Apparently, a WoW Law Enforcement guide was leaked by Anonymous/AntiSec.

It's already on a couple other blog sites already, where you can check out the various law enforcement guidelines.

For example, how "Player Mail is not maintained for more than 180 days."

The document doesn't really cover Player Chat very well though. It says they can do realtime monitoring of chat, and they describe Player Chat Logs, but they don't say anything about retention of older chat logs.. so, they only retain old Mailbox messages?

There was also another contradiction. In one paragraph, Blizzard wrote "Warcraft alone has more than 9 million active users worldwide spread across several hundred servers", but later they wrote "Because Blizzard has over eleven million active users, Blizzard does not have the ability to retain all types of information indefinitely." In December 2008, they announced 11.5 million subscribers and then in Feb 2010 Morhaime announced that there had been no growth since 2008.

Maybe they dipped quite a larger subscription number than everyone had estimated? (e.g. 11.5 to 9 million)

This was the really interesting part though:

Blizzard currently maintains more than 500 WoW servers with well over 100 dedicated to the North American region.. Each server can host more than 3500 players at the same time.

This is the first time I've ever seen a source directly from Blizzard confirming the maximum number of concurrent players per realm (i.e. "players at the same time"). It was always estimated that each WOW Realm could support about 5000-6000 concurrent player logins.

Although WarcraftRealms isn't a very good source for total player counts (because there's a lot of overlap of players), it is a very good source for daily player activity.

If you look at the Average Daily Activity Chart here, it shows total number of players logged in during each hourly interval. Remember though, that the same players might be logged in for 8 hours straight. And, if you look at the graph below the chart, they all max out at around 3500 concurrently per realm. :)

If you assume that an average player spends 3 hours per day playing WOW, that's about 6950 unique players per realm (on average) that play throughout the day. Blizzard has less than 900 realms worldwide, which makes it about 6.3 million players.

I wouldn't be surprised if this 2009 policy is the exact same one still used today. Documents like these are very rarely updated, and it doesn't look like they spent a lot of time preparing it. Still, it's pretty interesting..

Something interesting brewing on a couple wine enthusiast websites. Apparently, a large quantity of users there have suddenly been hit by multiple credit card charges from "Blizzard Entertainment".

The situation is suspicious because so many users grouped together on these very specific forums are all being charged fraudulently by the same company. Most of the charges are Blizzard related, and there are also common iTunes purchase trends. Check out the Wine Library forum, for example. This one too, but it requires an account.

Many of the users there weren't familiar with Blizzard, so many guesses were about the "Wizards of Warcraft" game and if Blizzard was some kind of Adult Entertainment company.

What is apparent, however, is that there have been many fraudulent credit card charges just recently and dating back over the past couple months. They all probably use the same wine (or related) online ordering site, and their credit card numbers have been compromised. (They have not received any breach notifications, however, which most companies aren't required by law to report anyways.)

Normally, I would suspect overseas farmers.. but most of these charges are for continued monthly subscriptions (only subscriptions, no extra purchases like software), and they're also making iTunes purchases. Maybe teenagers? :)

SS Chris wrote:

"Blizzard must be having a spectacular quarter from a Revenue perspective."

On a related note, Blizzard is actively investigating the issue it seems. I received Blizzard HQ traffic from the wine forums which I found highly unusual, and it was really the only reason I looked into it. Perhaps it was one of the "legendary" Fraud Specialist / Billing employees. According to Blizzard experts, though, the position does not exist, it has never existed, and only a raving lunatic wearing a tin foil hat could ever imagine and make up the fact that Blizzard would ever actually hire for a "Fraud Manager" or "Fraud Specialist" position. :)

I never realized this was such a problem, but apparently the issue goes back for many years.

Here's an older one that probably was farming related:

Blizzard just took $1100 out of my account and I've never even heard of them before today let alone bought anything from them! They took out 6 lots of $91.63 & 3 lots of $183.27.

These other, more recent ones, are just for continued monthly subscriptions, and they've ruled out their own children.

After seeing all of this, I have to wonder if any of these Active Subscriptions were used in their vanity figures? Some fraudulent charges might never get caught, or are only discovered after several months. I wonder what percentage of "Active Subscribers" are actually fraudulent charges? :)

* UPDATE (11/22/2011):

Looks like it finally got picked up by some other sites.

Apparently, the Winelibrary site itself maintained a list of user's credit card numbers. Possibly unencrypted plaintext?

* UPDATE (11/29/2011):

Blizzard has just updated their MVP FAQ.

One of the readers here was very upset that a MVP could ever be considered a Blizzard expert or ever be credible:

And btw, calling a MVP (which is not paid by Blizzard) a Blizzard expert isn't doing good for your credibility. You're starting to employ the same tactics as those that you pretend to uncover.

According to Blizzard, though, they have officially stated that:

"MVPs.. answer other players' questions consistently and accurately. It lends a note of credibility to what they post; it allows players seeking answers to take what they say at face value, and frees up Blizzard representatives so that they can focus on their primary responsibilities."

"MVPs promote constructive posting wherever they can. They contribute to the community and encourage polite discussion throughout the forums. When you see an MVP post, listen to what they have to say—they were also chosen for their knowledge of the game."

And the MVP that was quoted in regards to the Fraud position was the #1 MVP of them all. That's pretty credible, wouldn't you say? :)

Q3 2011 Conference

A copy of the transcript can be found here.

Mike Morhaime stated that WoW "finished the quarter with 10.3 million active subscribers worldwide", so that would be subscribers as of September 30, 2011 as opposed to right now. This also confirms that this older post now holds true: even after the Cataclysm launch in China during this quarter, the 4.2 content launch, and the simultaneous WoW Starter Edition launch, they still lost a considerable number of subscribers (11.4M to 11.1M to 10.3M). Remember too that these are "Active Subscribers" which represent a significantly larger of real players (vanity figures are common in the industry).

Mike Morhaime also said,

While the majority of these declines are coming from the East, World of Warcraft continues to be one of the most popular online games in China and remains by far the most popular subscription-based MMO in the world.

I guess, I can say this, the majority of the declines were in the East. China still represents more than half of our global player base and historically, December has been a very good month for subscriber trends.

Note that the majority of the decline was from China, but China also makes up the majority of subscribers. So, it makes sense that if subscribers dropped worldwide, that the majority on average was from China. :)

"Active Subscribers" in China are even more skewed in terms of real players, and if there are declines in China, it is much more representative of a larger player decline than in NA or EU. (China subscriber counts include IGR players and active prepaid cards.)

It's also of interesting note that this blog has claimed many times that Chinese WoW players make up 50% (or higher) of total WoW subscribership. It was based on research, speculation and predictive analysis of past announcements.. however it was met with great hostility and disbelief. There were many "here's your tin foil hat" comments in response to the claim that Chinese gamers made up 50% of subscribers. Finally, though, there's now something official on the subject from Blizzard. And consider this, if Chinese players make up more than 50% of total players, then you can use Chinese figures to determine real players as opposed to subscribers. NetEase, for example, has actually released real player figures.. which is something that has never done in NA or EU. :) This Blizzard comment has actually confirmed what TOD (and myself) have been writing about for a long time in regards to "Subscribers".

Q3 2011 - Live Stream Viewers

So, if you remember this post, I was expecting Mike Morhaime to talk about virtual ticket paid viewers (e.g. "make note of Mike Morhaime's special wording of Virtual Ticket Live Stream viewer counts.")

My prediction was based on all past trends:

1. Blizzcon 2009: Mike said "more than 50,000" live via Pay Per View.
2. Q3 2009 Report: Mike said "tens of thousands on Pay Per View."
3. Blizzcon 2010: Mike said "more than 100,000" paid DirecTV customers.
4. Q3 2010 Report: Mike said "95,000 paid viewers following along via DirecTV."
5. Blizzcon 2011: Mike said "more than 60,000" DirecTV viewers.
6. Q3 2011 Report: SUDDEN CHANGE!

I was really hoping this would happen. The one thing you'll learn about Mike is that he's very consistent and detail oriented. He now says, "more than 1 million online viewers." It looks like Mike might be a reader here after all. :)

Q3 2011 - RMAH and Q&A

I also mentioned last week about the whole PayPal/Battle.net integration. According to Mike, they'll be testing the real money systems very soon.

We've also been testing the gold auction house functionality through the Beta and are gearing up to test the real money systems very soon.

This will just be for beta members.. and it will probably be for the Battle.net credit system only. Blizzard will give beta members a certain amount of credits, for example, to practice using in the in-game RMAH. For the PayPal aspect (e.g. real money), that part will probably be done by employees working in conjunction with PayPal. As for integration and instructions for all other gamers, that announcement should go out one or two months before retail/digital.

