That’s still a lot of subscribers

Keeping with their usual form, Blizzard announced subscription numbers before an expansion.  Surprise, the game has more subscribers now.  People are very quick to speak about how the increase is due to WotLK launching in China and how most of the subscribers are in China and not in the Western Hemisphere.  That’s probably true.  In fact, WoW in North America may only have 3-5 million.  Maybe even less.  However, I think it’s save to assume that they’re well above a million.

Do you realize how many more subscribers than any other Western MMO that is, even taking the conservative guesstimate?  We’ve been stuck in a trend where games can’t break 500k or even 300k these days.  Just think about how different the industry would be if other games could reach 1 million or even 750k subs.  It’s not a numbers issue.  The numbers are there for multiple games to have 1 mill + subs.  The difference is quality.  A lack of overall quality causes the majority of MMO gamers to become transient.

China, US, Europe, wherever… the subscription model is going strong.  I’d love to see several games reach the 500K+ mark with a little bit more even spread, though.  The Golden Age of MMORPG’s was back when DAOC, SWG, EQ, AC, and a few others shared the players  more evenly.  I would be curious to see, if it ever happens again, whether or not there’s a relationship between when we have a really great era of gaming and when the numbers are less skewed.

  • How can this be? I’m sure I’ve seen numerous forum posters saying that WoW’s subscriber base was declining, and saying it so confidently that I assumed they were well-informed people with high-quality inside information!

    Were they not? Can it be true that they were just kiddies hatin’ on the internets?

  • Here’s a website I like to use to compare subscription numbers for different MMOs.

    http://mmodata.blogspot.com/

    I won’t say his graphs are 100% absolute gospel, but I believe they’re an interesting qualitative study nonetheless.

  • This comes straight from Blizzard. If we are to believe them, then they do have ~12 million and have grown again.

    It’s not even the fact that they’ve grown and hit 12 million that I really think is notable. It’s that no one else has even come remotely close — not even close to a guesstimate of how many are in the United States. Let’s lowball it and say they have only 1 million in the U.S. That’s still twice as many as any other.

  • I recently resubbed to WoW to check out the upcoming 4.0 patch and prep for Cataclysm, and there are a lot of my buddies that have done the same. Like you said there is literally nothing else to play right now in the genre that is worth my time. WoW still has flaws but it’s polished and is still pretty fun even after all of these years.

    So I’m sure Wrath launching in China is what pushed them over the 12 million mark, but there are a ton of returning players everywhere else too.

  • They define subscriber to include anyone who has accessed WoW in a game room in the last 30 days. This gives them somewhat inflated numbers from China (where the numbers are already massive). A Chinese cybercafe could easily have dozens of casual players dropping in to play.

    They claim that the boost in their numbers is due to the launch of Wrath in China plus anticipation of Cataclysm globally.

    I buy their view on China but I don’t really buy it that Cataclysm will be having a big impact already. Some people may have gone back but the only way that’s a significant boost is if they had a real dip in the mid-term of WotLK.

    They also seem to have added more countries. I knew they launched in South America but Singapore, Malaysia and the other SE Asian ones are new to me.

    I still think their expansion cycles are a little too long. For someone like me who consumed most of the content early on in WotLK there just isn’t that much to see to make it worth going back for. Arthas maybe.

    I’m going to go out on a limb and say I think WoW is declining in US and EU, I think that when they say it’s rising they’re referring to a really low mid-point. I think Cataclysm will sell well initially and then see an even more severe mid-term slump because there’s simply too much else to play to fly in circles over Dala all day. But I don’t think we’ll know because we’ll get a press release telling us they’re up to 13 million after they localise it in India and Pakistan.

  • The whole point being that regardless of how well Cataclysm does or whether or not they startdeclining, they’re still so ridiculously far ahead of anyone else that talks of WoW plateauing or even declining have so little merit.

    WoW could lose a million North American subs a year, which is 4x the average MMO’s numbers in their PRIME, and still go on for years.

  • I think as much as people hate to admit it, Blizzard hit on lighting in a bottle with WoW.

    They didn’t do anything overly “new”. They just smoothed a lot of the hard edges of a genre that previously had been very difficult to get into.

    WoW was my first MMO and I devoted 6 solid months to it before I dropped out. Vanilla WoW was an amazing experience the first time around. No other MMO has managed to capture that feeling since (Age of Conan, Warhammer etc)

  • Well if i look at 2010 and what happened in MMOs this year, it was CRAP! Everything was delayed into 2011, any NEW MMO that launched was a disaster or ho-hum and we were stuck with a bunch of “meh” expansions and Free-to-Play conversions.

