MMOGCHART.COM Updated

[SirBruce]

A lot of people have been waiting for me to update my MMOG subscription charts and research for a long while now, and I finally have a new version out. Lots of new data to mull over. Thanks to everyone for their support and patience!

http://www.mmogchart.com

Bruce

[Euri]

Well at least we know why there are so many rangrangs in the world now.

[Nick Walter]

Originally Posted by Euri

Well at least we know why there are so many rangrangs in the world now.

rangrang?

whatdat?

[stusser]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/defin...term=rang+rang

[Charles]

It's interesting to see that both Lineages are on the downturn. Also looks like UO is getting low enough that EA may finally put it to rest. Aren't they publishing some tolkien MMO? Perhaps they'll finally shut down UO when they start running another.

[DrDel]

wow, subscriber numbers for WoW are insane...

[Charles]

Originally Posted by DrDel

wow, subscriber numbers for WoW are insane...

It's the housewife factor. Dunno what it is about Blizzard, but they seem to nail them every time. No pun intended.

[Rywill]

Very interesting stuff. It's amazing the way WoW dwarfs everything else on the market. I mean, I really like WoW a lot, but Jesus. And no big competitors coming out until at least the end of this year, it looks like.

[HRose]

I cannot find the post, but it looks like an account on a eastern market is worth like a 5% of an account on our market for Blizzard.

Btw, numbers seem more accurate this time. WoW should be still at 6M. SOE games are completely unreliable and NCSoft and CCP/Eve-Online now disclose their numbers.

The chart below 100k is just a mess and it really doesn't say anything.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by HRose

I cannot find the post, but it looks like an account on a western market is worth like a 5% of an account on our market for Blizzard.

I believe in asia blizzard doesn't sell accounts, so much as site licenses.

[Balasarius]

Re: EQ2

as of June 2005 the game had some 278,000 total subscribers.

How does year old data qualify as an accuracy rating of "B" ?

[Qenan]

Seems like WoW has set a new standard for content, which makes it a very high risk, high reward market.

[SirBruce]

Originally Posted by HRose

I cannot find the post, but it looks like an account on a eastern market is worth like a 5% of an account on our market for Blizzard.

It's about 10% from what I remember being told at E3. I have some old pricing data, but recently Blizzard dropped their prices 20%; I'd have to dig up the recent figure.

Originally Posted by HRose

Btw, numbers seem more accurate this time.

The numbers weren't inaccurate last time, just OLD. :)

Originally Posted by HRose

WoW should be still at 6M.

Sorry, my friend, but you are wrong! You missed Blizzard's E3 press release. I don't blame you, though, because the release is mysteriously not up on their main web site, but it is on the UK web site (but not listed in their list of press releases):

http://www.blizzard.co.uk/press/060510.shtml

I *do* do this for a living, ya know. ;)

Originally Posted by HRose

SOE games are completely unreliable and NCSoft and CCP/Eve-Online now disclose their numbers.

A number of other companies provide numbers to me besides NCSoft and CCP; Jagex, Three Rings, Ankama, CipSoft, etc. I'm still trying to negotiate arrangements with companies like SOE, Turbine, Mythic, and EA. :)

Originally Posted by HRose

The chart below 100k is just a mess and it really doesn't say anything.

Yeah; I might break out another chart for those below 60K, but really it's just as crowded. Lots of older data, too. But hey, new data point for The Realm Online! :)

Bruce

[SirBruce]

Originally Posted by Balasarius

How does year old data qualify as an accuracy rating of "B" ?

Well, it was an insider sourced data point THEN. I don't have a more recent one I can provide. The rumor is EQ1 and EQ2 are now about the same, but there are a LOT of inactive EQ1 accounts out there that are nevertheless "countable" because they're still on game time cards or station pass subscriptions.

Bruce

[Jason Becker]

Makes me wonder what percentage is for the diffrent SOE games based on single accounts vs a general station pass.

[SirBruce]

Last I heard, the station pass had about 50,000 folks on it, but that was a year ago. Station pass folks still aren't counted for an individual game, though, unless they've actually bought the game. Still, if you bought EQ years ago and now have a station pass and only play SWG or PS, you'll still get counted as an EQ subscriber.

And like I said, there's a ton of people on game time cards. Really, we need to move to more complete and better metrics, like ARPUH (Average Rvenue Per User Hour), especially with many MMOGs moving away from the subscription model.

Bruce

[Dhruin]

I'd like to see US or UK + Europe data only. Last time I discussed this noone agreed but I find it hard to see the value in comparing numbers that are (sometimes) heavily skewed by different practices in Asia.

[Qenan]

I think it would be interesting to separate all the major markets... but I imagine it's harder to get that data.

[SirBruce]

Yeah, breakout by market is almost impossible, especially historically, except for a company like NCSoft. If you are wonky enough to look through that Excel spreadsheet I sometimes add comments on regional breakdown.

Bruce

[Bill]

The 10,000 Asheron's Call subscribers--are they the people that just forgot to cancel their accounts?

[SirBruce]

Originally Posted by Bill

The 10,000 Asheron's Call subscribers--are they the people that just forgot to cancel their accounts?

Most of those people were culled when the billing was switched over from Microsoft to Turbine.

Bruce

[JMR]

So WW2OL holding steady at 12,000? I thought they lost a lot of long time players once they removed power from the players/squads and transfered it to the select few of the high commands. Didn't they lay off a bunch of people earlier this year?

[rei]

DDO is managing to stay alive with next-to-no content.

[HRose]

Originally Posted by rei

DDO is managing to stay alive with next-to-no content.

More than a lack of content it's the overall concept to be inappropriate.

[worm]

Blizzard does't release any subscription data, right? So what's that number based on?

