Where do MMORPG subscription numbers come from anyway?
PostPosted:Wed Sep 15, 2010 3:50 pm
So looking at random argument about why my MMORPG is better than yours you invariably will see stuff like 'this site says my game has more subscribers than yours'. But really, where does these numbers come from? You can generally believe numbers trending up are accurate, but no game grows forever. If you look at census activity for say, WoW, the NA/Europe market activity seem to have dropped to about ~50% and we know WotLK got delayed forever in China. While that probably doesn't mean the subscription number goes down to 20%, according to Blizzard it is essentially UNCHANGED. So for some reason you still have exactly the same number of people subscribed to the game. They're just choosing to play half as often or, in the case of China, be about 3 years behind raiding TBC.
And that's Blizzard, the industry leader who is by definition most likely to provide some numbers that might resemble reality (since they're the leader, doesn't hurt to remind everyone you are still the leader with numbers). Where does the numbers for EVERY OTHER MMORPG come from? Are you just going to walk up to Sqix or SoE and say 'Yeah I heard your game used to have 500K subs but people say it's only got 50K people now, can you confirm this?' I assume for most games not named WoW it is strictly harmful for them to release their active sub numbers, and aside from earning information the companies are not obliged to release sub information which means there is absolutely no incentive for them to do this. Yes in some cases you might be able to work backwards from earning (like Blizzard which only has one MMORPG entity) but if you're in a company with multiple MMORPGs on their profile with variable pricing plans (especially F2Ps) that quickly becomes impossible. The other day I heard someone claim EQ2 has 1.5 million subs. Now that clearly sounds impossible and defies what you'd observe on the fairly empty servers, but how would you prove it?
I actually go by census efforts made by fans since the number of observed active players is the closest thing you can measure with any certainty, and if you assume most MMORPGs have similar culture (i.e. the number of active characters maintained by each subscription, on average, is about the same), it is a good approximation for population at least relatively. And if you go by these numbers, even WoW is somewhat depressing (down to ~3 million active level 80 characters, assuming each paying account has at least 1 level 80 characters that's a decline of 2 million in NA/Europe) and pretty much every other game out there is horrendous. But then maybe things are pretty bleak right now since you're seeing MMORPGs either fold or go to F2P. And if things are really this bleak, why on earth would the company want you to know about it?
I think if I just started making up some numbers, and convince a few guys to quote as reputable, I can become an industry leading source on MMORPG subscriptions too. It'd be really hard for anybody to prove me wrong because let's say I said FF11 actually has 3 people playing, that's clearly wrong but Sqix would be pressured to give the real numbers which they're clearly not inclined to. Now they can easily say I am just a stupid fan making up numbers (which is true) so nobody should believe these numbers, but then that applies to just about everyone making these charts so it doesn't hurt my credibility any.
And that's Blizzard, the industry leader who is by definition most likely to provide some numbers that might resemble reality (since they're the leader, doesn't hurt to remind everyone you are still the leader with numbers). Where does the numbers for EVERY OTHER MMORPG come from? Are you just going to walk up to Sqix or SoE and say 'Yeah I heard your game used to have 500K subs but people say it's only got 50K people now, can you confirm this?' I assume for most games not named WoW it is strictly harmful for them to release their active sub numbers, and aside from earning information the companies are not obliged to release sub information which means there is absolutely no incentive for them to do this. Yes in some cases you might be able to work backwards from earning (like Blizzard which only has one MMORPG entity) but if you're in a company with multiple MMORPGs on their profile with variable pricing plans (especially F2Ps) that quickly becomes impossible. The other day I heard someone claim EQ2 has 1.5 million subs. Now that clearly sounds impossible and defies what you'd observe on the fairly empty servers, but how would you prove it?
I actually go by census efforts made by fans since the number of observed active players is the closest thing you can measure with any certainty, and if you assume most MMORPGs have similar culture (i.e. the number of active characters maintained by each subscription, on average, is about the same), it is a good approximation for population at least relatively. And if you go by these numbers, even WoW is somewhat depressing (down to ~3 million active level 80 characters, assuming each paying account has at least 1 level 80 characters that's a decline of 2 million in NA/Europe) and pretty much every other game out there is horrendous. But then maybe things are pretty bleak right now since you're seeing MMORPGs either fold or go to F2P. And if things are really this bleak, why on earth would the company want you to know about it?
I think if I just started making up some numbers, and convince a few guys to quote as reputable, I can become an industry leading source on MMORPG subscriptions too. It'd be really hard for anybody to prove me wrong because let's say I said FF11 actually has 3 people playing, that's clearly wrong but Sqix would be pressured to give the real numbers which they're clearly not inclined to. Now they can easily say I am just a stupid fan making up numbers (which is true) so nobody should believe these numbers, but then that applies to just about everyone making these charts so it doesn't hurt my credibility any.