NA/EU Realm Populations
In North America and Europe, realm population information is extremely difficult to come by.
You pretty much have to rely on WarcraftRealm's CensusPlus UI Mod (Link). Right now, for example it's shows a total of 5.5M characters (however, these are characters from Level 10-80 and each account can have a maximum of 50 players across all realms.)
So, you can understand that the numbers aren't that accurate.
Blizzard also doesn't share Realm Population information because of obvious reasons (those details can only hurt them, not help them.) Even the definition of Low, Medium, and High Population realms can change - there's no fixed number as I have stated previously.
Blizzard has even confirmed this to be true. The populations are relative, meaning that they can shift back and forth at any time, depending on the population of other realms and their relation to the servers (Source). Population caps can even be increased/decreased depending on the number of servers being utilized or out of commission.
(Blizzard just confirmed it to be a fact Mr. Blizzard Troll. I guess that's further confirmation that he's just a support agent, and doesn't actually know anything about Blizzard's internal operations.)
China Realm Populations
So to summarize, in NA/EU it's almost impossible to determine census information because Blizzard will not share the information.
But in China, it's operated by NetEase so it's a totally different story! They're completely open to sharing player information on each realm. =]
Census information is pulled straight from the WoW servers by Beijing Network Technology Ltd. (there's no Census UIMod needed on each user's PC), and is publicly available here. Below are the numbers during peak gaming hours on WoW. In this case, there were approx. 790,000 users logged in concurrently.
Alliance: 338300 - Horde: 451655
So basically, a 3:4 ratio which is not bad.
The number of realms in China has also been growing steadily (many new realms launched this year and last), and some Chinese players have noted that many people are now returning in CWOW in anticipation of WOTLK's imminent release.
However, the first thing you'll notice is the incredible imbalances on the realms. I've attached screenshots below.
Some servers have 1200 horde and only 40 Alliance on the server. That's a 1:60 ratio! These drastic differences have also been confirmed by CWOW players.. they'll have thousands of players on one faction, but less than 50 on the other. It's not uncommon at all.
There also doesn't appear to be a lot of realm balancing activities. As you can see, realm A:H ratios are all over the place and most realms operate with one side significantly bigger than another. Because of this, it turns most realms into a PVE (everyone working together on one side) type realm.
To confirm my assumption, I checked with several CWOW players. They said that PVP is not very common in China, and it's mostly PVE. A more recent comment even stated, "even on PVP servers, PVE is much more popular."
As opposed to NA/EU Realms, the CWOW gaming culture seems to favor "Playing Together" rather than "Playing Against Each Other" (on average). There are many realms with a 1:0.01 ratio for example. And that's very accurate information (as hard as it is to believe for US players) and can be confirmed by any Chinese players playing on those realms. Server populations have actually improved quite a bit bit over the past few weeks, which is a good sign for WOTLK. =]
It's all pretty neat actually, and also explains why Guilds and gold PUGs are so huge and why gold farming is more popular and strategies used are almost identical. (For example, rare gold farming strategies that are applicable to NA/EU might not work in China or players probably aren't even aware of them.)
Based on those figures, I have to wonder if the same is true for NA/EU realms? When talking to US players, they often claim that their servers have 1:2, 1:4, or even 1:10 ratios (either they out-number the opposite faction, or vice versa.) They never had any evidence to back up their claims though, since realm population is not shared by Blizzard.
So in an earlier post, I received a troll comment using the standard "Heil Grammatik" technique. He sounded like a typical Blizzard fanboy, so I figured I would check it out.
(Note: it was a single transposition error that didn't actually impact the calculations.. but he didn't test out the math to confirm as he was too busy salivating over his next troll snack.)
But guess what? He was from IRVINE, CA. Blizzard fanboy central. =]
"Anonymous Troll" not so anonymous anymore: ip68-111-72-78.oc.oc.cox.net (68.111.72.78) (As of Aug 27/10 anyways, I'm assuming his IP is dynamic.)
It doesn't stop there. He's a Blizzard employee too!
He uses Firefox at work and at home (on a Windows OS.. ewww) and was reading a limited number of articles from work (which I'm assuming is against their policy - e.g. personal surfing) and the remaining he read from home. Here's a small excerpt from the logs:
That IP (198.74.38.59) is one of Blizzard's external facing IP addresses by the way. =]
His most recent access from work to read the blog was Aug 26 at 7:57:57PM PST.
You know Mr. Troll, just because you're a late night worker (call center/support staff judging by the hours), it doesn't mean you should be goofing off on the internet. There are tons of paying customers that need actual help, but you're too busy surfing the internet and wasting company resources and time.
