MMOG Subscription Chart Updated

SirBruce writes "Okay, this time I'm tooting my own horn before someone else does. I've released version 12.0 of my venerable work An Analysis of MMOG Subscription Growth. I've added several new charts along with new analysis, including initial subscription figures for EverQuest II and World of Warcraft. However, and perhaps most importantly, with the help of generous donations from viewers like you I have moved the report to a new web page, with a new URL (http://www.mmogchart.com/), a new design, and a new server that should be able to handle my frequent slashdotting. So, enjoy!" Boy, that was quick. Go Bruce.

Comments

Awesome

[Schezar]

Oh joy! Now I can pay a monthly fee for better graphics on what are essentially implementations of Progress Quest coupled with a chat room of some sort.

At least Progress Quest automates the leveling treadmill.

I mean, yes! I killed enough blue slimes to buy the red sword. Now I can.. kill red slimes! With larger numbers of hit points and damage!

Re:Awesome

[th3walrus]

This is a suprise in a world where it's popular to watch other people drive cars in a circle for hours? Imagine if they could press a button over and over to affect that car! Everyone would be there!

Re:Awesome

[DrSkwid]

The same world where crapflooding, flaming, trolling, spelling correction and even just writing stuff that no-one really cares about all passes for entertainment.

lets look at other stuff :

jigsaws
crosswords
walking
bird watching

they aren't call pastimes for nothing !

Re:Awesome

[Flunitrazepam]

Well, even though you are trolling you have a valid point.

I was hoping WoW would fix the treadmill problem somewhat, and it certainly does try to. There is more incentive to do quests for EXP instead of mindlessly camping monsters. The quests are more varied as are the rewards. However in the end it still comes down to the illusion that you are "investing" your time instead of just passing it.

I quit playing FFXI and got back into Enemy Territory and StarCraft for just that reason. You can jump in, have a good time for 20 minutes, and quit. True that time would probably be best spent doing something else, but at least you aren't harboring dellusions that you are getting something for your time. I came to that conclusion after spending hours trying to level up my "cooking" ability in FFXI. The thought occurred to me, "wow too bad I can't cook for shit in real life", and I never played again after that day..

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Progress Quest is missing one thing that the major MMORPGs lack:

The ability to sell items to other losers for cash.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit, that should be "have" not "lack". Slashdot: randomly adding a "Submit" button where a "Preview" button used to be. Thanks Slashdot!

Might have waited a bit

[TychoCelchuuu]

As always, a very interesting chart, although I'm sure it'll be much more interesting once the data for WoW and EQII has developed.

FFXI is #1!!

[Anonymous Coward]

behind the two Lineage games. What is it about Lineage that is so compelling?

Re:FFXI is #1!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Words cannot express my disappointment with humanity that FFXI, one of the worst games of all time, manages to have 20% of the market share of "games that aren't Lineage, Lineage II, or Ragnarok Online".

It's seriously offensive to rational thought.

Hopefully in the coming months we'll see WoW and EQ2 correct that.

FFXI

[Cornflake917]

Is anyone else surprised that FFXI is kicking so much ass in terms of subscriptions? I've played for a while, but it got REAL hard level up and I just lost interest. I'm guessing that it's probably because it's still popular in Japan and that you can play cross platform (PS2/PC). It will be interesting to see if FFXI's subscriptions will take a hit after EQ2, and WoW start bringing in the masses. Speaking of which, I need to cancel my FFXI subscription, I haven't played in 8 months.

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

You left out the "and if you do level up, there's no end game" and the "Square doesn't care about people camping quest NMs 24/7 so people can't complete quests" and "quests are universely really boring" and...

Suffice it to say I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would continue to pay Square for that turd of a game. I suppose forgetting to cancel is an acceptable excuse. :-P

(Then there was the expansion pack, universely agreed to be the worst expansion pack in gaming history. It added areas that look exactly like other areas, and new different areas that you couldn't get to without completeing an almost impossible mission - three times.)

Re:FFXI

[AuMatar]

ITs the Japanese. Gaming is really, really huge in Asia. Notice how the top 3 MMOs are all huge in Asia- Lineage I and II in Korea, FFXI in Japan.

