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Doing a similar thing to my Season 1/2 Data Dump for seasons 2 and 3. In season 3, a few servers were merged, such as Latin America going into North America. I've merged this data from season 1 and 2, to make this data consistent.
(S2 is Season 2, S3 is Season 3)
na is North America, eu is Europe, kr is Korea, cn is China, sea is South-East Asia.
Total players that placed in the 1v1 gametype, and players that placed in any ladder gametype.
1V1 PLAYERS ALL PLAYERS
S2 S3 % diff S2 S3 % diff
na 428,201 381,855 (89.2%) 597,561 551,524 (92.3%)
eu 406,608 366,478 (90.1%) 540,810 506,616 (93.7%)
kr 157,580 159,532 (101.2%) 241,545 248,954 (103.1%)
cn 190,302 91,791 (48.2%) 242,082 113,701 (47.0%)
sea 46,627 39,320 (84.3%) 64,293 55,633 (86.5%)
China had the same drop-off that all the other regions experienced going from season 1 to 2, because Starcraft 2 was released in China at the start of season 2. Everyone else stayed close to where they were before, even when season 3 was a month shorter than season 2!
Here are graphs of players over time. Brown is season 1, silver season 2, gold season 3. Season 1's data starts a month past release.
+ Show Spoiler [Graphs!] +North America![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8ay75.png) Europe![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2zdDC.png) Korea![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fvFp6.png) China![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QzNqx.png) Southeast Asia![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/xg1xd.png)
Here are players with at least 25 wins (b.net doesn't track loses yayyy!) in 1v1, and all gametypes. Season 2 data has been time-modified (see bottom of post for details).
1V1 GAMES ALL GAMETYPES
S2 S3 % diff S2 S3 % diff
na 136,395 120,779 (88.6%) 237,884 259,278 (109.0%)
eu 140,974 123,365 (87.5%) 233,675 253,706 (108.6%)
kr 50,408 55,030 (109.2%) 77,404 109,113 (141.0%)
cn 77,843 35,735 (45.9%) 72,201 57,555 (79.7%)
sea 15,367 12,423 (80.8%) 25,390 26,087 (102.7%)
Graphs of similar data, between 0 wins (everybody) and 200 wins.
Brown is season 2, silver is season 3. Season 2 data is once again time-modified.
+ Show Spoiler [More Graphs!] +North America1v1 ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/nwzkb.png) All ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/B6CCq.png) Europe1v1 ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/cJKA8.png) All ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wYX83.png) Korea1v1 ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/R4a3J.png) All ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vY0ky.png) China1v1 ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/UpYFN.png) All ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/CPGBd.png) Southeast Asia1v1 ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jiowO.png) All ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/e0iyC.png)
Attrition rate.
This consists of players that played in previous seasons, who returned in season 3. China didn't have a season 1, so its historical data is limited to season 2 only.
TOTAL PLAYERS RETURNED FROM % RETURNED IN SEASON 3 FROM
s2 s3 all s2 all s2 s3 new players
na 655,751 551,524 476,235 430,924 41.67% 65.71% 13.65% 75,289
eu 588,015 506,616 435,159 397,139 44.66% 67.54% 14.10% 71,457
kr 270,220 248,954 199,158 172,744 29.78% 63.93% 20.00% 37,418
cn 260,235 113,701 76,283 76,283 29.31% 29.31% 32.91% 49,796
sea 70,238 55,633 49,088 44,691 36.57% 63.63% 11.76% 6,545 EDIT: there were 210,505 new sc2 players in the last 3 months
This one's moderately complicated, here's a short explanation.
In North America 65.71% of players that played in season 2, also played in season 3. 41.67% of players that played in seasons 1 or 2, also played in season 3. 13.65% of players in season 3 (of which there were 551,524) did not play in seasons 1 or 2.
edit: What is "time-modified" data?
Since season 2 lasted almost a month longer than season 3, the numbers for games played doesn't match up properly. I modify player numbers based on how many people I had logged at a time matching up to the length of season 3.