After he left work for home, that's when he returned to the same webpages and then starting posting random comments. He spent an average of 10-20 seconds (entry and exit) going through every single post on the blog. =]
For some of the more recent posts, however, he spent 45 seconds to 1.5 minutes reading them (he wanted to make sure his more recent troll posts were read for example). I guess he didn't feel safe writing the troll posts from work, as their NOC team would have records. I should note Mr. Troll, that this blog receives other visits from different Blizzard employees too by the way and they will be reading this. Now that they have one of your visit timestamps, you had best watch over your shoulder. =]
Way to represent your business too by the way: steal company time, don't support your customers, then troll webpages. Judging by your access logs and constant refreshes, I can see that you're totally dedicated to your job.. trolling that is, not supporting Blizzard customers.
If you would like to see one his posts and my retort, check out this article and scroll down at the bottom.
His other post was just to tell me to stop pulling numbers out of my *expletive* and to look at Blizzard's Quarterly Reports which are public. The thing is.. those were the numbers I was using. I copy-and-pasted the Quarterly Reports to the various blog posts, and provided links to the public information. Ouch. I guess that's what you get for only skimming over the posts (10-20 seconds per post.)
* UPDATE:
While I was writing up this latest entry, he apparently bombarded the blog (mostly swearing) with even more troll posts. WOW! He sure is pissed too and did NOT appreciate my response at all.
He's going through every single article he can find. Many of his comments have even been cancelled as well (ie, he started typing a new comment, realized a mistake, cancelled it, and then moved onto another blog post.)
I can't wait until he reads this. Tee hee. =]
My friends and I are laughing our asses off over his posts and I have some friends at Blizzard that I'll be sending these to as well. This has been a wonderful day.
* UPDATE:
The Blogspot automated spam filter apparently captured about 1/3 of his comments too. That's really hard to do! His troll posts must have a lot of common phrases and keywords used by spammers. I'm having too much fun.
Predicted last month (Link), this is also a good "sneak peek" of other upcoming virtual items that will be made available at the SC2 store. You'll also see similar virtual items in Diablo 3 no doubt.
Blizzcon 2010 attendees (online and IRL) will receive an exclusive In-Game WoW Pet and SC2 players will receive an exclusive Character Portrait (Murloc Marine) and have special unit model changes made (e.g. decals on your armor.)
Blizzard might even donate the initial proceeds to charity!
At Blizzcon 2010 (this coming October), there is also supposed to be a "HUGE" Diablo 3 announcement. Game Director Jay Wilson said, "I can say that this Blizzcon, in terms of Diablo news, will be the biggest one that we've ever had."
I really haven't been following Diablo 3 that much, and I don't have any inside contacts that are working on that specific project there so I have no idea what the announcement will be.
But, I am completely expecting to be disappointed.
Here's what I'm thinking off the top of my head (in order of most likely in the unlikely event the news will indeed be "huge"):
1. It better not be anything stupid, like introducing multiple new classes. "Huge news everyone! There are two new classes!".. "Just kidding.. there's THREE! OMG!" *cheers and yelling from the crowd and many erections*
2. Maybe #1 but also throw in some new "features" to promote, like crafting skills, a PVP arena (or other PVP related stuff similar to WoW), new spells (also similar to WoW), hired NPCs, and/or some web and mobile components that are tied into the game.
3. That D3 is ahead of schedule and we'll see it sooner than expected like next year. (They won't give an exact date though.)
4. Diablo 3 will not just release for the PC, but also the PS3 and XBOX360. Yay.
5. Diablo 3 will be an On-Demand gaming platform (improbable though, as it's too soon.)
I can't see there being any other kind of "big news". He also said that it will be the "biggest one we've ever had", so I really hope it's not just the introduction of 1 new class.. but it probably will be.
As mentioned in previous posts, Blizzard bans players at a rate of 100k per month. It's probably closer to 60k now, though, due to diminishing subscription numbers.
For the longest time though, they were making a profit of approx. $12 million dollars per month just by banning players. (The cost of new subscription, old subscription, WoW license + expansion packs.)
It's a pretty big chunk too. Banning players apparently amounts to approx. 10-15% of Activision Blizzard's Quarterly Net Income!
Not only that, but on the "books" it gives the appearance that they have 2 players when, in fact, they only have 1 player. This doubles their "Active Subscription" numbers to please the shareholders and improve customer confidence. Banning players is just another "alternative revenue stream" really. And, they'll be making even more money (per banned player) when Cataclysm comes out.
