Ex-players cheering for the game to fail.

[Tyris Flare]

3rd party Statista reports that marketers buy and that MMO population pulls from. Daily active users pulled from algorithms that crawl player data:

World of Warcraft ------- 2,176,509
Destiny 2 ------- 1,240,807
Old School RuneScape ------- 2,040,699
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn ------- 2,389,369
World of Warcraft Classic ------- 1,182,759
ROBLOX ------- 551,237
The Elder Scrolls Online ------- 1,029,988
Elite Dangerous ------- 884,122
RuneScape ------- 1,110,310
Guild Wars 2 ------- 541,083

In WoW's defense there isn't a way to make a distinction between a paid and F2P user. Most of these games have a HUGE chunk of free to play content. Example - I play Destiny 2 quite a bit and have never paid them a dime. So while yes WoW is doing much more poorly than it was it still needs to be taken into consideration that if you combine both retail and classic you're looking at over 3mil active players that are ALL pretty much guaranteed to be paid accounts since WoW's F2P model only covers the first 20 levels. Though that's also giving WoW the benefit of the doubt that they're all unique users. A little more difficult to determine because of the shared sub, but if it's 1 person who plays a bit of both it counts as 2.

does this also pull from consoles?

[Alexeht]

Well maybe if the game would "completely crash" then they would make it better? I would rather punish people responsible for in-game shop getting larger and larger. I really loved wow and it hurts me that I cannot consider it worth paying sub atm, but for sure I will come back for WotLK classic

[ro9ue]

does this also pull from consoles?

It does. Destiny 2's PC active players is between 50-150k, most of their players are console.

[Zyky]

I think you are having trouble with what facts are.

I think you have a twisted perception of what facts are, the facts are plain and indisputable with the evidence to back it, you're white knighting a evidenced garbage game with a warped perception of not only the state of the game, but also of what facts are.

[ippollite]

3rd party Statista reports that marketers buy and that MMO population pulls from. Daily active users pulled from algorithms that crawl player data:

World of Warcraft ------- 2,176,509
Destiny 2 ------- 1,240,807
Old School RuneScape ------- 2,040,699
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn ------- 2,389,369
World of Warcraft Classic ------- 1,182,759
ROBLOX ------- 551,237
The Elder Scrolls Online ------- 1,029,988
Elite Dangerous ------- 884,122
RuneScape ------- 1,110,310
Guild Wars 2 ------- 541,083

In WoW's defense there isn't a way to make a distinction between a paid and F2P user. Most of these games have a HUGE chunk of free to play content. Example - I play Destiny 2 quite a bit and have never paid them a dime. So while yes WoW is doing much more poorly than it was it still needs to be taken into consideration that if you combine both retail and classic you're looking at over 3mil active players that are ALL pretty much guaranteed to be paid accounts since WoW's F2P model only covers the first 20 levels. Though that's also giving WoW the benefit of the doubt that they're all unique users. A little more difficult to determine because of the shared sub, but if it's 1 person who plays a bit of both it counts as 2.

To be fair, ff14 pop seems fairly static whilst wow's yoyo's like a... well, yoyo.

Also, they seem to have a bunch of default number sets for the playerbase. Its 2.2, then 2.7, then 3.4, then 4.3, then 5.4(?), and finally, 7.2

Its really weird. Just within the past month ive seen those daily players hit both the top and bottom ends with absolutely no catalyst that could possibly explain it. On top of this, the graphs they post bear absolutely NO relation to the month on month data they actually report. Like, just look at that shadowlands spike in the graph... then look at the month by month numbers for the same period... its like, 'what'?

Then there's the 'player sentiment' disclaimer. Is it reddit, twitter traffic? I understand they're trying their best out there, but theres something really weird about their data.

[Kyanion]

To be fair, ff14 pop seems fairly static whilst wow's yoyo's like a... well, yoyo.

Also, they seem to have a bunch of default number sets for the playerbase. Its 2.2, then 2.7, then 3.4, then 4.3, then 5.4(?), and finally, 7.2

Its really weird. Just within the past month ive seen those daily players hit both the top and bottom ends with absolutely no catalyst that could possibly explain it. On top of this, the graphs they post bear absolutely NO relation to the month on month data they actually report. Like, just look at that shadowlands spike in the graph... then look at the month by month numbers for the same period... its like, 'what'?

