DDI - 8000 subscribers and counting - When will it stop?

Imaro · Sep 14, 2009

Okay, again I'm going to ask... does this group subtract those who end their subscription or let it expire... or does it just register that you are or aren't a DDI subscriber at the time you create a profile?

Obryn · Sep 14, 2009

Count me among subscribers who haven't registered for that board thing.

-O

Jack99 · Sep 14, 2009

Echohawk said:
The count for the DDI group just hit 10,000. That's a climb of about 2,000 in the last week.

I wonder what the magic number is for the DDI to be considered a smashing success - for the members of this board that is..

Mustrum_Ridcully · Sep 14, 2009

Imaro said:
Okay, again I'm going to ask... does this group subtract those who end their subscription or let it expire... or does it just register that you are or aren't a DDI subscriber at the time you create a profile?

No idea. Someone would have to try, or someone of the admins there would have to tell us.

Imaro · Sep 14, 2009

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
No idea. Someone would have to try, or someone of the admins there would have to tell us.

Yeah, I wish someone would because if all it does is count whether a person at the point they create a profile is a subscriber or not... well then this number is pointless as far as being negative or positive since it in no way gives an accurate count of how successful DDI is.

Nikosandros · Sep 14, 2009

If it wasn't for this thread, who knows when I would have finally logged myself into the D&DI group on WotC site...

I agree with several other posters, that number severely underestimates the actual size of the subscriber pool.

Sammael · Sep 14, 2009

Jack99 said:
I wonder what the magic number is for the DDI to be considered a smashing success - for the members of this board that is..

I would consider 100,000 subscribers a success beyond wildest imagination.

Cadfan · Sep 14, 2009

First, people who semi-regularly buy one month subscriptions are still paying WotC money, so at worse they're partial successes from WotC's perspective.

Second, people who had subscriptions and have let them lapse are likely to be a small minority since yearly subscriptions, probably the most popular amount, won't yet have lapsed.

Third, if all this does is count whether someone is a subscriber at the time they visit the new forums, then it won't have much error in it yet because the new forums haven't existed for very long. I think less than a month, right?

I will agree with the underlying point that, over time, this will become a less and less valuable measure of the DDI's base, and that right now this doesn't tell us how many year long subscriptions have sold, just how many individualized purchases have been made by forum members. But a purchase is a purchase.

mudbunny · Sep 14, 2009

I have asked Trevor if I can get some info on this, but I would not be surprised if WotC declines to answer...

Imaro · Sep 14, 2009

Cadfan said:
First, people who semi-regularly buy one month subscriptions are still paying WotC money, so at worse they're partial successes from WotC's perspective.

But that's not what's being discussed (the arbitrary value of a success to WotC)... what's being discussed is the number of subscribers... Someone whose subscription expires and isn't renewed the day after they login and are "counted" isn't really valid as a subscriber at that point.

Cadfan said:
Second, people who had subscriptions and have let them lapse are likely to be a small minority since yearly subscriptions, probably the most popular amount, won't yet have lapsed.

This is pure conjecture on your part, especially since at this point with WotC still allowing one to download all previous issues of Dragon and Dungeon... it's probably more economically feasible to subscribe for one moth every 5 to 6 months, download everything and wait again. I would actually argue that being a yearly subscriber is kind of the worst deal right now unless one just wants to be the first to read stuff.

Cadfan said:
Third, if all this does is count whether someone is a subscriber at the time they visit the new forums, then it won't have much error in it yet because the new forums haven't existed for very long. I think less than a month, right?

Wrong because the numbers or even percentage of 1 year vs. 3 month vs. 1 month subscriptions aren't known. Heck it's even worse since one can purchase a subscription at any time within a month and so the end date can be anytime within a month. That means there is no way to tell what the error is in the count.

Cadfan said:
I will agree with the underlying point that, over time, this will become a less and less valuable measure of the DDI's base, and that right now this doesn't tell us how many year long subscriptions have sold, just how many individualized purchases have been made by forum members. But a purchase is a purchase.

Again wrong, first as far as the DDI being successful in general and recouping the money spent on it and continuing to be spent on it... a yearly subscription counts for way more towards that than someone who decided to subscribe for the assassin material this month and won't be signing up again until sometime in February or March.

Second, even now it can't be used in anyway to determine the DDI's base without knowing certain things about the counting mechanism and how it works... and even then it may be wildly inaccurate. You seem to want to make it a positive thing... but it's not really useful at this point and time for any type of conclusions to be drawn from the available numbers... positive or negative.