 | First release of MMOGData subscription dataJune 5th, 2007 |
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| | First release of MMOGData subscription dataJune 5th, 2007 |
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I’m a little confused. Mysteriously absent is Runescape. Maybe data from Jagex was difficult to acquire. I doubt it. I would imagine that one of the objectives of the site is to recognize industry trends and Runescape’s success is a hell of a trend to miss in the MMO space. Second Life and Club Penguin seem to be missing as well.
This site is based on insiders sending him stats — so if no one has sent him those stats, they won’t be present.
That said, SL publishes lots of stats, so that ought to be shown.
I may be mistaken, but does that graph have UO sitting at around 60-75k?
(certain colours used on that graph may or may not make baby jesus cry)
I may be mistaken, but does that graph have UO sitting at around 60-75k?
Yeah, I think. It’s hard to read with the light colors. Otherwise and excellent graph and I’m certainly glad they have picked up the ball.
UO, failing to fix what’s wrong while marching into strange territory that’s been kept a mystery to their customers….I have no doubt they have had some drop off. I get the sense that most of their customers feel an unhappy change comming, since they aren’t spending any time fixing what may be left behind.
UO’s original UI was the best I played. It was so intuative and simple that a caveman could do it. Then they added some new type interface mechanisms, while keeping the old, and then decided to change because they had complaints that new customers had trouble figuring it out. Doh.
But I don’t think they still will match SWG for the crown of bad decisions, not yet anyways.
I do think they will save themselves though, as I suspect they are going to a Runescape sort of game. Free, buy extras and hold an account to own a house. That sort of thing. The old customers won’t like it, but there’ll be plenty of new ones (the ones all their player base is wondering where from) looking for that good, free game. And it still might turn out pretty good too, despite the first impressions of the old timers. But that’s guess work, although based on some things that I may be stretching out of proportions.
Who knows, MMO developers and producers quite often are a case study in controlling the vertical and the horizontal.
All I can say is WOW at how far Dark Age of Camelot has fallen.
I gotta tell ya… at 60-75k, since half (or significantly more) of that is indisputably in Japan… that’s shocking.
People recently cockily quoted the old Bruce chart at me when I said I guessed UO had been taking serious hits in the last couple years. That chart sat at 135k, I believe some time in ’04 or ’05. This is closer to what I’ve been guessing at for a while now (just by hearing what people have to say). I said I thought those numbers were even probably fluffed at that time a bit, and certainly not applicable to talking about today.
…But this is kind of shocking.
And they still refuse to chance even one classic server.
An interesting number would be the “turnover”. Are those “old games” steadily declining, but still get new players (only less than leave) or – the more likely case – is there no influx of new players but old ones simply just leave at a slow rate?
Constant subscribers with a high turnover would mean good marketing. Constant subscribers with low turnover means a solid game design. It would be really interesting to see those numbers in order to find out who’s good at which.
Unfortunately, I doubt external sources will get their hands on real data.
Amaranthar – I think the idea of making “old” games free-to-play is not easy. How is Anarchy Online faring financial wise?
How about this:
Buy a bunch of smaller, “nearly-failed” MMOs. Have only a single server for each, if necesssary make areas inaccessible to make sure that it feels crowded. Introduce quick-start options (e.g. a first generation MMORPG with one city and direct “zonings” to every dungeon). Throw in a few independent titles. Create one subscription at $5 that gives you access to all of them. Make it a fast, easy, inexpensive fun thing.
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