During the Q&A portion of the call, Mike sure was put on the spot. Almost all of the Q&A questions were Blizzard related, which was unusual. Apparently, there's some concern about how well MoP was received. On a related note, check out the Mists of Pandaria Preview Trailer, and compare Likes/Dislikes to WOTLK and Cata. I've never seen anything like that before.

2012 Expectations

This isn't related to the Q3 call, and it was something that I have already been preparing so I figured it would fit nicely into this post.

I was digging around through old job posts looking for anything Titan related. One thing I found interesting, though, is that all references to those old Fraud Specialist and Fraud Manager positions have been completely wiped off the face of the internet. :)

It's was written about back in this post, and TOD had also backed it up with some Google results (1 2 3 4). They're all completely gone now and it's pretty interesting. Apparently the jobs were publicly available for a week or two, and then after it was posted it, it was suddenly removed from all websites (e.g. Blizzard and recruiting agencies/outsourcers) all at once. They were pulled even a month before the deadline. :)

(By the way, if you ever find references to those positions in old archival websites, let me know.)

Anyways, Blizzard is hiring for Summer 2012 internships. A whole ton of them. I think they'll probably receive more serious instructions, though, on keeping confidential information off of their resumes moving forwards. Interns are a pretty good resource for new discoveries. :)

This intern position in particular interested me:

"The strategic initiatives team focuses on broad initiatives that address company-wide or development-specific opportunities and challenges. Our projects range from strategic planning to organizational and / or operations initiatives to purely quantitative analyses. Our roles are as varied as our projects. We may support, research, consult on, or drive projects. Some past and present efforts include: business analysis and visioning for the D3 Auction House; the development leadership councils; the side projects program; quantitative and qualitative analysis of cross-company survey data; franchise development; assistance with BlizzNet (Blizzard Entertainment's internal intranet); email Mike and ask the execs; Blizzard Entertainment academy; and other initiatives aimed at helping fulfill the top development, business and organizational goals of the company."

It's interesting in that one of their first duties will be "business analysis and visioning for the D3 Auction House." They'll be hired during a time when D3 will be well underway, but they're still interested in future vision and expansion of the D3 Auction House. Blizzard is looking for fresh perspectives, new D3 RMAH features or services, and probably ways to leverage the D3 RMAH and apply to Titan (assuming the new business venture is successful).

Overhyping Titan?

I have also come to the conclusion that I might be overthinking Titan too much, and setting my expectations too high.

Paul Sams once noted, "We're confident in Titan. It's an awesome one." and "We're playing it already. It's a total ball to play." He was describing a prototype of course, which would still be backed with concept art and a strong vision.. but his wording of the game makes it seem like there's more action involved than the typical "turn based" combat experienced in WoW.

It's also what Blizzard has NOT been saying about the game that convinces me that Titan is being overhyped. They're not saying, "it takes gaming into a whole new direction" or "it's innovative, it's different and awesome". Every description of the game is the same as how they once described World of Warcraft.

Cameron Dayton's description of the game even portrayed a fixed history, philosophy, heroes, villains, and a main story line. This isn't a customizable or immense world shaping game, it's a standard MMORPG with combat (heroes/villains), new characters, and a new story to tell.

I don't think Titan will be taking gaming into any new direction. The "Next Gen" term is just referring to the graphics engine and really nothing else (except for maybe in-game revenue generators). There's also Titan transmedia at work.. since there are new colorful characters in this game, there will be novels, comic books, t-shirts, toys, mousepads, posters, etc.

And also interestingly, the development team has been focusing more on player and NPC design than "monsters" or "creatures".

I'm expecting that it will be a standard MMORPG/FPS like WOW, but targeting additional demographics. I'm inclined to support Daeity's earlier posts; modern setting, low scifi, low fantasy, a multiverse of environments, a large world full of users and NPCs (one server per region, everything can live in different countries, times, or locations in-game), and the storyline could be anywhere from modern wartorn countries, to parallel dimensions, to time travel, or maybe just a messed up Doctor Who story with multiple times existing at once.

In a massive world, with a large number of players and their own market place, it makes for a great opportunity to exploit D3's RMAH. D3 will make the decision, though, whether it will be implemented in Titan or not.

Future Predictions

And, for those watching trademark registrations,

• In 2012, about 3-4 months before Blizzcon you will see a registration for a strange name. It won't be Titan, but rather the D3 expansion pack. (Of course the name might be obvious, like "Heaven's Sin" or something.)
• During Blizzcon 2012, they'll announce the D3 expansion pack, there will be demos, a video, and 1 new class. New PVP features, and a new profession probably developed by the S.I.T. to further exploit RMAH usage and growth.
• Diablo 3 will also have new friend invite systems and "Scrolls of Resurrection", but they'll probably not be announced during Blizzcon.
• In 2013, D3 X1 will be released and WOW X5 will be announced (once again, trademarked shortly before Blizzcon.)
• In 2014, X5 released and assuming no more delays, the real Titan game name will be registered and demonstrated at Blizzcon. This is when everyone rushes to get domain names.
• The Titan trailer will be a mind blowing graphical festival of the eyes with a deep commanding voice narrating. Pants will be crapped, fans will spontaneously combust, and burly men will swoon. But it will just be another MMO with really cool graphics.
• After WoW X5, I think the development and delivery trend is going to change. They'll be very few and far between, and Blizzard will probably push their Digital Download platform, make the expansion packs smaller, and pretty much just turn them into DLC packs (instead of full blown expansion experiences).
• And, SC2: HOTS/LOTV fit somewhere up there too, but I think they're going to be delayed.

Blizzard reads all of this of course, and I'm the only site doing it. :)

* UPDATE: With Blizzcon 2012 being cancelled, I'll still keep the same timeline just without Blizzcon.

SWTOR will be launching late December, and I thought it might be fun to make some predictions on their future sales figures.

So, Battlefield 3 pre-orders are over 1.5 million (Sept 20, 2011) and over 1.25 million (Sept 7, 2011). And, EA has stated that "SWTOR far exceed BF3's pre-order sales." (July 26, 2011) On August 29, BF3 pre-orders were over 800,000 and SWTOR pre-orders were 380,000. On July 23 (within a couple days of their "far exceeds" announcement, BF3 pre-orders were 467,000 (not including PC, so it was probably close to 500,000.)

(* Updated the entry above because I'm confused. SWTOR pre-orders started on July 21, 2011 but I don't know when the BF3 pre-orders started. BF3 pre-orders should have been around 500,000 at the time of the July announcement, meaning that SWTOR pre-orders should have been between 0.5 and 1 million.)

With December 20 still a couple months away, those pre-order figures will still continue to rise especially as we get closer to the release date.

Right now, pre-orders should be atleast 1.5 million, but because EA stated that they "far exceed" (but not double) BF3 numbers, pre-orders should be about 2-2.5 million. As we get closer to December, pre-orders should be around 2.5-3 million.

(Hey, by the way.. did you notice that the SWTOR pre-order comes with an exclusive Training Droid? It's a non-vanity COMBAT pet. I guess we know EA's stance on virtual items and sales.. if they do this now, you know they'll do it later.)

I kind of have a hard time believing that number though. It's been such a long time that a MMO has been able to achieve those numbers of players.

I looked at RIFT as a possible comparison, but it just won't work. If you try searching for RIFT Subscription Figures, you'll probably come across the "1.3 million subscribers" post on the official forums.

"In a statement today, Trion Worlds announced their new flagship title Rift: Planes of Telara™ has exceeded all expectations, shifting in excess of 1.3 Million units. Digital sales amounted to a staggering 1 million, whilst physical copies came in at a respectable 300,000. A spokesperson was quoted as saying "Maybe we're closer to Azeroth afterall", poking fun at their own marketting slogan in relation to their success in comparsion to the current top dog World of Warcraft."

However, this was just an April's fool joke.. if you couldn't already tell by the multiple spelling errors and poor grammar.

In reality, actual RIFT sales figures are about 400,000.

If you recall, Trion Worlds was bragging a while back about having "One Million Players" but these were just vanity figures invoked from "internal calculations". There's a massive difference between 1,000,000 players and 400,000 games sales (which probably has even less players). There was no outrage about this clear distinction, but WOW fans sure do get upset when you suggest that Blizzard does the same: "What!?? Blizzard would NEVER do that.. it would be ILLEGAL for them to give wrong subscriber numbers. THEY HAVE SHAREHOLDERS TO ANSWER TO DAMMIT! THEY CAN'T JUST MAKE UP SUBS!" Everyone else does it and they have shareholders to answer to.. so, why is Blizzard any different?

And, I can't really compare it to Age of Conan. They anticipated hitting 1M sales, but never reached their target. They also dropped 3/4 of their subscribers after the first month.

There is really no other MMO that can be used as a comparison.

So..

