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MMOG Subscription Analysis Provides New Insights
Thanks to jer0 for pointing to SirBruce's updated MMOG Subscription Growth analysis page, which tries to "chart the trend in active subscriptions" for major MMO titles using public and private data. This "major revision" has the "chart separated into three tiers" dependent on subscription size, and shows Lineage as the worldwide MMO leader at "just under 2.7 million" (though this may be reliant on bulk 'PC Baang' subscriptions in countries such as South Korea, and the game has "only 7,000 [subscribers] in the United States.") Other notable entries include City Of Heroes ("surpassed 180,000 subscribers... proof that a well-executed MMOG can still garner substantial numbers even in the current competitive climate"), and the also recently launched, but less successful Horizons ("After peaking at around 35,000 subscribers, they have since fallen to somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 subscribers.")
They keep saying how it's the biggest thing in the world, but I've tried it...it sucks. And if this is the biggest thing in the world, then the world needs a reality check. I mean, it's really totally awfull.
Or is it one of those things that "it's world famous in Korea...and Korea is the center of the universe" kind of thing? I know, Korea has more people online per capita than the US, but still, do they have to subjected to such a sucky game? Someone move a EQ server into Korea or something. Those poor poor people!
This shows that being the most popular certainly doesn't mean the best!
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I for one don't mind paying 50-80 bucks for an online game. But I have a problem paying the full price for a game in addition to a monthly subscription. Sure it's a great business model for the game industry however it's not a good bargain for me as the consumer.
I never understood that MMO crafting thing. Why craft fake stuff? If I want to craft something, I'll do that in real life.
Hence all this is just a shouting/boasting game depending on which side of the coin you are. Too many of these companies do not publish numbers and I don't believe the old rule of 5xpeak online is really relevant much.
Take Horizons, their subscriber base in the US is probably less than 10K, but that is in essence a seperate game from the European operations under GN. Artifact Entertainment is in Chapter 11 as we type, they have a big show down with their provider at the end of the month, a provider whom they basically defrauded for many months. Their bankruptcy documents provided a lot of insight into these groups.
As for AC/AC2. Who knows, they won't tell as their numbers have never been good. A company proud of its numbers will tell you. A company with something to hide from players and investors tells a whole different story.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
what proportion of their subscribers are griefers?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
There is no standard for the data. For example, Star Wars Galaxies is in the habit of reporting the total number of unique numbers in their database. So everybody who downloads a free trial counts as "a new subscriber"
Finally, we have the biggest laugh of them all. "...proof that a well-executed MMOG can still garner substantial numbers even in the current competitive climate." The problem is that "substantial numbers" does not equal success. City of Heroes has been out for about 3 months. Most of the people currently playing CoH are still in the MMORPG "honeymoon" phase where everything is new, the end-game content is still unexplored, and people are trying out new ideas and new play styles. A year from now, we'll see if CoH is still succeeding.
The same goes for World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, and whatever new games come out. The only measure of a game's success is staying power.
For the record, most of that comment was a joke, I'm 28, haven't had caffeine for months, and only played UO a bit when it first came out.
I refuse to play a game that requires time from me daily and charges me $10 a month. Just saw one too many of my friends get pulled into games like EQ.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
City of Heroes is fun, and I commend them for doing something different when too many people are just trying to be Everquest.
It goes to show that there's a lot of different things that attract different people; CoH was my first MMO, despite being a long-time MUDder who wrote 100,000 lines of code to expand the Diku/ROM base for a mud I helped make. (I do have an SWG box still gathering dust that I'll use sooner or later)
I think there's two concepts that are waiting to make a lot of money:
(1) MMORPG for people with money. People are desperate to target the $10-15 range. But I think there's a substantial set of subscribers who would pay a lot more for better service. I think the MMO to exploit this will be two tiered. Much like EQ's premium service, but far more so. It will be at least $75/mo -- or possibly not flat rate. It may be $50/mo + $2/hr or something. I know a lot of players are price sensitive, but I paid $3/hr on weekends to get onto compuserve and move an asterick around in a dungeon at 300 baud. And $2/hr doesn't mean squat to me, and if I can get a party of 6 into some real "DM-controlled" sort of adventures at $2/hr, I'm on it. I'd probably want some perks, but it could be very profitable. I know a lot of people who would do the same.
