Active wow player count with sources <

Community General Discussion
1

About 2 months ago streamer ‘Destiny’ sat down with a blizzard employee in a sort of podcast like form

Said employee mentions the wow team and how they feel about the game at the moment vaguely

https://www.twitch.tv/destiny/clip/SparklingSweetHyenaShadyLulu

a question asked where the clip times out is asked regarding the WoW sub numbers

https://www.twitch.tv/destiny/clip/CautiousFaithfulSmoothieKreygasm

where the question is followed through

the blizzard employee then goes on to say

“the concurrent players would match the number #1 #2 or #3 steam game depending on the time”

Steams concurrent player stats : https://store.steampowered.com/stats/

typically dota or cs have about 600 to 700k concurrent players
meaning globally WoW has about 600k to 700k concurrent players (obviously fluxuating) we’re not told if that’s specifically tuesdays/saturdays
or if that’s the average meaning tuesdays and saturdays would be substantially more active

now here is where it gets interesting
he said it’s “like” 70% china
70% of 700k is 490,000

China = 490,000 (Of 700k worldwide)
leaving NA/EU 210,000 total between the 2 of them

EU’s population has always been roughly 20%-30% larger than NA’s based solely on Arena participation and Raiding guild participation

https://www.arenamate.net/arena-rbg-title-cutoffs/archive/warlords-s3
NA having 240,000 players in this season where EU had about 300,000

https://www.wowprogress.com/pve/eu
https://www.wowprogress.com/pve/us

US has 99 8/8mythic guilds
EU had 177 8/8mythic guilds

so if we were to take the remaining 210,000 and split it down the middle to 105,000
take 10% away from US (95,000) and add 10% to EU (120,000) totaling a 20% larger EU population

we can assume

on the average day during primetime
NA WoW has about 95,000 active players
EU WoW has about 120,000 active players
and China WoW has about 490,000 players

that would be the average at most

now there’s an additional variable that could be unaccounted for
i’m personally unsure how blizzard east works
i will assume china is it’s own game and WoW east (taiwan korea japan ect) is actually another segment that takes a piece of the original 210,000 pie which would potentially reduce an additional 33% of the 95,000 we reached for NAs active population

but east could group china with taiwan/korea/japan the way NA is grouped with OCE and South america

so we’re left with either 95,000 active NA players with a total of roughly 1million world wide

OR 64,000 active NA players if WoW east doesn’t group china with the other eastern players

thanks for coming to my tedtalk

8 Likes
2

Seems like nameless “employee” will lose his job divulging privileged information.

8 Likes
3

I say na with ocean and south america might be around 88,000 and will drop down to 60,000 or so till next expansion or patch.

4

Nameless sources are usually highly reliable and accurate…:joy::rofl:

20 Likes
5

does this include classic which is counted as part of the subs? because then there’s like 12 people who play both. doesn’t sound right to me.

6

Roughly 3k, maybe slightly more (~3.5k?), players online on 1 server at one time cumulatively across both factions seems to be the bar for a “full” server on Retail.

Take of that what you will when trying to figure out if your estimates for concurrent players is a good thing or a bad thing. And again, do remember that we’re talking concurrent online players, not “active subs” here.

Frankly, I think the whole “leak” or whatever we’re calling it is bogus. We were told for YEARS almost every year that “the largest decline was in China” when discussing the loss of subs. I highly doubt after all of that, China is 70% of WoW’s playerbase.

I’m sure China accounts for a non-negligible amount of the playerbase, but I don’t think it’s any kind of majority anymore.

7

how many do you think are on a classic server then?

edit: inb4 50k. lol

8

classic wasn’t out when this podcast happened so no

classic doubled wows sub count though based on profit increase from this past quarter

albeit temporary and classic will probably retain 20 - 30% of the players it started with at most

9

" ACTIVE WOW PLAYER COUNT WITH SOURCES "

Ohh boy this gon be good

“Source: someone said that a blizz employee said”

Humm

10 Likes
10

Concurrent means that those are only the people playing at any given time and not the total active player base.

1 Like
11

Hold on… s = \sqrt{\frac{1}{N-1} \sum_{i=1}^N (x_i - \overline{x})^2}

Guys… he is right.

7 Likes
12

I’m sorry but I I do not trust your sources.

:cookie:

9 Likes
13

Why would any Blizz employee go on a podcast no one knows about and talk about sub numbers. Seems as legit

1 Like
14

especially when they come from a streamer, yet alone a streamer like Destiny. lol

2 Likes
15

Oh, come on. Destiny is just as reliable as other streamers trying to make a name for themselves and grab a few more subs.

16

We’ll never know exact numbers anymore unless Blizz releases them. That being said its open for speculation… And nothing wrong with that.

I think most of us can surmise pretty good ballparks at the sub count just based on general feel and availability of the community.

With Classic, there’s definitely a lot more people playing, I’m thinking 2 mil NA.

the people playing BFA actively, IMO, is probably around 500k

Why do I think this?

Just look at the PUG groups going on, or the time it takes to get into a LFR, or well known guilds active member pops.

As of now, at least, just face it … Retail doesn’t have many active players … Or rather active players play for a very short amount of time each day/week and log off.

17

But he doesn’t tell us what kind of subs? Italian, BBQ, Grilled Veggies! A Gnome must know these things.

:cookie:

4 Likes
18

you think there are over 2m people on less than 40 servers? honestly? when the vast majority of the time all of the servers except for a handful are medium or low pop? and only on the weekends it’s that most of them are populated?

2 Likes
19

Raiding is severely disincentivized in BfA and interest in it as an activity has been dropping since the expansion launched.

I’ve seen server staple guilds with member cap die out multiple times over the course of my time here. It means nothing. One of them died because a single person quit and no one took over.

I think you’re falling into the trap of believing Classic has more people than it does because there are 30 realms vs 230 realms on Retail. (roughly, not gonna go count)

20

No I mean total people subbed to WoW.

People playing classic … Eh, prob 600k or so

1 Like