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MMOG Subscription Winners, Losers Analyzed
Thanks to CorpNews for its recent round-up analyzing and rating the biggest PC massively multiplayer games. Along with subscription estimates similar to the SirBruce analysis graph, there's sharp-tongued comments on performance for Ultima Online ("It's really all your fault. If you weren't a big hit, would others have followed?"), EverQuest ("Say what you will... it knew its target audience and hit it hard enough to make EQ part of popular culture"), and Asheron's Call ("Talk about the little engine that could.")
Where is Final Fantasy XI?
Why is puzzle pirates being neglected so much?
So far, every MMO I've seen (and I've seen most of them) is just a glorified chat room. It's IRC plus fancy 3d graphics and sound. Sometimes there is also a progress quest included as well. No MMO that I've seen actually has skill based gameplay, which is what makes something no longer a chat room, but a GAME.
Puzzle Pirates is the only MMOish thing I play. Why? Because success is almost entirely skill based. Theoretically someone who has a trial account and has never played before can defeat the person who has been playing the game since day 1 if their skill is great enough. Not only that, but the major factor in any victory is always skill. Not only that, but the people in puzzle pirates actually role play and aren't asshats. What started as random people on the net became my crew and now me hearties, arrr! You don't get that anywhere else.
Give puzzle pirates the attention and respect it deserves. It's probably the most original and well designed game to come out in a long time.
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Parents' BEDROOM? Shouldn't that be parents' basement? Parents' bedroom would open up whole new areas of psychological issues.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
These will be much more interesting once they're updated to include FFXI. From what I've heard of player numbers, it pretty much blows away all of the other games listed there, including Lineage, particularly since the US PS2 release. It also shares one of Galaxies' key strengths, namely that it's been able to draw in a lot of the people who wouldn't normally play a MMORPG. Plus, of course, it's release in the US didn't blow goats, unlike Galaxies' release, which sucked pretty much everywhere.
I'd bet that MMORPGs that launch badly suffer the greatest player losses over the first few months. Once people are hooked, they're hooked... the trick is to get them there.
I don't really care for this guy's article, while he seems to be telling what he thinks is wrong with MMORPGs, and it is true, his recommendations aren't what I would recommend for a few.
Take my latest MMORPG that's a non-beta, Star Wars Galaxies. His recommendation is to provide the Space Expansion to be perfect. That's not the case, because if so then the original game where you're still going to spend a minimum of 40% of your time is STILL going to be screwed over. Too many people can become Jedi, the Galactic Civil War is still overpopulated with Rebels, PvP is completely screwed up, the economy needs fixing, etc.
the Political Inquirer
They don't even talk about Final Fantasy XI.
____
nico
Nico-Live
the number of people subscribing to MMOGs has increased from 450,000 players in 2000 to over 2.5 to 6 million today Perhaps it's just a typo.
...following the lives of people in the game worlds that continually pay for the service but never level much or win any duels or find any incredible loot...
Reading MMORPG boards I've worked out most of the slang - MOB, DOT, NUKE, phat lewt Kill stealing, PK etc etc etc.
But I've never seen a definition for "catassing" - what exactly is a catasser or catassing?
Skip the troll replies please, I really want to know.
I found his synopsis of Shadowbane to be interesting. I just recently killed my account on that game. I played since it was release (Mar. 03, I think).
:)
If you ever wanted to see what it was like to be in a Mad Max movie then this is it. Except there's no cars.
A total gank fest. Not that this is a bad thing, but it is definately a game designed for a specific segment of the MMO market. New players are best advised to stay away from this title. It can sour their view of MMO's almost irreparably. Someone who has played in other games before stand the best chance of acclimating to this game.
For those of you who are interested in seeing what a bloodbath is like, Ubi offers a 15 day trial.
A pity really. I had fun with SB. But the bugs just drove me insane.
-- What's this '-r *' file doing here? -- Oh well, a simple 'rm' should do the trick.
That confused me too, but I think that was supposed to be 2.5 to 2.6 million.
(Karma = auto -1)
Everquest. Popular culture. Riiiiiiiiiiight. Lara Croft yeah, she is now. But Everquest?
Worst. Data visualization. Ever.
- World of Warcraft, simply put, is going to change everything. Subscription numbers for UO, FFXI, DAoC, AC, AC2, and EQ are going to fluctuate wildly when WoW comes out as people cancel their subscriptions to give Blizzard's game a shot. I don't know how many will stay, but I expect World of Warcraft, by the middle of next year, to be comfortably within the 250,000 - 300,000 area.
- Star Wars Galaxies will continue to hemmoraghe players until this fall, when the space expansion comes out. Regardless of how good it is, their subs are going to skyrocket as people flock to the game that has X-Wings and TIE Fighters. This influx of players will sustain them at least another 2 to 3 years as they continue to patch in new content and....(shhh) fix the game. SWG has passed the point where they could have failed. It isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
- Anarchy Online is going to be a sleeper comeback kid late this year or early next year. Their upcoming expansion sounds good, Funcom has finally managed to start to move beyond their disaster of a launch, and people are getting tired of Fantasy MMOGs.
- Lineage 2 is not going to do very well at all in the states. US gamers just don't like being ganked.
- AC and AC2, despite losses to WoW, are going to continue on quietly and happily. Jessica Mulligan is no slouch, and despite aging graphics and a tiny playerbase those games just keep getting better.
