So how many people do you guys think are still playing war (after the free month)

We only have two indirect ways of telling really

1.  Server populations are down about 40% since launch.  You can tell by counting the number of low/low servers (which have increased by 40%) and also the almost complete elimination of queues from high pop servers

2.  Xfire is down about 40% since the second week (ignore first week because players probably played extra hours)

MJ's plan to merge servers also indicates they don't expect growth from this point and lack of box sales supports his decision.

High was probably 600k players,  down to 350k now.  With probably a 5-10% loss every week moving forward.

I honestly don't think that there are more than 100k people playing.  I would say 100k at max.  I know they had 650k accounts made, but when I decided to not resub, I looked at my guild of over 135 and 80% of them had not signed on since september or early october.  And about half of us left said we werent gonna resub.  I would be really surprised if this game still has over 100k players right now.  It definitely won't when wrath of the lich king comes out.

So that marketing guy (talking with EA insiders at the day of launch) was right after all.

400K-500K players at launch and then settle down to 250-350K after 3 months.

I think the majority of War will be glad with this IF they merge the servers.

I've heard that people are seeing sharp drop-offs in server pops since the free month ran out. I think the game will settle around ~400k which is a healthy number for an MMO, but WAR is different in that it needs large numbers to fill out its many servers since this is an RvR game.

Server merges might be the only option if there isn't a considerable rise.

Originally posted by Zayne3145

I've heard that people are seeing sharp drop-offs in server pops since the free month ran out. I think the game will settle around ~400k which is a healthy number for an MMO, but WAR is different in that it needs large numbers to fill out its many servers since this is an RvR game.

Server merges might be the only option if there isn't a considerable rise.

400k is a "healthy" number? LOL 400k is an AWESOME number for a P2P MMO(there aren't many above that mark).

But I also think that number is inflated. With 650k accounts made, which includes beta, pre-order, ect, I don't think they even sold much more than 400k boxes to be honest. I know I wasn't the only one to pre-order and not buy the game.

I think the game will settle down to around 100k - 200k after the first 3 months.

Originally posted by Zayne3145

I've heard that people are seeing sharp drop-offs in server pops since the free month ran out. I think the game will settle around ~400k which is a healthy number for an MMO, but WAR is different in that it needs large numbers to fill out its many servers since this is an RvR game.

Server merges might be the only option if there isn't a considerable rise.

Isn't it true that the Free Month cut off date has actually been put back to the 10th Nov due to the account issues they had at launch?

It's also interesting that the date is immediately before WotLK.

any one thinking that war would sustain 2 millions, or even 1 million subs was delusional.there is this freak thing called wow that simply breaks the standards, but it is an abnormality, a phenomenon. It is like once in a life time.

Most good western made  mmorpgs can realistically hope to sustain a ~500 000 player base.  A pvp mmorpg will probably get away with 50-60% of that. simply put it, no matter how good they are, pvp based mmorpgs never become  massive  hits.

300 to 400 k subs is pretty good for this kind of game. it is still like 2 times more than aoc and on the lines of LOTRO.

Well if the xfire peak was around 75000 and that was 750K subs then the peak now being around 55000 would seem to imply around 550k subs.  If we say that the peak was 500k then we have around 360k.  So I'd say the current number is between 360k and 550k.

Originally posted by Dkevlar

any one thinking that war would sustain 2 millions, or even 1 million subs was delusional.there is this freak thing called wow that simply breaks the standards, but it is an abnormality, a phenomenon. It is like once in a life time.

Most good western made  mmorpgs can realistically hope to sustain a ~500 000 player base.  A pvp mmorpg will probably get away with 50-60% of that. simply put it, no matter how good they are, pvp based mmorpgs never become  massive  hits.

300 to 400 k subs is pretty good for this kind of game. it is still like 2 times more than aoc and on the lines of LOTRO.

 

 

Methinks your numbers are a bit off.  AoC hit something like 90k on xfire and 700k subs and is now down to maybe 7k.  So I'd say it is closer to 50k playing subs.  Maybe given the lowness of the numbers I'd not discount some deviation up but I would seriously doubt they can approach 100k.  LotR is 150k I believe from the last time they published numbers which was awhile.  So they are probably down around 100k.

Originally posted by Dkevlar

any one thinking that war would sustain 2 millions, or even 1 million subs was delusional.there is this freak thing called wow that simply breaks the standards, but it is an abnormality, a phenomenon. It is like once in a life time.

Most good western made  mmorpgs can realistically hope to sustain a ~500 000 player base.  A pvp mmorpg will probably get away with 50-60% of that. simply put it, no matter how good they are, pvp based mmorpgs never become  massive  hits.

300 to 400 k subs is pretty good for this kind of game. it is still like 2 times more than aoc and on the lines of LOTRO.

