Apples to Oranges

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A few weeks ago, I blasted WoW.com for comparing Free Realms account totals to World of Warcraft's subscription totals. Today on twitter I see people comparing facebooks farmtown totals to WoW. What is it with people? how can they possibly think this is even remotely the same thing? Is it some innate need to tear down success that fuels these comparisons? or just a complete lack of understanding of where these numbers come from?

Farmtown is a minigame provided free to users of facebook. You buy seeds and plant a crop, then wait a few days and harvest. You take your harvest to town, buy more seeds, plant again and...well, you get the idea.

Farmtown is one of those things that your friends try and spam gifts to you getting you to take a look. Like Free realms, by simply trying the game, you are counted as "playing" the game, even if you NEVER play it again. So, today when someone twittered that it had as many players as World of Warcraft, I stood appalled that someone could even compare the two.

These free games never give an accurate count as to the activity of their player base. They simply count all those who have signed up from day one until now. WoW, on the other hand, like all subscription based MMO's, counts only those accounts that are still active. And to have a 12.5 million active and paying customer base wins hands down in my book.

Someday, I hope Blizzard will release the numbers on how many accounts were created over the years, playing or not. I suspect it's more than twice their active subscriptions, and would silence the naysayers once and for all.