One of the stockmarket sites (Bloomberg?)  stated that console game sales are down 30% and subscription game sales are down 25% from a year ago. Those are sales, not subs, but I am sure the economy has been an impact on WOW, along with all other online games.

Read most of the first post, didnt read others after that cbf, any ways you say multiple accounts dont count? If I sold a magizine and say I Had 900 subscribers but 100 of these people bought 2 magizines I would say I had 1000 subscribers its that simple and not uncommon in buisness.

2 you do know that us is not the only country that has wow right?

3. Chinese people play wow, do you know how many chinese people there are? I mean honestly 6-8 mil of those subscribers are probally chinese.

Blizz isnt giving broken down details just a vauge number that is in the general vicinity its a common buisness tactic

I dont know what this thread has turned into but I can tell from reading the OP's first post that he is making sweeping generalizations about how people play WoW (1/3 have multiple accounts?  lol...yea right).  Hes pulling data from sites that use techniques which are filled with gaping holes and errors and are also outdated.  He also doesn't really know what hes talking about, being a WoW player or not. 

Originally posted by Zorndorf

On a macro scale: The fact this game has ... 60% marketshare of ALL western played mmo's (free games included), "everyone" plays it.

 

I don't think you can compare free games in your Marketshare %. For example to name just one, Perfect world had around 50million last i read,, and many others have much higher than Wow. Id guess more like 5% if you did.

Originally posted by Professor78

Originally posted by Zorndorf

On a macro scale: The fact this game has ... 60% marketshare of ALL western played mmo's (free games included), "everyone" plays it.

 

 

I don't think you can compare free games in your Marketshare %. For example to name just one, Perfect world had around 50million last i read,, and many others have much higher than Wow. Id guess more like 5% if you did.

A customer is only counted by blizzard if they have paid for access to world of warcraft in the month that they are releasing numbers for.  That is to say blizzards numbers only count currently paying customers.

Free games make all sort of unbelievable claims, because it costs nothing to make an account.  50 million accounts means nothing.  For example:  soe claims to have 3 million unique registered users for free realms, but they cannot even fill up 10 servers of a game that is the size of a schoolyard playground.  Free realms does not have the infrastructure to support 3 million users, let alone 300,000.

There is nothing to even suggest that these free games claims of "registered accounts" comes even remotely close to paid accounts.  Since they are free to make they essentially cost nothing.  Without knowing their paid membership numbers, they are worthless hype numbers.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by Professor78

Originally posted by Zorndorf

On a macro scale: The fact this game has ... 60% marketshare of ALL western played mmo's (free games included), "everyone" plays it.

 

 

I don't think you can compare free games in your Marketshare %. For example to name just one, Perfect world had around 50million last i read,, and many others have much higher than Wow. Id guess more like 5% if you did.

 

A customer is only counted by blizzard if they have paid for access to world of warcraft in the month that they are releasing numbers for.  That is to say blizzards numbers only count currently paying customers.

Free games make all sort of unbelievable claims, because it costs nothing to make an account.  50 million accounts means nothing.  For example:  soe claims to have 3 million unique registered users for free realms, but they cannot even fill up 10 servers of a game that is the size of a schoolyard playground.  Free realms does not have the infrastructure to support 3 million users, let alone 300,000.

There is nothing to even suggest that these free games claims of "registered accounts" comes even remotely close to paid accounts.  Since they are free to make they essentially cost nothing.  Without knowing their paid membership numbers, they are worthless hype numbers.

 

Exactly my point so how can the poster add FTP games into the 60% marketshare?

But I did remember reading an article way back probably in 2007/2008 that said Perfect world had 11 million active accounts, how they class active I don't know. And again not sure if that is Perfect world as a global company across all its games.

But my point remains, you can't compare Wow to market share of FTP games.

Originally posted by GrandoReaper

Originally posted by Orthedos

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Seriously, telling the 11 million subs are not correct, include trial accounts, are inflated by internet game rooms, etc, is even dumber than the average WoW newb ...

 

Some one is obviously jealous and uneasy.  Wanna guss why?
 

(1) They left WoW, or got banned, and want to punish Blizz.  Unfortunately, WoW left him behind crying and grew to almost 12million

(2) They want to feel good but failed and got drown in a crowd of 12million, so they moved to another game with no player population, looks really unique there, but then no one even notice he is online, alone.

(3) Someone has to feel big in RL, and think that trashing a big game will make him look "bright".

