Originally posted by trevornor

Originally posted by Myrdek

Originally posted by trevornor 

All I ask is you link directly where, in the 11 million announcement, where they specifically state that they do not include specific people that are not "people who have paid within the last month" because they, like any other MMO company out there, will probably include those within the free month of a fully paid game. Since you have now frequently stated that the basic game is selling higher than most other MMOs, can you prove directly that they are not including those numbers, like you insist everyone else is outside of WOW (and constantly try and justify how every other game's population is conciderably lower than the public announcement numbers) , but make an effort to try and state that WOW does not.

 

I'm not part of this debate but I was curious to find out the truth on this so...

www.mcvuk.com/press-releases/41601/WORLD-OF-WARCRAFTreg-SURPASSES-11-MILLION-SUBSCRIBERS-WORLDWIDE

____________

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

____________

 

So people who are in their free month are included

Those that are in free trials are not

Asian players are included if they logged in the past 30 days

 

Blizzard is very clear about their definition of subscriber and its on every press release they have. EA and Funcom are not clear and try to deceive as much as they can legally

 

Actually, thank you very much for your answer. It does clear up some of the double talk that was happening. Would it be fair to say that the current subscribers for all three include people who are within the free month of purchasing the full game? That would very directly explain the 800k number if it happened near the 30 sept time frame because all purchased games that were registered would qualify, no matter what game it was?

(Trying to make common footing)

Thank you for your effort and time. I personally, appriciate it.

Yes, that is true.  Both games include people who are within the first free month.   Which is why on Sept 30th, Mythic could say 800k 'players', because as of that date, not a single player had quit.  Even if you completely stopped playing, you still had an open account.

The reason I don't think it's as useful for comparing to Blizzard is because of two things.   

1.  The percentage of WOW players that are currently playing in a 'free' month is very small.  Out of 11M 'subscribers' to WOW, probably 200-400k of them just bought the box in the last month (based on box sales estimates)... so like 4% of WOW players are in their first month.    That percentage is 100% for Warhammer.

2. Retention rates go up drastically after the first month.  I think I read somewhere that the industry average is 65-70% retention after the free month... but by the third month, it's over 90%.  Even AOC is probably pulling 80+% retention this month.

That is my reasoning as to why the 800k number provided by Mythic is not comparable to the 5M number (NA and EU only) of WOW.   The likely percentage dropoff from the 800k number is somewhere around 30%.. the likely dropoff from the 5M number is much less, probably less than 10%.   

And like I have stated previously.  that 10% loss is easy for WOW to mask because it still has high box sales.   The 30% loss from Warhammer is less easy to hide because of the low box sales.

Originally posted by xzyax

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by xzyax

Threads like this one are why speculating what MMO subscriptions are is really a mute point.

 

Players like us DEMAND to know what the up-to-the-minute subs are for every MMO on the planet.

MMO's that are owned by publicly traded companies like:

WoW, WAR, and AoC have no choice but to oblige us.

They produce numbers that meet the requirements required by their stockholders... but those numbers are not good enough for us.  I am thoroughly convinced that no number ever released about an MMO subscription will be accepted unequivocally... it's just not our nature.

 

So then the question becomes...

Why do we even bother to ask for subscription numbers? 

It's not like the numbers will be believed, even if given.  So I ask... what is the point?

 

 

 

This is not true.   Three times this year Blizzard has given us straight subscription numbers (people who have paid within the last month).   Eve also makes it's subscription numbers clearly visiable.    Warhammer and AOC are the only two games that hide their subscription numbers by using terms like 'activated accounts' and other BS.  Both games have shown substantial losses in players which is why they try to spin it by using irrelevant numbers.

 

Heh... do I really need to link to all the posts about people that DOUBT the accuracy of Blizzard's and/or EvE's numbers?

There are skeptics of all the numbers.  Some will believe numbers from some companies but not others.  Some will believe all the numbers, but I stand by my statement that you'll not find any MMO numbers that EVERYONE accepts as truth.

 

Also to say that Warhammer and AOC are the only ones that "hide their subscription numbers"... heh, o.k.

