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A Look At the Growth of MMOs In 2008
Zonk writes with news of a collaboration between Massively and GamerDNA to analyze the state of MMO player bases for 2008. Sifting through the data brought out several interesting trends. For example, Age of Conan took a substantial hit when Warhammer arrived on the scene, but none of the other major MMOs were significantly affected. Also, it seems Lord of the Rings: Online got a big shot in the arm from its Mines of Moria expansion — even moreso than World of Warcraft from Wrath of the Lich King, relatively speaking. The article also asserts the following about the recently-canceled Tabula Rasa: "... until the cancellation announcement in November, numbers were trending in the right direction, however slightly. Players were growing more interested in the sci fi MMO shooter, and logins were on the rise. If its development had not been so long, so expensive, and so vastly overhyped and mismarketed, this title could have been left alone to find its legs and found some small measure of success in a long tail environment akin to the Sony Station Pass."
Yes, but how many of those are chinese farmers trying to sell in-game money to the 4 americans that play?
The sample of players used for this article (only GamerDNA members with profiles) is so skewed that the second biggest MMO of all (Runescape) doesn't feature in the article at all.
This is probably an excellent article if you are interested in what GamerDNA members are up to, but it's not very relevant outside that.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
> Why does nobody post statistics for Final Fantasy XI?
Because just like in the game, it takes too long to travel from the article to the statistics.
Bark less. Wag more.
Newsflash, buddy: the whole purpose of gaming is to waste some time in a pleasant way. Same as virtually any other hobby.
Yes, I know, people like to pretend that _their_ hobby is some great building skills... which they are only going to use the next time they do that hobby. Whether it's mountaineering, or going camping, or going out in the woods with a compass, or whatever, guess what? You're only going to use those skills at all the next time you go mountaineering, or camping, or going out in the woods with a compass. Chance to actually ever actually need to find your way in a city with a compass and/or by seeing which side of the tree has moss... zero. Actual RL value gotten out of it... zero. They too are just killing time in a more pleasant way than staring at the walls.
Or to quote Publilius Syrus: "Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it."
The whole "if your time has no value" only applies if you were, indeed, planning to sell it. Otherwise, without a purchaser actually paying for it, it has no value whatsoever. I.e., it applies if you were otherwise going to take a second job and get paid. (Self-employed crafting does count, but, again, if you were actually going to produce stuff you sell in that time.)
The same applies to installing Linux, OSS, and god knows where else that retarded meme pops up: only if you were going to otherwise get paid for doing something else in that time.
Were you? No? Then get a brain and find something more productive to do than repeating memes. It's only intelligence if you came up with it, not if you're the 1234567'th guy who parrots it verbatim.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.