Slashdot Mirror
Mmogchart.com Updated to 20.0
SirBruce writes "Mmogchart.com has been updated to Version 20.0! This is a major update, with updated numbers for many games, most notably World of Warcraft, Eve Online, RuneScape, and most of NCSoft's titles. I've also added three new MMOGs to the tracking data: Tibia, The Matrix Online, and Dungeons & Dragons Online. I've also removed the old subscriber data for Ragnarok Online in Japan, and unified the various total subscriptions charts. Also new to this update is preliminary market data for Asian MMOGs (including Ragnarok Online) that are commonly reported in terms of Peak Concurrent Users and Average Concurrent Users. Given the differences in pricing models, many of these games are not subscription-based, so a direct comparison with subscription MMOGs cannot be made. My thanks to everyone who helped with this update, and thanks to those of you who waited patiently for this update!"
It's pretty amazing that WOW has 50% of the total MMOG market share. Blizzard must be rolling in cash.
-gjr
Its the walmart of online games I think. Lowest common denominator.
Bait dangle
All that money they should be making and no worthwhile updates.
- Gronk!
It's interesting to note that Toontown is doing better than D&D Online. That's a pretty bad sign for Atari, whose finances aren't doing particularly well these days.
It's like looking at a fantasy painting. A storybook illustration. All pretty and soft and pastel. Every other MMORPG screenshot I've seen is harsh and gritty and unappealing compared to the smooth pretty of WOW.
And it also got big enough that it has the social network effect. Wanna try one of these MMORPGs you keep hearing about? You probably want to play one your friends are on! They'll help you out and you can play with them.
egypt urnash minimal art.
I believe WoW fills that incredible void of coming home with nothing to do after a hard day of work and it does it better then the others. Besides, most WoW are former Evercrack addicts anyway. ;)
My guess is that it's one of the first MMOGs to not punish the player for doing ordinary things. I remember the horror stories from EQ were people would lose weeks of progress each time they died, and then would die a few more times trying to get their uberloot corpses back. The people I know who left WoW went to "harder" games, such as EQ2, since they couldn't fathom playing a game that didn't try to screw you over at every turn.
What about the funniest dang MMORPG out there!!?
"Friends"? What the hell are "friends"? They seem like something I'd be interested in. Where can I get some of these "friends"? Are they available at the local drugstore?
Seriously though, the few friends that I have aren't interested in MMORPGs. I "meet" plenty of other players in-game though. Sure I don't "really" know them, and they don't "really" know me, but they recognize my character.
I hate this type of post because it's pointless. Of course many people consider WOW the worst because it's very popular. Every single person is unique and to make a game that appeals to everyone is impossible. What one person might find fun another might hate. What you find boring another finds interesting. There is nothing wrong with that and that is why there are so many genres of games.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
I wouldn't consider WoW one of the worst. I no longer play, but I'd rate it among the best- low grind to cap, low penalties. Until they overpowered the game with raid items (meaning you had to raid to PvP) and killed world PvP with battlegrounds, it was fun. I far prefer it to most of the others in its genere- the Lineages, the EQs, the FFXI grind fests.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
"Yes, I played it, yes, I was bored stiff after 3 months."
Ppff. That's not a problem with the game per say, it's a problem with the genre. One I share, in fact. I've played quite a number of MMO's, and I find that they ALL get extremely boring, it's just a matter of how soon. I've given up on ever finding a MMO that isn't a complete waste of time and money.
Quite frankly, I think that if we want to see the relization of the persistent virtual world, we desperatly need to grow beyond these immature fantasy romps.
You didn't like it, you were bored after 3 months...therefore EVERYONE shouldn't like it and be bored stiff.
Lineage has the second highest...have you played that? I can't see the draw for that one either, but obviously someone likes it.
Hey, we're all different. Blizzard can't please everyone all the time. You either like it, or don't. Don't take it so personally. Should everyone like or dislike the same movies? Books? You ask what makes the game interesting...but what could anyone say to change your mind? What list of things would make you reconsider it after you played it already for 3 months? You've made your mind up and we'd be wasting our time and yours trying to convince you.