 

 

if war had delivered on it's promise of War is everywhere and been fun i think 2 million for a pvp game is possible War went after the WOW crowd and that is a mistake in anyone's book you need the go after the ex wow crowd and there are plenty of them and also plenty ready to be ex-wow as soon as something decent hits the market.  Blizzard sees people ready to leave the game and are trying to figure out a way to halt that feeling. look how they went off on war when they thought it would be true competition. thing is if Mythic shows some balls and make a few key changes they could  make a nice rebound this spring just by simply giving all inactive subs a free month to see the improvements (alot of people that will not resub will give a free month a try)

I don't know how many of you are currently playing WAR. I am sure some of you have never even played the game.

First of all, On Oct 10th Mythic gave a press statement that they have currently 750k subs. So, all of you guys who thought they only reached around 300k subs are totally wrong.

Second, as I still play the game, I have not seen a population drop. Rather, I have seen a population spread from high pop servers to low pop servers. When I started playing, I started my char on a low pop server. The pop of my server has dramatically increased and now it has "High" pop ratings on peak times.

That says something. And when I played yesterday, I had less than one minute wait times to go in scenarios. So, I seriously doubt that pop numbers have fallen sharply.

In my opinion pop numbers are still above 500k.

LoTR doesn't have over 300k subs. It has merely 150k-200k subs and that is still good for a P2P game. Only few MMORPGs can claim subs above 100k.

The 11 million subs of WoW is actually a different story. Only 3 million of that are western subs. The way they count eastern subs (chinese, korean) etc is different. In China and Korea they use monthly cards to play, so they are not persistent subs. WAR still has not gone to China, Korea.

WAR cannot beat WoW. That is impossible. But, I think in long term WAR will be the MMORPG with the second highest western subscriber numbers. And that can be achieved by merely 250k+

Originally posted by cdeepal

I don't know how many of you are currently playing WAR. I am sure some of you have never even played the game.

First of all, On Oct 10th Mythic gave a press statement that they have currently 750k subs. So, all of you guys who thought they only reached around 300k subs are totally wrong.

Second, as I still play the game, I have not seen a population drop. Rather, I have seen a population spread from high pop servers to low pop servers. When I started playing, I started my char on a low pop server. The pop of my server has dramatically increased and now it has "High" pop ratings on peak times.

That says something. And when I played yesterday, I had less than one minute wait times to go in scenarios. So, I seriously doubt that pop numbers have fallen sharply.

In my opinion pop numbers are still above 500k.

LoTR doesn't have over 300k subs. It has merely 150k-200k subs and that is still good for a P2P game. Only few MMORPGs can claim subs above 100k.

The 11 million subs of WoW is actually a different story. Only 3 million of that are western subs. The way they count eastern subs (chinese, korean) etc is different. In China and Korea they use monthly cards to play, so they are not persistent subs. WAR still has not gone to China, Korea.

WAR cannot beat WoW. That is impossible. But, I think in long term WAR will be the MMORPG with the second highest western subscriber numbers. And that can be achieved by merely 250k+

I beleive that was 750k accounts.. and that was before the free month ran out.

What server are you on that shifted from low to high? Possibly one of the xp boosted servers? Even still, I read that they had raised the server caps, and since then I 've only seen med/med and low/low.. or are you playing on a euro server?

Also, I think there are more than a few MMOs out there with well over 100k subs besides WoW, including the one I'm currently playing (FFXI).

Originally posted by cdeepal

I don't know how many of you are currently playing WAR. I am sure some of you have never even played the game.

First of all, On Oct 10th Mythic gave a press statement that they have currently 750k subs. So, all of you guys who thought they only reached around 300k subs are totally wrong.

Second, as I still play the game, I have not seen a population drop. Rather, I have seen a population spread from high pop servers to low pop servers. When I started playing, I started my char on a low pop server. The pop of my server has dramatically increased and now it has "High" pop ratings on peak times.

That says something. And when I played yesterday, I had less than one minute wait times to go in scenarios. So, I seriously doubt that pop numbers have fallen sharply.

In my opinion pop numbers are still above 500k.

LoTR doesn't have over 300k subs. It has merely 150k-200k subs and that is still good for a P2P game. Only few MMORPGs can claim subs above 100k.

The 11 million subs of WoW is actually a different story. Only 3 million of that are western subs. The way they count eastern subs (chinese, korean) etc is different. In China and Korea they use monthly cards to play, so they are not persistent subs. WAR still has not gone to China, Korea.

WAR cannot beat WoW. That is impossible. But, I think in long term WAR will be the MMORPG with the second highest western subscriber numbers. And that can be achieved by merely 250k+

So much inaccurate information.  That 750K number was first given out in September, well before the 30 days was up.. it was repeated a few times after that.

Anecdotal evidence of your server does not overcome the fact that there are now almost 40% more servers on low/low and there are no longer any servers with queues, and a lot less on high/high.

