So according to Bioware...

And this is where your ignorance starts to show, not all subscriptions are equal. You can point to Blizzard as a very astute point of this, now depending on how you look at it, WoW either has 10 million subs or 5.5million subs, should you count China subs as full subs even though they don't function the same way as Western subs and cost only a fraction of the price, what about subs that have been canceled but still have active game time, what about free or comped time, what about free play accounts or resurrected accounts, what about accounts that have been banned, hacked? How does free time get taken into account, if someone buys a boxed game and has the 1MO free time, does that get taken into account? There is an entire host of variables that either should or shouldn't be taken into a account. It's not as simple as "count all the people herp derp."

No the real question is how do you know what the actual subscriber number is

what is the meaning of life and what is a subscriber?

I know I am butting in here, and on a topic you said you didn't care to discuss. Apologies. However, I believe this point is a matter of perspective.

They are talking about activity on the Subscription, not activity within the game. As the subscription is still being paid, it still has activity.

A Subscription holds no requirement for its owner to actively be engaged in its use in order for it to have activity. The "activity" is made when "a purchase [is] made by signed order, as for a periodical for a specified period of time or for a series of performances."

Note: I have no more of an idea on how they, or any other company, counts their active subscribers. Just wanted to point that out.

I'm curious how many people who've responded in this thread actually read the article.

It isn't about calculating the subscription number (i.e. the total number of subscribers).

It's about analyzing the various metrics of subscriber numbers--i.e. how many converted sales vs. how many total boxes sold, how many subscribed players logged in during a specific time-frame, how many subscribers from a specific geographical area, and so forth.

This.
After reading the article the OP posted I am inclined to believe that it is nothing but EA/BW CYAing. I am starting to wonder how bad it really is if they are having to BS their way out of questions related to actual numbers.

No statistic is meaningful without context.

Saying they have 1.3 million subscriptions tells you very little on its own, for example. When compared to previous numbers such as 1.7 million, now you can make some simple observations like "the number of subs has gone down." When you compare it to total box sales you can extrapolate a retention rate.

However, the only significance these numbers ultimately have is in terms of revenue. Again, this information is of little value on its own. If you know the expenses, marginal costs and other economics then you can start to make conclusions about profit and ROI.

Real metrics that focus on game population "health" are usually not available to the public. These are things like average and peak concurrency (number of players online at the same time), weekly and monthly uniques, session lengths (mean, median and mode along with several ranges). You can also continue this sort of analysis for specific activities like "x% of players engage in y or more warzones per day."

Fatman PvP (east coast) Heavy
Drooga's Pleasure Barge PvE (west coast) Standard
Jedi Covenant PvE (east coast) Standard
The Harbinger PvE (west coast) Standard
Ajunta Pall RP-PvP (west coast) Standard
The Swiftsure PvP (west coast) Standard
All other servers are light. Pretty much all you need to know is right there at the server screen regularly. Even during prime hours PST (which would have been 3hrs ago) there were still only 10 servers Standard or above.

Yep, we don't have the proof in hard numbers but that certainly "feels" like if you look at the server list in prime time. 2 V Heavy, 3-4 standart and rest light. I rerolled on JC which is still very heavy but both fleet barely scratching 200 peps on each side, also by pvping in the 1-49 bracket have ofthen guildies in 3-4 different WZ's who seem to also point out pretty much same pool of names on both sides pvping. I don't have the numbers, but it truly "feels" like there is less than 1k players on each of those 2 V Heavy servers in US primetime. The 25k active players primetime is quite likely considering of how many servers are hovering under 100 people (serverwide not fleet presence).

The fact that BW is going more or less shady is the most infportant one. I think the dmg is so much greater that any1 on these forums can anticipate and that is why they even talk about it. Again, we don't have hard numbers, but a lot of folks have the feeling this ship sinks faster that anybody can even think of. And don't forget all those who got hooked on the hype and paid full 6 months, but they don't play it anymore. I frankly don't care how many mln subscribers the game has. How many of those subs are are actualy playing is the key.

Anyway, I think once the 6month mark hits (+30 free days offered by BW) everybody will be shocked of how few subs are still active and how many of them are still playing... Dreadful days ahead

Translation: I have to be very careful how I spin this so I keep my job