site is no good either, I've never voted for one thing yet of course, I have opinions. I rarely run xfire when playing and I never saw a poll from the site that claims they know sub counts asking me if I still play x game.

 I can't find the link but I saw some info once about server farms in wow and I thought they stated between 2k - 6k max players on a server. Don't quote me on that because I need to refind the data lol

From their own website

http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?080122

"WORLD OF WARCRAFT® REACHES NEW MILESTONE: 10 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS
Subscriber base for Blizzard Entertainment®'s massively multiplayer online role-playing game now exceeds 2.5 million in North America, while Europe passes the 2 million mark "

Now... if 2m are europe and 3m are north america then how many does that leave that aren't either, so convenient to not talk about those - the majority of their players won't even speak english in all likelihood.

Read this if you like and get your mind around the difference of subscribers and what they don't advertise, well no game does.

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=2943#d49dd

 

That article is pretty biased and incorrect

Yes Blizzard does get alot less money from the Chinese subscribers, but that is not only because the Chinese pay less, but also because Blizzard is not allowed to run online games in China by itself and has to use expensive Chinese providers to run the game for them.

That is also why Blizzard changed from the The9 to the Netease provider, because they would get more royalties.

According to the Gamasutra article here : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23230 Blizzard will get around $140 million in royalties annually, at the time China had around 5 million subs. ( 6,5m subs for Asia ). $140m devided by 5m chinese players equals $28, devided by 12 months equals $2,3. Blizzard gets around 55% of the royalties, so the average Chinese player pays around 4,5€ per month. That is assuming the royalties are calculated on the total revenue, otherwise it could be even more. 

$4,5 per month may not be much to our standards, but you have also to take into consideration that employees in China are alot cheaper, so thay have less operational costs compared to the EU or US.

If you go look at the source Wolfsheadonline used : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24657 then there it is clear that the 6% revenue is because of the 22% royalty deal with The9 ( as in Blizzard gets only 22% of the money made from the Chinese players ), this actually results in $1 royalty per month per Chinese player, which is consistent with the other article, because if the royalty is more than doubled ( from 22% to 55% ) then we get around $2,5 doubled again to get the total of $5 per Chinese player.

These are rough calculations, and it probably varies between $4 and $5 per month per Chinese player, but it certainly is not $0,6 like Wolfsheadonline claims.

So imho the Blizzard numbers are pretty valid, even the Asian part.

 

You may think the article overall is biased but my point of linking it was to let them know that all subscribers may not pay the same amount but are counted equally and a way to think about why they really care about sub numbers. Why does a company tell you or you ask - it's trend following ya? Once you know a few thousand or so per server that's all you need to find groups.

There were plenty of good things in the article but concerning the finances:

Here is a financial report stating that in a recent quarter their revenue was only 7% of the total from Activision/Blizzard.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ACTI/758503228x0x311407/1d20a7b0-59e7-4e3c-ab4b-909628ee8e94/Press_Release_Tables_Q2_CY09_Aug_5_Final_v2.pdf

"GAAP Net Revenues by Geographic Region
North America 54 %
Europe 39%
Asia Pacific 7%"

7% would be 7c on a dollar so the article is not that far off according to Blizzards own lips and they range their number from 7-10% when you include all of activision. Since they've merged it's going to be harder to differentiate the two. You can keep up to date on the reports as it changes and see if it goes the way you envision. This is all part of wanting to know if their stock is worth investing in, right.

If you want to get bedazzled, listen to the stockholders conference where they state that the asian servers are the best being used in wow. Even though they are 50% of the customers paying less than 10% of the cost, they get the best lol

Companies don't like to give away financial data. Player numbers are just that for MMO's, thats why there is so much misdirection and down right lying in this area.

Originally posted by a_name

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by a_name

There is no way to tell for sure. Lots of companies will spit out numbers but for all we know they lie. It is in their best interest since ppl like you want to know right?