And in the end, it's really no big deal. Go play something else as is your choice.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
So tell me why, in case you enjoy the game. I really wish to know what makes WoW interesting. What is better than in the "other" MMORPGs? What makes WoW to something that deserves a 50+% market share?
I like it because it's straightforward. There's not a lot of non-game activity required to play the game. The quests are straightforward, the game mechanics are straightforward, the class roles are straightforward. For the vast majority of the content, you either can do it on your own or can find a group within a few minutes by barking up the appropriate tree. I don't have to deal with idiotic guild politics and teen-aged angst, I don't have to deal with planning out my skill progression, I don't have to research where the best equipment is. I can do it all without all that junk.
On the other hand, the game does have those elements to it, but they're optional. For people who want to form guilds and take down huge monsters and collect phat loot, they can do that, and have a good time at it. I don't want to, and the game works well for me; other people want to, and the game works well for them.
Overall, I think that's what it has going for it. The game caters to basically all gaming styles.
The main draw that other people have mentioned is that with so many people playing, it's easier to get an impression of the game before you start playing. Also, odds are that if you're interesting in starting WoW, you know someone who's been playing for a while and might be willing to toss you a few gold and invite you to join their guild. The main reason I play WoW instead of a different MMORPG is because I had many friends and relatives that played WoW as opposed to the one person I knew who played Ragnarok Online.
;P):
Another draw of WoW is the lore. Say what you will about those "paladins from space" the Draenei, but on the whole what keeps me coming back is the continuation of the lore that began in the first Warcraft.
Note that these two factors have little or nothing to do with actual gameplay. WoW isn't an excellent game in itself (especially when compared to other MMORPGS), but through marketing and by fostering a sizable, devoted community Blizzard has ensured a steady and increasing subscriber base.
All of this said, I do have a couple of gripes with WoW (no WoW post is complete without gripes, right?
-Crafting needs to be overhauled to allow customization; not only should blacksmiths and such be able to change the appearance of their creations to a degree but they should also be able to affect the bonuses an item gives. The higher the crafter's skill, the more bonuses can be stacked on the item. Jewelcrafting and socketed items are nice, but not good enough.
-Corpse runs. I realize there needs to be a token penalty for dying, and not dinging the player's experience is a good idea, but just rezzing after a few minutes would be better than manually having to guide your ghost back to your corpse.
Besides, most WoW are former Evercrack addicts anyway.
Let's look closely at that chart for a moment. Everquest's subscription numbers from July 2001 till July 2004 is a nice, straight line hovering at just under 500k subscribers, with a slight bump right before WoW was released. WoW, by contrast, started at zero during September 2004, and has basically taken a straight line path up to 6.5 million today.
I would say that that indicates that WoW subscribers are coming from somewhere other than Everquest. In my time in WoW, I've only met one person who said he had played EQ before; most everyone else either played something else (myself, FFXI and Puzzle Pirates before WoW) or had not played MMOs at all before WoW.
I agree that WoW fills the after work void better than other games do. Not counting endgame content, you can log in to WoW, play for a half hour, and log off, and feel that you've done something useful with your time. You don't have to commit an entire evening, you don't have to spam "LFG" for hours and hours because there are other things to do, and you don't have to spend an hour waiting for a boat to arrive at a port so you can get from one island to another. *cough*Vanguard*cough*
Perhaps WoW is not "hardcore" or "immersive," but if you really wanted the true immersive, realistic experience that has been mentioned by those who long for hard grinds and wait times, you could walk (don't drive) to the nearest forest, wait for a squirrel or rabbit to run by, whack it with a shovel, and then walk back to your house. That's as immersive as immersive gets.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no browser-based MMORPGs on MMOG chart, as you should see a mention of for example Urban Dead which count enough players to be in. So what's wrong with BBMMORPGS? Do they not appear on this site because they are browser based or because they are free?
You just got troll'd!
