Hmm I thought they had 700k subs, wasn't that the number touted recently. I also though they sold over a million copies, the drop off rate does seem to be fair substantial, but that might be linked to the overall numbers of folks who play MMO's in general, due to external influences like the economy etc.

Still not chicken feed, but it has certainly realigned my thoughts on how popular this game was, I had figured it was bigger than that. I wonder what their break even figure is given the investment and running costs of a triple AAA title.

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300k subscribers? where the hell are they all.

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300K? Weak

In other news, World of Warcraft banned 500K users just becuase they were "feeling a little gassy".

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I would be interested to hear how fast they lost those subscribers or whether or not there was users inflation.

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As for where the hell is everyone????? heheheh common question!

That can be explained I think, I did some math ages ago, and here was my very basic reasoning.

For about a quarter of a million subs, where they play around 5 hours a month (which was a median average playtime number from an unreliable web resource) would mean that during each hour there would be around 2000 people online in a given hour, split between servers worldwide, I think that would mean between 50-150 online at anyone time on a consistent basis.

The numbers are very hard to interpret, but I think it's very hard to equate number of subscriptions to direct player activity.

If anyone else has any better math to determine the perception of players online against sub, please post here, my numbers are very rough and just to give an impression of scale from a single user perspective.

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I'm back to playing WAR, and this is pretty much what I expected; 300k subs. The game only appeals to a niche crowd. You better like RvR because that's all there is to do, the PVE truly sucks, and scenarios get boring very quickly. But the RvR can be a blast as long as you don't mind riding from Keep to Keep, BO to BO, retaking and assaulting the same locations over and over and over again........but I'm enjoying it.....for now.

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300k = ouch.

I wouldn't think it bodes terribly ill for the game's future though ; it is a solid foundation number, and even if it doesn't rise particularly that should keep it going for quite some years.

Like Leshrac pointed out - it's a niche game targetting a niche market and now seemingly successfully securing that niche market.

I suspect that the sharp drop in numbers is just that many purchasers ( like myself ) expected it to be more rounded with a niche specialty, rather than all niche with barebones PvE attached - in the long run all the people who've left won't be significant beyond the initial cash injection that's already been banked.

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Amazing, who would have thought the crap customer service and lack of content owuld result in this. To bad i have no friends playing this title to verify the population. Personaly sounds more like pr to keep investors from jumping ship, such as opening day subs.

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I knew that the issue of subscriber-numbers-to-be-successful had come up before, and found it with some digging :

[ MTV Multiplayer interview Mark Jacobs, 8/29/08 ]

"With EA and the resources backing “Warhammer Online,” I asked Jacobs how one would measure a successful MMO in the age of “WoW” with its 11 million worldwide subscribers. “I would say we don’t have to get anywhere near that number to be considered successful,” he said. “Would I like us to be number one? Well, of course. Do we have to be number one to be successful? No. I want us to be no less than number two; that would make me very happy.” For the number two spot, Jacobs reasoned that “Warhammer” would need at least a half-million subscribers, which he guessed was close to what “Final Fantasy” and “EverQuest 2” have now. “Let’s just say north of half a million would mean we’re successful. Now how a far north? I wouldn’t mind being a little bit cold.”

According to Jacobs, another way to measure success is to look at the number of servers a game has added in a six-month period. “The corollary to that is if you’ve seen a game consolidate servers, you know it’s in deep, deep trouble — that’s not a healthy sign for an MMO,” he said, citing Sony’s January-released “Pirates of the Burning Sea” as a recent example. “It will be the same for ‘Warhammer.’ Look at us six months out. Look at us six weeks out. If we’re not adding servers, we’re not doing well.”

I'm still not forecasting doom & gloom, it was just annoying to only half-remember this talk.

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Ugh.. 300k? That's it? That's so low, they're going to fail so hard.

It's only 4.5 million in subscription fees a month. That's totally pathetic.

....Some people are morons.

No game, not even Blizzards other MMO will ever get the number WoW has, not close, not half ways, just never ever again.
WoW is a fluke giant success and no other game will have those numbers.

300k is a very good base for a very good game.


Also I currently play WoW, so you don't need to bash me, though I would play Warhammer is my comp didn't run it at 3fps.

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That's it? I thought they'd AT LEAST have half a million. Even AoC had 500,000 at approximately the equivalent point in their post-launch lifespan, after losing 300,000 in a few months lol.

Obviously that's not the case now but I figured WAR would be way more successful.

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They can hit the 500K subs if Mythic listens to its player base.Until now they have been in "we know what we are doing" attitude and this is not working so well.If they make T4 less boring and fix those damn ctd and server crashes may be some such as myself who cancelled will come back...but over all 300k is not so bad.

All they have to do is reading this http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2862440&postcount=1

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I think that isn't a bad number, considering that WotLK launched pretty close behind.

I'd still be playing WAR if my system didn't have the "random crash an hour" issue.

I'm going to have limited bandwidth for the next couple of months, but am fully looking forward to playing WAR on my next system.

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The question is not "is 300k a good number?" The question is, "is it going up, or is it going down the drain?" Let's look at the facts. (1) EA and Mythic both set a minimum success goal of 500k just to break even. It's not breaking even. And don't show me server cost and network cost estimates, remember that they borrowed gods know how many millions of dollars to pay the development cost and those loans are due. (2) By EA's own admission, they've laid off CSRs in droves. No wonder the cheaters are, as I've experienced lately, taking over the whole game. (3) IGN did a video tour of Mythic the other day. The office space was over half empty. They haven't admitted to having laid off developers, officially, in public, but it's pretty clear that they have. You can see it in how sadly un-ambitious the development schedule for the next five months is, too. (4) There has never been a successful MMO that was bleeding subscriber numbers at the three month mark, not anything like this.

Start the death watch. My bet is that they pull the plug no later than December 2010. (And I was only off by a couple of weeks on my prediction for the death of Tabula Rasa. Same math.) So enjoy it while you can. There's a lot there to enjoy, including the best expletive-deleted PvP I've ever seen in an MMO, and some truly impressive artwork. But don't put off trying it for too long, or you'll miss out. And at the rate they're bleeding customers, if you wait much past May, there won't be anybody to play it with.

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