There isn't something like that available, just our best estimates.
Your best bet to convince your friends to try the game is give them trial accounts and take them on some fun missions 
Figures. Meh.
*crosses fingers and hopes a dev will answer some of this*
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don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.
You won't find devs in here very often, this is the Player Questions - Players answering other players questions. You could try PMing Niviene but I'm pretty sure they don't release that information.
Yeah I doubt you'd ever get a whole lot of that "numbers of active accounts/logins" type information from any MMO because some of that could be considered sensitive company private. There's supposedly some kind of MMO industry quarterly report out there that collects public monthly averages from various companies but I don't know the links to that info offhand.
Beyond that if you're just looking for data to encourage other people to try this game I'd just point to the fact that it's been around for over 5 years and they have a big retail expansion (Going Rogue) in the works. Games that are "Dooomed" don't tend to last that long or have new content planned for them. 
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Figures. Meh.
*crosses fingers and hopes a dev will answer some of this*
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Figures? Look at it this way - your friends want real numbers to decide whether to play the game or not. What if NC released those numbers and your friends (and other people who see the information) decided, "Geez, that game's dead, it must suck," without ever playing the game to see if they liked it?
Or, what if the numbers were high enough that your friends joined and found they loved the game, but three months from now NC releases updated numbers because someone asks for them, and it sows subscriptions have declined by 5%? Then your friends (and maybe other people) decide, "That game's dying! I'm not palying a dying game any more!"
The upshot of it is, releasing subscription would be of little to no benefit to NC, and would be far, FAR more likely to lead to people drawing their own, likely negative, and probably incorrect conclusions about the state of the game.
There's a 14 day trial - have your friends play it. If they don't like it, they have wasted very little of their time, and none of their money. If they do like it and sign up, then the number of subscribers has just increased, and the game just got a little better.
(Sometimes, I wish there could be a Dev thumbs up button for quality posts, because you pretty much nailed it.) -- Ghost Falcon
As has been stated; the Devs are unlikely to break out the Total Active subscribership information, and not just because it would say something detrimental about the game. The approximate numbers we know about say that the game has plenty of life left in it. But those numbers are fluid and change on a daily basis. There is/was a website that ran a pie chart of all the major MMOs subscribership numbers, but I heard that it hasn't been updated in a while.
As far as active AT numbers; that's not going to help much in this game due to the Global Alt-itis Pandemic. I major in MMs with a minor in Support and do certificate work in Melee ATs. Also at any given time you could login to say Virtue, and find that the entire servr has logged in with Defenders... only Defenders. It's unlikely, but if the stars aligned just right; it could happen. But that wouldn't necessarily tell you what the most popular AT is. There was a post somewhere by a Dev I believe (Castle or BAB?) stating the approximate numbers/percentage of each AT rolled. That demographic still means little because you could have rolled toons just to pad your SG membership, and the first choices for a non-played-pad toon on Villainside would be a Brute if you're just clicking the first button on the screen during creation. I know I did it during the 'Great Server Prestige Gift Padding of 07' on many Servers.
Finally, if it's only numbers that will woo people to a game; you're going to be stuck playing an Elf somewhere else, and I don't know about you but I aint no frickin' Elf!
Heroes to Paragon, Villains to the Isles; Lemmings (Elfs) everywhere else.
Trial accounts for all my men!
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We used to get a total active subscriber number in the NCSoft quarterly reports, but they stopped breaking it out by game a while ago.
The rest of the information, we don't have access to.
NCSoft use to publish two numbers for this and most of their other games in their quarterly financial reports.
Max number of concurrent users online in a quarter.
Number of unique accounts that logged in at least once in a quarter.
The first number can be spiked due to new content coming out or simply a game wide event (2x XP weekend, Rikti/Zombie Invasions, Holiday Event)
The second number doesn't count subscribers who for some reason paid for but never logged in during the quarter (which should be a low number).
They didn't report any numbers with any of their games in their first quarter 2009 report that came out in May, now they simply report income for each game. And since NCSoft is a Korean company, that income is reported in Korean currency. Exchange rates between the US dollar to the Korean Won fluctuate greatly month to month, quarter to quarter. A weak dollar makes this game's income go up in their quarterly reports, a strong dollar has the opposite effect.
The last time they published both numbers, for third quarter 2008, the max concurrent users online was 13,443, unique access was 124,939 across the 15 (including Europe) game servers.
They did release max concurrent numbers only for fourth quarter 2008, 13,823.
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Thanks! Ballpark numbers are about what I was looking for anyway.
That looks like a convincing enough number to say "The game's not dead, quit it with the doom and gloom and try it!"
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Check out all my guides and fiction pieces on my blog.
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Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.
It should be said that the 124,939 unique access figure Father Xmas cites from 3rd Quarter 2008 is also a historically low figure for City of Heroes and shouldn't be relied upon, if indeed the number means anything at all. Even when they published that figure, it went up and down a lot.
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Finally, if it's only numbers that will woo people to a game; you're going to be stuck playing an Elf somewhere else, and I don't know about you but I aint no frickin' Elf!
Heroes to Paragon, Villains to the Isles; Lemmings (Elfs) everywhere else.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hey! I resent that remark. I play several elves in City of X, thank you.
That's one of the beauties of this game, you can be anything.
If you're talking about multiple friends, plus yourself, then why would it even matter if anyone else in the universe is playing? You guys can team with each other. Lots of people find the game perfectly fun solo. Even if the devs ceased development today, it would take months to get through all the existing content, and every indication is that there is some major development work going on right now. Odds are your friends will quit out of boredom long before the game shuts down. Even if they do get bored quickly, it's not that expensive to play it for a month. Heck, the trial is free. After a month, if it's still fun, they can pay for another month. If it's not, they still got a month's worth of entertainment for a pretty reasonable price.
