WoW subscriptions down to 5 million

[Trouble]

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/07/wow-subscriptions-down-to-5-million.html

Blizzard is quick to boast about their "over 11 million subscribers", but more than half of these subscribers are in China. And the Chinese servers have been down for a month now, with rumors circulating that they won't come back up anytime soon.

It's always been somewhat of a farce to refer to Chinese WoW players as "subscribers" but I guess plenty of other MMO's use half bullshitty numbers too.

[Jayce]

How should Chinese WoW players be referred to, if not subscribers?

[schild]

How should Chinese WoW players be referred to

In a muted breath.

And never, ever in public.

[Gobbeldygook]

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/07/wow-subscriptions-down-to-5-million.html

Blizzard is quick to boast about their "over 11 million subscribers", but more than half of these subscribers are in China. And the Chinese servers have been down for a month now, with rumors circulating that they won't come back up anytime soon.

It's always been somewhat of a farce to refer to Chinese WoW players as "subscribers" but I guess plenty of other MMO's use half bullshitty numbers too.

Because the Chinese aren't people?

I argued with someone over this once.  We finally just opened up their financial reports and looked at how much the Chinese were contributing.  To our surprise, the Chinese 'subscribers' was averaged out at about $15 a month.

[IainC]

How should Chinese WoW players be referred to, if not subscribers?

WoW has a different business model in most of Asia, it's common to buy prepaid cards with a set amount of ingame time on them rather than a simple block of access that subscribers pay for. As a result it's hard to say exactly whether a player is 'subscribed' or not.

[Trouble]

Well either way, those people aren't paying or playing right now.

[Vash]

I thought I read weeks or possibly months back that lots of Chinese players had already switched to the Korean version of the game because WoTLK had already launched there and they were sick of waiting for The9 to finish the censored version for China with all the skeletons and bones removed.

[dusematic]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo


*gasp*


oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

[Jeff Kelly]

They're still busy ordering their next gold-plated and svarovski-encrusted money hats however.

[Trippy]

Blizzard has always made it clear how they counted the time card-based players. There's no funny "accounting" going on here. Game time cards in Asia typically have an expiration time on the minutes once activated. I can't remember what the WoW ones are but it's probably the standard 30 days. So once you use a time card to refill an account that becomes an "active" time card and as long as you still have unused minutes from that card and you haven't gone past the 30 days on that card, that card is still considered "active". So China WoW accounts that have an active time card associated with them are considered "subscribers". It's really not that complicated.

I thought I read weeks or possibly months back that lots of Chinese players had already switched to the Korean version of the game because WoTLK had already launched there and they were sick of waiting for The9 to finish the censored version for China with all the skeletons and bones removed.

They are playing the Taiwan version. Not many Chinese people can read Korean.

[Sheepherder]

They are playing the Taiwan version. Not many Chinese people can read Korean.

But how can they read Thai?

[Oban]

 

[Lakov_Sanite]

Apparently a chinese guild just got a world first yogg saron 0 watcher kill today.  If people in china aren't playing, how does this happen?  are they simply playing on us servers? and if this is the case, is there a cut off of asian players like you're saying?

[Ingmar]

Apparently a chinese guild just got a world first yogg saron 0 watcher kill today.  If people in china aren't playing, how does this happen?  are they simply playing on us servers? and if this is the case, is there a cut off of asian players like you're saying?

It happened on a Taiwanese server.

[EJH]

They are playing the Taiwan version. Not many Chinese people can read Korean.

But how can they read Thai?

I believe the primary language in Taiwan is Chinese. Thai is spoken in Thailand. 

[Trippy]

Whooosshhhhhh!

[Lantyssa]

Was that the sound of a plane catching a bouquet flying overhead?

[Trippy]

No that's:

WhooosshhhhhhkechunkkechunkwrrrrrhrrrrrrrrrrrKAABOOOOMMMMM!!!!!!!!!

[apocrypha]

I thought I read weeks or possibly months back that lots of Chinese players had already switched to the Korean version of the game because WoTLK had already launched there and they were sick of waiting for The9 to finish the censored version for China with all the skeletons and bones removed.

Just to come back on this, we had a thread about it a while ago and it turned out that the skeletons and bones thing was a complete lie, it was simple protectionism at work that was delaying WOTLK.

[Sheepherder]

No that's:

WhooosshhhhhhkechunkkechunkwrrrrrhrrrrrrrrrrrKAABOOOOMMMMM!!!!!!!!!

According to a cousin an Airbus can eat a gull or two.  Larger birds it has problems with.

[Koyasha]

Mike Morhaime mentioned yesterday during Blizzcon opening that China re-release was coming up and already online for a beta again, so they'll probably have a majority of those subscribers back pretty soon.  I don't doubt that they've lost some, though.  But if they managed to get the Lich King problems with permission to release it there sorted out, they'll probably get most of them back.  If they're stuck at BC era there, though, they might have a hard time getting all that many of them back, so their chinese subscriber numbers may take a deep cut.  On the other hand, they're getting almost twice the percentage of profits from what I've read on a couple sites (accuracy is /shrug level but whatever) so unless they don't get back at least half their players there they'll still come out on top profit wise.

[Lantyssa]

Are people getting their accounts back as well?  If they have to start fresh they'll probably lose some more people.

[Koyasha]

Don't know, if possible probably yes, but no idea whether The9 turned over the information on accounts and characters to Blizzard's new operator in China or not.  And yeah, that'll hurt numbers a good deal if not.

[Krushchev]

They are playing the Taiwan version. Not many Chinese people can read Korean.

But how can they read Thai?

I believe the primary language in Taiwan is Chinese. Thai is spoken in Thailand. 

I believe there's also Taiwanese.

[Mosesandstick]

Taiwanese is a form of Hokkien, a dialect spoken mainly in the Fujian province in China, Taiwan and regions of South East Asia where the Fujianese/Hokkien have migrated to, such as Malaysia and Singapore.