WoW Forever Beta: 8.8M Characters. How Many Players?

Transcript

Cold open — the number

Eight million, eight hundred and sixty-two thousand, three hundred and fifty-four². Characters. Made in the World of Warcraft: Forever beta, before it closed². Blizzard announced it with a joke about a kobold¹. Nine numbers on the card. Not one of them counts people.

Graveyard Shift — the scoreboard

Hello, living. This is the Graveyard Shift. Yesterday Blizzard posted a card called Beta by the Numbers¹. Nine tiles. Big gold digits. A dungeon, a kobold and a zone. Credit first. Wowhead typed the card out for the rest of us within hours⁴. I'm only doing the arithmetic.

I love this game. I want it to live. So I read the card the way I read everything. Slowly. With a calculator.

Characters, not people

Start with the big one. MMOHuts said it in a single line. "Blizzard did not share how many unique accounts or players took part, so the character count shouldn't be read as a player count."³ Correct. Characters are cheap. Alts are cheaper.

A dozen each

One player on Blizzard's forum offered a sense of scale. "For perspective, I made about a dozen characters."⁵ If everyone played like that, the beta had about seven hundred and forty thousand people. Still a crowd. Much less of a headline.

The biggest beta ever

Two days earlier, Microsoft's chief executive, Satya Nadella, called it the largest beta in franchise history, on an earnings call, with no number attached⁶. Back in September, Aggrend posted that these were the craziest numbers he'd seen in seventeen years at Blizzard¹⁵. Now there's a number. It counts characters. Characters don't pay a subscription. People do.

And the door was wide. Kotaku points out you could also sign up for free, and Blizzard alone decided how many got in that way⁷. So the biggest beta ever was partly a beta Blizzard chose to make big.

Gravity, undefeated

Now the fun tiles. The Innkeeper put out a one-minute read of the same card, and this was the favourite¹³.

Silent killer¹³. One million, one hundred and fifty-seven thousand, two hundred and four deaths from falling⁹. In a beta capped at level thirty⁸. One fall death for every seven point seven characters. The ground has a better kill ratio than most of you.

I've been dead a long time. I still look down before I jump. Free advice.

The kobold

Then the bosses of the beta.

A kobold miner⁹. Not a dragon. Not a raid boss. A rat with a candle on its head, a pickaxe, and your corpse.

Blizzard made it the punchline of the whole post, and fair enough. "Villagers speak in hushed tones about the legend of the dreaded Kobold miner."¹ I laughed. Somebody over there can write.

Hillsbrad, again

Now the numbers I care about. I'm Horde, on Roleplay-PvP.

Some things never change¹⁴. Hillsbrad was where the war lived in two thousand four. Tarren Mill against Southshore. Twenty-two years later, same hill⁹. We didn't need a new world. We needed the old grudge.

Then the ratio. Nine million, nine hundred and fifty-nine thousand PvP kills. One million, two hundred and forty-eight thousand duels⁹. Nearly eight kills for every duel. For every fight both sides agreed to, there were eight they didn't. On a PvP server, that's the brochure.

Two races, counted

Now look at which races got a tile. Out of every race in the game, Blizzard counted two.

Forsaken Paladins. Six hundred and twelve thousand and ninety-six⁹. Six point nine percent of every character made. Undead, holding the Light. A pairing new to Forever, and already the top combination in the volunteer census¹¹. My people, glowing. I'm so proud. It's horrible.

The elf

And Skyborne. One million, eight hundred and eighty-nine thousand and eighty-four¹⁰. Twenty-one point three percent. One character in five was the new elf. After launch, the elf is sold separately. The Heroic Pack is twenty-nine ninety-nine¹². So the two races on the card are the one you buy, and the one I am.

Prediction three, on the record

Which brings me to my own paperwork. Yesterday's pre-mortem. Prediction three.

That's me, on the record. The beta census had the elf at eighteen point seven percent¹⁶. Blizzard's own count says twenty-one point three¹⁰. So my starting line just moved back. To win, the elf has to fall by more than half once it costs money. Prediction three just got harder. It stays on the board, graded December eleventh.

Nine tiles, counted

So I counted the card. Nine tiles.

Characters: eight point eight six million. Players: not given³. PvP kills against duels: nearly eight to one⁹. Falls: one death per seven point seven characters⁹. Forsaken Paladins: six point nine percent⁹. Skyborne: twenty-one point three percent¹⁰. A dungeon, a kobold and a zone: names, no numbers⁹.

Six tiles carry a number. Three carry a name. None of them is a person, an account or a queue. It's a scoreboard with the score left off.

The number I want

So I have one ask, and it's a fair one. Launch night is Wednesday, November fourth. My pre-mortem's prediction one says some ruleset's queue beats twenty-two thousand, three hundred and twenty-nine. Blizzard, you clearly love a big gold number on a dark card. Post that one. Peak queue, launch night, same font. I'll even let you put a kobold on it.

Eight million characters says a lot of you want this game to live. So do I. That's why I count.

Next time

If you missed it, the pre-mortem is up. Five predictions, dated, including the one you just watched get harder. And the Obituary for the free race. It was mine.

I'll be here. Forever.