WOW does not have 3M people in the west.. it has 3M people in North American, and another 2.5M in Europe..  Yes, billing method is different in Asia, but they only count people who payed in the previous month.  Also there is no indication that asian people play WOW less than people in the west. Their average server has the same raid progression as the average west server.  Everyone 'assumes' that all those asian accounts only play like an hour a month, which evidence indicates is not true.  Asian players pay per hour, which could actually end up costing them more than $15/month.

Its simple ladies and gentlemen.

WOW has been around for years.

WAR just came out.

WOW = Apple marketing
WAR = Blackberry ( RIM ) marketing

More people will own Iphones than blackberry storms.

More people will play WOW than WAR.

WoW is a carebear daycare game built to babysit adults and children.

Thus why so many continue to play it.

Its easy.

It's stupid easy.

Easy = Boring

If I wanted to do something easy, I'd quit my fancy engineer job, and go work at starbucks, at least I'd get paid.

And yet WOW's populations have gone up about  30% in the past month, while Warhammer has gone down about 50% since the first week.

WOW is unfun, boring, easy, lame and for kids and stupid people.  Yet last night there were 20+ servers in North American that had queues.

Meanwhile, Warhammer devs are already talking about server mergers.

Azrile -

1- Mark Jacob said that they increased server caps again last week

2- Actually the drop has been 24.6% saturday, 26.1% sunday and 31.2% yesterday. It should keep following this trend until december and patch 1.1 hits, then we should see some slight gradual increase. January will give us a good picture of what will become of the game

3- Asian players pay a LOT less than anywhere else, I think its something like 2 cents/hour when converted to US dollars. They also don't need to buy boxes and the majority play in coffee shops

Abrahmm - 400k is not awesome for a major MMO, its only acceptable. Mark Jacob said that 500k is the minimum to be considered succesfull these days, and EA said that 250k was only enough to break even. Btw, they sold 500k in the first week, only the 750k account might be PR spinning

My guess is that they now sold around 800k boxes and have around 600k people playing, the State of the game address seems to have made many people hopeful. Btw, DAoC had a retention of 71% after the free month according to Mark Jacobs.

Just because there are a lot of players doesn't make it fun.

I've honestly tried to play WoW so many times over the years but in the end, it gets boring and just feels like you're running through a giant themepark of boring lore-less quests.

Maybe because I didn't reach the max level, that was my problem.

but why should I have to play a game for so long to begin to have fun?

Shouldn't the game start off being extremely fun, and just get better?

In WAR I don't even care about my levels, I'm suprised when I level, I'm more engrossed in having fun with other players and teamwork. Something that I did not see in WOW.

You know what I saw in WOW?

A bunch of lame-tards screaming about chuck noriss and leroy jenkins.

So, just because there are 50 servers with their queues full doesn't mean it's a fun, exciting game. To me, this just further proves that lots of people prefer to play a dumbed down themepark carebare daycare type of game.

And thats FINE!

To each their own.

I'm just tired of every game being compared to WoW, as if it were something magical.

Take away the graphics and I will give you a list of 100 MUD ( multi user dungeon ) games that not only have the same game mechanics as WoW, but more, and more fun.

I'm gonna go with 300k-500k Somewhere. The problem is, if that is anywhere near the truth I doubt we'll be hearing any numbers from Mythic any time soon, they'll stick to the 750k accounts registered and keep upping that number as more units get sold. 

It is *highly* unlikely they're gonna announce 400k-500k subs after talking about higher(elbeit different) numbers before.

Originally posted by Myrdek

Azrile -

1- Mark Jacob said that they increased server caps again last week

2- Actually the drop has been 24.6% saturday, 26.1% sunday and 31.2% yesterday. It should keep following this trend until december and patch 1.1 hits, then we should see some slight gradual increase. January will give us a good picture of what will become of the game

3- Asian players pay a LOT less than anywhere else, I think its something like 2 cents/hour when converted to US dollars. They also don't need to buy boxes and the majority play in coffee shops

 

Abrahmm - 400k is not awesome for a major MMO, its only acceptable. Mark Jacob said that 500k is the minimum to be considered succesfull these days, and EA said that 250k was only enough to break even. Btw, they sold 500k in the first week, only the 750k account might be PR spinning

 

 

My guess is that they now sold around 800k boxes and have around 600k people playing, the State of the Month address seems to have made many people hopeful. Btw, DAoC had a retention of 71% after the free month according to Mark Jacobs.

Sorry, I missed where MJ said they upped the server cap.  I've heard it mentioned by players but they didnt' even sound sure.

Yeah, the whole asian thing is screwy and Blizzard doesn't break it down on their financial statements.  Even 2 cents an hour isn't terrible considering we only pay $.50 per day for wow.   Lets say they play on average 2hrs a day.. that still is 1/10 the cost of a US player.. so would mean another 500-750k subscriber equivalents.