(2) Skill-based play. By which I mean reflexes. I'm a broken record on this topic, sure; but MMOs are "the same". One needs to implement semi-twitch gameplay... perhaps a Q3 style play, with a level of auto-aim that decreases with level. (or simply easier-to-hit monsters) I don't want to completely twitch-base it, I think anyone should be able to fight and win (at least at lower levels), but I think there should be an in-game effect of "skill". Please don't mention planetside; I still want level progression; I still want it to be playable by people who don't have the reflexes. I just want those that do to get an edge for them.
<rant>
On another note, I'd like to pre-emptively predict the utter failure of Dungeons and Dragons Online. They were SURE to get a subscription out of me, until I read an interview, and discover they are MANGLING the D&D ruleset, one of the best things about it... doing things like allowing a +5 attack bonus to let you "perform 5-hit combos with the proper key sequence". What? Are these crack-monkeys making D&D Online or Street Fighter II Online?
</rant>
I've been looking this study over and I don't see any documentation for any of his facts. Granted this isn't the New York Times or the Washington Post but whenever I need to provide a report or an article I need to site my references, been that way ever since 6th grade. Why should he be held to any other standard though if he expects us to take his work seriously?
Take for instance his SWG numbers. SOE does not release their population numbers at all, so if they didn't want people to know their numbers why would they tell him as a secret source and not just release that information publically? And the only guess we have is between 200-300k subscribers based on a quote from one of the suits at SOE. A range of roughly 1/3 of the possible total volume can not be taken as accurate. Which makes me wonder how he was able to determine subscription drops +-15k when the only number we have is between 200k and 300k.
Yeah, it's nice he spent the effort to plot this stuff out, but it should really only be looked at as an analysis of what he thinks their subscription numbers are when he fails to provide any sort of sources or documented references. Quite frankly, his guess is as good as mine on most of these games regarding where their subscription numbers are. As a SWG player I can say It certainly appears there are more people playing now compared to six months ago, but that could just by my server(Bloodfin) seeing a population spike while others fall. Not enough for me to make a conclusive argument one way or the other on their total subscriber numbers.
Sorry for the AC post, moderators have been kind of flaky lately and don't want to get burned as a troll for raising a valid concern.
Problem with that kind of system is the amount of content required to keep players playing.
The game would have to be reasonably easy, and reasonably fast paced. Most games these days keep people tagging along by installing longer and more involved advancement methods. If jimbob spends 6 months getting to a high level, then dies to a dragon somewhere, he's going to quit. If he spends 2 days getting to the same level and dies, he'll be just as likely to start over as quit.
There is also the min/maxing problem that many modern gamers fixate on. They see two states for their character: max level/stats, and newbie. The entire point of the game is to be the best they can be. Everything accomplished on that route is considered "work" and is what makes the game "lame".
"Journey" type systems where the point of the game is having fun exploring a world are doomed to failure because of this mindset. Nethack is the best example of this type of game.
I find it a hilarious no-win situation on the part of the developers. I also find it hilarious that players are only happy with a game when they are the highest level, and fail to see that if the "level grind" were completely removed, they wouldn't have played the game to begin with.
I never understood that MMO killing thing. If I want to kill
monsters, I go hunting for spiders in my apartment, or track down
the bear that killed a local farmer's sheep.
The article complains about how the Legend stats completely dwarf the rest of the data in a linear graph. Doesn't this dataset just beg for a logarithmic presentation? This is like compairing populations of countries or any number of other scenarios where power laws apply.
Anyhow, the absurd comparisons of random untrustworthy data sources and the poor presentation just shows that this guy needs a good statistics teacher to whack him upside the head. I'm going to go read some Tufte.
This is unrealistic for many reasons. It might work in a small MUD, but for anything largescale (say over 50-100 players) you've got one major component to worry about: balance.
Economic balance. Play balance. Story balance. Everything has to work and continue to work for an extended period of time. Having DMs working fulltime coming up with quests is a nice idea, but with 1500 people that's a lot of DMs, and the balance will quickly spin out of control. (And if you want DMs talking through NPCs, that'd be at least 1 DM per PC, following them around and paying attention to their actions. Waiting 20 seconds to get a response from each NPC as the DM types it would still suck.)
It works like this: if quests lack sufficient rewards, no one will complete them. Sufficient rewards include the following:
However, too much of any of these will throw the game, and you have to be very careful to measure things out and consider how each affects the other across the board. Having 500 DMs constantly handing out arbitrary quests will be fairly quick chaos. Enormous inflation (even simple items cost millions), social breakdown (everyone is an ultrapowerful level-99 adept with infinite money on hand), or spiralling plots (contradictions, dead ends) are the issue here.
