Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
WoW still growing: 9.3 million for Q3
Nadia
Member UncommonPosts: 11,798
www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php
Publisher Vivendi has announced that its games division's sales have rised nearly 19 percent to 216 million euros ($315.2 million) in its third quarter, on the "continued momentum" of World of Warcraft and initial sales of Massive's World in Conflict.
The company also noted that its subscriber base has continued to grow from the 9 million mark it celebrated in July to more than 9.3 million, which it says is up more than one million subscribers since December 31 of last year.
Comments
question will obviously be that that is not 9.3 million concurrent subscribers. obviously it is all together from its initial release. while its impressive in of itself, lineage1 or 2 have (forget which one correct me if im wrong) have approximately 14 million+ subscribers since launch.
when MMO companies state subscribers they tend to be vague about the actual numbers of concurrent subsciber numbers. but oh well impressive nonetheless.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
Unlike all other MMO's blizzard clearly state who a subscriber is and in their last offical press release in July it stated 9 million subscribers and this is there definition of a subscriber.
http://www.blizzard.com/press/070724.shtml
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 all sub numbers you hear about WoW are subscribers atleast for that month and importantly exclude old unused acounts, cancelled/banned and trial accounts, its not 9 million in the last 3 years Id imagine its closer to 100million subs in total.... its 9 million who in month of july paid a fee to log into WoW.
I do disagree that chinese players are counted for a whole month even if they only pay to play 1 hour a month it should be weekly not monthly. but atleast its clear.
nm - removed my redundant info
EQ2 fan sites
In 2000 Britney Spears sold 10.4 million copies of Oops!... I Did It Again. Guess what? I don't care.
Most smart people wouldn't either. Numbers do not equal quality and whether you admit it or not this post is meant to mislead people into thinking WoW must be great because it has 9mil+. I'm sure we'll even get the normal (extremely retarded) posts like "9 mil can't be wrong". Unless you were directing this post towards people who own Vivendi/Blizzard stock, the numbers shouldn't matter. But I am pretty sure that was never your intention. Your intention was to simply brag and boast about WoW with out directly saying it.
Oops!... I Did It Again was mainstream trash and so is WoW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oops_I_Did_It_Again
I think what wow is doing is great. In fact it is more like diablo now that the leveling curve has been decreased - it is now easier to level and twice as fast. This is great. This means that there is finally an mmorpg in which i can play more than one class and still graduate from college. Thank you Blizzard. BTW I unsubed to wow to play lineage II but came back because Lineage II is a giant ghost town.
I wonder though how accurate these numbers are. WoW has absolutly no reason to state if thier population is on the decline. This is true for any MMORPG.
Now, there is little doubt that WoW is still #1..and a huge distance away from the #2 MMORPG. All, I'm saying, is I take company produced numbers with a grain of salt.
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
9.3 million? Oh COME ON.
9.3 million copy's maybe
Any idea where that growth is happening? The American player base never moved much beyond 2 million, same for EU. All the growth has been in Asia unless U.S./EU players suddenly spiked out of the blue.
all the growth is from china basically the game is not growing in the us or the eu
I'd be surprised if the US/UK subscribers added up to 2million total. The Korean and Chinese market for the game on the other hand is huge. Though with The9 giving out expansions and charging next to nothing per hour can you blame them?
I am giggling my azz off at some of these replies. There have been several posts lately saying how WoW is completely in decline and why haven't they released any player figures lately, it's because they are too scared to let everyone know that the game is losing ground!!!
So Vivendi announce that the game is actually still growing, so what do people do, do they drop in to say 'oh it looks like we were wrong' or 'well they have released the figures and i am surprised it is still growing' nooooo! They drop in to say that the game is still crap anyway or it is growing in the wrong areas!
ROFL!!!!!
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Jason, would you expect anything less from the most WoW-hate hyped forums on the planet? Seriously, I have respect for the staff of MMORPG.com, but let's face it, the community here as a whole has always hated WoW since it climbed to the top of the MMO chart. Why? Because most of the people that like WoW are busy playing it while the people that want a Sandbox game are whining. You can't blame them. Their #1 game EVE has been bashed with too much cheating from players and devs alike that they don't have a game to call home.
Hopefully AoC or Darkfall will come along to give them a clean and level playing field to enjoy just as much as WoW supporters enjoy their game.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
I personally think WoW is a great game and considering most other MMO's go in decline after the salesmonth a decline for WoW after 3 years is nothing to be ashamed at
That said, I only read a little bit of the Vivendi statement but it seems more like they were summarizing that since it's release in china wow expanded to a point of 9.3 million users which was perfectly true. From what i read however it doesn't state that that is the *current* population, just that it happened at one point.
That said, I didn't read the whole thing, too much corporate goodness for my taste
Check vivendi site if you want to doublecheck ^^
I saw someone state there would be like 9 million copies, If you read more carefully you'll see that it's an INDIVIDUAL account.