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's true that FFXI has a large player base in Japan, don't underestimate its popularity in the U.S. Since the U.S. release, it's gained around 250,000 subscribers. That number alone would put it in 3rd place among "American" MMOGs, behind only EQ and SWG. It would be a mistake to lump it in with the likes of Lineage and Lineage II, which have almost zero popularity outside of Asia.

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

You have got to be kidding.

Everyone I know why played FFXI hated it almost instantly. It's an aweful, aweful game. And you're telling me that 250k Americans are dumb enough to play it?

It makes me worried about the future of gaming if thats the case. Apparently Americans don't mind playing crap, if it's Japanese.

It would explain Katamari Damancy.

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

no. it is good.

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent poster makes the insinuation that Japanese gamers have no gaming taste. Don't forget that PS2 owners have been clamoring for a MMORPG worth playing. The truth is that RPG tastes differ on the other side of the pacific. Such tastes are taking hold in America and Europe as well. Variety is the spice of life.

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I didn't say that Japanese gamers have no taste. I said there seems to be this belief with a large group of American gamers that if it's Japanese it must be good. See the difference?

FFXI is crap. Katamari Damancy is decent, but it isn't great. Yet people seem to think of these games as some kind of beacon of excellence - soley because they're Japanese.

Wake up. They aren't. Katamari Damancy is an average puzzle game, albiet with a really weird story to it. FFXI is a truely terrible MMORPG. Now I suppose I can accept the idea of "PS2 players want an MMORPG and FFXI fills that niche" but it's still crap and I'd think going without would be far better than playing FFXI.

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

By saying that you can't beliveve that so many *American* gamers would play that stupid game, you insinuate that its perfectly believable that so many Japanese would play it (thereby having less taste). I agree that there are a lot of fanboys in the states that buy into the hype of a lot of crummy Japanese games. I've never played FFXI (FF series got much worse after VII, IMO), but I know a few seasoned gamers that swear by it.

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, sorry. I actually have no idea how popular those games are in Japan, and I actually have no idea how the Japanese view them. So I don't consider it a judgement on the Japanese.

FFXI I'm told works better in Japanese culture than it does in American culture, but the only Americans I know who "swear by it" are people who've played it far too long (like 50+ DAYS, yes, that's DAYS of play time, it keeps track for you) and don't want to admit they wasted that much of their life playing a shitty game.

It's also my understanding that FFXI wasn't that popular in Japan anyway. It's been out there for something like three years, I thought I read somewhere that most Japanese players had already gotten sick of it. Most of the current FFXI players are probably new European players who only two months ago were given access to it, and who currently are locked out of World of Warcraft because Blizzard hates foreigners or something.

(Although waiting two months for the WoW kinda pales in comparison to two and a half years for FFXI, so I guess Square-Enix takes the Xenophic Game Company Crown. Not that I care, because as previously mentioned, and you mention, recent Square-Enix games have been shit.)

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats a good point. It could be that there is too much pride to admit the game sucks. Well said on the topic of recent square-enix games. However the rerelease of FF1&2 on GBA is really good (but it may just be nostalgia). I recommend it to any fans of the older games.

Re:FFXI

[ThomaMelas]

They said they are going to have some stuff in the next patch to try to deal with that. News of it has sent the prices of some items they camp alot have dropped signifgantly.

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, hats off to Square then, for addressing a problem THREE YEARS after releasing the game.

Since I can't speak Japanese, I have no idea if these problems existed before the US release, so let's assume it's only Americans that caused this. Seems unlikely, but I can't say what the game was like before the US release. In that case ONE YEAR after people ran into these problems and at least a year of constant pestering of GMs to resolve these issues in which the GMs would do literally NOTHING, Square is finally taking action.

And it corresponds with the release of a new MMORPG and people leaving FFXI in droves.

Hm...

(Not to mention I doubt that no matter what Square claims they'll do that anything would happen.)

Re:FFXI

[iCEBaLM]

I and about 5 of my close friends play FFXI across PC and PS/2, it rocks man. Nothing compares with a 5 hour marathon leveling run with your closest buddies, or hopping on and doing a really crazy quest.

Level 52 Summoner, 34 Black Mage, 32 Dragoon, 30 Red Mage.

Re:FFXI

[iCEBaLM]

Awful? Are you kidding? What's so horrible about it?

