Honestly ESO has very few competitors and with WoW sitting at 3 million subs(mmohut numbers is like 2.98 million) since they aren't getting new content for 7 months, that leaves a lot of MMO players just floating about.

I mean in the mmorpg genre closest thing is wildstar but I mean if you really want to play a game published by NCSOFT....

WoW has 3 million subs? A link to the source please, I don't believe that for one second.

I thought WoW was currently sitting pretty at 8 million. I remember when they started sweating after dipping under 10 million. I'm sure a lot of dev teams wish they had Blizzard's problems!

Wow subs always dwindle down at the end of an expansion, I'll post a link to the info it was on mmo champion and me and some other players were discussing it on the WoW forums

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png has WoW at a little under 8 million.

Still quite a fall though. Especially considering they were at 11.5 to 12 million for a while.

They still lead the pack, not sure what the point is.

Dark Souls 2 is releasing on 25 April, so that will make me drop out of ESO for a long but temporary break.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/12203750470#11

Idk if you can look at this post if you aren't subbed to WoW please tell me if you can

A llot of the players say the numbers are not a big enough pool of players which I agree with, but honestly from being in WoW a lot of players are just leaving till WoD is out I mean I went from 300 players online to around 50 online in my guild.

I'm just saying the release is decent timing since they don't have to worry about the "king" of MMO's

I believe WoW have long included loads of people in Asia with time on gamecards as "subscribers". So their often-quoted headline figure is not really comparable to other games' subscriber figures.

I'd be interested in a breakdown by market of WoW subscriptions if anyone has one. Something that would tell you how many people are actually paying monthly subs.

Oh, for sure. I really enjoyed the game, but it's nuts that WoW that attracts a population that is a full order of magnitude more than most MMOs. I remember how, prior to WoW, a lot of gaming experts stated that the MMO market was glutted and no single game would ever break the 500,000 mark of individual subscribers. WoW really changed the whole paradigm in terms of MMO population expectations by investors.

Yeah, I can see it, but the fans saying that the poll is no good for telling you actual info have the right of it. Massive selection bias in internet poll.

That would be a projection, and as Mark Twain famously said, "There are lies; there are damned lies; and then there are statistics." Polls are terrible gauges of anything, and bad extrapolations from bad poll data are even worse.

The current subscriber base for WoW is hovering around the 8 million mark. Does this mean it's a triumph of design? Not for me, but Blizzard sure as hell knows what they're doing.

I understand that but blizzard won't give us a census since they only do those after an expansion is out.

Its 8 not 3...

Which makes sense, because projection polls are pointless and inflammatory (see your own link).

ìve been playing WoW for over 7 years and in my experience , that 12m sub peak was the worst, it basicly dropped the quality of the game and turned into a 3+ rated game..
Content became rubbish, Friendly people are hard to find, large gaps between content, disapointing xpacs.

I have to admit i have an current subscription running , but that is to lack of Good MMO's (i'm still in the same guild after 7 years and a few others still? play)

If TESO is an amazing game that gives people something they can't get somewhere else, it will be successful. If not, then it won't. WoW has nothing to do with it. Stop worrying about WoW.

Like I said though, that 8million includes lots of people in Asia who don't actually pay subscriptions.

edit: but back on topic, I think OP has a point that ESO is probably releasing at a good time when it comes to other games' age / stage in development / coming to market.

I like how EVE Online has carved a nice niche for itself in the MMO world. I think it has around 350,000 subscribers, which might sound like chump change compared to WoW, but it's a solid, respectable number that has made multiple content updates throughout the years. I'd be thrilled if ESO could do at least as well as EVE.

This. Personally I feel ESO should be worried about Wildstar . Unless Devs roll out at least one major patch before wildstar's release, i can see a huge population flocking there since WIldstar already offers a lot more content and variety of things to do at launch compared to ESO.

ehh, I just don't see it. There is nothing like EVE out there, even superficially similar. The closest is the X-series and that's not even multiplayer StarCitizen won't be out for years. TESO follows the themepark mmo design pretty heavily. I'm thinking it'll burn brighter than EVE but a LOT shorter.