Another milestone for World of Warcraft was announced today, the big 10 million. That's 10,000,000 paying subscribers, the press release detailing the geographical breakdown as 2 million in Europe, over 2.5 million in North America and 5.5 million in Asia. Not sure exactly where we factor into that but hey, we still don't even have local servers.

So WoW's population is equal to half our whole country. At what point do we start getting worried?

Oh and there's a new (4MB) patch. Grab it right here from AusGamers files.

mmm and I thought the headline was about the cause of marriage breakdowns.

scary and sad at the same time

At what point do we start getting worried?

When Blizzard cut off the servers and it turns into a 10 million strong zombie army. I am stocking up on chainsaws as we speak.

In other news, Blizzard must be at risk of CHOKING ON ALL THAT MONEY

I doubt that's 10 million active accounts. Would be interesting to know how many actually active accounts there are.

Been tempted to reactivate my account lately as I've been bored on weekends, but buggered if I'm going to pay $20 just for one or two days play.

I doubt that's 10 million active accounts.

no s***

Just thinking, I'd be curious to know how many of those 10 million accounts have Burning Crusade activated/added to those accounts.

Raven, from the press release:

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.

Term pointed out a link that shows peak active players in the US and EU realms: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity-2007-12.htm which looks like it tops out at approx 20% of the actual subscribers. Still ridiculously high.

and the f*****s still cant put in an aussie server

BUILD MORE FARMS

Your soundcard works perfectly!

that is f***ing NUTS!

Blizzard are SWIMMING in cash

lol @ no aussie server though!!!

also lol @ the idiots who play & pay monthly for the provledge!

Stop lolling at me heardy :(

So $14US a month? x 10 Million x 12 months = 1.68 BILLION dollars a year! :|
The WoW movie is going to be AWESOME! (With that much cash it BETTER BE)

I am sorry I just don't buy it. Even though they clearly define what they consider a current subsciber and they report those numbers based on that definition it just sounds like BS to me.I played wow for just over 3 years and the general apathy towards the game by most players I have seen is more conducive to decline than growth. Mind you that being said maybe the Asia market is where all the growth is, hell you know Asians they'll play a game to death or die trying.

Personaly I think we have seen the peak of WoW and it'll continue to slide until Wrath of the Lich King is released. I only predict a momentery bump in population levels for that which will subside within a few months of it's release. As I said the general apathy which is commonly seen in every area of WoW won't do anything to help the game grow. The impression I get from almost every single player I know or have encountered in WoW recently is that they are only there because they have nothing better to do. Many would go elsewhere but due to time invested on their chars they find it a tough step to take.

I for one am done with Wow and Blizzard they can kiss my ass. The last straw for me was the retarded buffs hunters got. Only bad games with clueless people running them have Buff nerf cycles like Wow has.

last edited by Taipan at 11:50:31 23/Jan/08

but what about starcraft 2 how could you deny that out of turn?

So $14US a month? x 10 Million x 12 months = 1.68 BILLION dollars a year! :|

Yeah, but it's US dollars, so it might buy a happy meal or two without change.

heh ticcles

I am sorry I just don't buy it. Even though they clearly define what they consider a current subsciber and they report those numbers based on that definition it just sounds like BS to me.I played wow for just over 3 years and the general apathy towards the game by most players I have seen is more conducive to decline than growth. Mind you that being said maybe the Asia market is where all the growth is, hell you know Asians they'll play a game to death or die trying.

Yes, a humongous company with a corporant humongonaut parent parent could be just outright f***ing lying about their customer (and implied revenue) base in press releases. That sounds entirely reasonable.

Oh wait, it sounds totally crazy. More likely those apathetic players just keep on playing and sending their money to Vivendi even though they don't quite understand why. Aren't MMOs awesome?

Blizzard are SWIMMING in cash

Blizzard don't own the profits for WoW, their parent company does.

In other news I bought a flying mount this morning for my lock.

WooT!!

Not sure exactly where we factor into that but hey, we still don't even have local servers.

I think you answered your own question with "So WoW's population is equal to half our whole country.". We don't factor in. Our player base of obviously insignificant in terms of their customer base. So there's no point forking out cash to maintain data centres over here...

Blizzard don't own the profits for WoW, their parent company does.

Yeah, and considering that the parent company also own the largest european land transport companies (TGV and Connex to name two), one of the biggest book publishing company, and the largest distributor of water, I'd say the dint WoW will have on their profits will be pretty minimal.

