How many players does a server hold?

[NiteRyder]

Hey just wondering how many players a server/realm holds?

Thanks all!

[Darien Talem]

Blizz has never released exact details, however judging off of back in the DAY when EQ showed it's number population and with how many people WoW has and the advance in technology, my guess would be several thousand before it peeks out. Maybe 10k for all we know.

[Unknowable]

you used to be able to type in /who server and get an entire list of everyone logged in on your faction (horde/alliance). i don't know if you can still do this, but if you can, figure that on most servers there's a 1/1 to 1.5/1 alliance to horde ratio (this is an estimate only, don't hole me to it), add the numbers, and you've got a rough estimate of the population of your server

[DarthMuffin]

/who has always been capped to 49 for me. I guess it's somewhere in the thousands, but 10k is too much I think.

[Justinledwards]

I looked at wowcensus and it showed about 16,000 on my server (12k alliance, 4k horde). Don't know how accurate those stats are tho

[icutyoubad]

My server has 14,000 players on it. The older, full servers have upwards of 30,000 players.

[Chunderpants]

Crikey - and I can still never find a group.

People must really hate me!

[Azaha]

lol here here !! must be my green moustache!? Which are the old servers? Anyone on aggrammar? How many on aggrammar?

[UndeadRogue]

My server has 14,000 players on it. The older, full servers have upwards of 30,000 players.

Are you quoting this for a fact ?
Not saying you're wrong here, but damn...
I never would have thought it would amount up to that much !!! :shocked:

[Hettar]

What you need to take into account is that there is three kind of numbers here:
* the maximum number of players that can be logged in at a given time.
* the maximum number of player that the realm can store.
* the numbers of characters created on this realm (that's what ow-census gives afaik).

[UndeadRogue]

What you need to take into account is that there is three kind of numbers here:
* the maximum number of players that can be logged in at a given time.
* the maximum number of player that the realm can store.
* the numbers of characters created on this realm (that's what ow-census gives afaik).

yes, indeed... 30k players ? or 30K characters ?
Big difference ! :grin: (5 to 1 ?)

[Hettar]

As for an estimate, I'd say the servers can handle around 3k players logged per faction. That sounds relatively reasonnable, but is based on no fact :p

[sycamore]

Wouldn't you be able to guestimate very roughly for your faction if you run the census taker tool and see how it breaks down the character details it extracts, if it gets more than 49 of any level it breaks it down by class/race and then alphabetically... if you did that at a busy time you'd get some idea of how many on your faction were on at that time...

But I don't really know, and have been (unwillingly, resentfully) add-on free for the last month :( so I can't try it out myself.

I used to run the tool when I was on a long flight and used to find it quite interesting watching it in action (I'm sad that way), I guess it's just running repeated 'who' commands in various permutations?

[ArTizan]

Jeez I'd love to the see the server and know it's specs. I'd laugh if it was a p600 sat under some guys desk covered in dust hehe.

/spills coffee on server

[swaldman]

Jeez I'd love to the see the server and know it's specs. I'd laugh if it was a p600 sat under some guys desk covered in dust hehe.

/spills coffee on server

I think a lot of people would be interested to know more about the hardware used, and more importantly how it's configured (clusters, etc., whether WoW zones are related to hardware or merely continents, etc.). But AFAIK blizzard have never released information on this topic.

Re numbers, going from intuition plus "things I read somewhere", the number of unique players (not characters) on a mature server is somewhere a bit over 10,000. The number allowed online I don't know about, although I know that it's expanded with TBC. If I had to guess I'd say 3-4k, but I have very little evidence for this.

[Richakin]

<-- from aggramar /flex


im not sure, but wowcenus shows 16k+ on servers...so...thats all i got

[dgrampa]

I heard somewhere at least a year ago (probably more) that the max number logged in at any time was 5k. If that was true, the hardware upgrades for TBC probably upped that cap. Adding a third continent, if they wanted to keep the same population feel, then the cap would be somewhere around 6-7.5k. But this is all speculation and the original 5k I heard could have been complete BS in the first place.

[Penthau]

Blizzard just announced they have 8 million subscribers. The front page of this website says there are 390 servers worldwide. That's about 20,000 subscribers per server if it was spread evenly.

[icutyoubad]

But as mentioned before with that statistics I posted--which I admit I heard secondhand, I have not proof on that--there is a difference between subscribers and active players. Is that 8 million active subscribers? Or are they pulling a McDonald's on us and that is how many people that have ever subscribed in the game's history?

[Bodom]

Link Nuked. Site has goldselling adds, and that's a no no. Signed, Valas.

[Hettar]

But as mentioned before with that statistics I posted--which I admit I heard secondhand, I have not proof on that--there is a difference between subscribers and active players. Is that 8 million active subscribers? Or are they pulling a McDonald's on us and that is how many people that have ever subscribed in the game's history?


It's 8 millions active subscibers, they say so in the PR (iirc).

[Clavina]

It's 8 millions active subscibers, they say so in the PR (iirc).

The key to that sentence is PR. It's a statement made to make Blizz look good and I think it should be taken with a pinch of salt...

[Idol]

Census counts characters, not players. So it is woefully inaccurate.