How about EQ, EQ2, LoTRo, PotBS, SWG, Vanguard... the list goes on. 

The numbers are "spun" by all of them.  To try and paint WAR and AoC as the only ones that are behaving badly isn't really the whole story.  I'm not disagreeing with you that they may indeed be trying to deceive us.  I just don't buy into the argument that they are the only ones doing it, and that the numbers of other MMOs are any better.

The reason I ragged on Mythic is because of two statements

1. How do you explain the 1.2M boxes sold and then only have 800k players when everyone is in their free month.  That 1.2M is boxes sold to retailers but they kind of twist it to sound like sold to players.  They also haven't explained how they had 1.5M sales the first week and only 1.2M sold after a month.

2. Please explain to me what MJ was talking about when he used that 3% number?   Under my interpretation, he was saying that Warhammer was retaining 97% of players.   I'm pretty good with math, but beyond saying 97% retention, I can't find a way he could use 3% to mean anything...  I'm sure he can come up with some good explaination.. but that thread was certainly full of people saying 97% retention and he didn't correct them.  What useful statistic was that 3% number except to deceive people?

Um, the only 3% MJ ever used was shortly after the US free month ended and he said the servers were only down 3% from the day before

     I dont think you can ever take anything that an exec of any company says about their sales.......They are going to spin it to make it look much better than it really is......

Originally posted by Pheace

Um, the only 3% MJ ever used was shortly after the US free month ended and he said the servers were only down 3% from the day before

exactly, the implication being that 97% of players kept playing.   It took like 2 mins after he posted that for people to start replying that " 97% retention rate is amazing, great job Mythic".    He could have very easily posted the 70% resub rate, but instead he chose to mislead people by using the 3% number which is a useless stat, since people who aren't going to resubscribe to a Warhammer aren't going to grind scenarios up until the last minute their accout is active.  I'm probably the norm with people who quit.  I played heavily for 2 weeks, then played a couple days the 3rd week, then never logged in again.

Again, it's like the 1.2M number.  They don't lie directly, but they use really unimportant stats and then let readers assume they are for something else.

Originally posted by strategy

Strange indeed. But very possible

800K "registred" users and 1.2 M "sales".-----> So 400 K boxes were not registred?

That means 400K boxes linger in the shops. EA sold them but the shops still have them in stock as these users are not registred.

And that 800K "registred" are the 750K "accounts MJ speak aboout on Oct 10th

So between Oct 10th and today 50K new "accounts" were added. Sounds logical.

But they don't speak of active subscriptions.

So I guess the active numbver of players would be 50% of the registred users (if taking X fire and the number of low/low servers).

BTW EA figures are terrible: 300 million dollars loss ....

Ough.

dont include xfire in your stat. no one uses xfire except nerds. i never even heard of it till i came to these boards. tons of people who play mmos do not use xfire. probably less than 10 percent of people who play mmos use the service.

Originally posted by medafor

Originally posted by strategy

Strange indeed. But very possible

800K "registred" users and 1.2 M "sales".-----> So 400 K boxes were not registred?

That means 400K boxes linger in the shops. EA sold them but the shops still have them in stock as these users are not registred.

And that 800K "registred" are the 750K "accounts MJ speak aboout on Oct 10th

So between Oct 10th and today 50K new "accounts" were added. Sounds logical.

But they don't speak of active subscriptions.

So I guess the active numbver of players would be 50% of the registred users (if taking X fire and the number of low/low servers).

BTW EA figures are terrible: 300 million dollars loss ....

Ough.

 

dont include xfire in your stat. no one uses xfire except nerds. i never even heard of it till i came to these boards. tons of people who play mmos do not use xfire. probably less than 10 percent of people who play mmos use the service.

Tons of War players use Xfire. At start they were with 15.000 !.

Now only 50%.

So of course Xfire shows the trends just like it did with AOC and WAR and COD4, COD2, GW, etc...

It's a brilliant tool to explain why 800K are not playing war and why the servers are empty.

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by xzyax

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by xzyax

Threads like this one are why speculating what MMO subscriptions are is really a mute point.