(4) err, you know, its hard to figure out why a stupid mind thinks that way, I give up.

You are right, if they are dumb, they are.

 

Did I mention that I still play WoW? lawl.

The point of this post is:  The world of warcraft active players per server is relatively the same as any other MMO's server (unless it is a crippled MMO) and you shouldnt be discouraged from trying a different MMO because it doesnt meet the supposed 11 million "players" on the MMO as a whole.  Your ignorance is a prime example of why I turn off trade chat.

Do I know you?  No, you are nobody, one in a million online, or one in a billion

Did I refer that to you?  Look at the mirror, you expect anyone to know you?

What you post is none of my business, take that with you to your bed.  You are not even talking about the topic.  The topic is, are there really 11million subscriptions to the game WoW.  Your idea of player per server is totally and royally offtrack.  Unless, you are deliberately trying to derail the discussion.

Your ego is a prime example why ... you finish that sentence yourself, after looking at the mirror.  Do you need to go out and buy one?

Originally posted by kverik

Read most of the first post, didnt read others after that cbf, any ways you say multiple accounts dont count? If I sold a magizine and say I Had 900 subscribers but 100 of these people bought 2 magizines I would say I had 1000 subscribers its that simple and not uncommon in buisness.

2 you do know that us is not the only country that has wow right?

3. Chinese people play wow, do you know how many chinese people there are? I mean honestly 6-8 mil of those subscribers are probally chinese.

Blizz isnt giving broken down details just a vauge number that is in the general vicinity its a common buisness tactic

How is it not detailed enough?  Blizz told exactly how many sub are in the US servers, mind you US servers.  Blizz also told us how many sub are in EU servers, Asian servers and so on.  Sub size, rounded to near millions, and by regions.  Each region is run by a different company, so there is no way they will add them or mix them up.

Now a sub in the US server =/= an american playing it.  A french can buy a US copy and play it.  He just need to buy it outside Europe, or have some shops smuggle him a US copy.  Blizz will not block a french IP loggin onto US servers.  They once block creation of US accounts from non US IPs, but once created, they won't block log on.

As for multiple accounts, does it matter?  Its a sub.  Money paid.  We also know that some family shares accounts, so one account is played by one whole family.  No one on earth can tell which count is multiple account, or which account is multiple player.  It makes no difference.  As a corollary, some people own multiple cars, some family share one car.  As far as the car servicing company goes, each car is a car being served, he does not care who owns or shares what.

The point is WoW claims it has 11m paid subscriptions.  How many people are behind the sub, god knows.  Is Blizz honest?  God knows.  However, counting the number of servers and likely average player size per server, claims of 11million is not totally out of order.  If you have a more solid way of estimating the sub base, share with us.

Subscribers means subscriptions, not per player.

If you asked how many people play WoW and they said 11 million people then it would be a lie.

Subscriptions also means that its not a trial, and that they have an active account.

Dual boxing does exist, as well as others just have multiple accounts to run other players around instances till they are level 80.

They have to release accurate data on the amount of subscriptions they have as it is required by law to give an exact amount of money income and from what sources so that it can be taxed. If they didn't give them the correct amount of subscriptions Blizz would be in a shit ton of trouble with the IRS, not to mention that their stock would be over inflated due to an unrealistic income.

Number of players only interest other players, number of accounts matter in the real world where companies go bankrupt by lying to their stock holders and governement officials. Grow up.

---

Originally posted by Zorndorf

---

...

---

Ok here wo go ! My 60% was based on this sample:
 
http://www.xfire.com/genre/mmo/massively_multiplayer_online/
It is a sample based on 250K-300K western players and I don't even want to discuss this huge sample.
Around 60% is that marketshare of ANY mmorpg playable in the western world.
BTW Last year this time the number of Wow players had around 55% share. But we ALL know what happened to AoC and WAR.
Besides a 2.5% error bracket, you can even calculate the number of players in each MMO ... and surprisingly you can deduct the other number of players in other MMORPG's.
Take the 5 M for Wow and the 300 K for EVE and you have a pretty good idea of what is being played in our western market.
btw: Xfire just tracks what is being played (no need to install it with each game and the ONLY games that would be underrepresented are those which would block the ports, which for 99% of the games is NOT the case).
So 60% is a good direction when viewing an ON LINE 24/24HR sample by 250.000 to 300.000 players. You can discuss it, but the relations between the number of players of those mmorpg's shows a very good TREND.
Wow, compared to other mmorpg's (ANY mmorpg) in the west is simply MAINSTREAM, while others are mostly niche.
I was talking about the mainstream aspect of Wow.
----> Taking out ONE little sentence in well a built up post is always proof of trying to downplay something.
Well, http://www.xfire.com/genre/mmo/massively_multiplayer_online/ Xfire samples are there to show HOW FTP modelled games just LIE about their number of players concurrently on line.
Because you can discuss the error rate of a 300.000 sampled base , but you simply can not negate trends in an on line sample of this magnitude...
Your example of Perfect World is a perfect illustration to this as the current ratio between Wow/PW is 60 to 1 according to that huge sample... (and that's not even bad since PW is on place 13h and far in front of other mmorpg's like AoC).
 
