Eorzea census: window into RMT botting practices

[Arashmin]

Amen to that. I get the distinct feeling that they don't care as much though because they can say 'X registered' accounts, same as WoW does, instead of revealing actual sub numbers, for the same reason WoW does. It's sad they feel the need to lie to people.

[DawnSolaria]

Amen to that. I get the distinct feeling that they don't care as much though because they can say 'X registered' accounts, same as WoW does, instead of revealing actual sub numbers, for the same reason WoW does. It's sad they feel the need to lie to people.

Its not sad nor did they lie to people, they clearly stated that its registered account.
If you open up a store, would you tell potential and paying customer that there are X amount to people come in daily but only about 1/10 of that X amount bought stuffs? Most likely not.

[Arashmin]

That's exactly my point; I wouldn't because it feels dishonest, and the only reason they do it here is that the other big MMOs all do it, so they don't want their numbers to seem low in comparison (nor do they want to reveal exactly how many subs they have for other financial reasons, but that's neither here nor there).

Lie is perhaps a stronger word that I should have used, but I do feel it's still not entirely honest, especially if it's conflated due to issues like these that are supposed to be along the lines of 'bannable offenses'

[Gunspec]

Its not sad nor did they lie to people, they clearly stated that its registered account.
If you open up a store, would you tell potential and paying customer that there are X amount to people come in daily but only about 1/10 of that X amount bought stuffs? Most likely not.

I think what he means is that companies like SE and Blizzard flaunt the "registered accounts" figure when we know very well that a sizable number of accounts were either RMT farmers, or people who tried the game and left after a few days of play. It is a little irritating that they often only use the largest number (because it sounds good) when players like myself are genuinely curious as to how many actual subscribing players are in the world with us.

For a while, Blizzard was using the "10 million subscribers" claim, which was cool when you consider just how much of the population is playing the game with you. "X million accounts" doesn't have the same resonance with me, since we know a majority of those accounts aren't being used at any moment. I mean, even I have had more than one FFXIV account, and probably 3 or 4 FFXI accounts.

[Xanikk999]

Amen to that. I get the distinct feeling that they don't care as much though because they can say 'X registered' accounts, same as WoW does, instead of revealing actual sub numbers, for the same reason WoW does. It's sad they feel the need to lie to people.

Blizzard actually does release sub numbers in addition to total accounts registered. In fact they are among the few in the industry that do.