SirBruce (not verified) on February 27, 2005 - 16:19.
My current estimate for WoW is 1.25 million. We know there's at least 750K from their statement, and given the number of concurrent logins in Europe and South Korea, 1 million is pretty soild. Of course, some of these people are on their free month.
Dave, I disagree with your analysis, because you're basically saying Blizzard is misleading about the 750K figure and is reporting all accounts created (Walt's #2 above) instead of current subscribers. I just don't believe that to be true because that's not what they said. Having said that, that would be claiming a 93.75% total conversion rate, without factoring in any quitters, and I do find that hard to believe. Still, even if your assumptions were true, you still can't ignore the Europe and Korea figures. Can we agree that it's somewhere in the range from 750K - 1.25M worldwide?
Abalieno, as Dave said, you were wrong, although I don't know why my explanation wasn't clear. My estimate was basically the same as yours; we differed by only a little. I was being conservative, of course. I agreed it was at least 500K in North America. Turns out it was 750K, which if true means we were both too low in our estimates. :)
Now, as for that "Walt" post above, I looks vaguely familiar, and I think I posted a response to it. As for "# of Active accounts" vs. "# of Active, paid accounts" I have no real opinion. Some MMOGs report one number and others report the other, and often I don't know who is reporting which. I see nothing wrong with people reporting accounts currently on their free month as a "subscriber" for that month if they choose to do so; it's only really a major factor when a MMOG initially launches. As for the "# of registered users" metric, I do *not* use that, for SWG or any other game. There was an early press release regarding SWG where they used a registered user's number that was the same as a subscriber number data point I used, but I later verified that was roughly accurate for subscribers as well, not just registered users. Again, when a MMOG is first launching, this probably included a lot of folks on their free month.
Okay, so I updated my charts...
My current estimate for WoW is 1.25 million. We know there's at least 750K from their statement, and given the number of concurrent logins in Europe and South Korea, 1 million is pretty soild. Of course, some of these people are on their free month.
Dave, I disagree with your analysis, because you're basically saying Blizzard is misleading about the 750K figure and is reporting all accounts created (Walt's #2 above) instead of current subscribers. I just don't believe that to be true because that's not what they said. Having said that, that would be claiming a 93.75% total conversion rate, without factoring in any quitters, and I do find that hard to believe. Still, even if your assumptions were true, you still can't ignore the Europe and Korea figures. Can we agree that it's somewhere in the range from 750K - 1.25M worldwide?
Abalieno, as Dave said, you were wrong, although I don't know why my explanation wasn't clear. My estimate was basically the same as yours; we differed by only a little. I was being conservative, of course. I agreed it was at least 500K in North America. Turns out it was 750K, which if true means we were both too low in our estimates. :)
Now, as for that "Walt" post above, I looks vaguely familiar, and I think I posted a response to it. As for "# of Active accounts" vs. "# of Active, paid accounts" I have no real opinion. Some MMOGs report one number and others report the other, and often I don't know who is reporting which. I see nothing wrong with people reporting accounts currently on their free month as a "subscriber" for that month if they choose to do so; it's only really a major factor when a MMOG initially launches. As for the "# of registered users" metric, I do *not* use that, for SWG or any other game. There was an early press release regarding SWG where they used a registered user's number that was the same as a subscriber number data point I used, but I later verified that was roughly accurate for subscribers as well, not just registered users. Again, when a MMOG is first launching, this probably included a lot of folks on their free month.
Bruce