Re:FFXI

[iCEBaLM]

It's also my understanding that FFXI wasn't that popular in Japan anyway. It's been out there for something like three years, I thought I read somewhere that most Japanese players had already gotten sick of it. Most of the current FFXI players are probably new European players who only two months ago were given access to it, and who currently are locked out of World of Warcraft because Blizzard hates foreigners or something.

You are completely out of touch with reality and should quit posting authoritatively on things you absolutely know nothing about.

Currently most players are Japanese, the second largest group is North Americans, and the third is Europeans.

FFXI is not "crap" nor do most people play it and like it simply because it's Japanese. Hell, I think half of the Japanese population on the servers are incredibly rude, about a third wont even acknowledge a non JP player exists. The game however is fun and I play it almost exclusively with english speaking NAs. Every once in awhile I'll see a JP or two in a party I got invited to, or get an invite into a totally JP party, but this is often the exception.

Yes there are the fanbois, no they aren't the majority. The game is fun to play which is why I play it. That being said I also played the WoW beta and while WoW is fun also, I don't see it having the staying power FFXI does.

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, you've already wasted 50 days on it and don't want to admit it was all just a giant waste of time.

Trust me, I'm not saying it's crap coming from a vacuum, I played the game for a while and had absolutely no fun with it after the first 20 levels or so. People kept on telling me "oh, it gets fun after ($YOUR_LEVEL + 10)." Well, it never did, and I kept playing until level 60 before finally realizing that it never was going to become any more fun. (Not to mention the level grind became insane at that point. Levels 1-50 take about 5000 XP per level. Levels 51-60 take about 15000 XP. Levels 61-70 take... 35000XP per level.)

If you want some other reasons it sucks, let's go with crafting. You can't solo mobs that give XP past level 15 or so. Crafting requires crystals. You can only get these off monsters that give XP. So crafting and leveling forcibly go hand in hand. That's BS.

There's more - but suffice it to say that not only is Square a lousy company, FFXI is a crappy game.

Re:FFXI

[C0rinthian]

Everyone I know why played FFXI hated it almost instantly. It's an aweful, aweful game. And you're telling me that 250k Americans are dumb enough to play it?

You're forgetting that FFXI is the ONLY MMO that is available on a console. This opens it up to a whole new market segment where it technically has no direct competition. 250k isn't alot of people in the console market.

(I'm not going to comment on the intelligence level of console gamers in comparison to PC gamers. I'm biased)

Re:FFXI

[iCEBaLM]

In other words, you've already wasted 50 days on it and don't want to admit it was all just a giant waste of time.

I will admit that readily, right here and now: It was a giant waste of time. Newsflash: That's what games are, that's what entertainment does, it wastes time, but it's FUN and that's why I play it.

Trust me, I'm not saying it's crap coming from a vacuum, I played the game for a while and had absolutely no fun with it after the first 20 levels or so. People kept on telling me "oh, it gets fun after ($YOUR_LEVEL + 10)."

Leveling is a means to an end, you will never really have much fun leveling. The fun comes out of the quests, missions and side events: Burning Circle battles, Garrison battles, Expeditionary Forces, Ballista Conflict, High Notorious Monster fights, etc. You level so you can take part in more of these.

If you want some other reasons it sucks, let's go with crafting. You can't solo mobs that give XP past level 15 or so. Crafting requires crystals. You can only get these off monsters that give XP. So crafting and leveling forcibly go hand in hand. That's BS.

This is also untrue. You can get crystals off of elementals of any level even if they are too weak. Or you could simply just buy them.

There's more - but suffice it to say that not only is Square a lousy company, FFXI is a crappy game.

While I agree it's not for everyone you cannot call the most populous MMORPG a crappy game, the world disagrees with you.

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

Leveling is a means to an end, you will never really have much fun leveling. The fun comes out of the quests, missions and side events: Burning Circle battles, Garrison battles, Expeditionary Forces, Ballista Conflict, High Notorious Monster fights, etc. You level so you can take part in more of these.

HAH! OK, let's go through those on a point-by-point.

Burning Circle and Garrison battles: stupidly tough, involving something like 2k worth of consumables. Usually done to earn money to purchase overpriced equipment to continue leveling.

Expeditionary Forces: instead of leveling yourself up, you try to level up your country's influence in a given area. Otherwise this is exactly the same as leveling.

Ballista: Instead of offering true PvP, Square created this pointless minigame. It's boring and stupid.