And what's the problem with WoW having 9.3 million players? You want your game to have that much players? Probably Blizzard made a game thats really attractive to players although lacking in graphics the game has more players then better graphiced games like Lineage 2 or Everquest 2.. It seems it isnt only about the graphics but also about the gameplay etc etc.. Now you'll probably tell me that I should try these games, fyi.. I tryed most games even Guild Wars because it looked awesome.. though.. I stopped GW because the gameplay was really bad.
I don't know why I am even replying to these trolls but well.. have fun with it ..
You will not shake us off,
above or below..
ROFLMAO!!!!
o_0 I hate WoW but I honestly couldn't give a shit about the subscriber numbers, its still a crap game in my view, even if it was a billion subscribers it still wouldn't change my opinion really.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
In 2000 Britney Spears sold 10.4 million copies of Oops!... I Did It Again. Guess what? I don't care.
Most smart people wouldn't either. Numbers do not equal quality and whether you admit it or not this post is meant to mislead people into thinking WoW must be great because it has 9mil+. I'm sure we'll even get the normal (extremely retarded) posts like "9 mil can't be wrong". Unless you were directing this post towards people who own Vivendi/Blizzard stock, the numbers shouldn't matter. But I am pretty sure that was never your intention. Your intention was to simply brag and boast about WoW with out directly saying it.
Oops!... I Did It Again was mainstream trash and so is WoW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oops_I_Did_It_Again
Relative to gaming, WoW is more comparable to these artists:
http://www.riaa.com/goldandplatinumdata.php?table=tblTopArt
I don't see Britney Spears there...
My youtube MMO gaming channel
Yeah 6 million Level 1 Orcs spamming invites to buy gold and keyloggers.
What I would like to see is a seperate count for Asia, US and EU. That would be more accurate, as the last time I rolled a little lowbie in a server which they(blizzard) said had high population, the lowbie areas where almost empty. I seriously doubt WoW grown that big in US/EU. Most likely the majority of the growth been in Asia.
Also its bloody stupid to count the players who just pay per hour. If they log in to play just for 1 hour pr month then they shouldnt be included in that count. Actually they shouldnt be counted at all, since they dont subscribe to the game. At most they should count each cafe as 1 subscriber as that would be a more accurate count since the internet cafes the asians play their games in, offer a big range of different games to play online. But I guess the Blizzard reps need a big number to show to their investors and so on.
...edits for additional thoughts and a few typos.
---
Grammar nazi's. This one is for you.
This is too funny. At this stage of the game WOW's only marketability is making the numbers larger than they really seem. What is interesting though is this...
According to the Blizzard website, on July 24th,2007 they announce more than 9 million subscribers from WOW. www.blizzard.com/press/070724.shtml Which is also the 3rd quarter
Now yesterday Vivendi comes out with a report stating they have 9.3 million subscribers. www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php 3rd quarter results
So if you look at both statements carefully since July 24th, 2007 from today, which is almost 4 months, they have had no increase of subscribers whatsoever which also may conclude that the 19 percent sales increase is false because more subs = more money per month. So in that 4 month span who did they sell their boxes to to get such a 19 percent sale increase ?
I do think WOW, the game itself, is a nice game to play but creating bogus numbers is such a huge turn off. Nice scheme don't you think ? Sorry but i'm not buying this sales pitch.
People can hate all they want, won't change the fact that the game is popular, fun, and will be around for a long, long time.
In 2000 Britney Spears sold 10.4 million copies of Oops!... I Did It Again. Guess what? I don't care.
Most smart people wouldn't either. Numbers do not equal quality and whether you admit it or not this post is meant to mislead people into thinking WoW must be great because it has 9mil+. I'm sure we'll even get the normal (extremely retarded) posts like "9 mil can't be wrong". Unless you were directing this post towards people who own Vivendi/Blizzard stock, the numbers shouldn't matter. But I am pretty sure that was never your intention. Your intention was to simply brag and boast about WoW with out directly saying it.
Oops!... I Did It Again was mainstream trash and so is WoW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oops_I_Did_It_Again
Relative to gaming, WoW is more comparable to these artists:
http://www.riaa.com/goldandplatinumdata.php?table=tblTopArt
I don't see Britney Spears there...
Nice numbers, but they are for all the CDs sales combined (for each band). I only referenced a single CD. WoW is still garbage.
Oh and one more thing, she is on that list. Have a nice day being a tool.
What is with you? Why did the poster above you deserve to be called a tool? Seriously?
ROFLMAO!!!!
Er..... real men don't ...giggle.....
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
No one I know of has been more clear about their subscription numbers than blizzard. They stated 9 million current active accounts. Not trials or free passes or counting the same people multiple times due to some funky station pass, but PAYING subscribers. Legally they can't make that stuff up. I realize companies go out of their way to polish their image and make fluff, but this looks pretty concrete.
Some of the logic in this thread is about the same as sticking finger in ears and humming to avoid listening.
WoW will eventually decline, but not until something comes along that actually competes with it.