For example, Korea actually has 56,393 people with 25 or more wins, while my numbers in the table state 50,408. Season 3 lasted 90 days, while season 2 lasted 118 days. (118 - 90 = 28) At the end of season 2, Korea had 221,819 players. 28 days prior to the end of season 2, Korea had 198,281 players, which is 89.38864blahblahblah%. Multiply 56,393 (real number of >= 25) by this percent, and you get the value in the table of 50,408.
edit2: added labels to my graphs.
edit3: new players per region in attrition rate
tl;dr china plummets as expected first season, everyone loses a little total players, gains a little active players, korea beats the curve, worldwide quarter million new players
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Glad to see growth in Korea, even if its just a little bit. It is the only region to not see loses. 
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The decrease in Chinese players is quite worrying. Over 50% of the players gone from s2. That's really many. I don-t think the numbers on the other servers are very bad though... 6-8% really isn't that many
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On October 30 2011 04:55 Zzzapper wrote:
The decrease in Chinese players is quite worrying. Over 50% of the players gone from s2. That's really many. I don-t think the numbers on the other servers are very bad though... 6-8% really isn't that many
The explanation for that is in the OP. It was the same as seen on the other servers after their first season.
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On October 30 2011 04:55 Zzzapper wrote:
The decrease in Chinese players is quite worrying. Over 50% of the players gone from s2. That's really many. I don-t think the numbers on the other servers are very bad though... 6-8% really isn't that many
More or less the same thing has already happened to the other regions already. It would/will be considerably more worrying if the suffer a similar drop from seasons 3 to 4. Also good to see Korea growing. I never realised that they had significantly less players than the other regions though.
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I hope that the number of 1v1 players jump up once HOTS comes out.
Even though its only a 10% difference of a drop for this season, its depressing but expected that more and more players are not staying active in ladder.
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On October 30 2011 05:00 Icekommander wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2011 04:55 Zzzapper wrote:
The decrease in Chinese players is quite worrying. Over 50% of the players gone from s2. That's really many. I don-t think the numbers on the other servers are very bad though... 6-8% really isn't that many More or less the same thing has already happened to the other regions already. It would/will be considerably more worrying if the suffer a similar drop from seasons 3 to 4. Also good to see Korea growing. I never realised that they had significantly less players than the other regions though.
Wasn't the it more like 30-35% who dropped out in the other servers? Maybe i just didn't remember this correctly...
Edit: Just looked it up. It was only EU that had a 35% decrease. The other servers had at least 40'ish
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Hmm, this doesnt seem good? what do people think? is this killing esports?
<3
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KR actually having more players in S3? I find that hard ot believe.
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Tons of people get discouraged from ladder so they just play customs, and you can't really account for that. Also lots of people that watch sc2 don't play, so I wouldn't get too worried lol.
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thats actually more players than I thought, thanks for the statistics!
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i stay really inactive since season 2, playing about only 100 games per season, but i still follow the pro scene and play customs =D
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On October 30 2011 05:04 Megaliskuu wrote:
Tons of people get discouraged from ladder so they just play customs, and you can't really account for that. Also lots of people that watch sc2 don't play, so I wouldn't get too worried lol.
This, people abandoning the ladder after a single year. Its pretty common in all games. Numbers still look healthy though. Some games are a wasteland after 2-3 months.
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On October 30 2011 05:04 Megaliskuu wrote:
Tons of people get discouraged from ladder so they just play customs, and you can't really account for that. Also lots of people that watch sc2 don't play, so I wouldn't get too worried lol.
Yeah, <5% drop a season isn't worrying in the slightest this soon after the release.
Also I'll bet money it's going to jump again after HotS is released.
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Well, on that note, I'm actually returning to the scene after a long break (only played 2 placement matches for season 2).
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On October 30 2011 05:04 decaf wrote:
KR actually having more players in S3? I find that hard ot believe.
a lot of americans are playing on the server too
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On October 30 2011 05:10 Tommylew wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2011 05:04 decaf wrote:
KR actually having more players in S3? I find that hard ot believe. a lot of americans are playing on the server too
The number of 'pro' players that play on KR is not going to change significantly the stats, there are 150 000 players on kr.
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The NA numbers, do they count the accounts from the merged latin-american server?
Also, pretty shitty results for SC2.
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Those are really small decreases in player count for a 1yr old game. Some decrease is to be expected, but the overall playerpool seems to remain remarkably stable. Good stuff.
