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  1. #1

    NA accounts below 1.5m

    Everyone seems to safely agree WoW is just getting murdered in the eastern markets and that it will continue to lose subs there. It's likely that the Eastern market will continue to fall off rapidly. No one really cares because they believe NA market is fine.

    Well, here's some fun math for you guys:

    According to http://www.realmpop.com (Recording any toon that has ever posted to an auction house or been in a guild with any player who has ever posted to an auction house)

    The current # of recorded lvl 90 characters on all NA realms is: 2,564,128

    If we give an average of 3 level 90s per account (seems a fair number to compensate between those with 1 lvl90 character and those with 11 lvl90 characters), we reach: 854,709 accounts in North America.

    Giving a lot of leeway in these results for instances of accounts that have zero level 90 characters and/or those accounts that don't meet the criteria for crawling (extremely rare), I think it's pretty safe to estimate total NA account holders below 1.5 million.

    Doesn't seem so big anymore imo.

  2. #2
    we need actualy information from blizzard before we can conclude anything. I dont trust sites like realmpop for things like this.
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  3. #3
    i really doubt it
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  4. #4
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    I really don't trust that whatsoever, it's a 3rd party site.
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  5. #5
    The Lightbringer leaks's Avatar
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    Well you solved the mystery. I guess we can all agree to move on now and never talk about this again.
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  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by leaks View Post
    Well you solved the mystery. I guess we can all agree to move on now and never talk about this again.
    hahaah it's nice to want things hahahah
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    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    Normal should be reduced in difficulty. Heroic should be reduced in difficulty.
    And the tiny fraction for whom heroic raids are currently well tuned? Too bad,so sad! With the arterial bleed of subs the fastest it's ever been, the vanity development that gives you guys your own content is no longer supportable.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by spectrefax View Post
    According to http://www.realmpop.com (Recording any toon that has ever posted to an auction house or been in a guild with any player who has ever posted to an auction house)
    That's a pretty specific and not necessarily accurate way of tracking.

    In any case, does it really matter how many other people are playing? If you find the game fun, play. If not, don't. For me, unless something better comes out or a bunch of my friends and raid team quit the game, I'm going to be around for a while. Beyond that, I really couldn't care less about how many other people are playing the game.

    More to the point, 2.5 mil is still quite a bit. Sure, we might see some servers shut down over the next few years, but that's to be expected.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Kurzior View Post
    That's a pretty specific and not necessarily accurate way of tracking.
    If they're legit and their system works as they say, crawling like that is going to tag 99.9% of lvl 90 players.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kurzior View Post

    More to the point, 2.5 mil is still quite a bit. Sure, we might see some servers shut down over the next few years, but that's to be expected.
    The example above states 2.5m *characters*, the number of accounts is much less (as shown by the math).

  9. #9
    Problem with that is, I've had friends who had been subbed over a year, that never made it to level cap, because they never had the time to dedicate to the game. They were new to mmos and just wandered the world and experienced it (moreso than what I can say for the average person who rushes to max level).

    I had one 90 for a while, my wife did as well, and we both unsubbed for a while. We subbed back. What if we didn't list anything on the AH on those toons back then? Now? What if we list auctions on multiple 90s now? Not at all?

    The only way to know current subs, is to have the account data that only Blizz has. It could be 1 million subs; it could be 3+ million. Only the ones at Blizz that see those account numbers know for sure.

    It would be interesting to some of us, especially with comparisons to other MMOs and their sub numbers. If we knew US/EU sub numbers, we could more accurately compare retention between them, and possibly give less fuel to the fire of the bashers; as they'd see the numbers are closer in line with the most successful MMO to ever hit the market; but things are never used so positively, and haters of WoW would come out in force ... so in Blizz's interest, it makes no sense to ever release those numbers.

    A competitive market is a good one. I think if you are good at budgeting and your payroll isn't too high, a couple hundred thousand subs at the $10/mo level should be considered successful. That is still 1-2 milllion a month. Enough to run support, servers, bug fixes, patches, and produce new content. $30-70k/day would be a pretty steep operational cost. 500k subs at $15/mo is $7.5 million a month, and should be considered quite successful, and have more than enough resources to support the game and future content.

    Blizz may not make the money we think, but they are in no way bad off, even if they only had 1 million subs in the U.S. ... that is still 15 million a month in U.S. subs alone ... far more than enough to continue to support the game at the current pace, and faster. Morheim may have to take a slight pay cut, but he can afford it (I'd only have to make 9 million for one year, to live luxuriously for the rest of my life ;D)

  10. #10
    Blizz has said many times (no I don't have sources, if you're that interested, please find them) that its only a small percentage of players who ever see level cap let alone raid etc... Believe it or not, but being 90 makes you a minority.
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  11. #11
    Hmm if your basis is the number of posters from the Ah then I question the validity of those.

    First their are allot of players that actually don't have 3 cap level characters
    Second: allot of players don't bother buying/selling stuff on the AH, personally I stack up stuff and only try to sell stuff once a month or so since I'm lazy. However I have more then enough gold to last me threw couple of years of wipping.
    Third: Lets say your right, and NA has around 900k players. So what? without any context it doesn't mater at all because for all you know NA had 1.3M players few years ago.