Why are you people so desperate for attention? It's not enough to be the enlightened minority, your insecurity has you constantly challenging the majority to defend their "inferior" taste. God, the anti-WoW baiters are worse than the Digg whiners.
But do you really want to know why it works? Aside from the detailed backstory, extensible user interface, well-defined gameplay mechanics, and superior art and music - it's because you can jump. It has the feel of a first-person shooter with the controls of an RTS.
Guild Wars is just freakin' Diablo with a rotatable view, and you're still glued to the ground. Eve Online is nothing but a crappy space flight simulator for accountants.
Let me preface this by saying that the only other MMO i've ever played was FFXI. I played for about a year, starting when the ps2 version came out, and had a high level paladin. I've been on WoW for ~3 months.
1. WoW looks pretty. I don't find the music annoying and repetitive (yet), and the ui is highly customizable.
2. Less grind. I found the grind fun in FFXI, and that's what the game is mostly about. The problem arises when you're sitting around waiting for hours for a xp party. Even at low levels during non-peak hours, it was a problem. You could never do something in an hour, and you had to devote serious amounts of time. Eventually, it became a chore. In an hour, I can knock out a quest or 2 in WoW and turn them in. Good times. Some WoW instances take a long time, and drops are rare for epic loot, but if you find it unbearable you can start an alt for a while and have a little fun with a different character.
3. It's easy, social, and fun. "the hardcore mmorpg'er" (example: militant vanguard fanboys) don't like WoW, but WoW appeals to a wider audience (not just big geeks, like myself). The reason I started playing WoW was because half of my office already was, and I was looking for a new game. The game is pretty easy so far (37 war), I have a guild full of coworkers, and I don't waste a lot of time waiting for a party.
4. Crafting. Crafting in FFXI is hell. The moon has to be the right phase, which only occurs for 1 hour every real day or 2. Your items could break during the craft, in which case you could lose millions, but crafting was very profitable at higher levels. In WoW, crafting is easy, and there really isn't too much money to be made. I'm an alchemist, so I'll be doing Arcanite Transmutes, but I won't end up making money off of anything else. It's better than the frustrations of FFXI to me, and the average gamer would tend to agree.
5. Selling/buying gold. When I left FFXI, Square was doing absolutely nothing about it, and it was crippling the economy. Blizzard at least tries, and as of level 37 I haven't really noticed it impacting the market on the server. Maybe I will at higher levels, but not for now.
6. Maybe it's me, but I've noticed less asshats on my WoW server than I found on FFXI. The occasional "OMG!!1! CHUCK NORRIS!1!!" in the barrens aside, it's been a fairly decent experience.
There's more reasons, but those were just off the top of my head.
Blizzard's far from perfect (goes down every tuesday, connection issues, login queues, etc), but it's enjoyable to me. Maybe I'm one of the "moron gamers" who just doesn't understand why WoW sucks..
Before you mod me flamebait, let's rather try to find out just WHY WoW has the share it has. Because, frankly, I can't see the reason. Yes, I played it, yes, I was bored stiff after 3 months.
Did you play with friends? or just pickup groups and solo? I joined way back, played for three months, got bored, put it on the shelf for more than a year. Then got to know a few people in real-life who played, convinced a few more, then it was one of the best games I've played.
You need to take advantage of the 'online' part of the genre. If you play it like a single-player game of course its going to suck. The fastest way to make it suck is to focus on 'beating' the game like you would say half-life or dungeon-seige.
To provide the other possible answer to your question, not everyone likes chocolate either.
Remind me never to play a squirrel character on your reality server, ok?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
That's not the only one missing.. how about Guild Wars? It only won a few awards..
God, Root, what is difference? -- Pitr from Userfriendly.org
Because I happen to know how to find this out...
In Vana'diel (the world FFXI takes place on), a moon cycle takes 84 Vana'diel days. The moon is divided into 12 phases, each lasting seven days. (The crescent and gibbous phases are doubled compared to Earth moon phases, so those last fourteen days, but it's easier to think of it as 12 phases.)
