Wow Hits 11 Million players

[AlekseiFL]

World of Warcraft Community Site

World of Warcraft Reaches 11 Million Players
Posted by: Blizzard| 10-28-08 10-28-08 The community of World of Warcraft players around the world continues to grow, recently hitting a new high of 11 million subscribers. We just wanted to take a moment to share the news and say thank you to all the current, new, and returning players around the world whose enthusiasm and support have made this milestone possible.

[Muligan]

WAR has been pretty silent and WoW continues to fuel their steam engine as they build momentum for WoTLK. I mention this because one, WAR is really the only significant competition in the MMO market and two, they have taken a few shots at each other.

It's time to generate some more buzz in the MMO community as a whole or Blizzard is going to stand alone in the gaming industry (which they somewhat do anyway).

Muli

[Zerai]

One addict is a tragedy...

Eleven Million...is a statistic.

[DeusEx]

The only subscribers that are relevant to us, are really only those in America and Europe. I mean really what do you know about WoW China or even WoW South Korea? These people form complete separate communities from the western ones and usually don't communicate on this or similar forums, so even when every single Chinese would have a WoW account it wouldn't affect our WoW experience

I would be more curious how the American and European subscriber numbers look like.

[Zappo_Crappo]

Originally Posted by AlekseiFL

World of Warcraft Community Site
World of Warcraft Reaches 11 Million Players

11 million subscriptions and 11 players are not the same thing.

[Campa]

What I'm curious about is how many people are multi-boxing.

Through my 10 years of MMO playing I've known a lot of people who had 2 accounts but just within the last 2 years the number of people I know rolling 5+ accounts in WoW has grown dramatically. The RAF deal just grew that even more.

Hell that's what made me get a 2nd account :P

[Sharmai]

The only significant fact about this is that WoW is still growing. We know WoW has lost players to War. Maybe not a lot but it's not unthinking to consider a couple hundred thousand. We can also assume that WoW has lost a few million players do to attrition and burnout.

And it's still growing.

If that's not scary then consider it is at 11 million before wotlk launches. It goes without saying that WoW will see a boost from returning players when wotlk launch.

Don't most 3 year old MMO's hit their plateau by now and kind of taper off?

[Gallenite]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

The only significant fact about this is that WoW is still growing. We know WoW has lost players to War. Maybe not a lot but it's not unthinking to consider a couple hundred thousand. We can also assume that WoW has lost a few million players do to attrition and burnout.

And it's still growing.

If that's not scary then consider it is at 11 million before wotlk launches. It goes without saying that WoW will see a boost from returning players when wotlk launch.

Don't most 3 year old MMO's hit their plateau by now and kind of taper off?

Most MMOs plateau long before this.

After working on MMOs in both categories, I came to the conclusion that there are really two different sets of population dynamics that can be applied to subscription-model/retail-box MMOs.

You're either:

A) #1
B) Everyone Else

The dynamics (and what you need to do to affect them) are different based on which bucket your game falls into.

Being #1 has a lot of inherent advantages that being Everyone Else doesn't. Not a big shock.

The fact that those advantages grow in strength so drastically, based on how far you're ahead of the rest of the pack, causes what might as well be a total rules shift in the population model.

"Everyone Else" needs to focus on different things to either sustain their populations or stand a chance at growing in the period following its typical peak/plateau, which usually happens after weeks or months, not years.

I like to think we did a reasonable job at adapting to being in the Everyone Else category on EQ2, but EVE stands out as the one that did the best job breaking out of the typical, declining population pattern of being Everyone Else.

- Scott

[Sabolin]

Originally Posted by Zappo_Crappo

11 million subscriptions and 11 players are not the same thing.

This is correct. One is a million times the other.

[royo]

It's so cool that they can pull numbers out of their ass, but no external auditing company to prove they actually have that many accounts.

[Sharmai]

No hes right 11 million players and 11 million subscriptions aren't the same thing. If even one player is a multi-boxer then you have less then 11 million players. However, that point is largely irrelevant imo. 11 million subscriptions is no less impressive if only because every thousandth player is a multi boxer or some such.

Royo: They could be lying. But why bother? No one doubts how big they are and after wotlk launched no one would doubt they got bigger.

Scott: Couldn't that just be a symptom of companies following the same old tried and true method? I mean they all know fantasy works so they do fantasy but when they don't see WoW numbers they aren't happy. And why should they be when WoW is doing it better? Shouldn't new upstarts with WoW dreams be focusing on an entirely new gameplay model? I.E. Fallout? EVE with controllable ships? Steampunk? Heck pokemon online?

With EQ2 you guys had some excellent class models. The bloodmage is a genius idea. But fantasy again? If someone came out with star wars online done right, or starcraft online, or something not entirely based on the fantasy model but done right don't think that I wouldn't jump in a heartbeat.

Look how many people got hooked into Hellgate:london (see example ME) even though it was not even a half mmo and everyone knew it wasn't done yet. We want something different so badly we paid for something bad. Willingly.

[Kuro]

Originally Posted by royo

It's so cool that they can pull numbers out of their ass, but no external auditing company to prove they actually have that many accounts.

Fuck, you've uncovered the truth.

42 people actually play WoW.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

"Everyone Else" needs to focus on different things to either sustain their populations or stand a chance at growing in the period following its typical peak/plateau, which usually happens after weeks or months, not years.

Where's our Mech Warrior mmo?

Make it happen Scott. I have the faith.

[Vim]

All hail to the WoW overlord!

[Concrete]

A GTA-type MMO rated 18 where you run drugs, guns and do gang wars would probably be insanely successful. Maybe one of those wealthy rappers could fund it.