At current trends, there should be at least 3 million subscribers over the first month. This period is crucial too, and they will require excellent online reviews in order for their numbers to continue growing. But, from what I've read online there are a lot of people disappointed by the game and how it's too similar to WOW (which they have stopped playing due to boredom.) Most of the reviews have been very poor, and I know that EA has been trying to control these reviews as much as possible until after the game is officially released.

To that end, here's my prediction:

I think that right out of the gate, SWTOR will sell less than 3 million copies. Most of those figures will be digital / pre-orders. There will be poor reviews post launch, and many players will abandon the game after the first month. It won't be a massive exodus like what AoC experienced, but I'm going to guess at least 30% of the players will quit shortly after their first month (say 2-3 months after launch).

During the first couple weeks, EA/Bioware will be bragging about how great their sales figures are and how "successful" the game still is while trying to keep hype and momentum going. But, gamers will be more interested in the reviews and what their friends think. Normally a publisher would mention what review scores they are receiving and by whom, but in this case they will just pick out "certain quotes" from reviews and post the single quotes instead: "the graphics are phenomenal!", "the story is engaging!", "lag issues weren't that bad..", etc. etc.

(I'm hoping for a review scandal. :) EA threatens to remove advertising revenue due to bad reviews for example. Keep your eyes open on this one.. sudden changes in who reviews the game, reviews are up for a day then deleted, layoffs, angry blog protests, etc.)

During their Q3 2012 Shareholders meeting (during the first week of February), they'll talk about how greatly successful the game was.. and just pretend that their shareholders didn't read any of the reviews.

By mid 2012, subscribers will probably be around 1.5 to 2.0 million at the most. Still, not a bad chunk of probably many WOW (and some RIFT) players.

If I learn anything new, I'll update my estimates before December. But, I think the beta reviews that are slowly leaking out may halt pre-order growth. I might even need to start considering pre-order cancellations if the more disappointing reviews go viral.

* I'm going to have to make some updates, I'll wait to see if EA provides any new information. It's looking more like a RIFT situation though, but maybe with slightly more players in the beginning.

* UPDATE:

I'm going to cut some of those numbers in half, I just find it really hard to believe that a new MMO is going to have any where close to 2 or even 3 million subscribers. I think first month sales will probably be under 1.5 million (approx. 900,000 pre-orders and maybe 300-400k retail sales). I'm still expecting an exodus of players though once the reviews start to hit - so I'm sticking with the approx. 30% cut. I think most reviews will be "disappointing" but if they are "TERRIBLE" reviews, then that exodus will be much larger. If they can keep delivering major content, I think they can stabilize at around 1 million players and then slowly grow to probably 2 million over the first year.

* UPDATE (12/06/11):

I'm going to revise my numbers again. A lot of the information being peddled out by EA/Bioware is very misleading, which actually concerns me. And based on the active beta players, I don't think it's going to be over 1 million. It's "supposed" to be atleast 1.5 million based on what Bioware is saying.. but I'm going to estimate 900k sales for first day sales (which includes all pre-orders.) Even that seems really high and I have my doubts. If they do hit 1 million during the first day, I'll be very impressed.. then after the first month is when things get really interesting. :)

* UPDATE (12/15/11):

Even though sources are saying that pre-orders are near 950,000, the launch is 2 weeks away, and they still don't include digital orders and retail copies, I'm still going to stick with a low number. :)

You'll probably think I'm crazy.

Based on the most internet sites, it "should" be at the very least 1.5 million on the first day, and if you believe the publisher hype, it should be more than 2.5 million first day sales.

Even with all of that overwhelming information, I'm throwing caution to the wind and I'm still sticking with about 900k sales on the first day. If you want some more flexibility, I'll make a guess at somewhere between 800,000 and 1,000,000. :)

The "staying power" of SWTOR will be the most interesting. After the first month, will subscribers rise or fall?

Notes taken from the Activision Blizzard Analyst Day [Source]:

* Introductory music for Kotick was hilarious. "PLEASE WELCOME.. *intense energizing action music*.. BOB-BY KOOOO-TICK!!!!"

* Kotick used the term "game changer" which was a pun that wasn't supposed to be a pun. I am disappoint.

* Apparently, Battle.net only has "15 Million (+) Monthly Active Users". Doesn't anyone else find that very low? This includes all Diablo players, StarCraft 1 + 2 players, WoW Starter Accounts, and World of Warcraft (including WoW China) active players. The ones that have B.Net accounts anyways (which is required for SC2, WoW and Starter Accounts).. but 15 million? That's it? Based on their vanity figures, I had thought it would be closer to 25-30 million at least. Since Starcraft 2 has 4-5 million active B.Net accounts right now, that only leaves 10-11 million players for the rest of their franchises. Guess that confirms Daeity's previous estimates regarding REAL PLAYERS versus "Subscriptions". :)

In September of 2002, B.Net had 11 million active users. And in September of 2004, they had 12 million active users. [Source]

So, B.Net Monthly Active Users has only increased about 3 million in the past 7 years. Wow.

* Activision boldly claimed that COD has more players (30 million unique players) than any Facebook game, and higher engagement than all top Facebook games. Once again, these are vanity figures and don't reflect actual active players and could have just been registered users.

But they're wrong. As of Feb. 1, 2011 CityVille had ~98.5 million MAU and Farmville had ~53 million MAU. Those are ACTIVE USERS, not just registered users.

What statistics did they even compare to?

* Activision claimed that their preorders for COD: MW3 are significantly higher than previous games and all other competitors. This is old news though. Based on their statements, MW3 preorders should be at least 7 million.

* The Skylanders transmedia MMO is targeting the "37 million online and gaming households with children aged 6-12". They received this statistics from the "2011 Gamer Census Data" but I couldn't locate this anywhere online. Maybe an internally researched census?

Skylanders is basically Pokemon candy cigarettes intended to get children hooked before being introduced to "adult cigarettes".. that is, Call of Duty. Gotta get them when they're young.

* There are about 100 developers working on the new Halo MMO right now. They're also building their own gaming service portal for the game (a "Battle.net" for Halo).

* Mike Morhaime was up next. Mentioned that they have 4,500 employees across 10 global offices. 800 of those employees are developers. The rest, as you know, are Customer Service.

* Mike detailed some other Blizzard vanity figures:

Warcraft franchise had 20.5 million sales, Starcraft had 16 million sales, Diablo had 20.5 million sales.

Blizzcon 2010 had over 25,000 attendees and over 500,000 viewers paid for the virtual ticket. Their Facebook page has over 1 million users following it.

* They're working on "Blizzard DOTA" and still working on the Marketplace for B.Net.

* Made some very interesting remarks about "nonlinear subscriber growth" and "erosion of player base." Nonlinear growth meaning negative growth but stated in a positive light. He mentioned that subscriber numbers are impacted by seasonality and new content, but that they're working on increasing retention initiatives and new regions to expand their service. It just sort of came out of the blue too, he didn't talk about subscription changes. These comments worried a lot of the attendees.. it's like he's preparing them for low subscriber counts at their next quarterly meeting.

* Continuing with the low subscriber number, he mentioned that NetEase is working on penetrating their Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in China. But there's risk involved, and their computer systems and IGR (Internet Game Rooms) are built for less performance heavy games like WoW. :)

* They've seen a 60% increase in new account creation due to the new World of Warcraft Starter Edition. Can't wait to see if they modify their "Subscriber" definition.

* The Diablo 3 Beta will be going into beta later this month. It will be starting during the last week or so, with beta invites going out at least 1-2 weeks in advance. So, Mid-Sept beta invites..

* Rob Pardo said that "Loot = BIG PART OF DIABLO". WOW has an "Achiever Economy" where players need to work for their items or have the best skill, whereas Diablo has a "Merchant Item Economy". The gameplay focus on items concerns me; I hope it doesn't sacrifice other important aspects of the game.

* Blizzard is expecting users to be able to sell items for $5, $10, and $50 on the Cash Auction House. The Gold Auction House will be for normal sales and most common items. The Cash Auction House will be for the best items and hardest to get.

* They seem to be aware that there's a clear segregation between the Gold AH and Cash AH in that the Gold AH will be used for low level items and the Cash AH will be used for high level items. For those who are complaining about the Cash AH, supporters will say "The real money auction house is optional." Well.. yes, optional for cheap items. All of the best items will be sold for cash and they'll also cycle through the system. Rob Pardo said that the "really powerful items will be bought and sold all the time."

* Rob Pardo is hoping people will use the Battle.net Account Balance (RMAH) to support their World of Warcraft subscription, buy B.Net games, and virtual items.

* The 3rd party payment provider partner has still not been announced yet because they don't technically have one yet. What concerns me is that they haven't finalized any deals yet, but that they're "getting close to a deal right now." The beta is starting soon, but they still haven't finalized the Cash Auction and Player Banking systems. Without a partner, what kind of shape is the technology and infrastructure? This can seriously push back the retail release date of the game and should have been finalized a long time ago. It sounds very last minute.