Vana'diel time runs 25 times faster than Earth time. So a complete moon cycle occurs every 84/25 Earth days, or 3.36 Earth days. Since each moon phase lasts seven days, you have 7/25 Earth days during which to craft. That gives a total of 6.72 hours every 3.36 days during which crafting has the highest success rate.
Except success rate isn't just determined by the phase of the moon, it's also determined by the day of the week. A Vana'diel week has eight days, every craft skill will have maximum success on only one day during the eight days of the Vana'diel week. So you actually have less than an hour every three or so Earth days where crafting success is maximized.
Notice that the phase lasts only seven days, though. That means that each moon cycle, one day does not occur during the optimal phase. So if you're trying to level that craft, you have to wait for a span of less than an hour that only occurs once every two moon cycles. (84 * 2 / 8 = 21 exact, so only two days swap off missing the cycle.)
For added fun, many people believe that the direction your character is facing also influences crafting results...
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
No way there is 190K left.
But the chart does show SWG in freefall since they released the CU, and that the NGE was downright catastrophic.
Should have listened to we who didn't want them to do away with the original game to begin with....
Corporatism != Free Market
The chart looked about as I expected: World of Warcraft towers above the rest while several other MMOs lose ground. But what I didn't expect to see is that WoW's gains are significantly higher than its competitors' losses. World of Warcraft is doing more than dominating the market--it's increasing the size of the market.
I'm interested to see whether those gamers will move to other MMO games after World of Warcraft or if they're only in it for WoW.
I don't play MMORPGs except for the occasional dip into SL. Most of my friends are aware of MMORPGs, maybe half of them played them before WoW.
...that, or Endless Forest.
I think nowadays pretty much everyone I know who plays these things is on WoW and/or SL. People fool with other games, but it's these two that they keep mentioning regularly.
egypt urnash minimal art.
WoW was probably the 2nd best MMO i've ever played (1st being Ultima Online way back in the day). Once you're level 60 for a while and do nothing but farming battlegrounds and MC/BWL/ZG, you quickly get bored. Leading upto lvl60 was definitely fun for me though. After that it's a huge grind for a chance to win 1 epic in your farming guild a couple nights a week.
Really? that makes me all the more intrigued about Guild Wars. Diablo was a far better game WoW ever thought about being. "Controls of an RTS" is exactly what I HATED most about WoW, that and the fact that all the professions were nerfed to uselessness.
How does this account for people who play more than one game. This isn't exactly a good representation of the market as a whole because you don't know what kind of overlap exists.
They should either rename this site to MMORGPchart.com as all games are fighting/rpg based games. Otherwise games like hattrick.org (820k users) and travian.com (120k users) should also be included.
...what matters is what you like, not what you are like...
EQ2 is a game with, basically, no death penalty that has almost nothing in the way of camping and encounter locking to prevent most possible griefing. Travel time is incredibly light. EXP comes fast. It may be harder in the sense of gameplay mechanics but I can't imagine how WoW could possibly be more friendly except to give you levels for free.
I know what you're saying, and I agree with you. I also have a question for you. I'm just curious as to what your opinion is.
How do the following screenshots fare with you? (I realize it's not technically considered an MMORPG, but I'm curious none the less, as the founders are ex-blizzard)
Here they are. Or you can go here for the gallery.
Thanks
>So tell me why, in case you enjoy the game. I really wish to know what makes
>WoW interesting. What is better than in the "other" MMORPGs? What makes WoW
>to something that deserves a 50+% market share.
1. Strong game IP franchies. People like the Warcraft universe. Of course, IP along is no gaurantee of success; look at Star Wars Galaxies or The Matrix Online.
2. Content, content, content. WoW has a ton of content. You can play it for 6 months and there's still new things to do. Every race has it's own feel. You can't say that about, say, DDO.
3. High soloability. You very rarely need to group, until you get into the tougher instances and the raids. This also helps attract casual players to the game.
