I would have to say it’s higher, my guess is 5% of players. I know I’m one of them.
I’d guess less than 5%
Even if it’s 1% that’s 10,000 if we assume a reasonable 1 million players in Europe.
Even 0.5% is 5,000, and that’s actually not a tiny number. Probably not that different to the percentage of people that get many rare things.
Forums are also no indication at all as to the type of players, or importantly for right now the general disposition of them. Forums attract a very particular type of player really shouldn’t be considered all that representative for all sorts of reasons.
@Daecimus: I was making an active distinction between having and playing 50 characters. As you said, there are numerous people who have a lot characters, but people who actively use lots of characters are really, really rare (literally one in a million sort of rare, according to some). Last time I used 50 characters was only three days ago. 
Last time? What do you mean?
I may not play some for a month, but that doesn’t mean they are valueless. I play them at different times. It is like the mount or pet point, as many of them are almost never used. Just because that’s true it’s no argument to delete them or put a ‘reasonable’ limit on how many one can have.
Characters should have a cap because you will end up with some players messing about and literally making thousands. However increasing the cap after fourteen years by ten or so isn’t going to make the servers melt-- that troll or bot player who now makes 60 instead of 50 to try and break the servers or destroy the economy isn’t going to succeed with just 10 more.
Anyway does anyone really think it’s incredibly rare to find WoW players who have liked levelling characters since vanilla, and still do? What’s the consequence of that? Many characters. ‘Levellers’ tend to be the quiet type, less of endgame, so are they going to be on the forums as much as the ‘Azerite Armour is rubbish!’ type? Azerite Armour is indeed very flawed, but that’s another matter.
@Daecimus: Literally, that December 21st was latest time I have played 50 characters within one day. People claiming it is impossible are wrong. Granted, the play time / character is very limited, but it is mechanically possible.
Your second and third paragraphs are essentially correct and those points have been expressed in the past.
As for the fourth… Well, there are people who claim that the mere fact that one does not need 50 characters to play every race and class (once) is a good enough reason to limit the number. I do not agree with that sentiment 100%. I am well aware that in the same sense some people collect pets or mounts, others like collecting alts. 
she isn’t playing on my account, I just log on to these ones and invite her to my realm if shes after a super rare pet … nothing more.
Dark Rangers for horde, more fat humans for alliance? 
not gonna read that essay, but yeah they should increase the cap. but really who needs 50 characters, nearly no1 lets be honest.
This. I love making new characters, writing their stories, selecting the perfect mounts and pet to go along with them. It’s really heartbreaking to have to delete them to make room for more. And with all the talk about more allied races this expansion and a new class in the next, I might have to delete even more of characters 
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Storage space. Mounts/pets/transmogs are account wide, so adding new ones increases storage linearly with a factor of 1, which is not a big deal.
On the other hand each character has a lot of data that needs to be saved - all the bag space, banks space, void storage, character achievements, quests state, etc.
In the end the ratio between character data to account wide data is probably something like 10k/1, so adding for example 10 more max character slots would increase storage costs by 20%.
@Shumensko: That is an entirely valid point, but Daecimus did note in a later post that he would be willing to pay a bit for some extra slots (just not a full second account cost).
Also, while I do not know how much extra Terabytes of storage space cost, I do not think the subscription consists primarily from storage space cost… or?
My guess is sub money are going mainly for content patches, but it’s just a guess.
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My 1 Terabyte drive cost me 40€. I have no idea how many full accounts data would fit in there but I’d guess a big lot?
Whatever they use for storage has a better cost/space than my crappy home drive I’d guess aswell.
Damn I really hope the reason for the 50 limit isnt cheaping out on storage
That would be a better reason than them making more money by people having multiple accounts therefore paying multiple subs per month though…
OP pays £20 month to have more than 50 characters, why would blizzard accept a single one off payment for extra slots for one account halfing that regular source of income? Dubious if it’s true but not unlikely.
No idea really, but keep in mind that all of the storage has to be effectively doubled, because obviously all the data has to be backuped. Also, don’t forget that they have to keep all the data of all accounts - current, old and new, so that storage has to be replaced in the future.
[edit]
Oh, and one other point. Character data increases with each new patch.
I see this not as a hardware issue, ie HDD storage, but a software issue. The software was written, in my opinion, to have the maximum of 50 characters per WoW account and would need a big rewrite to increase the count.
I say enough slots for 1 of every class on both factions is far more than enough.
Asking for more than 50 is needless.
You dont play them.
Its not humanly possible.
Sure it’s humanly possible, maybe not play every 50 character everyday not skipping a beat, but that’s not even the point.
I have a few characters that are xp locked at addons level with wich I try to equip them with bis lists of that addon, those characters will likely never see much playtime but sure enough every week I run em through those old raids hoping that missing gear piece will finally drop and I wouldnt consider to ever delete them after all that work, despite maybe using them very ocasionally to run some bg’s I view them more as collectibles, reminders of other times in this game.
I just got one more Mag’har monk locked at 80, starting to deck him out in “fake bis” ICC25 normal gear and working on Val’anyr, maybe I’ll even use him for some Herald runs. I wont consider deleting him after all that to make room to level another character wich I love doing.
Add a few x9 locked pvp twinks in a few brackets. Sure I dont play them everyday, maybe this week I do some 39’s, maybe next week I do some 79’s, but all those characters do get their play time.
Throw a few more 120s in the mix and 50 starts to look like a really small number 
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I say your 226 collected mounts are too many, you only need 1, let’s remove them. You don’t use all of them, it’s not humanly possible.
On a serious note, increasing the cap would make happy those who have 50, and would not affect others at all. Being against it’s stupid.
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If the software is capable of handling more than 50 characters per account, why not sell character slots for like €8 in the shop?
Do you really need that extra alt? Well then… caching caching pow