I can think of a lot of reasons not to play this game, or even try it, but I can't think of any reason why the number of other people currently playing should impact the decision to take the free trial for a spin.
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Then it sounds to me like they just don't want to try it and are coming up with lame excuses.
Sorry to waste everyone's time.
Where to now?
Check out all my guides and fiction pieces on my blog.
The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.
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Then it sounds to me like they just don't want to try it and are coming up with lame excuses.
Sorry to waste everyone's time.
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Not necessarily. In other MMOs you are often in great need of other players to do things so they may simply be going by what they expect. You probably need to explain to them that this is a very different breed of MMO.
A competent pair can even take down some GMs though of course it gets easier with more people. And lots of players solo AVs.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
[ QUOTE ]
NCSoft use to publish two numbers for this and most of their other games in their quarterly financial reports.
Max number of concurrent users online in a quarter.
Number of unique accounts that logged in at least once in a quarter.
The first number can be spiked due to new content coming out or simply a game wide event (2x XP weekend, Rikti/Zombie Invasions, Holiday Event)
The second number doesn't count subscribers who for some reason paid for but never logged in during the quarter (which should be a low number).
They didn't report any numbers with any of their games in their first quarter 2009 report that came out in May, now they simply report income for each game. And since NCSoft is a Korean company, that income is reported in Korean currency. Exchange rates between the US dollar to the Korean Won fluctuate greatly month to month, quarter to quarter. A weak dollar makes this game's income go up in their quarterly reports, a strong dollar has the opposite effect.
The last time they published both numbers, for third quarter 2008, the max concurrent users online was 13,443, unique access was 124,939 across the 15 (including Europe) game servers.
They did release max concurrent numbers only for fourth quarter 2008, 13,823.
[/ QUOTE ]
Don't forget that this most likely includes purchasable extras like character slots, server transfers, and booster packs. That would make the subscription amounts less.
"Play Nice and BEHAVE! I don't want to hear about any more of your shenanigans brought up in our meetings at Paragon"-Ghost Falcon @Tritonfree @Philly's 2nd Convenient CIGAL BoBC/INOANN Arts&Crafts Sporks
Average Joes FAP THE MENTOR PROJECT Justice Events
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
NCSoft use to publish two numbers for this and most of their other games in their quarterly financial reports.
Max number of concurrent users online in a quarter.
Number of unique accounts that logged in at least once in a quarter.
The first number can be spiked due to new content coming out or simply a game wide event (2x XP weekend, Rikti/Zombie Invasions, Holiday Event)
The second number doesn't count subscribers who for some reason paid for but never logged in during the quarter (which should be a low number).
They didn't report any numbers with any of their games in their first quarter 2009 report that came out in May, now they simply report income for each game. And since NCSoft is a Korean company, that income is reported in Korean currency. Exchange rates between the US dollar to the Korean Won fluctuate greatly month to month, quarter to quarter. A weak dollar makes this game's income go up in their quarterly reports, a strong dollar has the opposite effect.
The last time they published both numbers, for third quarter 2008, the max concurrent users online was 13,443, unique access was 124,939 across the 15 (including Europe) game servers.
They did release max concurrent numbers only for fourth quarter 2008, 13,823.
[/ QUOTE ]
Don't forget that this most likely includes purchasable extras like character slots, server transfers, and booster packs. That would make the subscription amounts less.
[/ QUOTE ] The money from those items would count toward profit of course, and could be included in a value that contained "number of purchases/transactions"... but i don't see how they would be included in a value described as "unique access".
"Unique access" is most likely the number of separate accounts that were active at any point during that time period, which may or may not include trial memberships.
[ QUOTE ]
Don't forget that this most likely includes purchasable extras like character slots, server transfers, and booster packs. That would make the subscription amounts less.
[/ QUOTE ]
Philly, those are based on NCSoft's actual "players on servers numbers" and not my crude attempt to guesstimate based on the 1Q2009 income numbers (from a previous thread about this).
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ohhh my bad
"Play Nice and BEHAVE! I don't want to hear about any more of your shenanigans brought up in our meetings at Paragon"-Ghost Falcon @Tritonfree @Philly's 2nd Convenient CIGAL BoBC/INOANN Arts&Crafts Sporks
Average Joes FAP THE MENTOR PROJECT Justice Events
You should post that other information you went to all that trouble doing the conversions for the dollar at the time.
"Play Nice and BEHAVE! I don't want to hear about any more of your shenanigans brought up in our meetings at Paragon"-Ghost Falcon @Tritonfree @Philly's 2nd Convenient CIGAL BoBC/INOANN Arts&Crafts Sporks
Average Joes FAP THE MENTOR PROJECT Justice Events
No Philly. That crude guesstimate was made with a bucket full of assumptions and without checking to see if there was a correlation between my method and 9 quarters of actual hard data I have. Then if there was a correlation, whether it was biased consistantly high or low or if they fell in a rough plus/minus range.
Frankly I'm not that curious to crunch all those numbers.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
The beauty of it is you don't need accurate numbers to make statements about whether the game is dying. Just make them up! Assert anything you feel like, make exaggerated claims based on those assertions, and angrily defend them using personal attacks.
This is an established tradition on the forums.
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
I've been looking for something that shows actual real life statistics (not in-game mechanics).
If at all possible I'd like to know:
(a) how many subscribers there are.
(b) average accounts logged in at a time on each server.
(c) # of active Blasters, Scrappers, etc.
It's more than just a matter of curiosity. I can better convince friends to try the game if I can tell them how "active" the game is (well, maybe... guess it depends on the actual numbers).
Anyone know where to find this?
Thanks!
Where to now?
Check out all my guides and fiction pieces on my blog.
The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.