* Rob Pardo reiterated that the Cash Auction House is in place because players wanted it. "Why? PLAYERS WANT IT!" He also said, "Players really want this, and if we don't do it, someone else will."

* Thomas Tippl mentioned that the following investments will be out within the next 2-3 years: Diablo 3, D3 Expansion Pack, StarCraft X2 and X3, World of Warcraft X4 and X5. Titan MMO will incorporate mobile and social elements and will not be out in 2-3 years (i.e. 2014).

* Thomas Tippl said that the Map Marketplace will launch at the same time as the first SC2 Expansion Pack.

* Other than the World of Warcraft expansion packs, Blizzard also has new "Value Added Services" in the pipeline to enhance player experience.

* The Bungie MMO will be multiplatform. Since it trailed Skylanders information, it seemed to be that Thomas was indicating the Bungie MMO would be multiplatform like Skylanders. So, all consoles, plus PC, plus a "Web World" (or a web based method to access your account and possibly play elements of the game.)

* During the QA Period, the "nonlinear growth" question came up again. Mike Morhaime stated that the 12M to 11.1M drop was across the board but that "We don't break down regionally." They have done so in the past though.

* Regarding "continuing content", there will be a major update coming later this year. Meaning the X4 announcement at Blizzcon.

And, that's all folks. Some interesting stuff though.. especially that B.Net figure.

Correction: After listening to the conference call recording, Michael Morhaime did in fact attribute the 11.1 million subscribers to the end of Q2 only, so I heard it wrong. The Q3 meeting should be very interesting now and after the "F2P" WOW Starter pack I'm curious if they'll be reworking their Subscriber definition.

-----

Michael Morhaime adjusted their total subscriber levels to 11.4 to 11.1 million during yesterday's financial call. I've noticed that many people are, for some reason, saying that it only dipped to 11.1 for that quarter alone but it's higher now.

In actuality, Morhaime was reporting the 11.1 million subscribers as it stands right now (August 3 2011). It's not just subscribers for the second quarter 2011 ending June 30th, it's at this present moment.

This means that almost a month after the Cataclysm launch in China (July 12 2011), and over a month after the 4.2 content launch and simultaneous WoW Starter Edition launch (June 29 2011), they have still lost a considerable number of players.

The first month of a launch is when the largest number of players join too, and if you remember China made up about 50% of World of Warcraft's worldwide subscribers.

Something to think about.

I think there needs to be expansions into new territory and countries due to the growing boredom being experienced in existing regions. It's mostly the novelty wearing off too, and the "boredom" is typical of every game after a certain period of time. That seems to be one of their new strategies to increase subscribership.. but I wonder which countries are still left.

As you can tell by the those subscription and financials, things have been looking very bad over the past several months. Not only do these officially confirm the accuracy of previous estimates, but also the manipulation involved in the Subscriber™ definition. =]

As explained many times in the past, there's a significant difference between subscriptions and Blizzard Subscriptions™. Investors and the public get to see their public financials, but it's not like they're legally required to reveal actual subscriber numbers (or names) to anyone. They use a special definition for public announcements, but that's about it - and that number can be manipulated in any which way they want. I also have an interesting news reveal shortly where the Blizzard marketing team will soon be able to manipulate this number even further to their advantage. =]

Based on the subscription numbers, you can see that they've lost a little over 10% of their subscribers and they still haven't been able to fix their attrition issues while churn is in some serious trouble (i.e. the rate of losing players has been higher than gaining players for almost a year now.)

In regards to the sudden drop in players (and associated revenue), I'm not sure how they can keep this information hidden any longer. I don't know how they can continue justifying their public financials considering the massive losses in micro-transactions and pet/store sales. Even with such a sudden drop (ie, 700-800k Subscriptions™), I don't think an official or documented announcement will ever be made. The Q1 (Jan/Feb/Mar) 2011 financials call is coming up in a couple months and I'm really looking forwards to it, especially after the massive release of all of this information. =]

You should see some interesting and more desperate actions soon in order to increase their revenue. One of them is new pet/store sales, but I'll be putting that up in another post right after this one before my 2 major updates.

One of their acts of desperation, which I think I've talked about in the past, is turning World of Warcraft into a F2P system like what everyone else is doing. That's right! Blizzard is planning changing their treasured game into a F2P structure.. well, sort of. Basically, the free 14-day trial period is being changed to unlimited play up to level 20. The announcement is planned "at the end of Q2 2011", so you should hear about it very soon.

This information was actually pretty easy to find, a ton of employees knew about it already so I didn't have to go through my usual channels. I don't know any more details over than the F2P modification, however, because they need to keep gold farmers and spammers on a leash, I'm sure you'll see a lot of restrictions in place similar to the trial method. For example, chat, AH restrictions, and probably a limit on gold and/or a bank limit so that they can't be used as mules. I'm also not surprised by the timing of the announcement either, it's right at the cusp of a new quarter in which they want to drive their revenue and artificially increase subscription numbers. =]

You see, this new approach reeks of both desperation and brilliance. Subscription attrition has reached a terrible state, and they're going to continue plummeting for years to come. However, because of this new method and the influx of "free players", it will artificially increase their Subscription™ count astronomically. Will they be changing their special Subscriber™ definition, or will it remain the same? If you ever see a "12 million" or "13 million subscriber" announcement in the future, just remember that 3-4 million of those "subs" might be in fact F2P players. =] And those numbers don't even come close to real players as you're well aware..

From what I can tell, this is just the first step in a new long-term plan and they have a lot of other stuff scheduled for the future (e.g. lowering the cost of WoW, reduced expansion pack price points, and eventual subscription fees). I didn't like the "Cataclysm experiment", but I do like this experiment.. I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner.

Okay, now that I'm past all of the boring stuff, it's time to move onto the more important and mind-blowing updates! Should be up momentarily so please hold tight.. I'm sifting through a ton of information and emails here and trying to sort things out to find the important bits.

As discussed earlier, there's a big difference between announced "Subscribers" and real players.

But what a lot of people want to know is how many real players are there playing RIFT right now?

According to Trion (Source) they had a grand total of 58 North American and 41 European servers prepared for launch.

Trion also pleasantly provides Shard Status information. It's very limited (just like Blizzard's - you don't want to reveal too much information), but it does let you know how many people are waiting in queue.

Right now, the Dayblind shard is FULL with 112 people waiting.

I counted the total number of players on Dayblind (very tedious and time consuming by the way), and it came out to around 1900 players (Defiant and Guardian combined). Let's say for argument's sake that their servers are maxed at 2,000 total players (a very reasonable estimate).

Since there are 99 total servers, that means that they can support AT MOST 198,000 real players.

Keep in mind that these are peak concurrent logins and it was the busiest period (9PM-11PM showed about the same numbers, then tapered off) for NA. Many servers are still showing Low and Medium (probably 1200-1500) populations too.

(Note: If you play RIFT, pull some numbers from other servers during peak hours and leave a comment here - e.g. total players on both sides. I suspect all of the servers have the same max. number though. Remember that these are peak concurrent logins at a certain time of day. Other players login during different schedules.)

There are also other factors at play, some players haven't started playing yet, and they might increase the player capacity on each shard at a later date.

Take this information for what you will, but I wouldn't be surprised if real players were somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 total right now (based on average player activity cycle and that over 50% of the shards were at half capacity.) If there were "1 million subscriptions" as promoted by gaming news sites, there should have been at least 600,000 simultaneous users logged in during peak hours.

Even if all of the shards were completely full, that would probably amount to 250,000 to 275,000 total players max during peak hours. That would mean less than 425,000 total players who would be logging in throughout the entire day. A far cry from the "1 million subscriptions" that gaming news sites are mistakenly reporting anyways. =]

You gotta love some of the people from MMO-Champion.com. For the most part, it's an awesome community with great users who have a lot of questions or they're just looking for interesting news and information. But unfortunately, there are a few immature trolls and some close-minded individuals.. and it's especially unfortunate when they are moderators.

After all, moderators are the folks with higher authority (and therefore held to a higher standard) and can control all of the information on the forums.

Check out this recent discussion about WoW statistics and figures and where they discuss information from this blog.

Herecius? More like Hilarious.

I absolutely loved this part:

When Blizzard states 'we have 11.5 million active subscriptions,' they are doing so under penalty of law. The statement is made not to us, the players, but to shareholders. If they lie on such statements, it's considered a federal crime.

Oh man.. I died laughing.

There are just so many things wrong here, I don't know where to start.

For one, he's saying that whatever Blizzard says is the absolute truth. When Blizzard says 12 million active subscriber, they indeed have exactly 12 million subscribers. Not 11,999,999 subscribers and not 12,000,001 subscribers.. they have EXACTLY 12 million subscribers.. UNDER PENALTY OF LAW!

