SOE: Free Realms 'close to' 5 million users

Ditto, not that it would kill me to play it on PC... i just don't want to. =P

My PC is old and really slow and I use a Netbook usually.

Technically, the same can be said of all the other online games where you have to register. Therefore, comparing this milestone to other online games would be logically fair. i.e.: I played the free month on World of Warcraft, then never went back.

Yep, you are.

The same way that I'm counted in the 14 million WoW users despite not playing for over a year.

Actually if you read the (legally binding) disclaimer that blizzard puts out with their stats you'd see they only count subs that have paid in the last month and don't include trials or free month accounts, it pays to read folks!

I registered but did not play for more than 1 day.. I'm likely being counted.

Yeah, there's eventually got to be a healthy dose of skepticism on these "subscriber" "reports" on these here interweb blogs. I know I played the game for 2 hours.

While I think Blizzard is fudging their numbers somewhat (maybe a tenth of all the people I knew on WoW 3 years ago still play), in theory their 11 million subscribers are all actual recent subscriptions.

hah, somebody's played too much E.V.E Online in their day :)

why don't they deserve the success? Doing more poorly in the past somehow makes present accomplishments worthless? Seems backwards to me.

Its a good thing you didn't include wow in your stack of good games haha.

There's a reason wow hasn't updated us on their current subscriptions since they hit 11M. The game is dead or dying as the real talent in Blizzard has moved on. Endgame raiding is a joke. All the content is trivialized and its now just a see who can collect more mounts/vanity pets/achievements race.

Wow is a successful failure in that they had no ideas of their own they just went about implementing ideas of others in a more successful way. But at the same time they refused to learn simple lessons even EQ and UO taught the industry, and wow is a complete joke now.

After playing it since closed beta, I truly feel sorry for anyone still playing.

Kudos to anyone who tries another MMO and stops rewarding blizzard for catering to casuals and removing all challenge and excitement from the game.

There is some incentive to play at endgame for the better gear - it's a better system than Guild Wars' gear being maxed out about eight hours into the game. But I have definitely noticed that the classic content was a lot more interesting than WotLK, and definitely than BC.

I'm excited about BioWare's KOTOR MMO, hopefully they'll be able to provide the content that keeps things fresh.

The endgame for TBC was 10x more fun than in WOTLK.

I finished TBC in the top guild on our server and we were the first ones to kill KJ, although they nerfed all bosses when we were working on Felmyst. After that and since raiding has been an utter joke. I quit due to time constraints before Ulduar but Naxx was a joke. The encounters were interesting but the difficulty was ultra-casual. Wow lost all of its magic when it decided to cater to the bottom feeders, and it has started to lose its customer base now too.

You don't have to focus 100% on hardcore, but when you ignore the end-game raiding and focus 100% on casuals, the good players leave and once that happens, all you have are crappy players. Eventually they get tired of grouping with each other cause none of them know what to do or how to do it.