Analyst: WAR subscriptions will eventually settle around 250,000
by Samuel Axon 
Sep 24th 2008 at 12:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, MMO industry, New titles, Warhammer Online, News items
Given the hype around the game, those numbers seem a little low, but Bhatia said he based his projections on statements made by EA reps saying that the company hopes to break even on its investment. After the game shipped 1.5 million copies, some initial sales data began to emerge which indicated that sales are meeting but not significantly exceeding EA's conservative expectations. In the end Bhatia expects the company to pull in between $55 and 60 million dollars of revenue from WAR.
Numbers like the ones above would clearly not make WAR a WoW-killer, but they would make it one of the elite few truly successful Western, subscription-based MMOs. Certainly this prediction is a far cry from Paul Barnett's wild bet. But of course even Barnett admits his number is a little outrageous, and he only stands to lose $26 if he loses, y'know.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brainiacrk said on 12:11PM 9-24-2008
Analysts might as well be weathermen. Actually, that's a low blow to weathermen.
That said... I can see this game, as many have said, having server population issues in regard to Tier level once everyone starts getting higher level characters.
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bob said on 9:34PM 9-30-2008
this just in: WAR has reached 500,000 subscriptions in its first week. thats subscriptions, not just sales. apparently thats a record for mmo sales, so...that analyst was full of crap.
WAAAAAGH!!!!!
Venix said on 1:01PM 9-24-2008
And he qualifies as an expert...how?
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Clandestine_Blaze said on 1:23PM 9-24-2008
"Venix said...
And he qualifies as an expert...how? "
Well, he's a business analyst. He'll crunch numbers and make somewhat plausible projections based on capital, initial growth, market saturation, economic conditions, traditional performance, history, etc.
However, games like this rarely follow those projections. WAR will, like every game out there, develop a devoted fan base and will continue to cater to those that are tired of the current crop of MMO's.
I personally LOVE this game and can't see how anyone wouldn't, but that's just my biased opinion.
Winterblink said on 1:16PM 9-24-2008
I remember a day when analysts weren't so in control of the popularity of games and/or hardware in this industry.
Nowadays they can totally turn the sales of anything into crap with the merest suggestion of negativity in a prediction.
"Numbers like the ones above" do not indicate how awesome the game really is, and it is extremely good.
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Tasogare said on 4:38PM 9-24-2008
Don't blow a gasket there, Jack. There is absolutly nothing wrong with women and younger people playing games...nor is ANYONE suggesting that. What david is saying, is that the secret to WoW's astronomical success is that it appeals so widely to the mainstream, to casual gamers.
Did you know that games like Peggle and Bejeweled widely outsell most console and PC games? The reason for that is because they're casual, they're easy to get into, and that means that both stay at home moms and people even older can play them at their leisure without having to worry about commitments and steep learning curves. That is also what WoW is. Simple. Now this isn't a bad thing by any means, but your example of the size of your guild and how many members are active is completely meaningless as that has absolutly NOTHING to do with what david was saying.
Casuals aren't necessarily the people that are looking to join a huge guild, and they're DEFINITLY not the people who are looking to be on and active for several hours a day, every day. The people who make up a very large portion of WoW's population, and the people who are making the game as rabid a success as it is, are the people who pay $15 a month to play for a few hours a week....which is what he said.
As far as your final comment...I think I'll take the ever changing world of keep/castle sieges that have a the always challenging human element, over the soul crushing monotany that is raiding the same scripted encounters over and over again, or wiping in the attempt. Don't knock something until you tried it, champ.
Winterblink said on 5:12PM 9-24-2008
"Blowing a gasket" is writing four paragraphs about something which you obviously didn't understand. I suggest actually reading and comprehending something first before replying with a rant.
Please try again, and have a nice day. I'm off to have some fun in WAR RvR.
david said on 1:50PM 9-24-2008
Well, this guy is wrong... AOC might have 40,000 subscriptions the way it has gone, but WAR will have close to a million IMO... WAR is the best MMO I have ever played and I think it will eventually get into 2nd place behind WoW...
The reason WoW is still popular is that women and children still play it... They play a few hours a week while the rest of us want a game that is going to last a LONG time... WoW just doesn't cut it anymore with the farming, pve raiding or the crappy pvp arenas...
WAR IS AWESOMENESS!! WAAGH!
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Jack said on 2:18PM 9-24-2008
This is some bull, I am so tired of this "The reason WoW is still popular is that women and children still play it... They play a few hours a week while the rest of us want a game that is going to last a LONG time..."
This is not true first of all I play WoW for like 4 years now and a hell lot more them a few hours a week I am also not a kid or women I am in a guild with over 500 members all active and only 1 woman and 2 "kids" that are under 20 years old. Also want is wrong with woman playing a game??
I am pretty sure lots of kids and woman play warhammer also now and I wonder of you will be able to play it more them a year sure its good now... but there is not real much stuff to do on off hours and higher levels....
Jess said on 2:20PM 9-24-2008
I think 1 million is a much more reasonable number. WAR is not a WoW-killer ( just like Heavy Metal will never outsell Pop Music) but 250,000 subs is extremely low.
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my2cents said on 2:21PM 9-24-2008
I don't buy it. I think WAR is going to reach a steady base of at least a million or two. Obviously, that's just a guess of mine but 300,000 seems way too low.