4. Relatively few bugs. I'm not going to say WoW has no bugs, but compared to the bugged launches and events many other MMOGs had historically, WoW's level of quality was simply superior.
5. Many people credit the RvR as being an essential element in WoW's popularity, particular to retain high-level players. I'm less than convinced that every MMOG needs something like this to gain WoW-like subscription numbers, but it's still a strong element to it success. Not that unrestrained, full open PvP is not as popular; WoW's PvP is very structured.
Bruce
...then by the year 2057, the earth will be consumed by a mass of WOW subscribers expanding at the speed of light.
One very important thing to note is that the last data point for a ton of the games on his list is June 2005 -- one example being Everquest 2.
The other thing to note is tabulating subscribers. In some of the Asian markets (can't tell you which ones in specific as I just looked this up myself) the Internet Game Rooms are very popular. You go in and buy an account that you then add points to on an hourly basis. Anyone who logs into one of those is counted for seven full days afterward by Blizzard as a paying subscriber. I'm sure there's lots of people who don't spend $15 American monthly on World of Warcraft but are counted as equal subscribers among their monthly-account-paying European and American brethren. Just as a reference it's about $3.73 to buy an account that you can spend points on and it costs a nickel an hour after that for gametime in WoW China, as per a Blizzard press release and Google's money translation calculator.
It's interesting to see what the Asian market means in terms of body count, but it makes me wonder what the relative revenue situations are like.
##warning this post is from a Eve-online fanboy##
WoW sucked up a ton of my time the last couple of years. I know enough about the game, I think, to give you a basic idea of why some people claim it's so awesome, and others (including me) think it's not that great.
Here are 4 points that WoW has going for it. Then, in italics, purely opinion on my part.
1. First of all, the game is dang easy to learn. The first ten levels of the game are nice and slow, in a protected environment, giving you plenty of time to learn your character. It does a great job of giving you a purpose, a little story, and just enough reward to hook you on the "I need more phat lewtz" idea. In other words "instant gratification".
This is the biggest reason that WoW got so popular. Anyone can sit down and play it. It was a nice change for the genre being able to start having fun without needing to "work for it". Many older MMO nerds will tell you, however, that having to work for something makes your accomplishment that much sweeter. This will be a unending battle between WoW fanbois and the rest of us. That said, this one huge attribute of WoW made Blizzard rich(er)
2. You can get something accomplished in a small amount of time. The trip to level cap is great fun. You can always log in, do something meaningful, and be done in 45 minutes if you like. Caters to the casual gamer.
This works great until the endgame. see point 4
3. No harsh death penalties You lose nothing if you die. No XP debt, no money, no items. Only a little time and a blow to your pride. In this way you are always making progress. It's a very friendly game to everyone, at least in theory. I point to the battlegrounds as a reference. Absolutely no way to lose anything by joining a battleground. If you lose, you still make progress.
People who have only played WoW will tell you how much of a turnoff death penalties would be to them, if they were to think about another game. I think this is unfortunate. Having something to loose when seeking to gain makes nearly everything that you do a lot more interesting. I'm not going to go on about it (you can find many reasons why many people like death penalties from any whiner in a developing game's forums) but I want to point out that people can just as easily ruin your fun. But in WoW, there's hardly anything you can do about it. blah blah death penalties actually reduce ganking blah blah.
4. Raiding Endgame Getting together with 40 people in the game and taking down bosses for items is the tried and true MMORPG way of keeping people subscribed. Frankly, it can be fun.
You almost HAVE to raid once you hit 60 in WoW. First of all, it's nearly all of the content that gets added. Second, WoW is so item-centric that you can't even have fun in the battlegrounds against people who raid. This is a complete turnaround from the 1-60 trip. You join a big guild, do the same raids week after week, each requiring a substancial time commitment. We're talking 4-7 hours here. It's not the same game.
Because of this, people end up rerolling (starting a new character) and/or not really even talking to people outside their guild. It's wierd. The same "hardcore" people that complain that WoW sucks, are the same people that the game caters to at the end. It's addicting though, I admit to that.
