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MMOGChart Update 21 Now Available
SirBruce wrote to mention that the 21st update to MMOGChart.com is now available. From the site: "This version has updated subscriber numbers for several games, most notably World of Warcraft, several of SOE's titles, and the recently launched Auto Assault. I've also expanded the mid-range chart a bit; eventually I'm going to have to implement a dynamic graphing system." The most dramatic information can be seen on the mid-range chart. The cyan, triangled line that represents Everquest made my jaw drop.
I'd be interested in seeing a comparison of how additional content and frequency of updates scales with subscriber numbers. The monthly fee outpaces individual subscriber upkeep costs by a pretty high amount, so you'd figure the games with high subscriber numbers would have at least a little more attention thrown at the updates -- but I'm not sure that is the case.
Although one of the problems with making such a comparison is that subscribers in different countries add up to vastly different subscribership plans and fees. Speaking of, though I've heard it's hard to get a hold of the numbers, I'd be very interested in seeing the average money per capita made off players broken down by pricing region. I'd also imagine there's a significant amount of overhead involved in expanding your business internationally. Hrrm.
Nice to see EVE-Online's figures still going steadily up. :)
If EverQuest taught us anything about trend of MMORPG, it's that people are quite willing to put up with any amount of 'this sucks I quit' features until there's actually something better out. Given the lack of high profile MMORPG coming out, I'd think WoW is going to stay at the top for a while.
It'd also be interesting to see how the numbers look like broken down to just 'people who are capable of speaking English'. No offense to the rest of the world, but comparing a game like EverQuest (virtually everyone is capable of speaking English) to FF11 (where half of the people are Japanese and can speak some English) to WoW (where a significant if not majority of the players can't speak English) is not really meaningful to me who lives in an English-speaking world. In WoW I can't even choose to interact with the non-English speaking world since servers are regionized unless they're here to sell gold. From my experience, the English-speaking MMORPG community is certainly quite fickle. Yet even if a large exodus does occur for the English speaking world (since everyone communicates in English here, I'd assume anything observed happens on a server that can at least speak English), it wouldn't show up as more than a blip on a game like WoW where a significant portion, if not the majority of the subscription comes outside of North America/Europe.