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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWoW's population hits 9.3 million in Q3 2007
by Mike Schramm 
Nov 15th 2007 at 1:30PM
Blizzard's publisher Vivendi is rolling in the cash-- they just announced their their quarter videogame numbers, and they're up a whopping 19%. They claim that World in Conflict gave them a nice boost, but c'mon, do you know anyone who's played World in Conflict? Didn't think so.No, the boost came from our favorite game, World of Warcraft-- Blizzard raised their subscriber numbers by just under a third of a million, making their population now 9.3 million, a raise of over a million in the past year. Burning Crusade's release in China definitely helped, too, and Vivendi's games division raked in $315.2 million.
Now, far be it from us to call a number like 9.3 million "disappointing," but it doesn't seem like WoW will hit that 10 million mark we all expected in 2007. Then again, patch 2.3 could bring a lot of folks back to the game-- is there a chance that .7 million people will sign back in, or will we have to wait for the next expansion to see a big boost?
[Via Massively]
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, News items, Economy
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Ahoni Nov 15th 2007 4:41PM
Thank you for the link penor.
Did you read your quote? WoW helped turn a loss AT THE GAMES UNIT into a profit. Not the company, the GAMES UNIT. One division. WoW did not save the company, it made the games unit profitable. You are still making crap up.
Try this.
http://www.vivendi.com/ir/download/pdf/PR061107_Q3_06R.pdf
3rd Quarter 2006. Total Vivendi revenue 4,889 million. Vivendi games revenue 182 million.
WoW provides a nice revenue stream. It does not, all by itself, keep the company out of bankruptcy.
Scoottie Nov 15th 2007 4:43PM
i am just used to writing toons instead of accounts but thats what i meant to say. i know several people that have multiple accounts but its still only one person.
Scoottie Nov 15th 2007 4:46PM
*need an edit button*
its just not believable that there are 9.3 million unique human beings playing WoW each with only 1 account.
penor Nov 15th 2007 5:01PM
Ahh, silly me, here I was thinking we were talking about the games unit since the original article on WoW Insider is about their videogame numbers, not the company numbers. I guess I need to spell things out for some people on occasion.
It's okay, implications can be hard to follow over teh Intarwebz.
Todd Nov 15th 2007 5:30PM
@glaci3r
Wow. I don't recall writing any statitics of any kind in my post. Perhaps you should go back and ready what I wrote. I think you should, moron.
To reiterate, I stated that some people own secondary ACCOUNTS to compliment their own account for the sole purpose of having more bank space (as in guild bank). Now with the introduction of guild vaults, these secondary accounts are no longer needed.
I'm not inflating the numbers any. I'm stating a pure fact. You mean to tell me that you, all wise and great, can say for a fact that nobody owns a secondary account on top of their main? Crazy, right!?
Paul Nov 15th 2007 5:31PM
ok, well, here's the next question that needs to be asked- is their games unit a separate company? if not, it can't go bankrupt.
you can't have a unit flirt with bankruptcy, only an entire company
KCV Nov 15th 2007 7:19PM
@7 learn to think global moron, Blizzard has said at a Blizzcon conference that a large majority of the player base is in Asia, not gold farmers but players playing on Asian servers. Asian players typically play in internet cafes and use a time card system not a subscription model where they pay for time and use it until it is used up, they also do not pay near the same amount as we do they more than likely play less.
I love when morons do A times B = zomg instead of thinking globally or reading a book on business 101.
arkhell Nov 16th 2007 6:27AM
@ Paul
nope devision an't go bankrupt... it can however be scraped from the company because the devisions budget is "bankrupt"
Todd Nov 16th 2007 10:17AM
@KCV
Why call me out, jackass? My comment has nothing to do with fucking Asia, that's not the point of my post. I'm commenting on how people have secondary accounts for the sole purpose of extra storage space. I'm also stating that, since the introduction to guild banks, these secondary accounts aren't necessarily needed now. I never mentioned anything about Asia? Stick to the topic of the post you're responding to, moron!
So sorry Nov 16th 2007 10:58AM
I can't think of any reason someone would actually WANT wow's numbers to go down. If they did go down, where would all the idiotic wastes of skin that sit here and argue over the most inane crap go?? They would all leave wow and play other games, annoying even more people. Please, keep those subscriptions folks!!!
jacksonibanezpeavey Nov 16th 2007 9:08PM
Okay, the idea of the majority of those subscriptions coming from bank alts is dumb. Look at it this way, there's ONE guild leader. Typically, the members will not be willing to spend the money just to create a couple characters to store stuff one.
So, say there's 1 person willing to do that for everyone 100 players. Even with that factored in, that's only 83,490 bank alt accounts for a population of 9.3 million. It's even an inflated figure. To say that 300,000 accounts are bank alts is dumb and not thought out. Here's another thought, if you're willing to pay an extra $15 a month to support a group of people you don't personally know, maybe you play wow too much?
While you're at it, why don't you pay my cell phone bill for me too...
Todd Nov 19th 2007 10:24AM
@jacksonibanezpeavey
"Okay, the idea of the majority of those subscriptions coming from bank alts is dumb."
Hmm, I'm having trouble finding where someone actually insinuated this very idea, that the MAJORITY of subscriptions are coming from bank alts. Please, point out where this is mentioned.
Ken Lydell Nov 19th 2007 5:48PM
Children at nasty play here, I think. Vivendi's total game division revenues for 2006 were 804 million euros. Profit was about 115 million euros. Blizzard accounted for most of that. Vivendi Universal financial reports are available online. Better to read them instead of making wild guesses about Blizzard's and Vivendi's finances.