I sit correced. The point, however badly voiced, stands.
Guild wars isn't techincally an MMO, since everything is instanced. Also, since there are no monthly fees, 1million+ copies sold doesn't translate into 1million current players. Its still my favorite game, and online experience, even if its not an MMO.
Prettyish terrain. Got no idea how appealing the characters might be, and that's what's important - WoW has these kinda-cartoony characters. (The gallery didn't work on Safari; I got the bg image overlapping the links and images and everything!)
Oh yeah, Mac client on launch might be part of why WoW did well too. Every single Mac gamer could get in on the ground floor with their friends instead of coming after their friends had already burned through it all.
egypt urnash minimal art.
...believing this guys numbers. yeah, some of them may be accurate. Blizzard has been tooting their horn with their subscription numbers. But, I've been playing Star Wars Galaxies since the beginning back in 2003 and there is no way they currently have just under 200,000 subscribers. The number of subscribers has the be half or even 3/4 of what it was in it's peak. So, I know that number to be just wrong. What other numbers are just wrong? EverQuest still has 400,000 subscribers???
Well, Arenanet was founded by some of the Diablo team...
There are thousands of articles around as to why WoW did well, from it's existing franchise, to taking the Warhammer minature artwork through to the game, to simplification and a slick interface. But I had had my does of EQ1 and to be honest find them all very boring these days. I am waiting for a generation shift, something new to come to the genre. Compare the gameplay of an MMO with the gameplay of a moden single player RPG like Oblivion, or the gameplay of Half-life 2. It's a huge gap still. Ever grind in Quake? I mean back in the 90's you could excuse the genre of better gameplay because of the additional technology involved, but these days they should be closer to the single player variants. Until they do, I have had my dose.
>>>I like it because it's straightforward. There's not a lot of non-game activity required to play the game. The quests are straightforward, the game mechanics are straightforward, the class roles are straightforward.
I'm guessing you are new to MMORPGs, when you have few under your belt repetitiveness and sameness typical of WoW will not be something you want to experience.
You can compare WoW to a bland sitcom, while it delivers all typical elements it lacks wit, creativity and originality. If you never experienced anything similar you might not realize that they 'borrowed' a lot of ideas/concepts/implementations but for veterans of genre it is all been there done that.
Remember "The Unix Hater's Handbook?" It mentioned the idea of "Worse is better" and the dominance that this phenomenon allowed Unix to achieve in the early 1990s. However, it holds true still (but Windows, and not Unix, is the target of ire) and not just applied to Operating Systems--the x86 processor architecture has killed off nearly all the far more elegant chip designs, RISC and CISC alike, in the last 10 years. x86 is so bad that Intel doesn't even fab "real" x86 chips anymore; they build what I understand to be a sort of ad-hoc load/store architecture and simulate the x86 instruction set through microcode (can you imagine MS cloning Wine, sticking that on top of a Linux distro, and selling the result as Windows 2010?).
WoW works the same way. No one thinks the game is perfect, but each player thinks a couple of features are integral to enjoying a MMOG while others are detrimental. But it's not a zero-sum proposition, since having five good features outweighs having five or even ten annoying ones. Therefore, you get a scenario where everyone plays the game because it has the good features they want, but complains about it because it has many features they hate. They promise they'll move on to whatever game fixes those problems, but invariably every game tries to please people by removing features, and ends up removing enough features that different people no longer have any desire to play the game.
It's nice that you are glued to the ground in guild wars.
Fighters body block opponents from getting to their healers and nukers.
While at times I would like to jump, jumping would really mess up the football style PvP.
And guildwars is nothing like diablo.
It is, however, the best game of its genre that will run on any operating system I'm willing to use.
I've been quite curious as to what percentage of WoW-players are mac-users. My guess is that it's quite high indeed, perhaps somewhere between a quarter and a third. There are what, around fifteen million macs recent enough to run it well in use today? Some nontrivial portion of those fifteen million will be used by people who have some interest in gaming, but have very few games available to them. Blizzard is one of the few companies that has had the sense to capitalize on this market, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised to hear that a million or two of those fifteen are also a million or two of Blizzard's six.Guild Wars has zero subscribers, due to that they don't have an option to subscribe.