Then there's the 'player sentiment' disclaimer. Is it reddit, twitter traffic? I understand they're trying their best out there, but theres something really weird about their data.

It seems like another site people used to link as proof of sub numbers. That site used to report numbers for games that were shut down at the time like Wildstar, it was a joke. This site seems just as useless. It just looks like guesses at numbers of subs. How can they come up with these numbers, using what metrics? Sub numbers aren't reported anywhere. Neither are FFXIV for that matter. And this site is supposedly good enough to determine which are WoW classic and which aren't? Yeah right.

[llewllew]

Those numbers are interesting. It's strange that they separated out WoW and WoW Classic, since they're the same account. It would be like separating East Coast servers from West Coast servers and calling them a different game. Shrug.

[ro9ue]

To be fair, ff14 pop seems fairly static whilst wow's yoyo's like a... well, yoyo.

Also, they seem to have a bunch of default number sets for the playerbase. Its 2.2, then 2.7, then 3.4, then 4.3, then 5.4(?), and finally, 7.2

Its really weird. Just within the past month ive seen those daily players hit both the top and bottom ends with absolutely no catalyst that could possibly explain it. On top of this, the graphs they post bear absolutely NO relation to the month on month data they actually report. Like, just look at that shadowlands spike in the graph... then look at the month by month numbers for the same period... its like, 'what'?

Then there's the 'player sentiment' disclaimer. Is it reddit, twitter traffic? I understand they're trying their best out there, but theres something really weird about their data.

The F2P MMOs have way more player stability in general because they always have access to the game, even if all they choose to do is collect pets or run an old dungeon for an item. With WoW people are forced to burn through as much content as possible because they're trying to make the most out of their $15. They're basically on the clock to get the stuff done. That's why you see the spike for new expansion content, but as soon as the 2nd or 3rd month's paywall comes up asking for another $15 people opt out.

On the fluctuations daily, I noticed some games seem to peak on player activity at night and some during the day (relative to my time zone), guessing that sort of reflects regional popularity.

- - - Updated - - -

Those numbers are interesting. It's strange that they separated out WoW and WoW Classic, since they're the same account. It would be like separating East Coast servers from West Coast servers and calling them a different game. Shrug.

They also separate out OSRS and modern Runescape. WoW Classic and Retail play like completely different games. Not familiar enough to know if RS is comparable.

- - - Updated - - -

It seems like another site people used to link as proof of sub numbers. That site used to report numbers for games that were shut down at the time like Wildstar, it was a joke. This site seems just as useless. It just looks like guesses at numbers of subs. How can they come up with these numbers, using what metrics? Sub numbers aren't reported anywhere. Neither are FFXIV for that matter. And this site is supposedly good enough to determine which are WoW classic and which aren't? Yeah right.

It's definitely not subs considering most of those games don't even have one. It's player activity.

[Kyanion]

It's definitely not subs considering most of those games don't even have one. It's player activity.

Ah yes, 'player activity' that doesn't sound nebulous at all. And how do they measure such a thing? Do they hack into servers to get these magical numbers? No? Then what is the source? These people have magical data that even WoW does not release nor does FF.

[Wowplayer2021]

I feel any subscriber count numbers are based mainly on conjecture. Sure there may be a bit more here and there but it is still a lot of guessing.

[ro9ue]

Ah yes, 'player activity' that doesn't sound nebulous at all. And how do they measure such a thing? Do they hack into servers to get these magical numbers? No? Then what is the source? These people have magical data that even WoW does not release nor does FF.

Crawling player data, trends. No official numbers exist. Lots of sites do this just for WoW and gather player data on faction populations, race / class popularity etc.

[Kyanion]

I feel any subscriber count numbers are based mainly on conjecture. Sure there may be a bit more here and there but it is still a lot of guessing.

Pretty much, a site can dress it up all they want at the end of the day it is taking what data they can find and making up a number. That number, to me, is useless as it is not the correct number of subs which we don't know. I don't really care how many are playing the game but I know many people love to try and use that as a weaponized number.

