The KISS Army: 300,000 Strong

Subscriber numbers are funny things in MMO circles.  Players live and die by what little is freely given by companies -- who more often than not hide these numbers for various reasons -- and entire verdicts of a game's future can be foretold in one day.  People analyze, quote and overanalyze based on these pieces of information while fully acknowledging that they aren't in full possession of all the statistics involved.  It's kind of entertaining, in a scary way.

So let's get it out of the way: Warhammer Online has 300K subs.  Your reaction may vary:

1. "300,000?  That's IT?  This game is dying!"
2. "Still doing better than many other MMOs..."
3. "Guess it's truly a niche title."
4. "300K isn't bad, especially since the game is improving and we know that the numbers will increase -- as most all MMOs do in their first year."
5. "That's 300,000 smart, sexy and slightly insane people."

It's interesting, because obviously this gives a lot of fuel to the anti-WAR crowd (which includes disgruntled current players), yet after reading some of the responses, there's a lot of optimism here as well. 

I'm not here to be a blind apologist nor a kneejerk hater -- just a player who's given a chunk of info and not really told what to do with it.  I think it was a very calculated move for Mythic to release their huge announcement last week, because they had to know that anything less than 750,000 current subs (the last solid number we got, which were registered players about a month in -- but not necessarily paying subscribers who had gone beyond the "free" month) was going to be taken badly.

I'll be honest -- I kind of assumed we were at the half-mil mark, and 300,000 does seem low for the game post-holiday and whatnot.  I know Paul Barnett said something along the lines of hoping for one million subs by Christmas 2008, and I'd expected one million by the new year (starry-eyed dreamer, I am). 

If we were to remain at 300,000, I'd definitely concede that WAR had found its niche and was going to settle in for that.  Yet, there is a lot to consider:

1. This is 300K current paying subscribers, versus 750K registered players who had yet to pay a monthly subscription.  Comparing those two numbers is a bit misleading because those are two different categories of players.
2. Is the game currently increasing or decreasing in subscribers?  Other than the 750K number, we have no concrete subscriber numbers from October through December -- knowing what the initial month dropoff was would be helpful, as would trends (peaks, valleys, climbs and falls).
3. According to MMOGCHART, World of Warcraft crossed into the one million mark by this time frame (Oct - Jan).  Other than WoW, MMOGCHART shows only a handful of games that crossed 300,000 in subscribers: Lineage (which took about a year to cross that mark), Lineage 2 (a couple months), Final Fantasy XI (about a year-plus), Runescape (3 years), EverQuest (1 1/2 years), Star Wars Galaxies (one month, but it peaked there), EverQuest 2 (a month, peaked shortly thereafter), Dofus (2 years).  Now, you have to take MMOGCHART with a *huge* grain of salt, but the number of MMOs who never crossed 300,000 on their list -- including DDO, DAoC, LOTRO and whatnot -- are the majority, not minority.
4. Assuming that WAR isn't in subscriber freefall, 300K more than enough to ensure continued operation and development of this title.  Once development costs are paid off, it will be generating a healthy little packet of revenue for EA.
5. WAR's Russian release, and the impact on sub numbers from that.

I guess these subscriber numbers matter only if you need them to.  If you were expecting WAR to challenge WoW in numbers, then this isn't your day.  If you need to know that there's enough people playing to keep the game running and interesting, then it's a comforting day.  On the forums, Mark Jacobs wants to add some more info (the cynic says "spin!") on this, but is awaiting permission from EA to do so.