 

---

 
The idea of error margin being 2.5% comes form an asserted stocastic sampling distribution, of some know properties of the sample.  Unfortunately we do not know how the 300,000 sized sample behaves.  It is just an assumption that it has a known distribution.
As a last resort, we can assume that it does not have a known property, but does not exhibit skews or multi-modal distribution.  Then we slap on the "law of large numbers" and assume a near normal distribution, but with a much larger sampling variability.
Either way your 2.5% or whatever sampling error and hence ranged estimation of sub, is a rather shaky assumption.  Not that you are wrong, indeed, in absence of a very scientific sampling scheme, this is about all you can derive from the messy pool of information.  Users beware.
Sub of AoC or WAR and sub of WoW, or sub of any game can be "complementary" as well as substitutes, when it comes to modelling.  A player can unsub WoW to try WAR.  A new gamer attracted to WoW and falling in love with WoW may start exploring new games and try WAR, while still playing WoW.  Some players play WoW and add other games simultaneously for wider span of entertainment choices.  The exact split and evolution of comple vs substitute, is a whole new game theory modelling.
Generally speaking, user beware.
One thing I believe tho, WoW does have a huge and active player base, no game currently on earth comes remotely close.  F2P is highly incomparable.  F2P, you can create an account and never play after the first week.  Many F2Ps will keep that inactive account for a long time.  That counts as sub.  In WoW, you have to continuously paid your sub money to be counted.  So long as you are paying, mostly likely you are playing.  The % of paying but never loggin on player is insignificant (I believe).
So saying a F2P has a sub base comparable to WoW is meaningless.  Likewise, a sub base of a pay by the hour game, is very different from a sub base of pay by the month.  Unless the pay by hour is converted to $15 equivalent monthly sub.  No one in F2P business will do that, and the ratio of conversion changes drastically month by month.  Even converted, the number will fluctuation like roller-coaster week by week.  No point in using such statistics.
Rants off.

 Edit: Nevermind

Originally posted by GrandoReaper

So I was looking at the mmochart at www.mmogchart.com/Chart11.html that has the subscriber distribution up to April 2008.  With the way that the chart is going I would make a easy guess that there are roughly over ~3 million Active WoW accounts in the US online.  Right now the US is estimated to have around 303 million people living in it.  Around 3 million for the "most popular" mmorpg would seem realistic but add to even more of the realism that 1/3rd (maybe more, this is lowest guess) of all the people that play WoW have a 2nd account or even a 3rd account.  So that knocks the 3~ to about 2~ if you are counting per person and not just account, in my eyes per person is the figure that matters when it comes to population.  That's not even counting all of the bots that are floating around holding onto massive amounts of gold.  In June 2006 Blizzard did a mass ban of around 30,000 bot/goldfarmer accounts, in 2006 you didnt see as many bots sitting there shouting advertisements for gold selling sites so I would guess that it would jack the number of accounts to 100,000 if you would count all of the high jacked accounts they use to do this.

Final Analysis (for the hell of it)

1. Advertised Active Subscribers - 11 million
2. Projected Active US Subscribers - ~3 million
3. GrandoReaper's Educated Guess of current Active US players - ~1.7 million

~1.7 million players is 15% of the Advertised Active Subscribers

~1.7 million players is 0.5% of estimated US Population

WoW Census www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php has a total of 1.4 million US Server Level 80 Character's (Horde/Alliance Combined)

I dont know about you but I know a lot of people that have 3 characters that are level 80 so you do the math.

Basically what I am getting around to is this isnt really that huge of a number when you look at US MMORPG's.