 

Players like us DEMAND to know what the up-to-the-minute subs are for every MMO on the planet.

MMO's that are owned by publicly traded companies like:

WoW, WAR, and AoC have no choice but to oblige us.

They produce numbers that meet the requirements required by their stockholders... but those numbers are not good enough for us.  I am thoroughly convinced that no number ever released about an MMO subscription will be accepted unequivocally... it's just not our nature.

 

So then the question becomes...

Why do we even bother to ask for subscription numbers? 

It's not like the numbers will be believed, even if given.  So I ask... what is the point?

 

 

 

This is not true.   Three times this year Blizzard has given us straight subscription numbers (people who have paid within the last month).   Eve also makes it's subscription numbers clearly visiable.    Warhammer and AOC are the only two games that hide their subscription numbers by using terms like 'activated accounts' and other BS.  Both games have shown substantial losses in players which is why they try to spin it by using irrelevant numbers.

 

Heh... do I really need to link to all the posts about people that DOUBT the accuracy of Blizzard's and/or EvE's numbers?

There are skeptics of all the numbers.  Some will believe numbers from some companies but not others.  Some will believe all the numbers, but I stand by my statement that you'll not find any MMO numbers that EVERYONE accepts as truth.

 

Also to say that Warhammer and AOC are the only ones that "hide their subscription numbers"... heh, o.k.

How about EQ, EQ2, LoTRo, PotBS, SWG, Vanguard... the list goes on. 

The numbers are "spun" by all of them.  To try and paint WAR and AoC as the only ones that are behaving badly isn't really the whole story.  I'm not disagreeing with you that they may indeed be trying to deceive us.  I just don't buy into the argument that they are the only ones doing it, and that the numbers of other MMOs are any better.

 

The reason I ragged on Mythic is because of two statements

1. How do you explain the 1.2M boxes sold and then only have 800k players when everyone is in their free month.  That 1.2M is boxes sold to retailers but they kind of twist it to sound like sold to players.  They also haven't explained how they had 1.5M sales the first week and only 1.2M sold after a month.

2. Please explain to me what MJ was talking about when he used that 3% number?   Under my interpretation, he was saying that Warhammer was retaining 97% of players.   I'm pretty good with math, but beyond saying 97% retention, I can't find a way he could use 3% to mean anything...  I'm sure he can come up with some good explaination.. but that thread was certainly full of people saying 97% retention and he didn't correct them.  What useful statistic was that 3% number except to deceive people?

I find this amusing, how is this deceptive.

They say what they sold, what the pct is. The give info they want to. Theres no deception here. EA sold 1.2 mil boxes, who buys boxes right from EA themselves? Stores. Its the people choosing be deceived. They gave real information, people just misinterpret it. 

EA is not responsible how people take the numbers, they just provide them. People read way to much into this. 

Next was the 3 pct thing, he said the day before, which means people who enjoyed it yesterday, 97 pct returned next day, which means there was a steady flow, once again misintepertation. Not EA's fault

Originally posted by Gregtheexcon

I find this amusing, how is this deceptive.

They say what they sold, what the pct is. The give info they want to. Theres no deception here. EA sold 1.2 mil boxes, who buys boxes right from EA themselves? Stores. Its the people choosing be deceived. They gave real information, people just misinterpret it. 

EA is not responsible how people take the numbers, they just provide them. People read way to much into this. 

Next was the 3 pct thing, he said the day before, which means people who enjoyed it yesterday, 97 pct returned next day, which means there was a steady flow, once again misintepertation. Not EA's fault

It is deceptive because EA knows that most people won't think about the numbers and just accept them. There is nothing illegal about what their doing but it doesn't make it ethical, their purposebly trying to mislead their customers into a thinking everything is rosy. You can always argue that it's peoples fault for not taking the time to analyse it but not everyone has the will or time for this. I had to spend 15 minutes finding old data to compare to the new one and make sense of it, which I only did because I have plenty of free time :)

As for the 3 percent thing, this was obvious deception. What Mark Jacobs said was that one of the biggest server only saw a 3% drop in the day after the free month ended. There is 2 things wrong with this

1- Not everyone knows that most leave way before the free month is over and isn't included in that number

2- The 3% is only for 1 server, he purposebly picked the one with the lowest drop to make everyone think the game was a huge success

Originally posted by Myrdek

Originally posted by Gregtheexcon

I find this amusing, how is this deceptive.