Wow goes around spouting off numbers and forget to tell you that their servers can only hold so many players, not like you'll be playing with 10m subscribers, nope, more like the 20k range at best. But since they have 2 factions split that in half since you can only connect with your side. It's classic bait and switch and ppl fall for it daily.

Here's an example of a chart ppl send info to from the /who so it counts characters, not accounts. Yet, wow advertising wants you to believe there are millions around... mmm hmmm sure are - spread out around a bagillion servers and half of em or more you can't talk to and a good percentage are bots.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/realmstats.php

Take a smaller place like LOTRO - yes, there are less subs but you encounter more ppl sometimes because they aren't spread into more servers. LOTRO has less than 10 servers if I remember right.

Those charts and xfire are not reliable stats either. Heck the hype on this site is no good either, I've never voted for one thing yet of course, I have opinions. I rarely run xfire when playing and I never saw a poll from the site that claims they know sub counts asking me if I still play x game.

 I can't find the link but I saw some info once about server farms in wow and I thought they stated between 2k - 6k max players on a server. Don't quote me on that because I need to refind the data lol

From their own website

http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?080122

"WORLD OF WARCRAFT® REACHES NEW MILESTONE: 10 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS
Subscriber base for Blizzard Entertainment®'s massively multiplayer online role-playing game now exceeds 2.5 million in North America, while Europe passes the 2 million mark "

Now... if 2m are europe and 3m are north america then how many does that leave that aren't either, so convenient to not talk about those - the majority of their players won't even speak english in all likelihood.

Read this if you like and get your mind around the difference of subscribers and what they don't advertise, well no game does.

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=2943#d49dd

 

That article is pretty biased and incorrect

Yes Blizzard does get alot less money from the Chinese subscribers, but that is not only because the Chinese pay less, but also because Blizzard is not allowed to run online games in China by itself and has to use expensive Chinese providers to run the game for them.

That is also why Blizzard changed from the The9 to the Netease provider, because they would get more royalties.

According to the Gamasutra article here : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23230 Blizzard will get around $140 million in royalties annually, at the time China had around 5 million subs. ( 6,5m subs for Asia ). $140m devided by 5m chinese players equals $28, devided by 12 months equals $2,3. Blizzard gets around 55% of the royalties, so the average Chinese player pays around 4,5€ per month. That is assuming the royalties are calculated on the total revenue, otherwise it could be even more. 

$4,5 per month may not be much to our standards, but you have also to take into consideration that employees in China are alot cheaper, so thay have less operational costs compared to the EU or US.

If you go look at the source Wolfsheadonline used : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24657 then there it is clear that the 6% revenue is because of the 22% royalty deal with The9 ( as in Blizzard gets only 22% of the money made from the Chinese players ), this actually results in $1 royalty per month per Chinese player, which is consistent with the other article, because if the royalty is more than doubled ( from 22% to 55% ) then we get around $2,5 doubled again to get the total of $5 per Chinese player.

These are rough calculations, and it probably varies between $4 and $5 per month per Chinese player, but it certainly is not $0,6 like Wolfsheadonline claims.

So imho the Blizzard numbers are pretty valid, even the Asian part.

 

 

You may think the article overall is biased but my point of linking it was to let them know that all subscribers may not pay the same amount but are counted equally and a way to think about why they really care about sub numbers. Why does a company tell you or you ask - it's trend following ya? Once you know a few thousand or so per server that's all you need to find groups.

There were plenty of good things in the article but concerning the finances:

Here is a financial report stating that in a recent quarter their revenue was only 7% of the total from Activision/Blizzard.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ACTI/758503228x0x311407/1d20a7b0-59e7-4e3c-ab4b-909628ee8e94/Press_Release_Tables_Q2_CY09_Aug_5_Final_v2.pdf

"GAAP Net Revenues by Geographic Region
North America 54 %
Europe 39%
Asia Pacific 7%"

7% would be 7c on a dollar so the article is not that far off according to Blizzards own lips and they range their number from 7-10% when you include all of activision. Since they've merged it's going to be harder to differentiate the two. You can keep up to date on the reports as it changes and see if it goes the way you envision. This is all part of wanting to know if their stock is worth investing in, right.