In WoW, I was in a rather large guild throughout TBC. About half of them are trying out WAR now and a few dozen have already completely left WoW for WAR.
You know how many guildies left for AoC? One. You know how many guildies left for LOTRO? Zero. I realize you can't just go off of the behavior of one guild, but I'm hearing similar reports left and right. Just something to think about...
(For the record, I'm not a crazed WAR fanboi who desperately wants WAR to do well. I do like it a lot, but I plan to continue with WoW also. Wrath is amazing so far in beta.)
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rihahn said on 2:29PM 9-24-2008
Well, let's run some "Gamer Numbers" to compete with the "Analyst Numbers"... Though I'd trust gamers to make more sense of things...
WAR has 55 servers running right now.
WAR had 36 servers running on opening day.
WAR had 1.5 million boxes on the shelves for opening day.
So, there is a maximum pool of about 1.5 million players who can even log into WAR. (Yes, there are a few downloaded copies, but probably not enough to affect things numerically.)
We can surmise that Mythic has sized their servers around the industry standard "guess" of ~3000 players online per server at once. And projected use based on a 50% utilization (meaning there are roughly 50% more people who have characters on that server than are actually online at any one time)
This gives us around 6000 people per server, as a conservative estimate. 6000 players times 36 servers is 216,000 players... Which fits with Mythic's published guesses of a quarter million players at opening.
But 36 servers wasn't enough...
At 55 servers we get a total of 330,000 players. Which probably means that Mythic saw a solid 250,000 people online and hustled to get some more hardware online to soak up the overage. Kudos Mythic by the way for getting the additional servers turned on so quickly.
So we can safely assume there are over a quarter million WAR players right now. We can also see that 19 servers have been added in the last ten days...
What we need to do now is watch how many servers get added over time and extrapolate the user base from that - but having been involved in quite a few MMO launches since UO, I can say with some certainty that adding 19 servers in the first ten days is a VERY good sign.
Additionally, as an employee at a gaming company and having friends at many other gaming companies, I can tell you that a positive response to the game is almost universal across the folks who make these things. We still have some fence-sitters here, but day by day more boxes of WAR are being sold as friends recruit friends to get into the fray.
One other item would be my observation that the only negative response to WAR that I've seen so far centers around the PvP aspect of the game - but as it becomes more widely known that PvP in WAR isn't about getting camped for an hour by 3 guys four times your level the converts are starting to be more prevalent.
My two cents anyways.
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mandarin said on 4:57PM 9-24-2008
I wouldnt put too much emphasis on what some analyst says about the numbers. It's all just a guess. The only people who can say the numbers are EA and Mythic.
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starzzareblind said on 5:41PM 9-24-2008
This looks ridiculously low for how good Warhammer is. It's the best MMORPG to launch since World of Warcraft, and almost equals the same amount of content when you add all the things in the game together, for a launch, it's got so much to do it's ridiculous. Not to mention how smoothly it went thus far. I don't see Warhammer getting 10 million any time soon, but Warcraft capped at 400,000 in it's first 6 months. It took quite a bit of time for the word of mouth get peoples attention and more than a year for WoW to hit 1 million. I see Warhammer coming in second, at maybe 3-4 million max. Warcraft will probably be the only game that reaches the 10 million mark for years.
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Embar said on 6:59PM 9-24-2008
This analyst is SO far off the mark!!! What is he basing his numbers off of? EQ? The original mythic game DAOC?!
AOC got 400,000 the first month and it didn't have HALF the appeal of this game!! Everyone is bored of WOW and looking for something new. WOTLK is just more of the same. bleh.
This game is the BEST MMO to come out since WOW. For ANYONE that enjoys PVP Battlegrounds in WOW, WAR is THE only game in town now. 12 Battlegrounds at least, ALL better than the Battlegrounds in WOW. Plus RvR, Plus end game siege.
Best pvp ever to be done in an MMO.
1 million is a MODEST prediction for this awesome game.
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ScytheNoire said on 10:34PM 9-24-2008
Who is this analyst working for?
I agree with the above comments that this guy is way off. Obviously, businessmen don't know about gaming.
WAR will easily have a million customers, and will only grow from there. It's a great game, beyond the botched EA launch, which we are now moving past.
Mythic and Warhammer Online will do fine, as long as they can stop EA from screwing it up. Unfortunately, EA is one of those dumb companies that is run by businessmen.
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ymrar said on 12:57PM 9-26-2008
Let me take a guess how the guy at Edge worked on this one...
He calls several analysts and posts about the one with the most negative numbers. Voila, we have a smashing title!
I might be totally wrong, I might be totally right, you decide..
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Andrew said on 5:32PM 9-25-2008
Hearing people refer to the launch as "botched" still makes me laugh. Not a single server crashing for six days, and no need to bring them down in that time right after launch is pretty damn impressive, and unparalleld in any other opening day for an MMO. Hell, most expansions aren't as stable as that.
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ark_keeper said on 3:32PM 9-26-2008
This data is definitely flawed. They are easing into the release. There are still two things that will increase the userbase as they are able to handle it.
1. Friend passes - none available yet, so the only people playing right now were willing to put up $50 to check it out! There is no trial or anything to decide for those fence sitters. Once they have the server load to handle it, they will be ready to add plenty more users.
2. Digital downloads - this goes right along with the friend passes. Add free trials and digital downloads and there will be new subscribers left and right. WAR will pass 1 million subscribers no problem.
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