    Numbers with context means nothing.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by spectrefax View Post
    Everyone seems to safely agree WoW is just getting murdered in the eastern markets and that it will continue to lose subs there. It's likely that the Eastern market will continue to fall off rapidly. No one really cares because they believe NA market is fine.

    Well, here's some fun math for you guys:

    According to http://www.realmpop.com (Recording any toon that has ever posted to an auction house or been in a guild with any player who has ever posted to an auction house)

    The current # of recorded lvl 90 characters on all NA realms is: 2,564,128

    If we give an average of 3 level 90s per account (seems a fair number to compensate between those with 1 lvl90 character and those with 11 lvl90 characters), we reach: 854,709 accounts in North America.

    Giving a lot of leeway in these results for instances of accounts that have zero level 90 characters and/or those accounts that don't meet the criteria for crawling (extremely rare), I think it's pretty safe to estimate total NA account holders below 1.5 million.

    Doesn't seem so big anymore imo.
    Okay well if that's true than you should be able to add the other realm pops from all over the world and the added total should be close to that 8.3 mil right ? If it's not then we know the numbers are off.

  13. #13
    something to keep in mind about overall populations is that china is roughly 1/4 of the worlds population, so when you look at south america, north america and europe, then consider what percentage of those populations play video games to begin with, you start running into insanely complex formulas that will just get argued over. the best way i can see to tell if 'wow is still alive' is this.... take the average monthly subscription multiply that how many subscribers (omg! only 8.3 mill)... thats how much money a MONTH blizz is taking in from this game. now you do have to factor in costs like developer salaries, website maint (shared cost w/ other games due to battle.net) and GMs and just general overhead from wow headquarters... they will still make content, still have gms, and still pump out patches as long as this game is making a healthy profit. if we have fewer accounts, thats not as many accounts getting hacked, not as many complaint tickets going in, many top end raid guilds are not playing anymore reducing demand for new content as quickly... cost also goes down as population decreases.

  14. #14
    This is most likely pretty accurate. I would say 1-2 million active accounts in NA. That is still a hell of a lot. Rift is doing very well and has under 500k subs in NA.
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  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by leaks View Post
    Well you solved the mystery. I guess we can all agree to move on now and never talk about this again.
    Wise words. Now that we know the truth everyone is free to either go back to play WoW or do whatever else you like to do.

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by spectrefax View Post
    The example above states 2.5m *characters*, the number of accounts is much less (as shown by the math).
    Taking 3 characters per account is too many imo, I think you are highly over-estimating how many people have level 90 alts. On top of that, its a bit silly to monitor the amount of players by looking at only level 90's. There are tons of people without levels 90s.

    EDIT: To give you an example of why you can't just guess how many people have level 90 alts; US has more total characters, but way less level 90's.
    Last edited by mmoc18646deaeb; 2013-05-12 at 02:36 PM.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by spectrefax View Post
    If they're legit and their system works as they say, crawling like that is going to tag 99.9% of lvl 90 players.
    Hasn't it been said that (since classic) WoW has never been a supermajority of max level player characters?

    If anything I'd wager that - of the (estimated) ~5-6 million western subs - those 800k you guessed may be the only characters with more than one max level character in general if you're lucky (it's probably far lower (for 3 at least), imo), and not an indicator of whether or not anybody else has reached the level cap.

    Otherwise, subs are going down either way
    Last edited by Confirm Deny; 2013-05-12 at 02:37 PM.
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  18. #18
    Deleted
    Oh I forgot to add, some level 90s in a guild could also be on inactive accounts.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by kalathoran View Post
    something to keep in mind about overall populations is that china is roughly 1/4 of the worlds population, so when you look at south america, north america and europe, then consider what percentage of those populations play video games to begin with, you start running into insanely complex formulas that will just get argued over. the best way i can see to tell if 'wow is still alive' is this.... take the average monthly subscription multiply that how many subscribers (omg! only 8.3 mill)... thats how much money a MONTH blizz is taking in from this game. now you do have to factor in costs like developer salaries, website maint (shared cost w/ other games due to battle.net) and GMs and just general overhead from wow headquarters... they will still make content, still have gms, and still pump out patches as long as this game is making a healthy profit. if we have fewer accounts, thats not as many accounts getting hacked, not as many complaint tickets going in, many top end raid guilds are not playing anymore reducing demand for new content as quickly... cost also goes down as population decreases.
    China has a special payment method. They pay per hour and not per month an Blizzard only gets some of this money because they are (like every other company) not allowed to directly make businesses in China and have to pay a Chinese company to manage WoW in China. But before WoW was released in China we had 3-4 million players in the west.

    I don't think that these number have changed that much so 1.5 million players in the US sounds plausible and when compared with other MMOs that's still a lot and more than every other MMO has.

  20. #20
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by lordjust View Post
    China has a special payment method. They pay per hour and not per month an Blizzard only gets some of this money because they are (like every other company) not allowed to directly make businesses in China and have to pay a Chinese company to manage WoW in China. But before WoW was released in China we had 3-4 million players in the west.

    I don't think that these number have changed that much so 1.5 million players in the US sounds plausible and when compared with other MMOs that's still a lot and more than every other MMO has.
    This is another reason why 1.3million isn't a big deal for Blizzard. Most of that number was in the east. Western subscriptions are worth a lot more due to the fact written above. So if they lost 800k from China, its not a big deal.

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