Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Is Blizzard lying about WoW Sub #s ?

24

Comments

  • OziiusOziius Member UncommonPosts: 1,406
    What I can't seem to figure out is why anyone cares? Especially people that don't play the game. I play wow and enjoy the shit outta it. Every night I log in, the are tons of players. That's good enough for me. I don't really psy attention o the numbers... I mean shit, I played shadowbane for years and it only had about 5k...lol. Just play something and have fun for fucks sake.
  • XarruXarru Member Posts: 37


    Originally posted by Byrhofen

    If only 2.7M subcribers purchased MoP, what did the other 300K / 1.8M do, according to general consensus?

    If you apply Occam's Razor to the subscriber / MoP sales numbers, you would reach a very simple conclusion, and that is that 2.7M is the total number of traditional subscribers (as in, players that actually pay a monthly subscription, as opposed to those that pay by the hour and are counted as a subscriber) which make up the NA/EU player base.

    However you look at it, WoW still has a huge subscriber base, and Blizzard (and WoW fans) still appear to be padding the numbers.


    Why do you believe every single wow subscriber buys new expansion in the first week / month? Considering you can play both new race and new class without it (i think). So if you decide to reroll / or return to play new race for the expansion, you don't need that box until you are 85


    Edit: ok, you can't access Monk class if you don't buy expansion. Good to know :P

  • GdemamiGdemami Member EpicPosts: 12,342

    Omg this article is so dumb :)

    It is very simple - not all 9.1M subscribers are long term subscribers.

    People come and go and go all the time and if supposed half of total player base did purchase the expansion, it is very impressive number.

    What is an average MMO gamer subscriber time span? 2, 4 or 6 months?

  • OziiusOziius Member UncommonPosts: 1,406
    Originally posted by Byrhofen
    Originally posted by goatus

    What is so hard to understand?

    WoW total (with Asia) = 9.1M. They never released exact EU/NA numbers (i think), but general consensus is, it was somewhere between 3 / 4.5 (Probably closer to 3 before MoP)

    With this info 2.7M MoP sales, including 900k returning players seems realistic.

    If we take the 2.7M MoP sales at face value, that means that 2.7M subscribers purchased the expansion (as that is the sales number released before MoP released in markets that pay by the hour, not a monthly subscription).

    If only 2.7M subscribers purchased MoP, what did the other 300K / 1.8M do, according to general consensus?

    If you apply Occam's Razor to the subscriber / MoP sales numbers, you would reach a very simple conclusion, and that is that 2.7M is the total number of traditional subscribers (as in, players that actually pay a monthly subscription, as opposed to those that pay by the hour and are counted as a subscriber) which make up the NA/EU player base.

    However you look at it, WoW still has a huge subscriber base, and Blizzard (and WoW fans) still appear to be padding the numbers.

    I have an active wow account. I am in a guild of about 120 people. Of the 120, about 30 ACTIVE players bought MoP at release. I did not buy it at release. I just bought it about a week ago. You see, even if you didn't buy the expansion, you could make a Panarian, and that's what a lot of folks in the guild did, until the could read some reviews on mist. Most of our guild now has the expansion. However, like I said, we didn't but it out the gate. Just because you have to be in line and buy something day one, don't assume that everyone does. 

  • ace5572ace5572 Member Posts: 113
    I'll end this thread right now. Blizzard is owned by Activision. Activision does nothing but lie, take shortcuts, and lube the wheels of corporate greed.
  • OziiusOziius Member UncommonPosts: 1,406
    Originally posted by ace5572
    I'll end this thread right now. Blizzard is owned by Activision. Activision does nothing but lie, take shortcuts, and lube the wheels of corporate greed.

    Very dramatic. The wheels of corporate greed....lol

  • SlickShoesSlickShoes Member UncommonPosts: 1,019
    Originally posted by Divion

    Whats so hard to understand

     

    Blizzard : " We have 10 million subscribers"

     

    Lol no you don't.

     

    You have 2-3 million subscribers, and allot [mod edit]who paid for an hour of play time.

     

    If i subscribe to a year of a magazine, and pay 15 dollars a month for a subscription, and get a magazine everything month, that is a subscription.

     

    If i go to the magazine store, and buy 1 copy of the same magazine for 20 bucks, and never buy another magazine, that is NOT a subscription.

     

    Saying you habe 10 million subs when you don't is lying.