Blizzard would never lie about active subscriptions. It's a FEDERAL CRIME after all.

And yes.. as you're aware, like 50% of the blog post (that he supposedly read since it was impossible to miss) was all about Blizzard's Active Subscription definition and how Blizzard has made it clear that "Active Subscriptions" does not mean real players. And yes, Blizzard has created "special definitions" for what a Subscriber is according to Blizzard. And yes, Blizzard has special caveats in their SEC filings and their press releases. According to Hilarious, though, you have to ignore all of those special citations(6), references, and definitions.. because whatever Blizzard writes in black-and-white is, in fact, absolute truth.

They don't use approximations in their numbers either. When Activision Blizzard says "GAAP net revenues increased to $4.45 billion". That's apparently $4.45 billion EXACTLY.. under penalty of law.

When they say "Activision Blizzard was the #1 publisher in North America on the Xbox® 360, PlayStation® 3 and PC collectively for the calendar year.(4)". That means they were the #1 publisher.. whatever that means. And because they said it to their shareholders, that means it's the truth.. under penalty of law. It's not like the statement came from a different group or study or anything.. say for example "(4) According to The NPD Group".

There are no special definitions, rules, caveats, "if's", "and's" or "but's".. when Blizzard states *something*, they are doing so under penalty of law dammit!

This is a perfect example of a market research team's wet dream. Gullibility and naivety under the guise of high idealism.

He's the kind of guy who buys impulse items and always reaches for items on the right and at eye-level in retail chains.

.. the kind of guy who buys 5 copies of Batman Forever on DVD because you can save money by buying in bulk.

.. the kind of guy who buys an expensive toy because there's a giant shiny sign stating that it's been marked down by 50%.

.. the kind of guy who only buys the same brand of beer because TV told him that hundreds of attractive women will have sex with him if he does.

And while he's being manipulated by ad-targeting all day, marketing psychology (and social science and sociology and neuroscience) and other perfectly legal methods of persuasion, at least he can sleep soundly at night wrapped tightly in a self-righteous American flag with a lawbook underneath his pillow and 5 copies of Batman Forever on his bedside table.

Does he truly not know that corporate propaganda, "spin", and marketing speak are common and actually take place in the real world?

EDIT: Especially a blogger that's using extrapolated data from addons

Weird.. I never used any addons at all. I mentioned an addon, but said that the information was unreliable and it was why I never used that information in any of my calculations.

A pretty big warning sign here if you ask me. He has made it very clear that he never actually read the article, however he's making other believe that he did thoroughly read it.. very deceptive and very disappointing for someone in his position on the forums.

This also gives you a really good idea of typical fanboy mind-set in general. He thinks the blog post is trying to attack World of Warcraft or something, so he immediately goes on the defensive, skips reading the article, picks out certain keywords, and then lies to everyone on his forum.

anecdotal evidence

Anecdotal evidence like you know.. Activision Blizzard's SEC filings, Quarterly Results, Fiscal Reports, published articles and interviews with Blizzard, revenue figures, raw server data, official announcements and press releases. You know, hearsay and untrustworthy stuff like that.

and figures that are 'peak number of players' as final numbers.

Once again, pure fiction.

The entire article was all about establishing the most (e.g. a ceiling limit) it could ever be based on official data provided. They were never called final and total numbers, that's just silly. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I said "maximum figure". For example, "That's the absolute most it could ever be". However, that number goes down as you include game sales, paid services, pet sales, etc.

He states that the peak number of players on Chinese servers was around.. 3.2 million? That's not subscriptions, that's people playing at once, and yet, he goes on to treat that as if it accounted for every single Chinese WoW player.

I have no idea what he's trying to say here.. it sounds like he's just repeating back something obvious to create confusion and pretend that it supports his "arguments". There's a difference between "Subscriptions" and real players - some "Subscriptions" don't even have a real player playing the game (for example, active but unused game cards). The entire article is all about trying to figure out player counts which I had thought I made clear.

Anyways..

What's most disappointing about this is that Hilarious is a MMO-Champion MODERATOR with thousands of posts and comments, and yet he used the same old arguments that I've seen hundreds of times on other forums whenever anyone mentions Subscribers vs Players. There was no insight or strong arguments.. the best he had in disproving the information was that the data was from some "addon" and that all of the evidence (from Blizzard and Activision's SEC filings) was untrustworthy.

So far, I'm not impressed. It's quite obvious that he didn't read a thing (just picked out keywords), and then lied to everyone so that they wouldn't talk about it anymore ("Nothing to see here folks, move along"). Does he do this often?

It looks like he's going through the 5 stages of grief too (he's at stage 3 right now):

1. Denial: "It's a federal crime to lie! I'm more apt to believe Blizzard than a blogger who has little to no credibility."
2. Anger: "ESPECIALLY A BLOGGER THAT'S USING EXTRAPOLATED DATA FROM AN ADDON AND ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE! AND YET.."
3. Bargaining: "Well.. maybe it's not _exactly_ 12 million. And yeah.. Blizzard can make estimates... Just a sec, let me add a post and make some edits.."
4. Depression: "I feel disillusioned. I need time to think about this.. I won't be making as many posts for a few days."
5. Acceptance: "Oh my God. Truth is all about wording. I see the whole world differently now.. every business with marketing teams do this."

Other than the usual crazy fanboy comment, most MMO-Champion users found the article interesting. It's too bad their moderators can't remain impartial though, but I guess some prefer to abuse their privileges when they hear something they don't like.

Speaking of which, here's some other guy who also had a comment after not reading the post:

It would be nice to know these numbers but arbitrarily saying twenty percent of the accounts are secondary accounts as a fact is ridiculous. since there has been no studies on this and Blizzard has never given out user information. It might be close to that be we can't say its fact.

You won't find that anywhere, because I never actually wrote it.

So, I have to wonder..

Why do all fanboys say the _exact same thing_ every time?

It's like there's a disease, a cosmic joke, or some support group where all of these people (fanboys) get together and plan on what to do or say:

"Hey everybody! Let's NOT read this book, but then claim we actually read the book okay?

Then we'll tell everyone that the book was full of misinformation!

Just make stuff up, and say that the author and their sources were not credible.. even though we don't know who they are! Tee hee. Wouldn't that be hilarious??

If you want to get more people to believe you, just grab some random statements from the book and then just say you know for a fact that they're wrong. "That's not true!" works really well. "I work in this field and this is wrong!" is even better, since more people will believe you.

WHATEVER YOU DO THOUGH, DON'T PROVIDE ANY EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY! You know we can't! Tee hee!

P.S. If someone asks for evidence, just stop replying. Alternatively, you can say that there WAS a link but it's gone now or you forgot it."

* UPDATE (03/21/2011):

Herecius promised me a 800 word retort, and he was going to post it just as soon as he was done. This was 48 hours ago now, though.. but I'm still waiting for it. I mean, Herecius wouldn't LIE to me now would he?

Various gaming news sites have already started stating that RIFT has hit 1 million subscribers. I'm sure you'll see more news articles about this over the next few days too.

But just like Blizzard, the truth is in the details. =]

Here is Trion's official announcement:

RIFT™ HEAD START KICKS-OFF TODAY AS TRION ECLIPSES
ONE MILLION REGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Names of Rift public servers revealed on the game’s official forums

Trion Worlds announced today that more than one million accounts have been created to date, signaling a high level of interest for the company’s first massively multiplayer online game, Rift™, which is scheduled to launch March 1st in North America, March 3rd in pan-European countries, and March 4th in the UK. The news hits just as the game’s Head Start period begins, giving pre-order customers advance playtime before servers officially open on launch day.

Launching with 33 Head Start servers, Rift will feature dedicated realms for PvP, PvE, and role-playing players. Servers are live today, coinciding with the game’s Head Start period, which lasts until the game launches next week. Find the official server list on Rift’s official forums at: http://forums.riftgame.com/showthrea...48#post1198848

One million accounts have been created to date. That includes the hundreds of thousands of open/closed beta testers over the past several months. It might even include players who created new accounts on their forums, as anyone is able to create a new account to post on their forums even if they can't play the game (for now anyways.) Here are the beta key numbers that I am aware of: MMORPG.COM passed out 175,000 beta keys (7000 VIPs), WarCry gave out 2,000 keys, MMOHUT gave out 5,000 keys, GameZone.com gave out 25,000 (1000 VIPs), Gamestar.de gave out 125,000 (5000 VIPs), and ZAM "burned through" 125,000 beta keys (5000 VIPs).

You know.. it's funny because I'm saying "it's just like what Blizzard does" but as a negative connotation. Usually that doesn't happen.. users often claim that games will copy good ideas from Blizzard ("oh, just another WoW clone", "same spell name"), but when have you ever heard someone claim that they copied something _bad_ from Blizzard? (e.g. "I can't believe they're doing the same thing as Blizzard, it's going to be a mess.. an even bigger screw up.") I don't think it happens very often.