If you want to get bedazzled, listen to the stockholders conference where they state that the asian servers are the best being used in wow. Even though they are 50% of the customers paying less than 10% of the cost, they get the best lol

 

The article is off in that it claims the players are only worth $1, they are worth more, but Blizzard is getting only a small part of it, and the majority goes to the Chinese provider The9. However now with Netease, Blizzard will be getting alot more.

The article claimed that in relation to what the players pay in China, there are only 6,12 million players worldwide, while if you look at the facts, the Chinese players pay around at least $5, which would mean in their logic around 7,5 million players worldwide.

But honestly I don't care that much about the financials, it is just interesting to see how popular a game is, and one of the ways to do it is with subscription numbers. Blizzard also clearly states how they have gotten the numbers and they also gave us the ratio ( currently around 45% Western vs 55% eastern subscribers ).

If all other mmo companies were as straightforward and forthcomming with subcsription numbers as Blizzard, the work on my site would be much easier and complete.

Only EVE Online does better, by giving me all the numbers uncut and directly per e-mail.

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by a_name

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by a_name

There is no way to tell for sure. Lots of companies will spit out numbers but for all we know they lie. It is in their best interest since ppl like you want to know right?

Wow goes around spouting off numbers and forget to tell you that their servers can only hold so many players, not like you'll be playing with 10m subscribers, nope, more like the 20k range at best. But since they have 2 factions split that in half since you can only connect with your side. It's classic bait and switch and ppl fall for it daily.

Here's an example of a chart ppl send info to from the /who so it counts characters, not accounts. Yet, wow advertising wants you to believe there are millions around... mmm hmmm sure are - spread out around a bagillion servers and half of em or more you can't talk to and a good percentage are bots.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/realmstats.php

Take a smaller place like LOTRO - yes, there are less subs but you encounter more ppl sometimes because they aren't spread into more servers. LOTRO has less than 10 servers if I remember right.

Those charts and xfire are not reliable stats either. Heck the hype on this site is no good either, I've never voted for one thing yet of course, I have opinions. I rarely run xfire when playing and I never saw a poll from the site that claims they know sub counts asking me if I still play x game.

 I can't find the link but I saw some info once about server farms in wow and I thought they stated between 2k - 6k max players on a server. Don't quote me on that because I need to refind the data lol

From their own website

http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?080122

"WORLD OF WARCRAFT® REACHES NEW MILESTONE: 10 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS
Subscriber base for Blizzard Entertainment®'s massively multiplayer online role-playing game now exceeds 2.5 million in North America, while Europe passes the 2 million mark "

Now... if 2m are europe and 3m are north america then how many does that leave that aren't either, so convenient to not talk about those - the majority of their players won't even speak english in all likelihood.

Read this if you like and get your mind around the difference of subscribers and what they don't advertise, well no game does.

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=2943#d49dd

 

That article is pretty biased and incorrect

Yes Blizzard does get alot less money from the Chinese subscribers, but that is not only because the Chinese pay less, but also because Blizzard is not allowed to run online games in China by itself and has to use expensive Chinese providers to run the game for them.

That is also why Blizzard changed from the The9 to the Netease provider, because they would get more royalties.

According to the Gamasutra article here : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23230 Blizzard will get around $140 million in royalties annually, at the time China had around 5 million subs. ( 6,5m subs for Asia ). $140m devided by 5m chinese players equals $28, devided by 12 months equals $2,3. Blizzard gets around 55% of the royalties, so the average Chinese player pays around 4,5€ per month. That is assuming the royalties are calculated on the total revenue, otherwise it could be even more. 

$4,5 per month may not be much to our standards, but you have also to take into consideration that employees in China are alot cheaper, so thay have less operational costs compared to the EU or US.