Try visiting the site mentioned in the article. EQ2, EQ, and FFXI are all on there.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
here you go !!!
Sony has this funny little thing called Station Access, which gives you access to pretty much all SOE games. If you want to play two SOE games (e.g., EQ2 and Planetside), you're marginally cheaper off buying a Station Access. If just want the extras in one game (e.g., extra character slots and some other advantages in EQ2), they're often _only_ available as Station Access.
Once a game has been activated under Station Access, there's no way to say "nope, I don't want to play this one any more" as long as you keep your Station Access. E.g., once I activated SWG under that payment plan, no matter how much I find SWG a steaming pile of shit and an example of how _not_ to design a game, I can't unsubscribe it. On the upside, it doesn't cost anything extra to leave it there.
On the downside, I too get counted in such "look how many players we have" statistics.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That's not a jump. This is a jump.
No kidding; I was particularly interested in FFXI data as that's my main MMORPG...
And the only time you really, REALLY have to pay attention to this is if you're trying to HQ a Tier0 or Tier1 synth with the highest possible chance.
Noone I knows pays much attention to moonphase, or even day, when going for skillups, or HQing in Tier3. Tier3 HQ is MUCH less vulnerable to moon/day influences than Tier0-2. And Tier2 is less vulnerable to the effects than 1 or 0, as well.
But don't mind me - I happen to like the FFXI crafting system enough that I have 2 over 90 and 1 over 80...
I'm not surprised. WoW outbeats all MMOGs in the 'market' simply because it is well written, well designed, very scriptable and fun for players of all sorts. Also the amount of support sites for WoW is staggering. And yes, with 6.5 million subscribers Blizzard is generating a lot of cash. With the paraphernalia and the planned movie it will only increase it's marketshare.
-- Neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, iuva.
and then by posting you voided your mod point
Again I don't see Guild Wars in the charts. While I don't expect them to track every single MMOG, Guild Wars should make it past the 120,000+ threshold, and definitely be in the 120,00-700,000 range. I think that deserves some special attention despite the fact it's free-2-play.
"Ack. Yech. Barf. Snort." - Bill the Cat
I think you meant to say that PlayOnline gave out real figures for subscribers BEFORE September 2004, but haven't had anything since then except the census. I got a soft confirmation from a source on the 650K number, but that's still from last year in any case.
Bruce
I don't know if the rest of you are bothered by this, but.... Runescape beating out every other MMO on that chart aside from WoW and Lineage is a little disturbing.
"The fastest way to make it suck is to focus on 'beating' the game like you would say half-life or dungeon-seige."
:(
I agree with you. Unfortunately, even on RP servers, people are not taking a leisurely, smell-the-roses stroll. Doing anything but the most optimal path is considered a waste of time. Figuring out something on your own never happens. Guildies, pick up groups, friends, they all have done it already and will guide (i.e., rush) you through. It's almost as if level limits trigger a 'get to the end' response in people, and all they want to do is get there. Nevermind that once you're there, the challenging bits of the game are few and repetitive.
So yeah, I dunno. I don't have that much of a point here, just pointing out that what makes the game the most fun is hard to find
Hooray for more guesswork that people will assume is gospel.
The problem with games like PQ and GW is that they don't follow the subscription method (which is what MMOGChart.com tracks). Numbers of characters does not equal number of players (or subscribers).
Actually I think Blizzard did a fairly good job of keeping professions in line with everything else in the game. For instance I just made my Robes of the Archmage which are on par with any but the top 1% of raid armor for a mage, they took me about two weeks of casual grinding for gold through quests and some outright grinding.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It was supposed to be a joke.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I had never heard of Endless Forest before... I just looked it up and Google and found some reviews and screenshots. Beautiful graphics, but the concept has given me an aneurysim...