WoW Subscriptions Around The World

In January 2007, when Blizzard announced 8 million subscriptions worldwide (Source):

China: 3.5 million
North America: 2.0 million
Europe: 1.5 million
Remaining Territories: 1.0 million

In January 2008, when Blizzard announced 10 million subscriptions worldwide (Source):

China: 4.5 million
North America: 2.5 million
Europe: 2.0 million
Remaining Territories: 1.0 million

Blizzard hasn't made any other official announcements detailing breakdown of subscribers per geography since then, but based on growth trends I think it's pretty safe to assume that their current (12 million) subscribers are approximately:

China: 5.5 million
North America: 3.0 million
Europe: 2.5 million
Remaining Territories: 1.0 million

These figures actually confirm a lot of other estimations out there that put Chinese subscriptions at between 5 and 6 million total. Or basically, "about half" of total worldwide subscriptions.

How many real players are there, though?

In North America and Europe, this information is really difficult to confirm. Blizzard does not release this information to the public so it's up the users to figure out approximate counts.

The Warcraft CensusPlus UI Mod is an addon for WoW where players can poll players online, and all of the information is collected to generate an approximate census of WoW in NA and EU. However, this information is not very accurate, there's a lot of duplication of numbers, and data can be skewed or altered by users.

Right now, for example, total NA and EU players are calculated to be 6,417,374 total users on the census page. However, according to Blizzard, their subscription count in NA and EU is about 5.5 million maximum. =]

In China, however, it's a different story.

NetEase operates WoW in China, not Blizzard, and they're not as restrictive with their policies or information. (Gold/Account trading is perfectly legitimate there by the way.) NetEase publishes raw data across all of their realms, and is available in census format (showing peak logins for both factions and on each realm).

According to Blizzard, total subscribers in China are about 5.5 million. According to their servers, however, total players peaked at about 2.4 million as of this month. That's the most I've ever seen it.

Estimated players in NA/EU

For this, I'll start out by using Blizzard's official announcement from January 2008 when they announced their 10 million subscribers.

China: 4.5 million
North America: 2.5 million
Europe: 2.0 million
Remaining Territories: 1.0 million

During this time, their Net Revenue for World of Warcraft was $275 million. Keep in mind, that this figure also includes WoW sales, Paid Services, Pets, etc.

Since we know how much they pay for WoW subscriptions in each of these geographies, we can get a much more accurate estimation of how many players there are at the most.

China pays ~$7.27 per month
North America pays ~$15 US per month.
Europe pays ~$17.6 (12.99€) per month.
Remaining Territories pay about ~$15 per month.

NetEase, however, has a special contract with Blizzard. NetEase collects subscription payments, and they pay Blizzard a 55% Royalty Fee. So, Blizzard is collecting ~$3.99 per month from each Chinese subscriber.

Using these figures and their subscriber counts, here's what their revenue should have been:

China: 4.5 million x $3.99 x 3 months = $53,865,000
North America: 2.5 million x $15 x 3 months = $112,500,000
Europe: 2.0 million x $17.6 x 3 months = $105,600,000
Remaining Territories: 1.0 million x $15 x 3 months = $45,000,000

That's a total of ~$317 million when it _should_ have been $275 million.

That $275 million figure also includes a ton of other revenue too (game sales, paid services, etc). For example, if subscriptions were to totally match revenue, then there would be 8.6 million players out of 10 million subscribers. However, if there was $50 million worth of game sales and services during that time, then the real players would have been 7 million out of 10 million subscribers.

So, let's try something more recent (e.g. 12 million subscribers) and where we know approximately how many sales there were out of the total revenue to get a better picture.

During the third quarter ending September 30, 2010, total WoW revenue was $289 million. During this period, Blizzard launched WOTLK in China (Aug 31) and they peaked at 12 million subscribers. Since Chinese players did not need to purchase WOTLK, this provides a better revenue figure to work with since it won't include those larger amounts of Game Sales. (Paid Services, Pets, and minor sales will still be included in this total revenue figure however.)

China: 5.5 million x $3.99 x 3 months = ~$65.8 million
North America: 3.0 million x $15 x 3 months = $135 million
Europe: 2.5 million x $17.6 x 3 months = $132 million
Remaining Territories: 1.0 million x $15 x 3 months = $45 million

So, total revenue _should_ have been about $378 million, but it was $289 million instead.

Let's say however, that there are a total of 3 million real players out of 5.5 million Chinese subscribers, and re-adjust those numbers. That's still $342 million though.

Hmm.. okay, let's say China player count is 50% of official Subscriber counts (like what it should be). And, all of the other geographies are 3/4 of their official counts.

That's a total of $267 million, which is much closer to the $289 million total. That also leaves $22 million in potential game sales, pre-paid services, pet sales, etc. If that's the correct number, that would mean that there are 7.6 million real players out of 12 million "Subscribers" worldwide. Does $22 million sound too low or too high for all of those purchases during a 3 month period though?

Let's get an absolute maximum figure: Total real revenue was 76% of what it should have been, so if you apply that number to total subscribers that gives you approx. 9.17 million players. That's the absolute most it could ever be, assuming that there were no game sales, no paid services, no pet sales, absolutely nothing but subscriptions during that 3 month period.

Of course, we know that's not true.. if we knew how much Blizzard sales (outside of subs) are during a 3 month period we could get a much more accurate estimate. For now though, real players are probably about 7.5 to 8 million out of 12 million total.

Previously, it was estimated (taking a different approach) that the maximum possible number of players were about 7.2 million out of 11.5 million total. (That's equivalent to 7.5 million out of 12 million.)

However, there's one important item I've been leaving out. In April 2009, NetEase paid for a 3-year license agreement in the amount of $30 million for the right to operate World of Warcraft. In addition to that flat rate, they also pay recurring license fees, royalties, and consultancy fees to Blizzard. (Several sources estimate "minimum annual revenue shares of $180 million" for example, meaning that they must pay Blizzard at least $15 million per month. Is that minimum subscription, or is that on top of royalty fees?) There could very well be another $30-45 million, for example, included in their revenue figure that has nothing to do with subscriptions. (That would reduce 7.5 to 6.8 million.)

However, for arguments sake I'm using the more inflated figures in Blizzard's favor.

The Magic Number

One thing to remember too is that subscription numbers are always fluctuating from month to month, and there are always different factors at play (seasons, server issues, ban waves, new expansion packs, boring content, etc.) There are always players coming and going from the game (e.g. new players or attrition.) Over one quarter, 100,000 players might leave because of boring content.. but 60,000 new players might join.

Blizzard only announces when they peak at certain numbers (maximum number of simultaneous "Subscriptions"), but if you look at all of the possible real players who have joined, played, and stayed or left the game, it's possible that World of Warcraft has cycled through 20-40 million unique individuals around the world over the years. That's actually really cool. =]

(But it's impossible to know the number for sure unless Blizzard releases all total WoW Classic digital/retail/everything sales since day 1.)

Over the past 3 years, though, the subscription numbers have plateaued (no longer growing at explosive rate seen before) and it seems like the "magic number" they're hovering around for real players is probably between 6.5 and 8.5 million (at any time playing World of Warcraft). That's still a freakin' huge number of players for a 6 year old game.

This gives you a really good idea of Fantasy MMORPG POTENTIAL too. Given that you have an awesome game, great gameplay, an addiction factor, and your game is as popular as it could ever be - your maximum potential number of players will be about 6.5 to 8.5 million players. As a publisher, if you can attain that amount, you've reached the maximum potential possible for that game. I don't think SCI-FI MMORPG can reach the same heights as Fantasy.. but Real Life Simulations (Call of Duty / GTA) could probably exceed it as that genre has a larger market demographic.

I already have an old entry that explains Active Subscriptions, and multiple blog posts covering many facets of this topic. However, I decided to make a new entry to help further explain that there is a difference between real players versus Active Subscribers™. But, I'll be taking a different approach.

Blizzard Has 12 Million Subscribers

In the older post (August 2010), I examined real player numbers during a time when World of Warcraft's Subscriber count was officially 11.5 million.

However, this became a major problem for many readers (here and on other forums). The biggest excuse used was, "Well.. these numbers must be totally wrong because Blizzard's last announcement stated 12 million players for a fact! This is really old now too, so none of these numbers apply to today."

Just to clear things up, the same concept of real players vs Subscriber counts apply no matter what Blizzard's Subscribers presently are.

For example,
Blizzard announces 9 million Subscribers, but there are 5 million real players.
Blizzard announces 10 million Subscribers, but there are 6 million real players.
Blizzard announces 11 million Subscribers, but there are 7 million real players.
Blizzard announces 12 million Subscribers, but there are 8 million real players.