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On October 30 2011 05:00 Icekommander wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2011 04:55 Zzzapper wrote:
The decrease in Chinese players is quite worrying. Over 50% of the players gone from s2. That's really many. I don-t think the numbers on the other servers are very bad though... 6-8% really isn't that many More or less the same thing has already happened to the other regions already. It would/will be considerably more worrying if the suffer a similar drop from seasons 3 to 4. Also good to see Korea growing. I never realised that they had significantly less players than the other regions though.
There are significantly less people who live in SK...
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That's still plenty of people worldwide to cheer on SC2 as an eSport, so I'm not all that worried yet.
Great data though, excellent read.
Korea hwaiting? xD
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On October 30 2011 05:20 legaton wrote:
The NA numbers, do they count the accounts from the merged latin-american server?
Also, pretty shitty results for SC2.
Yes, as well as russia -> europe, and taiwan -> korea.
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Awesome post. The only concern I have is that the non-Chinese servers had a huge dropoff from S1 -> S2 because S1 was 9 months long (or something). S2 was only 3-4 months long, and they (China) experienced a larger dropoff than the other servers did in their first month? Oh well.
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More people are playing in Korean ^^
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On October 30 2011 05:49 youngminii wrote:
Awesome post. The only concern I have is that the non-Chinese servers had a huge dropoff from S1 -> S2 because S1 was 9 months long (or something). S2 was only 3-4 months long, and they (China) experienced a larger dropoff than the other servers did in their first month? Oh well.
Yes, one thing I don't keep any information on when games are played, or I could tell how many active players there are at any given time. Work gets in the way of the important things . . .
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SEA is so fucking dead i cant play on it anymore. I get matched againts the same people it drives me mad.
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On October 30 2011 05:04 decaf wrote:
KR actually having more players in S3? I find that hard ot believe.
As the pro scene transitions from BW to SC2 in korea, I would imagine the number of players playing sc2 would grow also. There are probably many hold-outs who haven't gotten SC2 because they still see all of their favorite players competing in BW. But when their favorite players switch games, they may decide it might be time to buy SC2 for themselves.
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I feel a lot less proud of getting GM on SEA. 
Oh, and in a nice way for the love of god please label the axis on your graphs.
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Is it possible that the growth in Korea because they merge the Taiwan server in? Also a lot of foreigners can buy TW account easily now and play there.Also, there is apparently no lag anymore playing in KR server from NA according to incontrol on SOTG. Might be quite a bit of repeat from other regions.
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On October 30 2011 07:40 Peleus wrote:Oh, and in a nice way for the love of god please label the axis on your graphs.
hehe, yea, I hear you. I wrote that code over a year ago and haven't touched it since, very hacked together and such. Good incentive now to actually look at it again.
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The numbers don't seem bad to me. You have to remember that people had to go back to school for last season and maybe don't have the time to play anymore. Also need to consider that most video games are pretty dead after 1.5 years of being released. Most try to attract new players by releasing a new game (EA, COD) and Blizzard hasn't advertised WoL at all since release. Considering all the new games that came out over the last year, I'd say the numbers look good.
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Oh my god.. SEA is a graveyard.. time to make the switch to NA...
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On October 30 2011 07:40 Peleus wrote:Oh, and in a nice way for the love of god please label the axis on your graphs.
There you go, have some labels :D
+ Show Spoiler [Less shitty graphs!] +
On October 30 2011 08:52 Achilles306 wrote:
The numbers don't seem bad to me. You have to remember that people had to go back to school for last season and maybe don't have the time to play anymore. Also need to consider that most video games are pretty dead after 1.5 years of being released. Most try to attract new players by releasing a new game (EA, COD) and Blizzard hasn't advertised WoL at all since release. Considering all the new games that came out over the last year, I'd say the numbers look good.
I did the math on how many new players there had been through season 3, and worldwide, got over 240,000, which I put under the section attrition rate. That's a lot of sales for a year and a half old game.
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Could you summarize the data for us?
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One thing I'm pretty curious about is the actual reason the players are leaving - aside from real life priorities, is it due to gameplay (just not fun etc.)? ladder fear? 'coldness' of bnet interface? I think it would be good for Blizzard to know what isn't working, so they can try do something to maintain a higher % of players going forward.