They say what they sold, what the pct is. The give info they want to. Theres no deception here. EA sold 1.2 mil boxes, who buys boxes right from EA themselves? Stores. Its the people choosing be deceived. They gave real information, people just misinterpret it. 

EA is not responsible how people take the numbers, they just provide them. People read way to much into this. 

Next was the 3 pct thing, he said the day before, which means people who enjoyed it yesterday, 97 pct returned next day, which means there was a steady flow, once again misintepertation. Not EA's fault

 

It is deceptive because EA knows that most people won't think about the numbers and just accept them. There is nothing illegal about what their doing but it doesn't make it ethical, their purposebly trying to mislead their customers into a thinking everything is rosy. You can always argue that it's peoples fault for not taking the time to analyse it but not everyone has the will or time for this. I had to spend 15 minutes finding old data to compare to the new one and make sense of it, which I only did because I have plenty of free time :)

 

As for the 3 percent thing, this was obvious deception. What Mark Jacobs said was that one of the biggest server only saw a 3% drop in the day after the free month ended. There is 2 things wrong with this

1- Not everyone knows that most leave way before the free month is over and isn't included in that number

2- The 3% is only for 1 server, he purposebly picked the one with the lowest drop to make everyone think the game was a huge success

I dont think is deceptive.  WoW includes free months in their numbers too.  WoW has 11 m.  WAR has 800k.  None of both games are deceptive when they give the numbers... of coruse some people will always doubt... and its ok for them to doubt.  :)

Originally posted by Keeper2000 

I dont think is deceptive.  WoW includes free months in their numbers too.  WoW has 11 m.  WAR has 800k.  None of both games are deceptive when they give the numbers... of coruse some people will always doubt... and its ok for them to doubt.  :)

What is deceptive is things like the 1.2 million game sold by sept 30th when they said 1.5 million at launch to stores. Not many people thought that retailers sent some back so most ended up thinking it was the amount of game sold to consumers. I doubt EA didn't consider that :)

The amount of subs could be deceptive too if they actually counted them Oct 17th right before the first free month ended but we'll never know the exact date of those numbers

I admit that it's not a big spin but it's still far from being clear

750-800K is pretty significant. I wonder how many have quit WoW temporarily (vs permanently) because of it?

Originally posted by Battlekruse

750-800K is pretty significant. I wonder how many have quit WoW temporarily (vs permanently) because of it?

Here is the answer: www.xfire.com/games/who/Warhammer_Online_Age_of_Reckoning/

and here; http://www.xfire.com/games/wow/World_of_Warcraft/

Or 99.149 players against 7679 players as (western) XFire players.

That's a ratio of 12.9: Meaning IF 99.149 players stand for an average subscription rate of 4.5 Million western subs for Wow.

Than 7679 stands for 348K subs for War. That's the absolute maximum for War btw, as older MMORPG's have lesser subscription based players on line each day and of course Xfire does not count Macintosh users from Wow. So probably it is about 10% less than that number.

As we all know from AoC, Xfire gave a very accurate number at the end of June for AoC. The same count then gave about 450K subscriptions for AOC and later it was confirmed in an official report from FunCom they had at that point 420 K subs (published 2 months later).

Very accurate in view of the present day lower server populations compared to the full/full status the WAR servers had on launching week when they stated to have 500 K accounts created.

So again proof the 800K are nothing but "accounts created" at Sep 30th, but as can be seen on our servers: 55% left already. Hence the server merges.

Originally posted by strategy

Here is the answer: www.xfire.com/games/who/Warhammer_Online_Age_of_Reckoning/

and here; http://www.xfire.com/games/wow/World_of_Warcraft/

Or 99.149 players against 7679 players as (western) XFire players.