    Where are players going to go in a year like that? Back to WoW . Even right now, what do we have? 2 months of -nothing- , ok wait, Final Fantasy XIV which is not being received very well [4/10 from gamespot etc]

    So i’m not surprised Blizzard can report an increase without doing too much, WoW right now is better , more content and more variety than anything that came out this year.

  • To be fair to the first commenter, I do believe WoW had at one point 14+ million subs. And if their numbers have -climbed- back to 12, then they were obviously lower than that. So, your point is still valid, that WoW was losing subs and losing them fast. But as with every expansion they bring out, some people who left did so because of the game’s stagnation between expansions. So as the release draws near they’re resubbing in order to limber up for the release, or just to check out the pre-release patch that changes up the game’s mechanics.

    Having WotLK come out in China also probably generated a huge surge of subs as well, of course. Give it 6-8 months and see what their projected subs are at. Once that new-game shine dims I bet a lot of people shove off again.

    But to Keen’s point, the numbers are still monstrously impressive. Hopefully SW: TOR and some other new MMOs will come out that can provide a complete and polished experience that will draw people in. Just gotta keep your eyes on the horizon till next year I guess.

  • Well, after I got bored with WoW a few months back I figured I’d try a few new/old ones. EQ1, 2, SWG, Vanguard, those webbased ones, Champions Online, LOTRO, DDO, Project1999, Aion, few others. None of them kept my interest for long, Too focussed on grouping or soloing, nothing to do at all, grindfests, no X factor.
    I ended up resubbing to WoW last week because of all the MMO’s out there, that one has all of that balanced, I can load up and start playing and compared to some other MMO’s, theres actually enough people to game with.
    I don’t care how much I want to like an MMO, if I see 3!! personas in an hour of running around major cities, I’m not gonna play it.
    Don’t get me wrong, WoW bores me aswell (only interested in levelling my hunter alt), even the expansion doesnt really get me excited, I will leave for TOR/GW2 and possibly even TDU2, but until then, I need my MMO fix.

  • While it is a matter of quality, its not just a simple matter of making a quality game. If I play Modern Warfare, and Medal of Honor comes out, I can easily play both, and justify both.

    If I play WoW and Warhammer comes out, even if I make the decision to switch, I’m likely to choose one or the other in the end. Maybe its WoW, maybe it is the new game, but the point is, its not good enough to be just good, or of high quality, its that you need to be perceived of the very highest quality of all choices in the MMO industry. Obviously not everyone agrees on which game that is, and not everyone will limit themselves to one MMO, but it strikes me as a very big and important difference in the MMO industry compared to other kinds of games.

  • Yes big numbers, and i applaud them. I still think they are exaggerating but they are still the top and will remain the top.

    What i don´t get is why people even care about their numbers. (except those players who use it as an argument that it is the “best” game…silly) As soon as the press release hit the internet people where discussing it like it was important in any way, it isn´t, at last for the players.

    It´s not like Blizzard is giving out anything for free, reducing sub prices, or hiring more people for their live team. They also have no EvE server structure, there aren´t that many players per server.

    I´m also sure that WoW will continue to run many many years, no matter if they have 12m, 1m or 250k players. There are a lot of mmo´s with a very low player base that are profitabel.

  • I’m not sure why numbers matter either. Sure, WoW is incredibly successful and everyone knows it. There is a huge gap between them and the #2 mmorpg…whatever that may be. So what i guess.

    It proves if you make a highly polished and well-balanced game with a ton of content and the style of graphics that just about any computer still working can run with very easy gameplay for the vast majority of the game, and you have one of the most popular IPs ever in computer gaming to work with…hey guess what you’re going to capture the lion’s share of the casual computer gaming market and be a huge success! This should not be a surprise to anyone.

    Now reading your post again…maybe you are just using WoW as an example that the monthly sub model still works vs, say…free to play? And to that i say…of course it does. If it’s a good game people will pay to play it…that’s never going to change.

  • I do think numbers matter. It helped me bring in some of my buddies that I played WAR with. They had never played WoW, but when I started again and told them that WAR is dropping like crazy, yet WoW has had ~14 million subs and is 4-5 years old was enough of a reason for them to try it. Now we are all having a blast. But at that time neither really wanted to try a new MMO. So in that case the “numbers” really did make a difference.

    The whole “12 million folks can’t be wrong” is a pretty powerful statement in my opinion. (Especially when second place is ~250,000. Which is the point of the post I believe.)

    Doody

  • why is the golden age when people were split across multiple MMOs? I think it’s far better with everyone playing the same one, as it creates a unity of vocabulary and experience

  • WoW will be profitable for at least another decade (longer in less tech advanced countries).