And $50/mo is laughable. People choke at $12.95/mo for FFXI (which is high), and FFXI has incredible balance (one of the few MMORPGs with a stable economy even after 2 years).
If you want to play this sort of thing, play a "real" RPG with pencil and paper, where such concerns don't matter. P&P RPGs can be far more fun and flexible anyhow.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
DM complexity doesn't scale linearly with the number of players, but exponentially. Good luck, you'd sure as heck need it.
You'd be better off working on research into how to get computers to be able to make up/tell coherent stories on the fly.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
Go fetch small piece of natural resource X.
Go fetch small piece of natural resource Y.
Put X and Y together to make tool A.
Go fetch small piece of natural resource Y.
Go fetch small piece of natural resource Z.
Put Y and Z together using tool A to make item B.
Repeat until you have 80 units of item B.
Go fetch small piece of natural resource P.
Bake P in item B.
Removed baked P.
Stack baked P.
Call all your friends to gather around and see your abstract art, created entirely of baked P!!11!
.sigs are for post^Hers.
So yeah. You crazy people play your game with your permadeaths. I'd like to see a better solution, personally.
My wife, who works in the MMORPG Industry, tells me that she believes that Sir Bruce's numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.
I'd like to point out that some companies, including the one my wife works for, are extremely reluctant to reveal these kinds of numbers and consider them closely held proprietary secrets. Therefore, it's unlikely that all these numbers came from the game companies themselves. Numbers that did come from game companies might be a bit inflated. It's hard to resist the temptation to make your game look just a little bit better.
Just a word of caution that you shouldn't believe everything you read.... even on /.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Online games require similar development as traditional games, thus the initial cost of the game (and distributors and stores want their cut, etc). You generally get a discount on future products that link to the game (expansions) if you already own the original. Although you can download games, it takes a LONG time even over cable modems, and many people actually like to have a disk and the associated packaging.
But they also require other things, and these are what your $13/mo subscription pays for:
Some big disadvantages of online gaming
Its funny the AC posts the interesting response.
Arranged marriages exist because the inevitable extension of the family, was of course the tribe or the community. While you may disagree with the legitimacy of arranged marriages, they existed to foster the strength of the community, and it was ultimately the community that made the decision.
Meeting people through online games is a modern example of our egotistical and self abosrbed civilization. The people that play such games have no idea what a community really is, and they can't be a part of one. Now, for many I do sincerely believe games provide some semblence of escape from the alienation our society forces upon its people. For that, I am not suggesting the OP who found is wife on an online game is himself morally depraved.
I am simply saying that this form of meeting separates marriage and family entirely from the community in a way some would say is bad.
Just a thought...
Anyone care to comment on how stupid all of this is?
There is nothing stupid about being constructive.
A smaller, more focused MMORPG, perhaps even the "massive" part needs to be removed. Target subscription is 500-1500 subscribers, with a set upper limit of probably 1500.
To my mind, the problem here is more the number of people online at anytime than the actual number of suscribtions. A game that has "dead" periods is in bad shape to start with.
If you wanted to play, you'd submit an application, and assuming it's not all booked up, you'd be given a choice of up to 2 dozen characters to play, complete with biography summaries of those (and if they were completely unsuitable... wait another day, while we find some other choices for you).
You can not enforce characters on the players. Game masters like to try this to improve game balance, but the end result is always unhappy players that can't play the style they want and unhappy game masters that have "good characters" played "wrong" by players. This is good for tounament style of play, not MMORPG.
Inststead make a limited number of choice ( 5 or 8 instead of dozens ) and make sure they are all playable and balanced. Earth & Behond is a good example of this aspect. Allow non-linear evolution for each of them ( E&A fails in that ) and you have a good recepie.
I'd also try to weed out all the obnoxious players, too, for that matter. People who want to play in character are important, and if you chalked up more than a few infractions (talking about monday night football in game, using too much modern slang, etc) I'd probably end up canceling the subscription.
Sorry, won't work. You cannot stop your players from doing off topic chatting. A MMORPG is more than just a game, it's a community. You have to accept it.
Player death would be permanent (choose another character).
As a result, players will leave the game upon loosing everything to a simple bad luck. Eve-online is a good example of this. Not good. Do it the other way around, allow players to die as many time as they want, but with consequences. This is a game, everything happening in it should be enjoyable to players, even loosing.
The main problem of many MMORPG is that the GM staff cannot afford to micromanage the game. When a player start, the discovery of the game is good enough to make him stay. At "high level" new quest and plot are aimed at you. But in between, this is where things go wrong. Fill this void and you'll be in business.