     

    How is this rocket science? Detials don't matter, fact is, they lie.

    ** Also, i just looked South Korea uses a similar time model ~

     

    It's deceptive watch :

     

    Play a game that has over 10 million subscribers!

    Play  a game that has 3 million subscribers, and some penny men!

     

    They use the subs as an advertising pillar, and a quip for broadcasting false consumer health.

    Other games do the same, have you seen the advert for world of tanks? have you seen the old lineage boxes that state there are 7 million players? that 7 million was total about to have played the game, not subscribers.

    Your problem seems to be the way that WoW counts a subscriber, you think that some guy in a cafe playing for 1 hour should not count in there numbers. How many hours should they have to play to qualify?

    All they are doing is quantifying the number of monthly players in a easy to understand way, subbed players and ones using internet cafes that cannot subscribe to the game in the western way.

    What about the guy in the internet cafe that plays 200 hours in a month? If you say 1 hour doesnt count as 1 sub then 200 hours must count as more than 1?

    Also China is NOT Asia, the asian market for WoW includes Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, China, Taiwan etc

    image
  • chillizchilliz Member UncommonPosts: 96

    I wouldnt be suprised if the OP wrote the article on that site.

     

    Hey OP newsflash for months and months Blizzard were reproting sub player looses close to 1 million every quarter, how come you dont have shite to say about that?

     

    This is a company the clearly definwhat they use to describe as a sub.   What other company choeses to disclose player loasses of 600k a quarter?  They have shown gains and loses. Do you have a problem with that?

     

    NOP. Not every single player that ahs subbed to wow wants to or has even the money to pay for mop.  Jesus christ I have players in my guild that are still at 80 because they dont have mop. In wotlk I had players in my guild stuck at 70 because they didnt have the money at the time or want to evenbuy WOTLK. And they just carried on playing wow. Maybe they eventually might buy the expac. But if in your twisted mind you think somehow the whole subscriber base is magically going to buy the expansion when its out you just dont know anything.  

     

    OP get the hell over it.  Mop has stabalised Blizzards playerbase once again after BLIXXARD reported IN THEIR QUARTELY REPORTS , which they have to do by law to their shareholders.    Blizzard has once again I repeat reported huge losses that no other fuuckign company has done, now they have seen aan upsurge in players withmops release, and you have a problem?

     

    Yes 10 million subs they have, so GET THE FUCK OVER IT.  I bet you were one of the guys that prayed for blizzards and wows demise with GW2 or any other game for that fact.  KEEP hating Blizzard and wow keep going strong while all other so called next gen super uber wow killing wtf bbqsauce hyypee of the month games keep falling flat.



  • ThaneThane Member EpicPosts: 3,534

    they see em rooooollling, they hating!

     

    nuff said, next topic.

    "I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"

  • HelleriHelleri Member UncommonPosts: 930

    I'm going to start by saying what WoW is up to has never effected me directly in my gaming experience (Runescaper here, and no I will never step down from that soap box)....

     

    That said WoW and many other MMO's are selling a service to the sum of tens of millions, up to hundreds of millions of dollars per enterprise. They should be kept transparent and honest...The question is by who. I think as far as the United States is concerned, there should be some interest from the FTC in lobbying for congress to allocate funds and mandate to the FTC for a division devoted to keeping such enitities transparent and honest where their business is conducted with U.S. Consumers and Capital Investors (they have done this before for other sectors).

     

    It wasn't but a few years ago that the video game industry as a whole over took (in the United States) the pornography and feature cinema industry combined in annual revenues (to the tune of over $8 billion USD).

     

    There are just under 50,000,000 MMO players worldwide (based on what is measurable as not all of them have released data to draw on). About 46% of these are paying into MMO's at an average of $8.30 USD per person...per month. That's roughly $390,100,000 USD (almost 400 million) spent monthly on MMO's worldwide. Again, this comes from the graphs we can create based on the data we can see alone (and the relliability of the data can be called into question). That's around 4.6 billion a year and we can only roughly account for about half of the world wide industry here in the states.

     

    We're talking about massive sums of money that are the biggest chunk of the biggest from of world wide entertainment. And we're lucky if they vuluntarily opt into ESRB Ratings and Privacy policy adherence yet alone transperent spending practices. And, the only people watching them are the people who are interested in what they are making because they report to the people who are making money off of them.