If you go look at the source Wolfsheadonline used : http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24657 then there it is clear that the 6% revenue is because of the 22% royalty deal with The9 ( as in Blizzard gets only 22% of the money made from the Chinese players ), this actually results in $1 royalty per month per Chinese player, which is consistent with the other article, because if the royalty is more than doubled ( from 22% to 55% ) then we get around $2,5 doubled again to get the total of $5 per Chinese player.

These are rough calculations, and it probably varies between $4 and $5 per month per Chinese player, but it certainly is not $0,6 like Wolfsheadonline claims.

So imho the Blizzard numbers are pretty valid, even the Asian part.

 

 

You may think the article overall is biased but my point of linking it was to let them know that all subscribers may not pay the same amount but are counted equally and a way to think about why they really care about sub numbers. Why does a company tell you or you ask - it's trend following ya? Once you know a few thousand or so per server that's all you need to find groups.

There were plenty of good things in the article but concerning the finances:

Here is a financial report stating that in a recent quarter their revenue was only 7% of the total from Activision/Blizzard.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ACTI/758503228x0x311407/1d20a7b0-59e7-4e3c-ab4b-909628ee8e94/Press_Release_Tables_Q2_CY09_Aug_5_Final_v2.pdf

"GAAP Net Revenues by Geographic Region
North America 54 %
Europe 39%
Asia Pacific 7%"

7% would be 7c on a dollar so the article is not that far off according to Blizzards own lips and they range their number from 7-10% when you include all of activision. Since they've merged it's going to be harder to differentiate the two. You can keep up to date on the reports as it changes and see if it goes the way you envision. This is all part of wanting to know if their stock is worth investing in, right.

If you want to get bedazzled, listen to the stockholders conference where they state that the asian servers are the best being used in wow. Even though they are 50% of the customers paying less than 10% of the cost, they get the best lol

 

 

The article is off in that it claims the players are only worth 6c, they are worth more, but Blizzard is getting only a small part of it, and the majority goes to the Chinese provider The9. However now with Netease, Blizzard will be getting alot more.

The article claimed that in relation to what the players pay in China, there are only 6,12 million players worldwide, while if you look at the facts, the Chinese players pay at least $4, which would mean in their logic around 7,5 million players worldwide.

But honestly I don't care that much about the financials, it is just interesting to see how popular a game is, and one of the ways to do it is with subscription numbers. Blizzard also clearly states how they have gotten the numbers and they also gave us the ratio ( currently around 45% Western vs 55% eastern subscribers ).

If all other mmo companies were as straightforward and forthcomming with subcsription numbers as Blizzard, the work on my site would be much easier and complete.

Only EVE Online does better, by giving me all the numbers uncut and directly per e-mail.

 

You don't care about the financials because they support what the article stated.

You are stuck on two timelines. You say the past doesn't count because the future will be different so you blow it off.  I would wager that the past counts because it's what led to some success of the game and SO DOES BLIZZARD or else it wouldn't be one the things they have to mention in every one of their advertisements - x subscribers! So you keep citing that in the future it won't be like this. What you aren't finishing the phrase with is that the two will still not be comparable prices. The balance is improved but the situation remains.

The snowball effect was not because of the future it's the past in this case. Wow does not have its foothold because it doesn't rely on you believing that if you aren't there you aren't "normal" and these partial paying subs work to their advantage. You can future forecast all you like but the past is all that there is data for. Future revenues mean nothing until they make it into the bank account yet you are already counting it as tho it's settled knowing that the servicer has been changed which means there was a problem at some point. You are believing that this servicer will be guaranteed and permanent. I showed you a financial report so that you can see where it's at currently that's why your future defense doesn't hold water in that part of the discussion.

Even if your future predictions with the gamasutra article stand - the western players will still be paying more. Arguing about the difference of cost does not change the fact that the cost is not the same. This is what the article was trying to impart. Every subscriber is not equal and until you are told such things, you will be marketed upon with the claims of millions of subscribers that you think are just like you. But they don't walk alike, they don't talk alike, and they don't pay alike.

Even if said subscribers are... "Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers" which means that if you purchase a game card and only play once a month for 1 hour as long as that card isn't expired you are a sub. This is why smart shoppers want to know more about habits and usage, not just flat numbers.