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United States12235 Posts
On October 30 2011 09:29 Zealot Lord wrote:
One thing I'm pretty curious about is the actual reason the players are leaving - aside from real life priorities, is it due to gameplay (just not fun etc.)? ladder fear? 'coldness' of bnet interface? I think it would be good for Blizzard to know what isn't working, so they can try do something to maintain a higher % of players going forward.
Look at the tremendous drop in the graph after even x=1. I think it stands to reason that there are many casual players who played during Season 1, but stopped because they either don't think of multiplayer the same way we do (a competition), or would rather play team games for fun, or to see where they'd place and then quit. Seasons 2 and 3 also have very sharp drops after x=1, which probably means the more casual players just played their one placement match to see which league they'd fall into, and that's it.
I wonder how much the Season 3 bonus pool accrual rate change impacted the amount of retained players. On the surface, it appears that it really didn't at all because the curves are very similar as wins increase. However, maybe if the bonus pool was still at its old rate, the curve would start further down the Y?
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I am just curious if there is anyway to detect or see somehow which accounts are one persons account.
I know personally I have 5 accounts and I use them all on the ladder at some point in each season (They are in different regions as well). I'm going to assume you can't actually detect that because I certainly can't think of a way. Great data by the way and thank you for sharing this it was a nice read. I knew that the player base decreased with every season but I didn't realize it was by that much from season 1 to 2.
Good to see a tiny amount of growth in the Korea numbers albeit a pretty small one.
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I'm not helping much, but I quit team games this season. I will focus more on 1vs1.
Nevertheless, it's sad 1vs1 players are becoming less except in Korea.
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On October 30 2011 06:09 wordd wrote:
SEA is so fucking dead i cant play on it anymore. I get matched againts the same people it drives me mad.
What are you smoking? You do understand that we are getting 10x less players than NA whereas the population of the entirely of sea is 15x less than the US and would be roughly 20x given the inclusion of Canada, if anything it means we are in a very populated server given the population differences and our ability to play on NA.
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On October 30 2011 09:35 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2011 09:29 Zealot Lord wrote:
One thing I'm pretty curious about is the actual reason the players are leaving - aside from real life priorities, is it due to gameplay (just not fun etc.)? ladder fear? 'coldness' of bnet interface? I think it would be good for Blizzard to know what isn't working, so they can try do something to maintain a higher % of players going forward. Look at the tremendous drop in the graph after even x=1. I think it stands to reason that there are many casual players who played during Season 1, but stopped because they either don't think of multiplayer the same way we do (a competition), or would rather play team games for fun, or to see where they'd place and then quit. Seasons 2 and 3 also have very sharp drops after x=1, which probably means the more casual players just played their one placement match to see which league they'd fall into, and that's it. I wonder how much the Season 3 bonus pool accrual rate change impacted the amount of retained players. On the surface, it appears that it really didn't at all because the curves are very similar as wins increase. However, maybe if the bonus pool was still at its old rate, the curve would start further down the Y?
Yeah, I definitely know what you mean - but like, is SC really a game that only mainly (high level) competitive players can enjoy? If the game is fun, shouldn't the casuals play more than just their one placement match? They could do those wacky day9 funday monday stuff etc. I mean, the lower bonus pool point accumulation and no loss record showing for below masters were all meant to encourage casuals playing more no?
What I want to say is that there are quite a few 1v1 games where both the serious and the casual enjoy playing, but it seems like even with pretty good matchmaking with the MMR system in SC2, majority of the lower level casual players just don't have 'fun'?
