What kind of hit did DDI take a year after subscriptions started? Was it huge?

[Wayside]

One thing worth noting, although it is purely anecdotal of course. The 25k DDI subscribers mentioned are those who have a subscription AND have logged on to the WotC website. In my group (thats the anecdote), 6 out of 7 people have a subscription, and only 1 of 6 has ever been to WotC's forums.

My experience is in the same vein: 0 out of 24-ish DDI subscribers that I know have RPG forum accounts of any kind. I highly doubt that our 1 in 31 combined figure holds across the board--that would be nearly 800,000 subscribers--but actual subscriptions are certainly much higher than 25,000.