Valuing a game card at RMB38 here. http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2011918

to US Dollars here = 5.56450 USD as of today's exchange rate. That's what Chinese players can pay for wow.
 

Even at your 4 to my 5 estimate it is still one third of the cost that others pay. That's a valid thing to alert to them - they are being told something is popular in a place where its price is reduced. It's like me making a website for ppl and offering them a reduced rate then trying to charge you 3 times as much just because I have clients that used me because I'm the best - it's not entirely true because they used me because of my reduced rate which I'm not giving you and someone should tell you that.

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by thinktank001

 

There is not even an official source saying aion has 3.5 million. 

 

A full Aion server handles around 7000 peak concurrent users, which is quite high. If you know that WoW China has a 1/5 PCU to Player ratio and Aion currently has 239 servers, you can see they sure have alot of players. 7000 on a server means a full server tho, and not all server are full anymore (  a full server means you have to queue to get in ). 

Still they never had 6-7 million players, I estimate around 3,6 million now with the European and US release included.

 

Stop guessing and pretend that your site is anything more than a stupid guess on your own part.

Seriously, nowhere..did you hear..nowhere.......let me repeat that.........nowhere..........did NCsoft ever state that Aion had 3 million or 3.5 million total or in Asia. What you are doing is just guessing like everyone else.

You keep backtracking and  changing your numbers, please stop, site is a joke.

Originally posted by a_name

You don't care about the financials because they support what the article stated.

You are stuck on two timelines. You say the past doesn't count because the future will be different so you blow it off.  I would wager that the past counts because it's what led to some success of the game and SO DOES BLIZZARD or else it wouldn't be one the things they have to mention in every one of their advertisements - x subscribers! So you keep citing that in the future it won't be like this. What you aren't finishing the phrase with is that the two will still not be comparable prices. The balance is improved but the situation remains.

The snowball effect was not because of the future it's the past in this case. Wow does not have its foothold because it doesn't rely on you believing that if you aren't there you aren't "normal" and these partial paying subs work to their advantage. You can future forecast all you like but the past is all that there is data for. Future revenues mean nothing until they make it into the bank account yet you are already counting it as tho it's settled knowing that the servicer has been changed which means there was a problem at some point. You are believing that this servicer will be guaranteed and permanent. I showed you a financial report so that you can see where it's at currently that's why your future defense doesn't hold water in that part of the discussion.

Even if your future predictions with the gamasutra article stand - the western players will still be paying more. Arguing about the difference of cost does not change the fact that the cost is not the same. This is what the article was trying to impart. Every subscriber is not equal and until you are told such things, you will be marketed upon with the claims of millions of subscribers that you think are just like you. But they don't walk alike, they don't talk alike, and they don't pay alike.

Even if said subscribers are... "Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers" which means that if you purchase a game card and only play once a month for 1 hour as long as that card isn't expired you are a sub. This is why smart shoppers want to know more about habits and usage, not just flat numbers.

Valuing a game card at RMB38 here. http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2011918

to US Dollars here = 5.56450 USD as of today's exchange rate. That's what Chinese players can pay for wow.
 

Even at your 4 to my 5 estimate it is still one third of the cost that others pay. That's a valid thing to alert to them - they are being told something is popular in a place where its price is reduced. It's like me making a website for ppl and offering them a reduced rate then trying to charge you 3 times as much just because I have clients that used me because I'm the best - it's not entirely true because they used me because of my reduced rate which I'm not giving you and someone should tell you that.

I really don't think you understood what I was saying. But I was indeed a bit wrong in saying that I don't care about the financials, I realize I actually do care enough that I like people to use the numbers correctly.

I certainly agree that the past counts, and so does the future. But both in the past and the future the Chinese players will pay roughly the same, the only thing that will be different is that Blizzard will get more off the $5 ( I'll use $5 from here to make it easy ) and the current provider Netease will get less compared to the old provider The9.

