…but at least they make SENSE.

(the source of this discussion is an interesting article that appeared on the New York Times. Signe posted it integrally here. There’s interesting stuff to read aside the vague references to the numbers I discuss here)

You probably all know SirBruce. This is a discussion on F13 where I guess World of Warcraft numbers. And, of course, I’m never wrong:

SirBruce:
Well, they never mention subscriber numbers, unfortunately. I knew about the 700K figure a few days ago, as well as the fact it was getting lots of playtime in the Korean cybercafes.

I’d say there are at least 500K subscribers now. Potentially 100-200K more if you count Korea. But unfortunately, that’s only an estimate..

So WHY you keep estimating BADLY?
700k of box sales are EXCLUSIVELY for the american release. You assume a 200k vanishing as a churn rate?
In Korea there are 100k loggin in at the same time. How it’s possible that this number is EQUAL to ALL the subscribers?

A believeable estimate, right now and with the data we have, is that the american subscribers are at 600k if they sold 700k (and the box sales for the LAST WEEK still put WoW just behind HL2 and The Sims2). And 150-250k, at least, for Korea.

With the European release they’ll break easily 1M.

SirBruce:
“It appears that World of Warcraft is on a pace to generate at least $200 million in subscription revenue this year, in addition to more than $50 million in retail sales.”

$200 million / ($15/month * 12 months) = 1,111,111 subscribers per month on average. Now, that’s probably not possible, because they only sold 700K copies; it’s the payments from the cybercafes that distort this. So we still can’t be sure how many people are playing in South Korea, but at least it’s putting us in the ballpark.

No, it’s probably not possible just because you have a very personal idea even of the basic math.

—

Haemish:
Wait, isn’t the general consensus that only 1/8th of all subscribers are logged in nightly? So if that is even remotely true, they would somehow have over 2 million subscribers?

Because I believe most numbers aren’t correct.

I do not believe that each night 250k are logged in. Instead I believe they reached that at peak during the holiday. About Korea I don’t know but it’s not impossible to guess the numbers for NA and my bet is that they are at 600k.

In general the proportion is 1/4 – 1/5 anyway. Eve-Online has 13k at peak and 50k+ subs. DAoC, back then, 60k at peak and 250k in total
Everquest went above 100k logged in with 450k in total or so

All these examples are America+Europe, so the peak log ins are smoothed. While WoW has a good 95% of the playerbase completely focused in a few timezones. This means that there are MORE peoples logged in and less resulting total subs. So it’s probably 1/3 – 1/4. With a rough 150k or more logging in at peak we have about 600k.

This is an estimation, but an estimation that makes sense. Plus the game is still on the top three, while, as an example, EQ2 *vanished* after the first week.