Yeah, and considering that the parent company also own the largest european land transport companies (TGV and Connex to name two), one of the biggest book publishing company, and the largest distributor of water, I'd say the dint WoW will have on their profits will be pretty minimal.

Not owned by Vivendi anymore, remember the whole Activision-Blizzard thing?

Not owned by Vivendi anymore, remember the whole Activision-Blizzard thing?

Well given that Vivendi still owns a controlling interest in A-B it kind of still is, but yeah Vivendi won't see the profits directly.

I for one am done with Wow and Blizzard they can kiss my ass. The last straw for me was the retarded buffs hunters got. Only bad games with clueless people running them have Buff nerf cycles like Wow has.

Clueless people.. So clueless that 10,000,000 accounts have been made. I wish I was that clueless.

i remember when pvp day 1 started.. i woke up early and as soon as the server was up i was flying to hillsbrad to smash some horde.. for about 2 months the game was fun - after that it because s*** and was a downhill spiral in terms of fun.. untill twinks came out.. then it was fun for another few weeks

i'm sooo glad i dont play anymore

1.68 billion a year and still no aussie server or decent infrastructure that can provide us decent pings... gg lowerping puts blizzards techs to shame.

you can just change some setting in regedit on your computer and lower your ping. i used to be 450-500 pretty much all the time, now 200-250

apparently that reg edit f***s with your downloads, especially large files. haevn't tried it personally though i quit wow a long time ago.

you can just change some setting in regedit on your computer and lower your ping. i used to be 450-500 pretty much all the time, now 200-250

There's only two kinds of people who fundamentally f*** with the way their computer interacts with networks/internetworks.

A) People who know exactly what they are doing.
B) Idiots.

last edited by typo at 21:21:57 23/Jan/08

Its one line i added.. my pc still seems fine. and halved my WoW ping so, meh

Its one line i added.. my pc still seems fine. and halved my WoW ping so, meh

Blizzard fixed the problem maybe two weeks after internode made a gateway for it.

Besides, just because your PC seems fine, doesn't mean that you're not dropping eleventy billion packets.

Blizzard fixed the problem maybe two weeks after internode made a gateway for it.

Most people are still resorting to using proxies of some sort to get improved pings, so the whole problem has not been solved.

oh no wtb eleventy billion packets back

sif whinge about wow, dont like it dont pay for/play it, there are far better alternatives.

Disagree about alternatives - until Warhammer/Age of Conan, there's WoW, EQ2 and SFA. The sword & sorcery genre has its king, so the alternatives will have to offer something different. Conan has some interesting ideas, like the player cities stolen from SWG and PvP cities stolen from Lineage 2, but it won't kill WoW.

And the other genres are laughable in their ability to hold gamers to a long term replayability. City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, Auto Assault, Sims Live... dead, dead, dead. Or nickel and dime operations compared to the WoW juggernaut. The game that will kill off WoW hasn't been thought of yet.

City of Heroes

CoH is the perfect niche MMO.

It has a group of rabid fans that all you really have to do is not radically change the game and add something interesting every couple of months and you have them for life. Are they making the billions of dollars of revenue that WoW is? No. But they're a solid performer in NCSofts crown.

It's because of the Lineages and the CoHs that NCSoft can play around with the long shots like Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault.

If i were releasing an MMO in the current climate, i'd be aiming to be like CoH, not WoW.

neimad Shadowbane had player built and owned cities before SWG was even an itch in Sony's pants. Shadowbane also had the most fun PvP I have ever played but that stems from the fact they you stood to lose a crap load more if you got your ass beaten.

I don't think any game will kill Wow I think it'll be blizzard itself that sinks wow. As for me doubting their subscription figures well thats just my opinion based on the fact that I have seen a trend on many servers indicates a decline not growth. Of course no company has ever embelished a story or painted a more positive picture than the way things really are, I mena thats just unthinkable isn't it.

Shadowbane also had the most fun PvP I have ever played but that stems from the fact they you stood to lose a crap load more if you got your ass beaten.

As i recall it also had security that made win95 look like Fort Knox. IIRC there was an incident where someone worked out how to unlock the GM console and managed to drown everyone in a city by raising the water level or something similar.

Poor form.

I don't think any game will kill Wow I think it'll be blizzard itself that sinks wow.

I have the same feeling. Simple inertia says that unless WoW alienates/bores to death their server population they'll be difficult to beat but these are crazy times for MMOs so who knows what will happen.

Yeah I remember some of the hack jobs done in SB. While really pretty lame that someone was actually able to do it they were actually pretty funny in a sad kind of way.

