WoW subscription level before Cataclysm.

[Ken_Silver]

Player: Hey, Blizzard. What does the data say about our Subscription level?
Blizzard: It's... it's... over 12 Million!
Player: What?!? 12 Million?!? That's impossible!

http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/10/07/wo...llion-players/

Yeah. That is insane and this is before Cataclysm has come out.

Charts showing the data:
http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/WoW.png


What counts as a subscription:

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.

Remember, this is before Cataclysm. What's going to happen once it hits? Your guess is as good as mine.

Note: Because people are going to ask. The big dip is supposedly the lost of the Chinese players before they jumped ship to the TW servers approx. 2 years back.

[Khalan]

What is TW? Very interesting chart, I had no idea Aion was so popular.

[Ken_Silver]

Taiwan. Perhaps that's not the right acronym for that country. I apologize if that offends anyone.

And Aion is very, very popular in the east. So since that's a global chart, it may represent that. I don't know how well it did in the west. The initial response was good, then it dropped.

[Baz]

How the fuck did we lose like 5m for half a year I thought we lost like 1.5m at one point

[Deleted]

That's a big loss there Oo

[Willing]

the WoW graph is like a giant praying mantis of doom, looming over the rest of them, threatening to crush them with a single blow!

[Ken_Silver]

How the fuck did we lose like 5m for half a year I thought we lost like 1.5m at one point

I believe that's when WoW China originally got shutdown and the Chinese players waited a bit before going to play on the Taiwanese servers.

[Dragonic]

Let's just hope the game will be playable on release. I wasn't there for Wrath release but I heard most server were laggy as hell or down.

[Asozeras]

What happened between first and second quarter of '09 that made em plummet from 11.5m to 6.5m subs?

[phoenixia]

What happened between first and second quarter of '09 that made em plummet from 11.5m to 6.5m subs?

Read the first post.

[Khalan]

I don't remember any problems at all on my server at WOTLK release. But that was a while ago...

[Deleted]

That loss was when WoW was shut down in China by The9 sometime 2009-2010 due to issues with the government.

WoW since then migrated to a different provider in China and has been up and running since then, plus they finally got WOTLK.

You can also see that about half of WoWs subscribers are Chinese.

[Escargon Gesu]

Dont wana rush, but i think they are all gold farmers preparing for Cataclysm.

[Snes]

That loss was when WoW was shut down in China by The9 sometime 2009-2010 due to issues with the government.

WoW since then migrated to a different provider in China and has been up and running since then, plus they finally got WOTLK.

You can also see that about half of WoWs subscribers are Chinese.

Chinese subscribers still count :P

[Deleted]

I don't believe that chart seeing as the 12mil mark has only just been announced, yet it is already on that chart earlier. Also I do not believe that we lost 5million players due to the china problem, seeing as a lot went to TW servers and because China just doesn't make up almost 50% of the WoW sub base.

[Straton]

Didn't realize Aion was that old and who in the hell plays Runescape? That game is terrible and boring as hell. Trust me I witnessed my buddy play it for 3 years before switching to WoW and then taking me with him (I wasn't much of a PC gamer until WoW).

[Roose]

According to the graph that means that they had already hit 12 million several months ago.

[Zka]

Let's just hope the game will be playable on release. I wasn't there for Wrath release but I heard most server were laggy as hell or down.

Raids were laggy for months at peak time here, but servers were stable otherwise.

[Roose]

I don't believe that chart seeing as the 12mil mark has only just been announced, yet it is already on that chart earlier. Also I do not believe that we lost 5million players due to the china problem, seeing as a lot went to TW servers and because China just doesn't make up almost 50% of the WoW sub base.

There are billions of potential WoW players in China. It would not surprise me if they had over 5 million playing.

[Ken_Silver]

I don't believe that chart seeing as the 12mil mark has only just been announced, yet it is already on that chart earlier. Also I do not believe that we lost 5million players due to the china problem, seeing as a lot went to TW servers and because China just doesn't make up almost 50% of the WoW sub base.

You could check the site to see exactly where the data comes from. I wish that Blizzard let out a chart of their own making, but they probably have that in-house and wouldn't want that out in the open. The chart I posted above is the best that I could find (since I found the link, searching the post at WoW-Insider.)

And as for the 12 million, perhaps the chart is not 100% accurate.

Maybe at that time period, we hit 11.9 million or something.

Note: The chart is missing a few months. It might not include people coming back to finish ICC/RS? When did the Lich King himself get released?