Gallenite and SOE

[Gecko]

Originally Posted by Digits

Every single press release they have ever done in regards to player subscription numbers specifically detail that they only count active subscriptions, game cards and the 30 day period after initial purchase. Asians have to have paid in the past 30 months to be counted, but considering how cheap it is that's a terrible mechanism and those numbers are probably vastly inflated.

Interesting if that's true. I'd be curious to see exact North American current subscription numbers for the more popular MMOs.

[Twobit Whore]

Past 30 months? That's 2 and a half years. I have a hard time believing that, but it could be true I guess.

[Gaereth]

Past 30 days.

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.

[Rythonn]

Originally Posted by Gecko

Interesting if that's true. I'd be curious to see exact North American current subscription numbers for the more popular MMOs.

Never seen the threads about MMOGCHART.COM ? Scratch that I just realized he hasn't updated that in awhile.

[Kodylan]

Originally Posted by BanquozGhost

Not that I usually reference the guy as a highly reliable source of information, but according to Brad Mcquaid, the rule of thumb for MMORPG's is about 20% of the total population will be logged in at peak concurrency. If so, you're looking at a total population of about 1 million for MapleStory.

Take it for what it's worth (not saying it's worth much).

The concurrent numbers were actually from Korea alone, after looking at it again. It's the same paragraph that mentions the game being one of four in the country to break 200k concurrents.

Wait, on second thought, was your comment a joke? Just noticed that you mentioned Brad Mcquaid.

[Digits]

Fucking god damnit, I meant to put past 30 days now my post doesn't make any sense just like all my other banana jammers

[jayrebb]

Originally Posted by Kodylan

Wait, on second thought, was your comment a joke? Just noticed that you mentioned Brad Mcquaid.

Brad's figures are no joking matter. 20% of the userbase will be logged in at all times, and thats final.

[Daelos]

Originally Posted by jayrebb

Brad's figures are no joking matter. 20% of the userbase will be logged in at all times, and thats final.

here's an early christmas gift, just for you

[Gaereth]

Well...if thats final then WOW is running concurrent users of about 1.86 million at all times.

[jayrebb]

Originally Posted by Gaereth

Well...if thats final then WOW is running concurrent users of about 1.86 million at all times.

Ya if theres one thing Brad knows its games in general. He showed me how to run multiple copies of Crysis on the same computer for 900 bucks. The guy has got tips and tricks, ill give him that. If you have a chance to take a seminar with him, do it. The concurrent user estimate is just one chunk of a big block of knowledge.

Quite an interesting fellow, not sure why hes catching all this hate on the boards.

[Gecko]

In checking Blues out, I saw this tidbit:

Gamasutra - The Activision/Blizzard Merger: Five Key Points

there's a reason why Blizzard have been and are left well alone - the clout that comes with this mindblowing statistic: "Blizzard Entertainment [which has "over 9.3 million subscribers" to World Of Warcraft] has projected calendar 2007 revenues of $1.1 billion, operating margins of over 40% and approximately $520 million of operating profit."

This disclosure separates out Blizzard's revenue from Vivendi Games and Vivendi very explicitly, and shows why the division has been key to holding Vivendi Games together in recent years.

That's pretty staggering, and it shows Blizzard is spending the cash to keep WOW updated, and making an absolute mint.

[jayrebb]

Originally Posted by Gecko

In checking Blues out, I saw this tidbit:

Gamasutra - The Activision/Blizzard Merger: Five Key Points



That's pretty staggering, and it shows Blizzard is spending the cash to keep WOW updated, and making an absolute mint.

Explains why every Vivendi interview, no matter how unrelated, mentions the Blizzard studio. And from looking at their holdings, Blizzard is Vivendi Games. The only thing Sierra has put out recently of note was F.E.A.R. which everyone downloaded anyway. FEAR got a lot of word of mouth, but mostly just people linking torrents to eachother. It even seemed like it was a community thing to just pirate F.E.A.R. Even people who had never used torrents before. Power of suggestion I guess.

And didn't the F.E.A.R. IP get lost somehow? I know the sequel required a name change. What happened?

[Andric d'Regor]

Originally Posted by Gecko

In checking Blues out, I saw this tidbit:

Gamasutra - The Activision/Blizzard Merger: Five Key Points



That's pretty staggering, and it shows Blizzard is spending the cash to keep WOW updated, and making an absolute mint.

dont see how you make out that its being spent on keeping the game updated. Its being spent on server centers/bandwidth mainly and a tiny fraction on dev.

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by Andric d'Regor

dont see how you make out that its being spent on keeping the game updated. Its being spent on server centers/bandwidth mainly and a tiny fraction on dev.

How do you make that out of those numbers? It's just saying how much it uses to maintain the game. Doesn't Blizzard only maintain the EU, NA servers and not the Asian Servers?

[Jysin-DW]

All of that cash yet, 3 years and 1 expansion...

LOL.