Based on those trends, I think it's safe to assume that if Blizzard announces 13 million Subscribers (and absolutely no variables change), there are probably about 9 million real players.

So, if this post is read towards of the end of this year, when Blizzard reaches 13 million players for example, the same concept applies. This should be a no-brainer.

Blizzard Only Makes Announcements When They Peak

When Blizzard reaches a certain Subscriber milestone, they make an announcement. There might be an announcement if they reach 12.5 or 13 million Subscribers for example.

On Oct 28, 2008 Blizzard "surpassed 11 million subscribers". On Nov 21, 2008 Blizzard "reached 11.5 million subscribers."

In February 2010, Mike Morhaime stated that "there are currently 11.5 million World of Warcraft subscribers, the same number of users the game had in December 2008." That's from Dec 2008 to Feb 2010! There was no growth during that time, but they didn't make any announcements of Subscriber decay.

In fact, there was quite a substantial amount of Subscriber decay during this time.

From June 2009 to October 2009, The9 was transitioning ownership of WoW to Blizzard's new partner NetEase. During this time, all servers were offline and there was no WoW in China.

When servers were brought back online in October 2009, NetEase was ordered during the following month (Nov) to stop charging current players and stop new registrations until the Chinese government could approve the game. From November 2009 to March 2010, NetEase was not allowed to collect subscription fees or register new players.

Ignoring this fact, let's just examine the 4 months when servers were offline and there were no subscriptions or players.

That was a loss of approximately 5-6 million players world wide. There were no announcements made, e.g. "Blizzard announces World of Warcraft is down to 5 million worldwide!" After all, why would they?

However, during this entire time news websites around the world continued to promote 11 or 11.5 million Subscribers, even though the number was closer to half.

On August 5, 2009, Activision Blizzard held their quarterly earnings call for the quarter ending June 30, 2009. Now, keep in mind that there was no WoW in China during June of 2009.

Activision Blizzard stated in their SEC filing that World of Warcraft "is played by more than 11 million subscribers worldwide."

In that same Form 10-Q, they also stated: "Our new licensee for World of Warcraft in China will not be able to begin offering the game in China on a paid basis until we obtain all required regulatory approvals, and we do not know when that will happen. World of Warcraft was unavailable to players in mainland China from June 7, 2009 (local), the date on which our prior license arrangements expired, until July 30, 2009 (local), when our new licensee began making the game available to our previous players in China in a test format without charge."

(Note: They still didn't have all approvals, so the date was extended beyond July 30, 2009 - but that was the limit of the information that they knew at the time.)

So, even though they were around 5-6 million official Subscribers during June - Blizzard still stated in an SEC Filing that WoW is played by more than 11 million subscribers worldwide.

This is completely honest and true, no matter what you might believe. It's all about wording, and that's one of the points I'm trying to make.

1. They only make announcements when they peak Subscribers.
2. When they say "20 million Subscribers", that doesn't necessarily mean that they actually have "20 million subscribers" (or anywhere close to that number) at that time.
3. When they say "20 million Subscribers", that doesn't necessarily mean real players.

It's all based on wording and their last official census announcement.

Right now, for example, they have "12 million Subscribers". Even if something bad were to happen, Blizzard can still tell news outlets "At last count, we are at 12 million Subscribers" or they can say:

We're currently at 12 million Subscribers worldwide!

*based on internal figures and calculations.

Even if Subscribers (or real players) are actually closer to 4 million. It's still a completely true statement.. based on their own findings or methods.

Why Do You Keep Capitalizing "Subscribers"??

I want to ensure that there's a distinction between Blizzard's definition of "Subscribers" and what you might consider a subscriber.

Yes, Blizzard has a special internal definition of what a "Subscriber" actually means. If that's not proof alone that there are big differences between real players and Blizzard Subscribers - I don't know what is.

Subject Lines and Header Titles might say one thing, but please read the fine print. All MMO companies do this with their numbers, it's not just limited to Blizzard and this shouldn't be a big secret (apparently, though, most gamers are just in complete denial about this distinction).

Here is Blizzard's official definition of a Subscriber™:

World of Warcraft’s Subscriber Definition

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.

So basically,

- a Subscriber is not one single player.
- a Subscriber is any account that has a paid subscription fee (if you haven't logged in, but still have an active subcription - then yes it counts).
- a Subscriber is ALSO any account with a first month's subscription.
- a Subscriber is ALSO any person who has an active prepaid card.
- a Subscriber is ALSO any "Internet Game Room" players who have accessed the game over the past 30 days.

What this means:

- If an account gets banned and a new account is purchased during the same month, that counts as two active subscriptions for one user.
- You pay for the month at the start of the month. When you get banned, you still paid for that entire month and Blizzard won't be refunding your money. The banned/cancelled account will no longer apply once you reach the end of the month.
- A "first month's subscription" is very common especially for gold farmers and gold sellers/traders who need to create new accounts frequently.
- Even though "expired prepaid cards" are mentioned, the cards in fact never expire. You can purchase one in NA/EU, but wait several months/years to activate it for example. When you purchase a prepaid card in China, you can keep adding time to it for as long as you want.
- Blizzard does not provide a definition of an "active prepaid card", so it's possible but highly unlikely, that prepaid cards mean any card that have time on them (whether that time has been used or not.) Since Blizzard does not have immediate access to Point of Sale data, they would base "active prepaid cards" on restocking quantities. If a retailer requires 50 new cards, for example, it's assumed that there are now 50 "active prepaid cards" in the hands of Subscribers, and those would therefore count as a Subscriber.
- Since the game is free in China and it's inexpensive to play, many users have multiple accounts and multiple pre-paid cards. 1 player might represent 2-4 Subscribers for example. These are all considered active pre-paid cards as long as there are still minutes on it.
- Pre-paid cards in China hold minutes (2000 minutes or 4000 minutes for example). If the cards still have 5 minutes left on them, and they are thrown out, that still counts as an Active Subscription. Until the card is completely expired (used up), then it counts as an active prepaid card as per Blizzard's definition.
- There are players worldwide who have multiple accounts (multi-boxing), not a large amount but it exists. One player might represent 8 Subscribers for example.
- "Internet Game Room" players are an interesting scenario. In China for example, players can goto "Game Rooms" (e.g. gaming cafés instead of playing from home) where they can pay for 1-2 hours of gameplay for example. Any user who plays within the 30 day period is counted as an official subscriber. So, you could login to WoW from a Game Room, play for 1 hour to check mail or guild activities and then not sign-in again for an entire month - that still counts as an Active Subscription. Imagine the sheer number of unique logins from Game Rooms? "Game Rooms" as Blizzard calls them are extremely popular in China.

Not Done Yet

Since this entire thing is going to get pretty big, I'm going to divide it up into parts.

From what you've seen so far though, you can probably guess that there is indeed a big difference between what you view as a subscriber (real player? one account?) and what Blizzard defines as a Subscriber.

Next up, I'll show you what Blizzard has said about Subscribers around the world, how many real players are in China, and how many are estimated to be in North America and Europe.

In NA/EU, Blizzard does not publish actual player counts (versus Subscribers). However, in China the WoW Servers are run by NetEase and they do publish actual player counts. I think you'll be surprised by the results.

Blizzard has been pretty quiet about subscription counts from each country, but there was a time when they officially released subscriber figures. These numbers are based on Blizzard's definition of a "subscriber" by the way and are quite interesting to say the least.

In January 2007, when subscription counts totaled 8 million worldwide (Source):

China: 3.5 million
North America: 2.0 million
Europe: 1.5 million
Remaining Territories: 1.0 million

In January 2008, when subscription counts totaled 10 million worldwide (Source):

China: 4.5 million
North America: 2.5 million
Europe: 2.0 million
Remaining Territories: 1.0 million

You can find other posts on Gamasutra with earlier subscription figures too, but it appears that Blizzard stopped revealing extra subscription count information in 2008.

Based on their growth trends, I think it's safe to say that these estimated projections are fairly accurate for Blizzard's latest (October 2010) 12 million subscriber count:

China: 5.5 million
North America: 3.0 million
Europe: 2.5 million
Remaining Territories: 1.0 million

That's pretty interesting. Keep in mind though that "subscriber" counts don't necessarily mean active players. In China, for example, most players have multiple prepaid cards and accounts (since the game itself is free).

Did you want to hear something really spooky?

Six months ago, I worked on estimating the number of subscribers in China versus worldwide figures. I had previously estimated that "At a rate of $15 per month, that means that there are 6.0 million players" outside of China.

So, out of 11.5 million worldwide, it's about 5.5 million Chinese subscriptions and 6.0 million in NA/EU/Other.

And based on official figures provided by Blizzard, it's about 5.5 million Chinese subscriptions and 6.0 million in NA/EU/Other.