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This is really cool. This is the sort of thing that people could use to support argumentative essays regarding StarCraft. Sickkkk
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On October 30 2011 09:56 Zealot Lord wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2011 09:35 Excalibur_Z wrote:On October 30 2011 09:29 Zealot Lord wrote:
One thing I'm pretty curious about is the actual reason the players are leaving - aside from real life priorities, is it due to gameplay (just not fun etc.)? ladder fear? 'coldness' of bnet interface? I think it would be good for Blizzard to know what isn't working, so they can try do something to maintain a higher % of players going forward. Look at the tremendous drop in the graph after even x=1. I think it stands to reason that there are many casual players who played during Season 1, but stopped because they either don't think of multiplayer the same way we do (a competition), or would rather play team games for fun, or to see where they'd place and then quit. Seasons 2 and 3 also have very sharp drops after x=1, which probably means the more casual players just played their one placement match to see which league they'd fall into, and that's it. I wonder how much the Season 3 bonus pool accrual rate change impacted the amount of retained players. On the surface, it appears that it really didn't at all because the curves are very similar as wins increase. However, maybe if the bonus pool was still at its old rate, the curve would start further down the Y? Yeah, I definitely know what you mean - but like, is SC really a game that only mainly (high level) competitive players can enjoy? If the game is fun, shouldn't the casuals play more than just their one placement match? They could do those wacky day9 funday monday stuff etc. I mean, the lower bonus pool point accumulation and no loss record showing for below masters were all meant to encourage casuals playing more no? What I want to say is that there are quite a few 1v1 games where both the serious and the casual enjoy playing, but it seems like even with pretty good matchmaking with the MMR system in SC2, majority of the lower level casual players just don't have 'fun'?
Playing 1v1 casually around a game like starcraft is pretty tough for a lot of people. I think everyone can agree that team games are much easier to play casually and have fun with than personally putting your ego on the line every single game.
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O.O So many people who're legit trying to play SC2... cool... I mean, playing ladder is so much less casual than playing customs~! Also, don't be so taken aback by how many people are playing ladder, most people who start out in SC2 don't get past 20 games on ladder before crawling into a hole and going back to Halo and CoD...
The fact that THAT many people played 25+ ladder games is a HUGE accomplishment in itself~!
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On October 30 2011 09:26 Itsmedudeman wrote:
Could you summarize the data for us?
CHINA: China had the first season drop of 50% the other regions had after their first season.
OTHER: All other regions stayed close to previous levels (most lost ~10%, korea +3%) in total players. Players with 25 or more wins on all regions increased 3-9%, except Korea +41%.
210,505 new players in season 3 worldwide.
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Wow this is amazingly well done. Still a bit sad that so many are leaving each season. I have no experience of such statistics, but it would seem like a lot of players are abandoning the game?
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I fitt into the statistic perfectly, I played a ton back in beta/season 1. Then in season 2 I played about 1/4 as much and now I don't play at all. All I can really say is that laddering in SC2 does not come close to being as fun over time as laddering in BW was.
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On November 07 2011 04:01 Euronyme wrote:
Wow this is amazingly well done. Still a bit sad that so many are leaving each season. I have no experience of such statistics, but it would seem like a lot of players are abandoning the game?
No way, that's actually really little. No matter how good a game is there's 0 chance that every initial buyer is going to keep playing after a year, or even a couple of months.
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On October 30 2011 05:07 windsupernova wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2011 05:04 Megaliskuu wrote:
Tons of people get discouraged from ladder so they just play customs, and you can't really account for that. Also lots of people that watch sc2 don't play, so I wouldn't get too worried lol. This, people abandoning the ladder after a single year. Its pretty common in all games. Numbers still look healthy though. Some games are a wasteland after 2-3 months.
yeah that happened to World in Conflict. Had a promising e-sports future but the ladder was dead after 3-4 months... really saddening
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That Korea grew is encouraging, and surprising.
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The ladder system can be quite discouraging, and this is why i feel many people drop out. Controlling for the assumption that if you don't play, you get worse, in a game like counter strike, you can hop on when you feel like it, play for bit, and the competition remains relatively the same. This is because playing cs is like playing customs, anyone can join. In a game like sc2 though, the ladder always puts you up against 50% win ratio, so you'll never consistently have good days where you win (and winning=enjoyment) The only people who don't mind losing in sc2 are generally those who enjoy learning (because they eventually want to be better), and those people aren't the casual player. It gets to the point where people make the decision "do I want to invest time and really get good to enjoy the game? Or should I just stop playing?" I for one know that in the summer sc2 came out, I had 3 really good friends pick it up, as well as 7 or so people i knew from hs. They played a fair amount, and this past summer, I was the only on who remained on. My best friends watch me play customs with practice partners now and say "man watching you play makes me want to play (because we use to be equal skill level), but I don't want to because it's so hard now and I'm going to suck"
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EPT
