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.

Not sure if you've read older posts, but way back in September of 2010 I had said that the ZG mounts would be making a comeback. I couldn't find any other posts to the contrary.. all of the news and WoW sites were all saying that the mounts were gone for good.

I had heard something else though. =]

Glad to see that everything I wrote about so long ago has finally come to fruition - the mounts, the Insane title, and the Qiraji Battle Tank available for more players and outside of the instance.

In regards to new Cataclysm realms, it appears that everything was all setup internally for new realm deployments too. But, the "Cataclysm experiment" failed to meet Blizzard's expectations and it looks like it has actually resulted in a reverse flow of subscriptions unfortunately. =[

This is good news for their next expansion pack however (or even content patches between now and then.) It means that they'll really have to do something awesome to bring players back. I'm hoping for a couple new Hero classes, a new crafting profession (create relics/wands/bows/fletching or elemental poisons for rogues), class-specific quests (like a Rogue's Den that issues daily assassination quests that require cunning), and/or maybe a third faction (with all brand new classes/races "from another dimension" to adjust the lore.) Paid class changes, larger backpack, more character slots, or progression servers might be interesting too.

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.