[SirBruce]

DDO's concept is great, and it has a lot of strong things going for it. Sadly, it stumbled in three major areas:

1. Not enough content.
2. Not enough solo play.
3. Nothing ELSE to do (no mini-games, crafting, housing, treasure hunting, etc.)

There are other issues, too, but those are the three main ones. These were all identified in beta, but Turbine chose to ship anyway. What are they doing now? Scrambling to add more content and more solo play! Still, it seems like although the server concurrency numbers are low, a lot of people are still subscribed, waiting for the next patch. It'll be interesting to see how long they let wait; remember that while the hardcore players got through all the content within a month or two, the more casual players still have a couple more months to go before there's nothing left for them to do. I would expect DDO's numbers to rise a bit higher into the summer and then start to fall back down quickly. Turbine may be able to turn the product around, especially with a strong Christmas push. City of Heroes was able to recover from an early drop in subscriptions.

As for Blizzard, they post their subscription numbers routinely in their press releases as they reach new milestones.

All numbers I use are sourced, not guesses. If it's rated an A, the number is from an official statement or on-the-record source. If it's B, it's from an unofficial source that I've found to be reliable. It it's C, it's usually not on the chart at all; the couple of data points that are C's are either from questionable sources or numbers that are derived based upon inexact statements ("We have more subscribers than X, less than Y") or other means that seem sound but have large error bars associated with them.

Bruce

[Rollory]

Originally Posted by SirBruce

I would expect DDO's numbers to rise a bit higher into the summer and then start to fall back down quickly. Turbine may be able to turn the product around, especially with a strong Christmas push.

Eh? How? "Adding more content" will not do it, noway nohow. Players will ALWAYS burn through content in a fraction of the time it took the developers to make it. You therefore need content that by its nature can be experienced in multiple different ways, usually depending on player input. DDO's dungeons are the precise opposite of this: once you've gone through them once, you know know how to do them and subsequent adventures are just optimizations in the route; once you've gone through them a dozen times, you're physically ill at the thought of doing the same damn thing yet one more time. The game's fundamental design is its most crippling factor.

They will have to fundamentally change the nature of the game to save it. Which cannot be done in the timeframe they have. Particularly if they are spending that time with short-term flailing like adding PvP (precisely the wrong feature for the audience the game was originally marketed to) and new quests that will just get burned through within a couple weeks of release.

If I was the Evil Corporate Overlord, I'd write it off right now - transfer everyone involved to other projects (maybe fire anyone involved with overall design), and get what money I could from it. The costs involved in fixing it at this point are comparable to developing an entire new game.

[instant0]

DDOs biggest mistake was the O. It would have been an excellent NWN style game. (If they added some more content, that is).

From what I remember in the beta it took less than a week to burn through all the content.

I would have hoped the WWII Online picked up somewhat, like I see EVE has done, since the game is really good. I can only hope the numbers are bigger than Planetsides are.

I dont like the fact that Station Passes are counted as a EQ subscriber when you've left that game dead for years, by that regards, Tanaris should be counted as having 50k subs then, since you get it 'for free' with The Pass (Although it was free back in the days -- and great).

Lots of titles on that list I did not recognize, time to google and see if some of those games are great, might even learn a new language in the process.

I believe I read that the Korean(?) WoW subscription would change to a pay-for-how-much-you-use instead of paying for 30 days when you only play 2 of them.

Its interesting to see how some of the titles goes down when a competing product is released. See EQ2 lost 100k subs a short while after WOW launched. Amazing that UO still has subscribers, but, it was the only game that I played that really created a "living fantasy world" -- until they started nerfing it, anyway.

Nice work :)

[Talorc]

Anyone else find the "curve" for Eve online interesting?

As Bruce comments, most of them show a Parabolic curve of a big hit from initial retail distribution, and then a flattening growth, followed by a slow decline.

But Eve Online has been accelerating its growth. Hope in the future for MMOG developers willing to carve out a niche, do it well, and distribute online?

[SirBruce]

Originally Posted by Rollory

Eh? How? "Adding more content" will not do it, noway nohow. Players will ALWAYS burn through content in a fraction of the time it took the developers to make it.

That's not the standard. The standard is if you can add enough content per month to satisfy the amount of time your average player plays per month. If your average subscriber plays, say, 40 hours/month, then you need to be able to make 40 hours worth of content in 730 hours, but you can throw as many content creators at that as you want in order to achieve that goal. If you can't achieve this through monthly patches, you do it via expansions.

Note that "content" is not just new quests or dungeons. It's really anything you can add that makes the player spend more time feeling like they're accomplishing something and being entertained. New mobs, new classes, new features like housing and crafting, etc. can all provide that.

Originally Posted by Rollory

DDO's dungeons are the precise opposite of this: once you've gone through them once, you know know how to do them and subsequent adventures are just optimizations in the route; once you've gone through them a dozen times, you're physically ill at the thought of doing the same damn thing yet one more time. The game's fundamental design is its most crippling factor.

The only reason you HAVE to repeat dungeons in DDO is because of lack of content. It's not really fundamental to the game's design. You shouldn't HAVE to do the same dungeon 3+ times.

Originally Posted by Rollory

They will have to fundamentally change the nature of the game to save it. Which cannot be done in the timeframe they have.

I disagree. I think the necessary changes could be done in six months, which is what I recommended in beta to deaf ears. They're already doing some of them now, by redoing the newbie experience to be more solo friendly. I agree that Turbine has an uphill battle ahead, but it's not an impossible one; you may not be able to get people to come back to the product, but there's still a lot of people who haven't tried it yet.

Pulling the plug on it would be a big mistake, not only for their image, but becasue it's almost the only thing they've got going for them now. They need it to keep going just to get LotRO completed.

Bruce