My point was that in the article ( http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=2943#d49dd ) they let us believe that Chinese only pay 6c per dollar, and I quote "For every dollar a non-Asian WoW subscriber pays for WoW an Asian subscriber pays 6 cents", which equals roughly $1 a month per player, and that is a plain lie, they took the article from gamasutra and messed it up completely.

Furthermore, the comparison is made on revenue, but that is also skewed, because in Europe and US you have to subtract the operational costs ( carried by Blizzard themselves ), the royalties from China are nearly pure profit ( not taking into account actually developping the game ) because the operational costs ( Server infrastructure, Internet bandwith, GM's, selling time cards, localization, ... ) are carried by the provider ( The9 or Netease ).
 

I do agree it is interesting to know that in China it costs only 1/3 of what it costs in US, but you have to remember that operational costs and salaries there are lower and as a result the Chinese also have less to spend.

If you take into account the lower salaries of the Chinese, the difference between China $5 and the US $15 is not that much bigger than the difference between the US $15 and the EU $22.

Again, I agree it is a valid thing to know, but you have to use the correct numbers and not pull them out of context and that was what clearly happened in the article. ( The Gamasutra article were Wolfsheadonline reffered to was pretty much correct tho, and it would have been better to link that instead )

Originally posted by pepsibottle

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by thinktank001

 

There is not even an official source saying aion has 3.5 million. 

 

A full Aion server handles around 7000 peak concurrent users, which is quite high. If you know that WoW China has a 1/5 PCU to Player ratio and Aion currently has 239 servers, you can see they sure have alot of players. 7000 on a server means a full server tho, and not all server are full anymore (  a full server means you have to queue to get in ). 

Still they never had 6-7 million players, I estimate around 3,6 million now with the European and US release included.

 

Stop guessing and pretend that your site is anything more than a stupid guess on your own part.

Seriously, nowhere..did you hear..nowhere.......let me repeat that.........nowhere..........did NCsoft ever state that Aion had 3 million or 3.5 million total or in Asia. What you are doing is just guessing like everyone else.

You keep backtracking and  changing your numbers, please stop, site is a joke.

 

I admit the latest datapoint for Aion is an estimate, but I have alot of data to support it, most of it based on the Quarterly reports from NCsoft.

I also gave it an accuracy rating of C – Not too confident : Some of the data points come from official or other reliable sources, many of the data points come from estimates, third party sources, unclear official sources or other indirect information.
 

I don't have solid numbers for all the mmo's, I do have solid numbers for many of them.

Use it or don't use it as you see fit.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by pepsibottle

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by thinktank001

 

There is not even an official source saying aion has 3.5 million. 

 

A full Aion server handles around 7000 peak concurrent users, which is quite high. If you know that WoW China has a 1/5 PCU to Player ratio and Aion currently has 239 servers, you can see they sure have alot of players. 7000 on a server means a full server tho, and not all server are full anymore (  a full server means you have to queue to get in ). 

Still they never had 6-7 million players, I estimate around 3,6 million now with the European and US release included.

 

Stop guessing and pretend that your site is anything more than a stupid guess on your own part.

Seriously, nowhere..did you hear..nowhere.......let me repeat that.........nowhere..........did NCsoft ever state that Aion had 3 million or 3.5 million total or in Asia. What you are doing is just guessing like everyone else.

You keep backtracking and  changing your numbers, please stop, site is a joke.

 

 

I admit the latest datapoint for Aion is an estimate, but I have alot of data to support it, most of it based on the Quarterly reports from NCsoft.

I also gave it an accuracy rating of C – Not too confident : Some of the data points come from official or other reliable sources, many of the data points come from estimates, third party sources, unclear official sources or other indirect information.
 

I don't have solid numbers for all the mmo's, I do have solid numbers for many of them.

Use it or don't use it as you see fit.

 

 

The 3.5 M of Aion only was cited ONCE by an anonymous AU source in ... June 09 and by one journalist of IGN. It came 3(!) weeks after an official May announcement of NCsoft they had ... 1M Chinese players on ... 113 Chinese servers back then.

