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MMOGChart.com Update
I don't know how I missed it but last week Bruce Woodcock updated his highly informative site, MMOGChart.com, for the first time in months. His data only goes out to late last year, but he promises another update soon. From the Edge Online blurb: "The charts, neatly broken into separate genre-giants, mid-size, and more-modest categories (largely due to World of Warcraft's unprecedented population squelching its competitors below), show at first glance few surprising results. As expected, World of Warcraft dominates the charts, with the Lineage pair coming in beneath, Final Fantasy XI continuing to gain ground, and UK indie-developed RuneScape coming in at a very respectable 5th, well above several blockbusters below."
Press reports back in November `05 (when the New Gawfaful Experience was revealed) had SWG's subs at 200K. That was down from 250K during the CU era, and 300K during the pre-CU era.
I estimate that SWG lost 50-60% of it's sub base as subscriptions expired after the NGE bombshell. There are servers that almost completely lack population now, and even the "large" servers have declined.
Corporatism != Free Market
That would be like adding Diablo 1 and 2 to this this chart.
None of these games are MMOs, and if you like Guild Wars beter than MMOs so be it... but you can't make it an MMO by comparing it to World of Warcraft and Everquest.
I am not judgeing GW because I have never played it (I hear it is fun) all I am saying is that it fits in to a very diffrent catigory of online games and tends to attract a diffrent type of gamer.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
While Bruce's work is sort of interesting, it is very frustrating when people take it as gospel. Even the numbers that he feels confident enough to give a "B" to, "The numbers may not be exact for the MMOG in question, but are certainly in the ballpark," can sometimes be waaaaaay off.