    The main question, why is WoW so profitable in comparison? I mean, it’s almost like all the recent MMO developers are backtracking, or throwing out half-assed products.

    Wait a second, that IS exactly what they are doing. Sure, not every single MMO, but we can all throw out at least 5-6 failed MMOs that we’ve experienced in the past couple years. We don’t want another WoW, but YES, we do want the technology/theory to be as good as WoW (pathing/ui/progression/quests/etc).

    For example, I want pathing to work correctly, I want a mob to not zigzag to me, is that asking for too much in a 2008-2010 MMO scene(Looking at you Aion/Warhammer)?

    Without a doubt, WoW raised the bar, but not that high really. It’s already surpassed in graphics by a dozen MMOs, why can’t those MMOs surpass it in the other fields?

    I jumped in the FFXIV beta, and immediately knew that this was going to get absolutely obliterated. I don’t mind figuring out how your world/game works (it’s fun), but you can’t forget that I’m paying you money to play, i’m trying to GIVE you my money, but you’re making it very, very hard by making just about everything as complicated and unintuitive as can be. In the example of the horrid UI, I don’t want a WoW UI, I JUST WANT ONE THAT MAKES SENSE.

  • WoW profitability has nothing to do with the contents of the game itself. It has everything to do with ease of access and being casual-friendly. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that the content of a game doesn’t dictate how many people play it. Look at all of the terrible facebook games people play. Yet they continue to play them to be social. Which is why a game like WoW will continue to thrive. It’s easy. It has a lot of people, and it can be kind of pretty sometimes.

    WoW didn’t break a mold. It didn’t polish a genre. It just made a genre easily accessible to the masses. There’s no innovation there. There’s only good business. WoW is no more original than the game before it. It’s just easier to play.

  • The reason why MMOs might have shared player bases “more evenly” during the pre-wow era was because WoW brought in players that would never play those types of games, thus making it seem like they have all the mmo players.

  • also, why can’t Wow be successful alongside other MMOs?

    in 2004 the sub numbers were:
    SWG – 275k
    DAOC – 250k
    UO – 225k
    EQ – 450k
    FFXI – 500k
    EVE – 25k
    LA2 – 1,000
    LA – 2,750

    Even with the lineage series blowing the other games out of the water, we claim there was a golden era… what was so different? is it because LA was “asian”?

  • @St.Pierre: In as short an answer as possible: Yes. Most of the subscriber were Asian. Count the NA subs and they were probably more in line with the rest.

  • @Mala: I think that’s a very good point.

    @St. Pierre: I’d have to agree with Keen, that if you considered strictly the NA market, the numbers would be a lot more even. And while I think there might be other criteria to use when referencing an epoch as a “golden age,” a wide distribution of consumers across a larger number of outlets is, in general, more desirable than crunching 80+% of your market into the hands of an individual developer. It’s healthier for the market in terms of competition and pricing, it provides a lower barrier to entry, allowing newer franchises to be immediately competitive, and with more developers and franchises entering the market you’re more likely to see variety and innovation across the genre.

  • I’m pretty sure WoW has just literally saturated the market. I mean, it was literally a gold rush, everyone staked their claim, and WoW was smack on the motherlode. No one will ever even come close to WoW until WoW dies…which will only happen when it allows itself to.

    The problem in comparing subscription numbers is that it isn’t like all the MMOs are drawing from the same pool of players. It isn’t a direct competition unless the developers make it a direct competition. WoW contains the entire “casual” player base, the normal people who don’t play video games as much and certain don’t play other MMOs.

    And WoW is an AMAZING game for what it is. I honestly believe that it is literally impossible to out-WoW WoW by now. There is no way you can gather the capital and developers needed to beat WoW at it’s own game. It’s just had too much of a head-start in player base that remain loyal to it as well as polish and, most importantly, learning from it’s mistakes and making advances. It would be like a novice trying to go against Roger Federer in Tennis. You could literally have more talent, more speed, more strength, and a perfect stroke but when the opponent has so much experience he just is going to beat you. Any little mistake you make they can capitalize on, and most mistakes they make you won’t be able to take advantage of.

    We’ve seen MMOs in the same vein try and snatch a piece of WoW’s base, especially trying to strike while the iron is hot with a targeted release when WoW is weakest, but WoW has ALWAYS won that siege. You can nab a big chunk fast, but it’s sand through your fingers and pretty soon you are closing up shop.

    Your two options, til WoW gives up and goes home, is to nab a smaller, completely different player base, or go against WoW and fail.