At that time Chine Aion ...  was open Beta (free to play).

So this 3.5 M "rumour" came on a time when the servers were certainly not there for China (and 3 weeks is simply impossible to triple the amount of players - let alone the servers).

Since then NCsoft opened up new servers in other regions like Japan and Taiwan. But they LACK in giving any official subs info. Their famous "60% of all players are playing now" statement of the NA/EU launch, shows it had a 400 K with 240 K players on  line on far too few servers (12/12).

Even these new servers ALL combined can not support the usual 10K to one server limit we see in the overall fantasy realm based mmorpg's. So 3.5M - even with the new Aion west servers AND Japan AND Taiwan is a myth.

If you WANT to make a website about these figures, you better back them up with statements of NAMED CEO's of companies. otherwise juste delete the info.

Based on number of servers (and what we now see in the downward trend of Aion on Xfire), the game certainly has not the "normal" capacity to host these numbers. it is also in sharp contrast with the "always up - hype" Aion had this last year. So clearly Aion West is down these days in samples.

The acceptance of false figures is counter productive for the industry btw.

It looks like they are going down this month, I agree.

There are certain facts that you seem to dismiss tho, like that the Aion servers can hold 7000 peak concurrent players, please accept this fact as it comes straight from the Quarterly reports from NCSoft.

So in theory they should be able to handle 20k subs per server if you compare it with more traditional servers that can hold around 3500 PCU and 10k accounts.

This is of course only the case when the servers have queues. At release, that was certainly so, both in China, Taiwan, Korea and the West. But again, I agree that it currently is no longer the case and numbers are going down.

My other datapoints for Aion most certainly still stand, like the one with around 1750000 subs around march ( dont have the exact data with me atm ), because that was the sum of the Korean and Chinese players at that time.

With the latest downward trend of Xfire and servers with no queues but still medium or high pop, I'll have to add a new estimated datapoint again.

About previous estimates, I normally only make 1 estimate per game, so if I have a new, more up to date estimate I delete the previous one, so perhaps it looks like retracting, I look at it as updating/revising. I only keep the history on the live charts for datapoints that have at least a reasonably reliable source. So for estimates, it is only the latest estimate I have that I will put on the live charts.

I re-researched the costs for playing for each area.
I think my initial China number wasn't valid because it assumed there was a month time on
the gamecard. Apparently they don't have such a card there - the pricing is instead buying
points that expire at an hourly usage rate. Since you mentioned Europe I'll toss all 3 in
together and show what I've found.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/press/pressreleases.html?081121
"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,..."

Consumer cost:

European Purchase
http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Warcraft-Pre-paid-Game-Card/dp/B000BPCILI/
15.99 pound sterling = 26.35 USD 60 day card
= 13.18 USD month
Counts as 1 sub

North American Purchase
http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Pre-Paid-Time-Card-Pc/dp/B00063BLG8
29.99 USD 60 day card
= 14.99 USD month
Counts as 1 sub

China Purchase
http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2011918
http://wowcard.163.com/#
Visit in Firefox
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://item.eachnet.com/prd/1221321600380069_prd.html&ei=vhvrSs-iLtDllAfw5qz_BA&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAwQ7gEwAQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3D300%25E7%2582%25B9%2B15.00%25E5%2585%2583%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3DXJv%26sa%3DG
 

38 renminbi/yuan = 5.57 USD for 48 hours/600 points = *3
= 16.71 USD for 144 hours average of 5 hrs a day play time
Counts as 3 subs

38 renminbi/yuan = 5.57 USD for 48 hours/600 points = *6
= 33.42 USD for 288 hours average of 10 hrs a day play time
Counts as 6 subs

5 million subs / 3 = 1,666,667 million subs

5 million subs / 6 = 833,334 thousand subs

I think in this case they are displaying 3 or more times the numbers by the way they sell their
cards. For sure it's got to be twice the numbers  (i.e. 2 game cards) - who could play 24 hours a month and stay competitive.

