Assuming an homogeneous distribution of players across platforms and regions, 11M end up as 1.833.333 players per server.

Now, there are 31 zones, and also things that are outside of zones (dungeons, battlegrounds, quest locations, etc.)
So let's approximate it to 32 zones, with even distribution.

That gives 57.291 players per zone.
Let's divide them even across 24h (unlikely, but let's be generous...): 2387 players at any given zone at any given time.

But zones are instanced, and I don't think an instance allows near as many as a thousand players in the same zone.
So even if there actually are 2000 players in the same zone, they will be split around several different instances.
*** many instances are there? Apparently, it's a variable number, and more instances are created as more players enter a zone.

In times of events, Ive been to extremely packed zones, with my wife being in a different instance with just as many people.
That was maybe around 200 players per instance (in Cyrodiil the limit is probably higher).

Even with all that... with 2387 per zone, instances should be quite full always... so I guess they are counting inactive players too. Or maybe there are many more casuals than we think that don't log in daily...

Jayman1000 wrote: »

I really doubt that there is so many players. There has got to be a SHIPLOAD of inactives hiding in those numbers then. Sometimes when I sell extra of a commodity I can drive the price down; this is in the most central trading guilds. but Im not really selling that much of it, yet still I can drive the price down. That doesn't sound right if there were millions of players... With millions of players the stuff I put up would be but a drop in the ocean and have virtually no effect on prices if servers were really that crowded.

It depends of what are you selling.

Even with millions of players, it can happen that only a handful of people are actually selling some items.
And, with the guild trader system, it doesn't matter how many millions of players there are, since the amount of players with access to trading hubs is limited anyway.

So you don't have to compare your sales to "millions of players", but only to those with access to a trader in one of the main hubs.

Which aren't many, a few thousand at most (this is easy to estimate from guilds), and from those, the ones selling the same as you.

MilwaukeeScott wrote: »

Sylosi wrote: »

There aren't 11 million players playing the game as this thread implies, they've sold 11 million copies, and like every other game on the planet, that means that most of those players this many years into the game are no longer playing it, which is why for example in an interview at the end of last year a dev stated that the active playerbase was about 2.5 million.

Explain adding 1 million NEW PLAYERS LAST MONTH.

There is nothing to explain, because firstly it wasn't last month, it was for this year up to last month, so all that means is they've sold a million copies of the game in that time.

So even if by some miracle not a single player left the game in that time, all those players who bought the game still play it, none of them were for bots, none of them were second accounts, then that would mean based on the figure they gave end of last year that the game had about 3.5 million players, not 11 million.

But of course realistically it is likely less than that 3.5 million, because people of course have left the game in that time, some of those accounts were for bots, some of the people who bought the game found they didn't like it and so on.

I really don't know why some people are so desperate to exaggerate numbers for a game, 2.5 or 3 million is a pretty good number for an MMORPG these days, but the game has not "magically" equalled WoW near its peak, which is what 11m players would mean.