- - - Updated - - -

Crawling player data, trends. No official numbers exist. Lots of sites do this just for WoW and gather player data on faction populations, race / class popularity etc.

Pretty package but it boils down to being wrong. All it does is give an inaccurate number and people will try to use that data to make statements like "FFXIV has more players than WoW". Why? Because more people searched the term on google? Well no shit, people aren't typing in world of warcraft to search for wowhead or whatever.

And the difference with WoW faction populations is also a lot of incorrect information. Many people use to link a wow fansite that polled servers for information, many servers had few to NO responses or used the addon that was needed to do it. Thus the data it provided was wildly off. Some data pulled from the armory can give you some ideas of class/race combos and the like but even that data has an asterisk.

[Kithelle]

Well, you see, for these players it's just as easy as Blizzard re-releasing {insert favorite expansion here} and all of the game's current issues will vanish. The fact that Blizzard doesn't just re-release previously successful expansions based entirely on an arbitrary opinion of one single players' experience is the real reason WoW is failing. If Blizzard really wanted the game to be successful, they'd just allow millions of versions of it to exist so that every unique player can get the exact experience they desire from it.

Problem is then some of those players complain about costs, they think classic should be cheaper...then they hope Blizzard burns to the ground

[ro9ue]

Pretty package but it boils down to being wrong. All it does is give an inaccurate number and people will try to use that data to make statements like "FFXIV has more players than WoW". Why? Because more people searched the term on google? Well no shit, people aren't typing in world of warcraft to search for wowhead or whatever.

And the difference with WoW faction populations is also a lot of incorrect information. Many people use to link a wow fansite that polled servers for information, many servers had few to NO responses or used the addon that was needed to do it. Thus the data it provided was wildly off. Some data pulled from the armory can give you some ideas of class/race combos and the like but even that data has an asterisk.

You don't need to be 100% accurate to glean information from data. Pretty confident according to the class data that Monks and Warlocks are not as popular as Hunters and Paladins.

[Kyanion]

You don't need to be 100% accurate to glean information from data. Pretty confident according to the class data that Monks and Warlocks are not as popular as Hunters and Paladins.

Sure things like that are a bit easier to make broad guesses with armory data or data Blizz has provided on classes before. But it is not as easy to gauge subs to the game, not even close.

[ro9ue]

Sure things like that are a bit easier to make broad guesses with armory data or data Blizz has provided on classes before. But it is not as easy to gauge subs to the game, not even close.

It's player activity which is the same thing.

[Kyanion]

It's player activity which is the same thing.

No. It isn't.

[Aucald]

I've long noticed a trend where people tend to act defensively when it comes to people defending or praising things they themselves don't like or actively hate. Conversely, people have the same defensive reaction when it comes to people criticizing something they like. It's okay for other people to like something you hate, or vice-versa as the case may be. People can even like things that are objectively bad, or dislike things that are objectively good, for personal or even ironic reasons (like people who enjoy terrible movies because they find them hilarious).

[Rogalicus]

3rd party Statista reports that marketers buy and that MMO population pulls from. Daily active users pulled from algorithms that crawl player data

If you are using MMO-Population site data, the only thing it cares about is subreddit online numbers, which is a pretty deceptive metric. FFXIV has proper lodestone scans that never pushed the game behind 1250000 players (and even that number was tied to the most hyped patch with active free login campaign during pandemic).

[Keristrasza]

Can't think of anything more narcissistic then creating strawmen arguments so you can feel superior to a position that no one outside of trolls have ever taken.

Funny, seems most people share this idea. It's common sense that you don't focus on stuff that makes you unhappy, any sane individual will tell you that. As for strawman, if you actually read the comment of the person I was quoting you would see that they indeed said they wanted it to fail. Meaning there is no fallacy in my comment and thus there is no IMPRESSION of refuting the statement. The only trolls here are unhappy people who want a company to fail because they don't like a game. Which is narcissistic and childish to boot. Grown and sound people do not want something to fail because it upset them, they move on and get over it. Period. No if, ands or excuses to be had.