Notorious Monsters: You said "HNM", so we'll start with those. With 24-hour spawn times and basically nothing else to do at higher levels, these things are camped like mad. Thanks to Square's "no local servers" policy, and various glitches in the game, there is a nearly 100% chance that a Japanese player will "claim" these monsters first. (Once a monster is attacked, only one group can attack it, all others can't.)

Even better, if an American group does claim it, there are glitches in the claiming system that frequently allow another group to claim the monster while they're fighting it for very brief moments of time if they have a low latency connection. Ultimately: this means that even if the American group grabs it, the Japanese group will get it anyway. GMs consider this "fair play." (Although, of course, not if an American group steals an NM from a Japanese group.)

"Normal" NMs are usually camped so you can earn money or equipment to continue leveling. These are frequently camped 24/7 by people selling the items online. Apparently it isn't against the terms of service to play an account 24/7, because GMs won't do anything about it. Apparently Square has finally decided to do something about this, now that people are leaving FFXI in droves to play MMORPGs where the company will listen to them. (One of the reasons Square is a lousy company is this whole "there are no problems with the game" bit. My other favorite is when they announced connection problems with Optimum Online users after they were resolved - five days or so after they first came up.)

And as for elementals - the most common crystal type you need are Fire crystals. For some "we hate players" reason, Square decided to make these crystal fairly rare. Yes, you can get crystals off elementals, as long as you want Wind, Earth, Water, or Lightning crystals.

Earth and Water are the most common crystals - so they aren't used in most crafting recipes, of course.

The fact that it's the "most populous" MMORPG scares me. Seriously, try playing EQ2 or WoW, and be prepared to be surprised at how much better they are compared to FFXI. It just doesn't hold a candle. FFXI is an outdated, crappy game, run by a crappy company that doesn't care about its subscribers. (And don't you dare unsubscribe for a couple of months, since then you'll need to purchase the entire game - uncluding expansions - again.)

Re:FFXI

[iCEBaLM]

Burning Circle and Garrison battles: stupidly tough, involving something like 2k worth of consumables. Usually done to earn money to purchase overpriced equipment to continue leveling.

They're simple if you go into it with proper equiptment and supplies, plan ahead. I have beat many garrisons and BCNMs.

Expeditionary Forces: instead of leveling yourself up, you try to level up your country's influence in a given area. Otherwise this is exactly the same as leveling.

And you get treasure for doing it!

Ballista: Instead of offering true PvP, Square created this pointless minigame. It's boring and stupid.

True PVP would be better but Ballista can be pretty fun.

Even better, if an American group does claim it, there are glitches in the claiming system that frequently allow another group to claim the monster while they're fighting it for very brief moments

Never seen this happen.

And as for elementals - the most common crystal type you need are Fire crystals. For some "we hate players" reason, Square decided to make these crystal fairly rare.

Frequently available in the Altepa Desert or the Kazham jungles. Nothing really hard about getting them. Ice elementals are almost always available in Beaucedine Glacier, Dark elementals in Xarcabard.

Earth and Water are the most common crystals - so they aren't used in most crafting recipes, of course.

I use tons of earth crystals for Woodworking (arrows, furnishings) and water for cooking (juices cause I'm a mage).

The fact that it's the "most populous" MMORPG scares me. Seriously, try playing EQ2 or WoW, and be prepared to be surprised at how much better they are compared to FFXI.

I believe I have already stated I've played WoW and I liked it however it has no staying power.

(And don't you dare unsubscribe for a couple of months, since then you'll need to purchase the entire game - uncluding expansions - again.)

Wrong, PlayOnline account is good forever and is free, it's the content IDs which are not, only your character data is lost.

Re:FFXI

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no point in arguing over the difficulty of the garrison and BCNM events - just suffice it to say that even with good planning, it's still really easy to lose. Likewise, I don't know of anyone who actually enjoys the Ballista event.

Also, since when do you get treasure from completeing Expedition Force events? You get more CP from them, other than that, it's basically the same as fighting monsters on your own. Just with a level cap.

Frequently available in the Altepa Desert or the Kazham jungles. Nothing really hard about getting them. Ice elementals are almost always available in Beaucedine Glacier, Dark elementals in Xarcabard.

Hmm, nope. Altepa is usually nothing or earth, and sometimes Fire. Even when it was fire, I never did find a fire elemental. The Kazham jungles are usually nothing, water, or double water. On slim occasion they are fire.