In 2007 EQ1 with 23 US server's had 145,000 characters that were atleast level 70 www.eqjunkies.com/eqstats/index.htm (at the time max cap was 75, max cap population is 42,000) with a total of 187,000 high level people across all servers.  The ratio of two boxing people in EQ1 at max level compared to WoW isnt nearly as much.

Right now WoW has atleast 150 US server's (I would have counted exact number but had 6 year old screaming in background).  Across all of those servers right now there is 755,000 max level characters.

EQ 23 US servers - 187,000 high level's

WoW ~150 US servers - 755,000 max level's

If WoW only had 23 US server's it would have - 115,000 max level's estimated

Question is : Would EQ1 be considered more populated if it had more player's per server than WoW?  I mean would you want a high populated active raiding server or a game that has a lot of servers with moderate amount of people raiding?

LMAO .. this really made me laugh.. rich..  what a moron

I will make this short:

Xfire is not a random sample. It is a program one must want to use, go download and install and let it gather data. Just like these forums, usually the people who want to use it are not a random group of gamers, but on the more hardcore, "meta" side of gaming as a whole.

If the sample is not random and not studies for bias and such (like Nielsen ratings are), the the data gathered from said sample is worthless.

Now Xfire can show us that a lot of people play games and play WOW but any data gathered from said sample is circumspect at best and a fallacy at worst.

Originally posted by Professor78

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by Professor78

Originally posted by Zorndorf

On a macro scale: The fact this game has ... 60% marketshare of ALL western played mmo's (free games included), "everyone" plays it.

 

 

I don't think you can compare free games in your Marketshare %. For example to name just one, Perfect world had around 50million last i read,, and many others have much higher than Wow. Id guess more like 5% if you did.

 

A customer is only counted by blizzard if they have paid for access to world of warcraft in the month that they are releasing numbers for.  That is to say blizzards numbers only count currently paying customers.

Free games make all sort of unbelievable claims, because it costs nothing to make an account.  50 million accounts means nothing.  For example:  soe claims to have 3 million unique registered users for free realms, but they cannot even fill up 10 servers of a game that is the size of a schoolyard playground.  Free realms does not have the infrastructure to support 3 million users, let alone 300,000.

There is nothing to even suggest that these free games claims of "registered accounts" comes even remotely close to paid accounts.  Since they are free to make they essentially cost nothing.  Without knowing their paid membership numbers, they are worthless hype numbers.

 

 

Exactly my point so how can the poster add FTP games into the 60% marketshare?

But I did remember reading an article way back probably in 2007/2008 that said Perfect world had 11 million active accounts, how they class active I don't know. And again not sure if that is Perfect world as a global company across all its games.

But my point remains, you can't compare Wow to market share of FTP games.

If you really want to see some crazy F2P numbers google Maple Story's claims...  LOL    ...Over 92 Mill

THere may be a buttload of people in WoW, but the world does feel quite empty are far as the community goes. Unless you have a group of friends or an active guild, it's pretty much a single player game.

Holding me back from re-subbing.

images.google.com/images  : wow

images.google.com/images : lotro

images.google.com/images : eq2

images.google.com/images : L2

SO clearly WoW is the least multiboxed, LOL

LOTRO blind fanboy vs WoW blind fanboy ... let the battle commence!!!

Apologies, but you got to admit, this argument does look hilarious from where I'm sitting.

Originally posted by solareus

images.google.com/images  : wow

images.google.com/images : lotro

images.google.com/images : eq2

images.google.com/images : L2

 

SO clearly WoW is the least multiboxed, LOL

 

Try Daoc, WoW multiboxing, although extreme by the people who do it has been very little, compared to some older games (like Daoc, Daoc probably being the worst). You'll find more of every result on google for WoW because well, there's *more* people, if you hadn't noticed ;)

I would say multiboxing picked up since the RaF thing though

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by solareus

images.google.com/images  : wow

images.google.com/images : lotro

images.google.com/images : eq2

images.google.com/images : L2

 

SO clearly WoW is the least multiboxed, LOL

 

 

Naah, I don't think so, if multi boxing was used in those other games, they would have ... players. :))) instead of posters.

 

Wow Multiboxing:  unknown+++++ accounts 

50++ accounts

Look closely at the images, those are 2 different locations. that is about 100 WOW accounts in 2 images.

Is xfire of any use? I see it mentioned by some people, but noone I know is actually using it. Or is it more of a US thing?