"But if a player get's banned, why then is it so easy for them to start back up again? They're probably highly technical right? They use new PCs, new MAC IDs (or spoofing software), employ proxy servers to mask their IP addresses, change their accounts around, right??"
Well, no actually. Let me explain.
Blizzard collects a TON of uniquely identifying and personal information about you.
Let's review the WoW Client and associated Warden system.
Warden, as you know, is a polymorphic (hidden) application that hides on your system and constantly changes it's code to remain hidden and obscure it's activities. It collects a ton of information from your PC and forwards it all to Blizzard.
If you weren't aware of this, here's some information to bring you up to speed:
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/privacy.html
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html
http://www.wow.com/2007/11/15/blizzards-new-warden-and-our-privacy/
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2005/10/new-gaming-feature-spyware
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=127684
According to Blizzard, the purpose of the software is:
- to make sure you can play the game without fear of hacks or keyloggers
- to protect your account from being compromised
- check for hacks and bots to prevent cheating
- survey for future games so that developers can better understand our systems. "During each survey period, we obtain information regarding the CPU, RAM, operating system, video, audio, HD/CD/DVD, and network connection you use to connect to World of Warcraft." (Link)
There's a ton of information that Warden collects. It includes, but certainly not limited to:
- IP Address
- PC Name
- User Names / Logged in User Name
- MAC Address
- OS Version, Patches installed
- Browser Version
- Software Installed
- Website URLs open at the time of the scan
- Documents on desktop, or documents open at the time of scan
- Accesses every process and program running on the PC
- Sniffs email addresses
- Webpage favorites and bookmarks
How serious is Blizzard in stopping this type of activity?
Even though they have the information available to completely ban cheaters for good, or at least make it extremely difficult for them to create a new account, they don't.
Blizzard collects a ton of unique information about your PC constantly but they only ban the ACCOUNTS and nothing else.
To be clear:
- Blizzard does NOT ban by IP Address (they know if it's static).
- Blizzard does NOT ban by MAC Address (very easy to do, highly effective).
- Blizzard does NOT ban by user name, address, credit card information or any other unique info.
This means that if you're a horrible cheating exploiting speed-hacking PVP bastard, and someone catches you and reports you, all you have to do is simply create a new account and power-level your toons back up to 80 within a week. That's it. Feel free to put it on your old credit card too, Blizzard doesn't care.
How serious is Blizzard in protecting the user?
Warden is also supposed to protect your account from key loggers and trojan horses, not just detect cheaters and botters.
I installed 3 common WoW keylogging applications (on a testbed PC of course), Warden did not detect them or warn me at all when logging into the servers. I suppose it's possible that Warden's account protection features haven't been updated in 5 years.. after all, most of their efforts seem concentrated on trying to detect cheaters and botters (and build up a list of "Players To Be Banned").
Warden has been so ineffective in protecting users that Blizzard had to release the Authenticator token. It wouldn't take much though to get Warden to detect keyloggers and actually protect users, but that would cut into their Authenticator sales.
All of these facts point to a single truth: Blizzard is serious about detecting cheaters, but not serious about protecting the user. They want the return business after all. :)
Warden 2.0
In an earlier post, I had said:
"And because they can introduce the services any time they want, they only have to release them if they are showing poor performance for that quarter."
Coincidentally, Warden 2.0 was released on June 23, 2010 in the middle of the quarter when their profits were the lowest they've seen in 21 months.
There was a huge BLITZ on banning accounts, Blizzard got some good PR and gave the impression that they're making WoW safer for players and stopping hacks, but nothing has really changed at all. Banned players have re-activated their accounts and Blizzard received a massive spike in profits from the "returning players."
It's just like when police have "blitzes" themselves.. speeding blitz, unsafe vehicle blitz, sex trafficking blitz, drug blitz, etc. It's only effective that one time, there's never any follow up or consistency, and it's really just to rebuild confidence and address complaints. Nothing ever changes though. If Blizzard was serious about protecting honest users, bans would be permanent and based on the person not the account.
Warden 2.0 is a very clever alternative revenue stream for Blizzard.
Even though they can create new accounts at any time, botters, hackers, cheaters will always need to employ new methods to avoid detection however. Mostly because it's inconvenient when they get caught and they have to start from scratch. They never have any worries about not being able to play again.. it's just a renewed investment of time.
It's under Blizzard's best interest though to keep detection algorithms up to date however. The more players they can ban, the more reactivations there will be, and the more profit they reap. =]
tl;dr; Warden is an ineffective anti-cheating method by design and is employed as a means to reap profit.