     

    Read the EULA's and ToS for many of these carefully and you'll see that as a consumer you have next to no legal recourse and no consumer protection by the meer act of dowloading and installing their products (even runtime environment plugins for browser based MMO's).

     

    It's seriously ridiculous how much the parent companies of MMO's could get away with if they find them selves in trouble and need to jump ship. Some one should at least be holding their passports.

    image

  • NacarioNacario Member UncommonPosts: 222
    Dont have a source on this other than I think it's the asian market, also because it offers so much, has been unique on feats such as arena and requiring little from low end PCs.
  • dimnikardimnikar Member Posts: 271
    Originally posted by Divion

     

    If i subscribe to a year of a magazine, and pay 15 dollars a month for a subscription, and get a magazine everything month, that is a subscription.

     

    If i go to the magazine store, and buy 1 copy of the same magazine for 20 bucks, and never buy another magazine, that is NOT a subscription.

     

    You're lacking some key information (and thus, wasting our time).

    Blizzard counts anyone who's payed for access "in the last 30 days" from the announcement. That means that everytime they announce their player numbers,  that many payed for access in the last month.

    Get it? I mean, do you, really?

    They didn't pay *ONCE* and got counted unto eternity. They payed in the 30 days leading up to the announcement - everytime.

    Why is that so hard to understand? After all these years?

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403

    So, you're saying subscription-based arguments are (and always have been) inherently guesswork?

    We knew that.

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403
    Growf

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

  • tawesstawess Member EpicPosts: 4,227
    Originally posted by chilliz

    This is a company the clearly definwhat they use to describe as a sub.   What other company choeses to disclose player loasses of 600k a quarter?  They have shown gains and loses. Do you have a problem with that?

     

     

    Actually for most companies loosing 600K players in a quarter would bring them below sustainable playerbase... So actually most of them would actually have to tell the world about it. =P

     

    But i agree most companies does not willingly talk about losing that kind of % of customers. CCP did when they botched up Eve a while back but other then that retentionrates are fairly mutch hush-hush

    This have been a good conversation

  • dimnikardimnikar Member Posts: 271

    And the "2,7 out of 10 mil bought mop" argument is insanely stupid.

    People still play COD1 through 8, even though 9 (BLOPSII) is out. Those people aren't playing COD, then? Eventually the numbers shift to the newer releases (when prices go down, enough friends switch, etc). Same thing.

     

  • dreamsofwardreamsofwar Member Posts: 468
    I don't know if the maths is wrong, but what I do know is that 2 - 3 million actual subscribers is still much, much more than any other on the market.
  • deniterdeniter Member RarePosts: 1,430

    Every time a gold farmer's account is banned the farmer creates a new one. So, if he was banned only once he's counted as 2 subscriptions for that month.

    I think you can do the math if several farmers are banned more than once within a month...

  • BallsoutBallsout Member UncommonPosts: 70
    Feenix

    image
  • SlampigSlampig Member UncommonPosts: 2,342
    The game is 8 years old, does it really matter anymore?

    That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!

  • lotapartylotaparty Member Posts: 514
    Originally posted by Divion

    Is this crazy, or what  ? : http://www.examiner.com/article/world-of-bullcrap-uncovering-the-bad-math

     

    Does kinda make you wonder why MoP sales # are so far behind the alleged active sub numbers

    it might actually be true :)

  • lotapartylotaparty Member Posts: 514
    Originally posted by deniter

    Every time a gold farmer's account is banned the farmer creates a new one. So, if he was banned only once he's counted as 2 subscriptions for that month.

    I think you can do the math if several farmers are banned more than once within a month...

    they get banned .they appeal the decision and win back their account . i personally know a person who is a gold farmer and he won back his account three times 

  • jungleninjajungleninja Member UncommonPosts: 206
    Of course Blizzard is lying. Its obvious they lost a whole lot of players with the coming of Guild Wars 2. We all know its true, but Blizzard wants us to believe different. Not for nothing they are loosing alot of income. Its because they dont have payers.
  • kitaradkitarad Member LegendaryPosts: 7,919
    How can anyone be that silly to think that every past subscriber would buy MoP. I did not and still played. 

  • BadSpockBadSpock Member UncommonPosts: 7,979

    Even if they were lying about 3/4ths of the sub numbers, they'd still be the most popular MMO in the West.

    Oops?

This discussion has been closed.