That's a ratio of 12.9: Meaning IF 99.149 players stand for an average subscription rate of 4.5 Million western subs for Wow.

Than 7679 stands for 348K subs for War. That's the absolute maximum for War btw, as older MMORPG's have lesser subscription based players on line each day and of course Xfire does not count Macintosh users from Wow. So probably it is about 10% less than that number.

Xfire can't be used to compare one game to another, too many factors that can skew the data. It would need to be a perfect sample of the gaming population to be able to do that.

The only thing we can do is look at the trend of a particular game, like Warhammer, and see if it goes up or down. Even then we can never rely on it like its fact

The best post I've seen on this was done by Ethion

_____

Ok I've seen this posted by you a zillion times. And what you say taking from a mathmatician point of view is absolutely correct. However taken from a practical point of view like an engineer of social scientist is not. What statistical polling type data is always going to be bad to some degree in almost all cases. And if you don't know the badness of the statistic it is hard to determine the inherent error rate in the results. Or in other words the error becomes unbounded. But again we are speaking in absolutes and in the extreme. The reality is not absolute but rather analog. So we know that xfire sampling is not entirely random or unbiased. This means that the data has a range of potential error that we can't quantify from looking at the source of the statistic. This does NOT mean that the data is meaningless. It merely means that you can't quantify the error.

So instead you need to quantify the error using other means through experimentation. Kinda like if put 1000 people in a room and I go into the room and only talk to people in one corner of the room I'm getting a biased data sample of people that only liked to hang out in the sw corner maybe because the lighting was better there or some other self selecting rational. So maybe 30% of my sample prefer snickers bars. Since it was a biased sample I can't say that 30% of the entire room like snickers and while I could say that 30% of the people in the corner liked them and the distribution of the people in the corner relative to the rest was a certain percent and from that calculate and error level. I could also measure the entire room and calabrate that against my results and do that several differnt times and that also would allow me to quantify the significance of my bias and the errors.

Meaning that if the data from xfire is in reality valid in test cases then it is probable that it is valid in other cases. And while again this doesn't hold up in terms of absolutes very little ever does. What you can determine is that it is valid in test cases and therefore is not exhibiting errors. This doesn't mean you can toss out your logic there are obvious things that can poison your data. Like maybe xfire sends out a promo to all gamers telling them that for the next month playing on wow will be free. This is gonna create a surge of xfire users playing wow that won't be reflective of the community.

But in a general sense xfire does clearly map to real world trends. When a game launchs xfire shows a large serge up. No surprise. When a game dies xfire shows the game dying. If a game is really popular xfire shows it doing better then other games. Can I compare AoC to LInage II using xfire data and say that one game is doing better then the other. No there is a margin of error and while I don't know what it is I do expect it to be something. If things are plus or minus 10 or 20% I consider that too close to tell. However I can say that there are more players playing WoW then Warhammer. I can say that there are more people Playing War then LoTr. Or there are more people playing LoTr then AoC. I feel rather confident making these statements and I'd put money on the table any day saying I'm right.

So in summary for those that haven't fallen asleep. Is xfire data absolute NO WAY. Is xfire meaningless also NO WAY. The truth is in the middle and xfire is the best data that we have access and it is meaningful in doing some preditions as long as we understand that there is a significant margin of error.

_________

Originally posted by strategy

Originally posted by Battlekruse

750-800K is pretty significant. I wonder how many have quit WoW temporarily (vs permanently) because of it?

 

Here is the answer: www.xfire.com/games/who/Warhammer_Online_Age_of_Reckoning/

and here; http://www.xfire.com/games/wow/World_of_Warcraft/

Or 99.149 players against 7679 players as (western) XFire players.

That's a ratio of 12.9: Meaning IF 99.149 players stand for an average subscription rate of 4.5 Million western subs for Wow.

Than 7679 stands for 348K subs for War. That's the absolute maximum for War btw, as older MMORPG's have lesser subscription based players on line each day and of course Xfire does not count Macintosh users from Wow. So probably it is about 10% less than that number.

