WoW Forever: add-on census estimates 1.17 million EU players

A community census has put the first player numbers on the WoW Forever launch. It estimates that 1,167,387 people have played in Europe so far and 996,914 in the US, a little over 2 million together. This is one report of an unofficial estimate: Blizzard has not confirmed it and has published no player figures of its own.

In Europe the 2 big rulesets are almost level. Normal (PvE) is put at 549,916 players, 307,204 Alliance and 242,712 Horde, and PvP at 557,718, with 244,246 Alliance and 313,472 Horde. So the Alliance leads on Normal and the Horde on PvP.

The roleplay rulesets are far smaller. RP-PvP is put at 28,347 players, 15,103 Alliance and 13,244 Horde, and RP-PvE at 31,406, with 20,621 Alliance and 10,785 Horde.

The numbers need care. They are read from a census add-on that only some players run, so part of the active community is never seen, and accounts and characters are hard to tell apart. One player said similar counts caught only about 25% of active testers during the beta, when a volunteer census counted a million characters. The totals are people seen playing so far, not how many are online at the same moment.

Some players also say they see little of these crowds in the game, because layering problems leave some regions looking very empty. Blizzard said on 5 November that it would tweak some numbers to make quiet areas feel more lively.