I can't believe that you would think that WoW has less "staying power" than FFXI. I have to admit that I continued playing it long after I stopped having fun soley due to having friends playing the game pressuring me to stay, so it has "staying power" in that sense.

Let's put it this way. I stopped playing when I realized that FFXI was causing me more stress than my job was. I don't play games to stress myself out. I play them to relax. FFXI doesn't offer that.

Forget Donations dude

[MBraynard]

With all of your hard work on this, I don't doubt that you could produce a high-dollar monthly newsletter.

Sort of like NDP does for games. They post up some general information on their site re: game sales, but give a more detailed report each month.

You could probably come up with a more detailed report you could sell for about $2500 per year - and maybe delay the release of the general information on your site so that the report subscribers get it a few weeks ahead of everyone else.

We can talk more about this if you want. mamapsttatbraynarddotcom - remove the backwards spam.

Re:Forget Donations dude

[Anonymous Coward]

We can talk more about this if you want. mamapsttatbraynarddotcom - remove the backwards spam.

You mean matt@braynard.com?

Re:Forget Donations dude

[AvitarX]

What I would do for a mod pint to marj this as funny.

Re:Forget Donations dude

[Scott7477]

I totally agree with the parent comment: why not get paid for this work. Even if you already are a millionaire, you can just give us kibitzers delayed access to the information for free.

Re:Forget Donations dude

[SirBruce]

If the right opportunity came along, sure, I could see getting paid to do this or similar research, so long as I could still release reports to the public, as you say, on a delayed basis.

Bruce

Why Lineage is up there.

[darkmayo]

Dont underestimate the Korean cyber cafes. That is where the majority of these subscriptions come from.. and I'll wager a guess that companies like IGE (who are a item/gold farming sweatshop) own a huge chunk of accounts as well for these games.

Made a few adjustmnets

[SirBruce]

I've made a couple of slight useability adjustmnets to the pages, including adding a scrollbar to the left frame if you need one. Some people at lower resolutions weren't seeing the whole thing.

Many people have asked if I could break out North America and North America & Europe numbers from Asia. That's a lot harder to do, mainly because I don't have them! I can tell you some rough ideas - about half of FFXI's subscribers are in the US, about 100,000 of DAoC's are in Europe, over half of UO's are in Japan - but that's about it.

So far the traffic hasn't killed the new site. I just can't believe there's that much interest in this sorta stuff!

Bruce

For those just tuning in

[Snowspinner]

SirBruce is a fairly longstanding Internet user with a trail of flamewars and bannings a mile long. I'm not going to go into them, except to note that some of them are pretty high profile. (Banned from Lum the Mad back in the day... arguably caused the downfall of FurryMUCK once)

But I would like to just ask Bruce one simple question. Because, well, Bruce... you're a fucking millionaire. You are a major investor in World War II Online. You have lots and lots of money, to the point where you do not work a job.

Do you really have to rely on reader donations to get a new fucking webhost?

Re:For those just tuning in

[SirBruce]

So, you're not going to go into them, but you'll mention them anyway because, hey, nothing like a good smear, eh? Last I checked, FurryMUCK is doing just fine. And how many times do we have to go over this? I was not, to my knowledge, banned from LtM. I was banned from SND... you know, by that guy Eldin, who turned out to be a real ass who ran away with all of the site's money? Yeah, that guy. It's ironic that just about every site that decides to ban me winds up dying shortly thereafter -- how's player2player.net doing lately? As for your question, reader donations go to far more than just the web host. They also allow me to do my research. It takes time and money, and the results are made available for free. I only wound up putting up the donations link when someone actually said they wanted to donate. Bruce

Re:For those just tuning in

[Snowspinner]

I never new press releases and earnings reports cost so much money to acquire, Bruce.

Re:For those just tuning in

[SirBruce]

The amount of things you never knew could fill a Beowulf Cluster of Libraries of Congress. Bruce

Console MMOs

[sbszine]

You're forgetting that FFXI is the ONLY MMO that is available on a console.

There are other active console MMOs. Phantasy Star Online is available on GCN and DC, and Everquest on PS2. There's probably also something for XBox that I'm not familiar with. But point taken, FFXI is the only modern MMO choice for console gamers.

Saga of Ryzom?

[Anonymous Coward]

No figures for that yet?