- City of Heroes is going to be a success...for a while. CoH is going to draw a whole bunch of newbie MMOGers into the fold who have never picked up a MMOG before. 6 months down the line if they don't have villains patched in they're going to start losing people as the fact that there is nothing to do besides combat starts to wear on the playerbase.
- Middle Earth Online is going to be a middling success. Their design concept is only so-so, but they'll attract enough attention via newbie MMOG players lusting after Legolas to stay afloat.
- Warhammer Online .... ?? I don't know where it's going to pull it's playerbase from. Have to wait and see on this one.
- EQ, one year from now, will no longer have such a commanding lead over all other US MMOGs.
- EQ2 is going to do "okay". It's a very different game but the branding alone will be enough to keep it going. Despite what SOE says, EQ is going to lose players to EQ2, futhering the WoW effect on the original Everquest.
- The Sims Online should be put out to pasture. That creepy melting pot of social darwinism was doomed from the get-go. EA should let it die.
- Shadowbane will continue to slowly exist as a team of dedicated and talented developers rescue a game that had almost as bad a launch as AO. People will always want to "Play to CRUSH!" so SB will always have players.
My 2 cents. I spoke a little more about this here: Quality over Quantity.
I think this article was pretty spot-on.
This is still an immature market no matter what anyone says. I'm the perfect user for this sort of thing (make my own hours, disposable income, and a geek), but none of these established MMOGs have kicked my can. I did consider Everquest, but it just seemed like the same monster-killing over and over again, with no compelling plot. And you can have all the pretty graphics and explosions in the world, but that doesn't make a good experience (Jonny Mnemonic anyone?)
I think WoW is going to be compelling and profitable and thus, the new standard by which all the others are going to be judged. I know I'm going to try it out.
Still looking forward to part 2
I can't help but wonder if he'll be doing an anaylsis of games that did particularly poorly--- like Earth and Beyond (another EA failure), which had a barely survivable player base... that is, until SWG came out.
I'm an EQ, DAOC gamer and have been enjoying MUDs since the early Gemstone days. I tried E&B becuase it was different and I was VERY impressed with the game. The story was original, the characters were interesting and the dialog/plot/quests were so funny I fell out of my chair laughing on several occasions.
Really a shame their endgame content and PvP aspects fell short. The space combat was actually very well done also. Just a shame they couldnt hold everyone's interest.
That article was ridiculous. Where are some of the biggest MMORPGs in the world? Where's Legends of Mir? Where is Red Moon?
FFXI (Final Fantasy 11): It's missing. Why? All of the million-plus players can't be in Japan. I know more people in my area that play FFXI than play the rest of these games combined, and no, they're not even on my server.
got standards? --- http://www.w3.org/
When I say I played it from the US launch, I mean the PC version.
Just a note concerning Lineage 2:
I've been playing the beta and it's not a gank fest. If you pk someone who doesn't fight back you turn red and pretty much ruin your character (it's possible to work the karma off but if you've committed multiple pks you usually won't live long enough to do so). All my encounters with red named players so far have involved watching them run for their lives while being chased by a mob of other players. Reds tend to be pretty rare.
Other than that though the game is a complete flop. You may not be able to get away with pking, but griefing is another matter. Another player can follow you around stealing your kills and otherwise harassing you but you can't kill him for fear of going red.
The level grind is worse than any other game I've played, and the money requirements to keep your equipment up to date is steep. This might not be a problem if it weren't for the fact that the real conetent of the game (the guild PVP system) exists at the high end, but to get there you have to farm/grind your way through the boring and poorly developed PVE content.
Exploits, scamming and boting seem rampant, the GMs claim they're banning people, but I still see the same bots week after week.
There's no variety in the characters either, everyone has the same equipment at any given level, and the base models are severely limited, so it's attack of the clones.
They didn't even change the chat window to support english text, the word wrap often breaks words in two, making it annoying to read.
I'm sure it'll find an audience with those who actually seem to like the grind, but I can't see it becoming a major hit in the US.
Square-Enix just announced that they passed 500K subs (surpassing EQ). They also sold 115k PS2 hard drives in March. Interesting.
Pirates of the burning sea ( www.burningsea.com )will be the LAST MMO I will try. I've been a UO addict for more than 2 years, and I was then extremely disappointed by AC2, and then SWG (the're both nothing compared to UO. well, SWG it much closer than AC2 though ). I loved Master & commander movie, and I think that PoBS could be very fun. If it's not, well, I swear it will have been my last MMO.
perception is reality
This article just seems to say which ones have the most subscribers. Does anyone want to take a stab at organizing them by how fun they are?
Simply based upon the fact that the author or potentail author might like stamping on kittens and considers that fun. Where as I doubt that is what you would like in a game. Not to mention that its hard to have played all MMO games and get a fair representation of them for a comparison. Esp since you have to play for at least a few weeks to understand everything and know where to go for the action. So your comparison will be biased based upon what game you played last.
Based upon the number of subscribers is a fair comparison for "how fun they are". The ones with the most subscribers must appeal to a larger crowd and have something that draws them to it.
Personally I love playing WWII Online, constantly updated, they listen to the community for future updates, all around great job!
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
www.eve-online.com
This is a space MMO that has really started to gain a following after a year of its launch. The cool thing about EVE is that everyone plays on the same server. It is a different type of MMO compared to all the EQ clones. Not to mention it's visually gorgeous.
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.