The method of time distribution via a points system allows them to inflate the
number of active users while the consumer would still pay a similar cost. We've seen tho that
the consumer is paying but the profits are being trickled to the distributor.

Short of a government agency passing a law that clearly defines what should be reported and requires MMORPG publishers to provide the figures we'll never really know what the real numbers are.

Heck, even for the few companies that do share their sub numbers, there's always a number of detractors who insist they are lying about them, especially if the figures are high.

Originally posted by a_name

I re-researched the costs for playing for each area.
I think my initial China number wasn't valid because it assumed there was a month time on
the gamecard. Apparently they don't have such a card there - the pricing is instead buying
points that expire at an hourly usage rate. Since you mentioned Europe I'll toss all 3 in
together and show what I've found.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/press/pressreleases.html?081121
"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,..."

Consumer cost:

European Purchase
http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Warcraft-Pre-paid-Game-Card/dp/B000BPCILI/
15.99 pound sterling = 26.35 USD 60 day card
= 13.18 USD month
Counts as 1 sub

North American Purchase
http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Pre-Paid-Time-Card-Pc/dp/B00063BLG8
29.99 USD 60 day card
= 14.99 USD month
Counts as 1 sub

China Purchase
http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2011918
http://wowcard.163.com/#
Visit in Firefox
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://item.eachnet.com/prd/1221321600380069_prd.html&ei=vhvrSs-iLtDllAfw5qz_BA&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAwQ7gEwAQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3D300%25E7%2582%25B9%2B15.00%25E5%2585%2583%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3DXJv%26sa%3DG
 

38 renminbi/yuan = 5.57 USD for 48 hours/600 points = *3
= 16.71 USD for 144 hours average of 5 hrs a day play time
Counts as 3 subs

38 renminbi/yuan = 5.57 USD for 48 hours/600 points = *6
= 33.42 USD for 288 hours average of 10 hrs a day play time
Counts as 6 subs

5 million subs / 3 = 1,666,667 million subs

5 million subs / 6 = 833,334 thousand subs

I think in this case they are displaying 3 or more times the numbers by the way they sell their
cards. For sure it's got to be twice the numbers  (i.e. 2 game cards) - who could play 24 hours a month and stay competitive.

The method of time distribution via a points system allows them to inflate the
number of active users while the consumer would still pay a similar cost. We've seen tho that
the consumer is paying but the profits are being trickled to the distributor.

Your research is interesting, but you made a wrong turn somewhere.

Blizzard states :

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.

For me it is clear that they are not counting accounts more than once if they buy more time cards or points or whatever in the same month. If they did, then they would indeed inflate their numbers on purpose, but even then they would be the biggest by far, so whats the point?

And for the real, mainland, Europeans ( j/k :p but still ... :) ) it is 27€  = 40$ = 20$ a month

http://www.amazon.de/s/ref=nb_ss?__mk_de_DE=%C5M%C5Z%D5%D1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=wow+time+card

You actually made my point, Chinese players do pay good money, and the old provider The9 took the biggest part of the cake ( 78% ).

We discussed this in another thread, between them calling it ridiculous and a definition explanation that can't be solved for the word active, it's reached a halt. I say one thing others say another. Am I alone in my thinking, doesn't really matter if ppl post to agree with what active means - it would just be arguing at this point things you can't link to fact. Guess I had a good time debating it even if everyone thinks their side is right.

Originally posted by iamnotsevere

Originally posted by Vinterkrig

Originally posted by iamnotsevere

No. Because mmochart was basically fraudulant in that it got most of its numbers out of thin air. People caught on and laughed at other people who referred to it.

 

There is no way of knowing sub numbers in the vast majority of games, so sites like this do not exist.Not legitimate ones anyway.

 

^ this

 

but you can look at xfire for a sample sizing of whats going on, though that isn't either a true showing of whats going on.

 

Xfire is as close as you can get to a true sampling , I would say, ....

        and that is woefully innacurate.

 Seems to show trends fairly well.

this was necroed 2 years later ... why ?