  • @Howdy Doody: Great for you, i usually tell people about interesting game mechanics, or fun/lore when i want them to try another game out, and that works good too 😉

    It´s not a powerful statement, i think it´s kinda silly and people who think “the bigger the better” are sheeps and run with the herd. Just because Avatar is the highest grossing movie (not considering inflation) doesn´t mean it´s the best ever made. McDonalds doesn´t serve the best food, Madonna is not the best musican, Dan Brown is not the best writer and WoW is sure not the best game ever made. (i purposely haven´t chosen the most successful of every catergory)

    They all do one thing good, they manage to appeal to a broad audience. Well, that´s my opinion at last.

    @Shadrah: very well said.

    @Caleb: I agree with you, WoW is amazing for what wants to be and other studios won´t come close to that. I mean, would you buy a new game that is basicly WoW 2.0? Why not play WoW then. However it´s not always the game studios own fault that there games look and play so similar and come over as “gime some wow players pls”. It´s often the people behind the scene, the publishers, investors or some idiot of manager who thinks he can make more profit if the game is more like WoW. They bring it out, “fail”, there is still some profit made, the devs get the blame, possible fired, and history repeats itself.

  • @Cirdanx

    I see what your saying and I do for the most part agree with you. I guess the only real difference is I think that a stat like that helps folks to try the game, and maybe give it a little bit extra time knowing that so many people are enjoying it.

    But if you don’t like the game, then you just don’t play it. I don’t find that very complicated.

    I like your points, nice explanation.

  • @cirdanx: you make some very interesting points. The only thing I would argue is that those are all, usually, one-shot purchases. You buy Dan Brown’s book once, if you like it – you buy another, if not, well, guess what, you already bought it. You pay for Avatar once, you go see it, if you didn’t like it – well there again, you already paid for it. Too late to go back. Food is not necessarily a luxury good, like videogames / entertainment. Non-luxury goods are pretty much indistinguishable from each other, you (being an average person, not necessarily “you” specifically) tend to buy on price. McDonald’s is by far the cheapest, so that’s why it wins. Your examples, while I feel they do raise a valid point, aren’t necessarily the best examples to choose.

    The fact that there are, month-after-month, 12 million people subscribing to a game says something about it’s quality relative to all other options. When it comes to luxury goods, you do buy on brand. So the idea that “12 million people play this game, and the game started in 2004” says something, much like when a company offering a service says, “Hey, I’ve been around since 1873.” It says something about the company: quality, reliability, and an overall good service. And yes, WoW is as much a service as it is a product, that’s why you pay a subscription fee.

  • Not really. Quality is irrelevant when you get to that level of penetration: social dynamics tend to be what drive the success. I don’t think I have the sophistication to try and chart that, but remember that Pokemon also has WoW-like levels of penetration in its genre,as did reality shows Survivor and American Idol.

    Or Madden. Madden is a great example because there were much better quality alternatives throughout its lifecycle. I think megahits really aren’t liked to quality or polish, but depend on other social factors.

  • One thing that doesn’t get emphasized as often as it should is that WoW’s figures are for Current subscribers. To be precise:

    “Blizzard counts according to active subscribers, anyone in their first initial free 30 days of access, and “Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days.” They exclude players with free promotional, expired, cancelled, or expired prepaid subscriptions.”

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/207188/world_of_warcraft_subscriber_base_tops_12_million.html?tk=rel_news

    WoW has been around for 6 years. That 12 million is only people who played WoW at least once in the last 30 days. That’s just a fraction of all the people who HAVE played WoW. Who knows how many that is. It will surely be far, far more than 12 million.

  • @Bhagpuss: while that’s true, I think most of the people in this discussion knew that coming in. That 12m is their current active base is almost axiomatic.

    If it was ‘total’, then the word ‘decline’ wouldn’t be operative, because your “total number of individuals in history” can’t decline, it’s fixed and increments upwards only.

    Although, it would be interesting to know how many individual accounts WoW has had throughout its life. Considering the accounts don’t ever seem to really be deleted, I’m sure they can get the figure from somewhere.

  • I don’t get it.

    Why is there discussion lacking on the fact that the growth is been tiny?

    Why is no one asking why it isn’t growing the massive amount it was before?

    Obviously Blizzard did something during its growth periods that it isn’t doing any more… But all the WoW-fanboys seem to be skipping past that point.

    Why do I ask this?

    Well a number of reasons. Because really no real growth at all means that people are quitting at the same rate as they are joining. Which isn’t a good sign at all. If they cannot keep people playing (and there are a lot of people who have stayed for a long time) then there is something wrong.

    Obviously there is something being done differently within the game that is not increasing the growth like it was during Vanilla/TBC. Or at least turning away a certain player base while they are filled up by others less-experienced. Or the same huge number of people keep playing with not many others interested long-term.