As we all know from AoC, Xfire gave a very accurate number at the end of June for AoC. The same count then gave about 450K subscriptions for AOC and later it was confirmed in an official report from FunCom they had at that point 420 K subs (published 2 months later).

Very accurate in view of the present day lower server populations compared to the full/full status the WAR servers had on launching week when they stated to have 500 K accounts created.

So again proof the 800K are nothing but "accounts created" at Sep 30th, but as can be seen on our servers: 55% left already. Hence the server merges.

 

so if proportions are everything in determining a population base. The fact WOW just dropped 10% over last week, when they pushed the 11 million player mark, does this mean WOW in one week lost 1.1 million players?

I hope you see the flaw in your logic....

Originally posted by trevornor

Originally posted by strategy

Originally posted by Battlekruse

750-800K is pretty significant. I wonder how many have quit WoW temporarily (vs permanently) because of it?

 

Here is the answer: www.xfire.com/games/who/Warhammer_Online_Age_of_Reckoning/

and here; http://www.xfire.com/games/wow/World_of_Warcraft/

Or 99.149 players against 7679 players as (western) XFire players.

That's a ratio of 12.9: Meaning IF 99.149 players stand for an average subscription rate of 4.5 Million western subs for Wow.

Than 7679 stands for 348K subs for War. That's the absolute maximum for War btw, as older MMORPG's have lesser subscription based players on line each day and of course Xfire does not count Macintosh users from Wow. So probably it is about 10% less than that number.

As we all know from AoC, Xfire gave a very accurate number at the end of June for AoC. The same count then gave about 450K subscriptions for AOC and later it was confirmed in an official report from FunCom they had at that point 420 K subs (published 2 months later).

Very accurate in view of the present day lower server populations compared to the full/full status the WAR servers had on launching week when they stated to have 500 K accounts created.

So again proof the 800K are nothing but "accounts created" at Sep 30th, but as can be seen on our servers: 55% left already. Hence the server merges.

 

 

so if proportions are everything in determining a population base. The fact WOW just dropped 10% over last week, when they pushed the 11 million player mark, does this mean WOW in one week lost 1.1 million players?

I hope you see the flaw in your logic....

That is true.

But are they saying that the 5 to 6 million asians that play WoW do NOT use Xfire????  Because if he would honestly reverse those very same numbers to acknowledge WoW's 11 million user base.   The X fire numbers would suggest that WAR has a CURRENT player base of 852,000.  But then again that is what EA released in their report.

Originally posted by Myrdek

I'm not part of this debate but I was curious to find out the truth on this so...

www.mcvuk.com/press-releases/41601/WORLD-OF-WARCRAFTreg-SURPASSES-11-MILLION-SUBSCRIBERS-WORLDWIDE

____________

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

____________

 

So people who are in their free month are included

Those that are in free trials are not

Asian players are included if they logged in the past 30 days

 

Blizzard is very clear about their definition of subscriber and its on every press release they have. EA and Funcom are not clear and try to deceive as much as they can legally

People are still on this? Heheh.

I thought about posting something when Blizzard annouced the 11M mark, but somehow I decided not to.

You know, Blizzard is no less deceptive than EA. They spin the number right under your nose and you just don't know about it. I noticed that you figured out one very important aspect of the Blizzard's subscriber definition. Here it is

All Asian players logged in in the past 30 days are counted as subscribers.

And here is the key to that spin. Asian players are not subscribers in a traditional way. They do not pay the same as we are. Let me explain how a Chinese WoW player pay for the game and you will understand what's the different.

1 - You don't have to buy WOW box (CD key). You register, download and play. That is why you see many Chinese WoW players multi-box because those accounts do not cost them at all.

2 - You only pay for the time you play, if you don't play, you don't have to pay. You buy a card, it has a certain number of points in it. Everytime you log in and play, this number is deducted from your account. If you don't log in, it does not decrease at all.

3 - The price to play WoW China is 30 Yuan for 600 hours. That's about 4.384 USD for 600 hours of playing. If you consider playing 24 hours a day and play non-stop, you can play for 25 days for just $4.384.

