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

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.

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 !

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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..

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.