If I have one fear it is that Wow will be seen as some kind of holy grail to Dev's the world over and they will try to emulate Wow's style(keep in mind I see wow as a horribly carebearish game). I held the same fear for FPS games when counter strike was the clear king of them. While wow appeals to the broadest possible player base by having a mountain of things to do I still don't believe it does anything really well. I have numerous bitches to do with wow but the one that peeves me he most is the way they totaly f***ed over any world pvp.

I have numerous bitches to do with wow but the one that peeves me he most is the way they totaly f***ed over any world pvp.

And now we get to the heart of the issue. BLIZZARD IS f***ING US AGAIN ARGH

I have numerous bitches to do with wow but the one that peeves me he most is the way they totaly f***ed over any world pvp.

I'm of two minds about world pvp.

In theory, it's a really good and fun thing. However given a large enough player base enough people will be douches to make the game stop being fun.

For mine it comes down to too many people who pvp to ruin someones day and the less chance the victim has the more fun it is for the ganker. Stranglethorn Vale after the release of ZG comes to mind. Or the old stories from the AC PVP server where people would camp the initial spawn areas. To me thats stupid and pointless pvp.

Sorry, I deactivated my account about 2 months after the BC release - what doesn't work about World PvP may I ask?

what doesn't work about World PvP

Well when i stopped playing (around the time of BC's announcement) your pvp ranking got raped if you attacked(or was it just killed?) anyone in a town that wasn't a guard. Sounds reasonable but the two problems were AOEs(of course) and that some of those non-guards actually attacked you (so by defending yourself you in essence lost pvp rank).

That may have changed given the new pvp system.

They changed that ages ago now.. No such things as killing blows now..

You can no longer become badass by killing civilians.. except if you're killing Booty Bay dudes for rep with the Bloodsail Buccaneers..

Gogo Admiral's Hat!

You mean dishonourable kills not killing blows.

f***.


Err.. yes, KBs still exist, DKs don't. >.>

10 million Current subscribers.. Why the f*** don't you people read the thread?

Post Number 12, asshat:

Question:

Post by Raven @ 10:51am
I doubt that's 10 million active accounts. Would be interesting to know how many actually active accounts there are.



Answer:

That number is made up of gamers who have a currently active subscription or pre-paid card, those who've bought the game and are enjoying their free month's access, or people who've accessed the game over the past 30 days. It doesn't count people using free promo subscriptions, expired pre-paid cards, or people whose subscriptions have expired or been cancelled.



http://games.internode.on.net/content.php?mode=news&id=2510

Bah, Australians have a bad habit of cutting down the tall poppies. Some people here are only bitching about WoW because it is doing so well. It wouldn't matter what game it was.

Bah, Australians have a bad habit of cutting down the tall poppies. Some people here are only bitching about WoW because it is doing so well. It wouldn't matter what game it was.

Yes Heath, why don't you go off yourself? oh wait.....


too soon?

Ah, the whole DK thing? Man, that was f***ed when I stopped playing and they still haven't fixed it?

I never saw what was "honorable" about a level 60 ganking a level 40, but Blizzard left those kinds of kills in as well...

i wonder how many of those subscribers are people multiboxing and chinese gold farmers.

last edited by ravn0s at 11:19:59 25/Jan/08

I never saw what was "honorable" about a level 60 ganking a level 40, but Blizzard left those kinds of kills in as well...

Play on a pve server then carebear.

www.wowdetox.com

www.wowdetox.com

What the f*** BREEDS that type of idiocy?

I am WOW and I am PROUD. I dont have a problem. ROTFFLMFAO!

You lost all credibility by this line.

The numbers, which do not take digital downloads into account

Because people who are playing an online game and using a credit card to play that online game would NEVER buy the game online even though it would probably mean an earlier start particularly for people living in places that aren't America.

Other than that your post was pointless. Someone from america called, he wants his epic fail back.

10 million destroyed lives..

I'm sorry BrassEm, but you are a foo, and I pity da foo!

From your link:

... Of the $18.85 billion the video game industry generated at North American retailers ...

Anyone with half a brain knows that NA is probably about 25% of the WoW market, with another couple million subscribers from EU / other international, and likely about 5 million from China, Korea & misc Asia. China is WoW's #1 market apparently.

If anything, your link backs up Blizzards claim to 10M subs.

Hey, I don't mind getting ganked

I think you got trolled
the irony of calling someone a carebear in a wow thread when the entire game is completely carebear

jim you say carebear alot ..

i vote your a carebear

you're