So, when Blizzard come out and announced they have 11M subscribers, those are not 11M subscribers as you understand them. If you consider any WOW China player play 24 hours/day and always play non-stop which is unrealistic, a US subscriber is equal to 3 Chinese subscribers financially. If you consider a average of 10 hours a day playing (which is still a lot) then the ratio will be much bigger. If you consider the actually real life situation when it is possible that a Chinese player log in, play for a few hours in the last 30 days and still get count as a full subscriber then you will understand how far from reality that 11M subscribers number is.

In fact, Blizzard does not get the full income from subscribers from WOW China. It does not work like that. WOW China is published in China by The9. This company is not Blizzard. They lisensed WoW from Blizzard and have to pay a huge sum of royality fee but they are not Blizzard and they will not give everything they get from their players base to Blizzard. So when Blizzard annouced they have 11M subscribers, they actually a little (just a little because those players till playing WoW) cheated, those players are WoW players but they are not Blizzard subscribers.

PS: If WAR uses the same business model like WOW China here, how many people will play it? Hmm, food for thought.

To the post above me.

You are confusing Subscriptions with how much Blizzard makes from those Subs. Blizzard never stated that they earn the same amount from the different territories they operate in, they just state that if an account in China logs in the last 30 days then it counts as a sub. Pretty much everyone there playes in game cafes, which don't really exist in the west so it's hard to compare, but it is the only reliable way to measure the amount of people playing your game. Pretty much all MMO's (and non-MMOs such as SC and the like) are also played in the same way. It's how the system works there for all MMOs.

Blizzard is kind enough to give a very clear definition of what a Subscriber is, just wish more companies would do likewise.

Originally posted by Raztor

To the post above me.

 

You are confusing Subscriptions with how much Blizzard makes from those Subs. Blizzard never stated that they earn the same amount from the different territories they operate in, they just state that if an account in China logs in the last 30 days then it counts as a sub. Pretty much everyone there playes in game cafes, which don't really exist in the west so it's hard to compare, but it is the only reliable way to measure the amount of people playing your game. Pretty much all MMO's (and non-MMOs such as SC and the like) are also played in the same way. It's how the system works there for all MMOs.

 

Blizzard is kind enough to give a very clear definition of what a Subscriber is, just wish more companies would do likewise.

You don't understand my point. If the business models are the same in every country do you think WoW will have this many players world wide?

When you discuss about WoW success in a forum, you only see 11M subscribers but most people just did not realize that subscribers are not all the same. When you use a broad term like that people will take the concept of most familiar to them which is the way US subscriber works. You don't think that is deceptive? When you announced you have 11M subscribers but most western players just don't have any idea how it works over there, don't you think that intentionally misleading?

Your argument is that most people over there playing at the game cafes but this is WOW, not Lineage. The problem with Lineage was NCSoft gave Internet Cafes account quota and not counting actual accounts. WOW China actually manages every single account just like the US counter part, so you can actually very accurately measure the amount of players playing your game.

In my previous post, I gave an example of players who only log in a few hours a month, pay a few cents and still get counted as subscribers. If you counted like that than WOW is actually doing pretty bad since there are many games in China have the amount of players in the 30 millions range. Their concurrent players (amount of player playing at the same time) are in the range of 2.5 millions equal to the total numbers of WOW players in NA.

So, I disagree when you just counting the number of players as subscribers. You will have to look at how they pay for their game because that is one very important aspect that could determine how big your players base will be.

Originally posted by Thachsanh

When you discuss about WoW success in a forum, you only see 11M subscribers but most people just did not realize that subscribers are not all the same. When you use a broad term like that people will take the concept of most familiar to them which is the way US subscriber works. You don't think that is deceptive? When you announced you have 11M subscribers but most western players just don't have any idea how it works over there, don't you think that intentionally misleading?

Nope, because Blizzard says, along with the subs numer, what they mean by it. Along with every release of new sub numbers, they make it very clear what they mean by a sub. You would have a point if they didn't say subscribers mean different things in differnt countire, then you would be right in saying that they are intensionally missleading, but unlike other companies, they provide a very clear definition of what they mean, which is why I believe you are wrong.