Nice.

It appears that my estimated subscription information has been confirmed by Blizzard themselves. =]

What's even more cool is that I can use the information from their 8 and 10 million subscriber figures to calculate even more interesting stuff about Blizzard's financials. More on that to come later though.

* UPDATE:

The original article below was from August 2010, when World of Warcraft's total subscriber base was 11.5 million. However, for a more updated version (e.g. 12 million subscribers and taking a different approach to estimate numbers), please look here.
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Unfortunately, mmogchart.com stopped tracking World of Warcraft's growth back in 2007. However, based on announcements, Blizzard has stated that they have over 11.5 million "Active Subscribers".

Here's an approximate chart of their growth:

Millions of webpages also reiterate Blizzard's official statements and that they have made it clear that these 11.5 million players are "ACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS".

Actual Sales Figures

Something always troubled me though..

According to vgchartz, here are Blizzard's most recent sales figures:

(Note: Approx. sales both retail and digital worldwide and confirmed by NPD.)

How is it possible that they have 11.5M "Active Subscribers" but less than 7M upgraded to WOTLK (released almost 2 years ago) and 7.4M upgraded to Burning Crusade? Let alone, 4.5M players are still playing Vanilla WoW, and there are over 11M players that have been apparently active for over 6 years. Something funny is definitely going on. =]

In February 2010, CEO Mike Morhaime stated that only 30 percent of new World of Warcraft players ever make it past level 10. That's an extremely low retention rate. He also stated that subscription levels had not grown since December 2008 - they had the same number of subscribers now that they did then.

Given their sales numbers, low retention rate, but high claims of "active subscribers" - it just seems impossible. So, let's look at the factual numbers.

Investor Statements

Here are their financials over the most recent 3 month period:

World of Warcraft Gross Profits: $301.75 million
World of Warcraft Operating Costs: $12.75 million (Source)
World of Warcraft GAAP Net Revenue: $289 million (Latest Quarterly Report)

(Note: GAAP means "Generally Accepted Accounting Principles" but when corporations use non-GAAP methodologies, they can inflate or stretch numbers in their books. So it's safe to say that GAAP is the more "honest" figure. If you review their other Quarterly Reports for 2008 and 2009, they also show similar rates.)

Sales during those months were negligible, so their monthly subscriptions totaled approx. $301.75 million gross worldwide.

At a rate of $15 per month, that only accounts for 6.7 million active subscribers! That's almost 50 percent!

(Note:  Chinese players pay on average ~$7.27 USD per month and account for ~23% of all worldwide players.  However, most CWOW players have multiple accounts.  All other geographies pay approx. $15 per month.  More details here.)

But they said 11.5 million subscribers, how is this possible? Rather than focusing on just the latest 3 months, let's look at WoW player growth and loss for the past 4 years.

Player's Who Have Left World of Warcraft

Since there isn't any public information on the number of players that have left WoW, let's look at players who have been BANNED in North America and EU alone.

Here are the official Blizzard announcements since their launch:

Mar 2005: 1,000 accounts
Dec 2005: 18,000 accounts
Apr 2006: 5,400 accounts + 10,700 temp banned
May 2006: 30,000 accounts
Jun 2006: 59,000 accounts
Oct 2006: 76,000 accounts
Nov 2006: 105,000 accounts
Mar 2007: 100,000 accounts
Apr 2007: 114,000 accounts

Blizzard was banning approximately 100,000 accounts EVERY MONTH until they abruptly stopped making announcements. It's now been 3 years since they have made any official announcements regarding player banning, even though the banning still continues to happen.

Well, of course they stopped making announcements. Nothing shakes customer and investor confidence like knowing over a million accounts per year were being banned! =]

* UPDATE:

In May of 2008, it's estimated that Blizzard banned 350,000 to 500,000 accounts over a 3 day period in one of the biggest ban waves ever (most Glider accounts were associated with this ban).

Blizzard never made any official announcements regarding this ban though. It's not unheard of though for Blizzard to ban several hundreds-of-thousands of accounts. Remember when they banned 320,000 B.Net accounts in Apr 2010 and 350,000 B.Net accounts in Nov 2008?

Also of interesting note, check out the exhibits from the MDY v Blizzard lawsuit. Part of the evidence is that MDY sold over 100,000 Glider keys and that the majority of Glider users owned multiple WoW accounts (several had 3 or more). Glider users, on average, purchase one additional WoW account.

What do these trends show us?

There are, of course, many variables that leave open margin for error (e.g. abandoned accounts, players that get banned and stop playing, hacked accounts, etc.) but all of those figures are negligible and to keep things simple, the approximations below will favor Blizzard's figures.

The banning trends showed that approximately 1.0 to 1.5% of the total subscriber base were being banned on a month-by-month basis.

Even though that number was increasing, let's assume that only 1.0% were being banned per month.

On the other side of the coin, World of Warcraft's growth rate is approx. 2.0% per month (1.9138% per month to be exact) starting from the same time as the bans. (Note: Between Mar 09 and now, their growth rate is actually negative, but let's ignore that factor for now.)

So we know that almost 500,000 players were banned by April 2007. Between Oct 06 and Apr 07, World of Warcraft's user base grew from 7 to 8 million players. However, during that exact same time frame 400,000 players were banned.

The mathematics need balance.. so if WoW is growing by 2% per month (Active Subscriptions) but they are also banning 1% per month.. where does that extra 1% come from that properly balances the total number of subscribers?

When a player gets banned in the middle of the month, they typically activate a new account. However, their subscription was already paid for at the beginning of the month. On the books, that amounts to 2 "Active Subscriptions" per month because the banned account expires at the end of the month. =]

That missing 1% are actually WoW sales by banned players who purchase a new account within the same month or next.

So "active subscriptions" are actually double the number of real players. Blizzard's statement that they have 11.5 million "Active Subscriptions" is indeed accurate.. but with a twist, they're not referring to real players on those accounts. They're paid subscriptions, not players.

Summary

According to their official financials, there are currently 6.7 million paying customers. On average, about 100k players were banned per month, however since their growth rate has reduced the ban-rate would go down as well. So there could be anywhere between 6.4 million to 6.7 million real active players currently.

That number actually makes a lot more sense and satisfies their sales figures of WoW and the two expansion packs.

And according to growth (vs banned) statistics over the past 4 years, there were probably between 5.75 and 6.9 million real players during it's prime. Based on annual averages, the subscription count would be double that number, giving you the "11.5 million active subscriptions" figure. Even after favoring Blizzard for high and low figures, it's plain to see that during the course of their constant growth (see chart) about 50% of that profit was made by player-bans who purchased new accounts.

I think what had happened was that at one point World of Warcraft reached about 7 million players, but 40% of those players were banned and they purchased new accounts with new subscriptions which then created their "11.5 million Active Subscriptions" boast (averaged over several months to a year).

Blizzard has also not updated their official "11.5M" statement in over 2 years, so that is the figure that all of their employees "stick with" whether it's accurate or not today. It reminds me of Cingular's "fewest dropped calls" marketing strategy. They aggressively marketed a statistic based on a singular group's highly questionable findings and told the world that out all of all of their competitors, they had the "Fewest Dropped Calls" and the "Allover Network" citing said group as "the leading independent research company". =]

Their marketing strategies are actually quite brilliant and I admire it from a business perspective. I've discussed Blizzard's reputation management in the past and this is just another great example: It's all about wording and how they perceive the numbers. =] They've lead the entire world to believe that they have 11.5 million active subscribers (thinking "players"), when in fact it was really half that amount (possibly less than half.)

(Note: There are players with multiple accounts (ie, 2 accounts, 5-boxers, 10-boxers, etc), but it's a very small percentage and left out of these figures.)

Since growth has stopped and player-bans are down (50% of profit), this is actually a very excellent time for release of their expansion pack, it will help bolster their profit from sales and allow them to restart the cyclical process mentioned above.

So, this is just another interesting side of Blizzard most people don't know about. I love the company, not just from a gaming perspective (I've bought all of their games and will continue to do so) but also from a business perspective.. all of their business processes and methods are as polished as their games.

* Update:

Just a quick note regarding a comment made by one of the readers. Their net revenue / gross profit would also contain the sale of services and virtual items. (For example, transfers, race/faction changes, the Celestial Steed, etc.) I've been giving Blizzard favorable numbers to determine maximum possible number of players. However, if their net revenue contains 20% sales of services, for example, that means that there are even LESS players. So there could be anywhere been 6 and 7 million players, assuming that all profits are based on subscriptions. Include sales of anything else WoW related - and that reduces the number of possible players drastically.

Keep in mind, that merchandise sales are separate. The authenticator, tshirts, mugs, WoW keyboard/mouse, etc are not included in this sales figure (different vendors.)