MMOGChart.com Update 50
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."
SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
We've also seen server populations dwindle, including the server I play on, which is still one of the 5 most active. Used to be you would see 100 people PvP'ing on any given evening, now you are lucky to have 20 total.
SWG is lucky to have 50-75,000 subscribers left AT MOST.
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:2)
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:1)
Friday night is prime time for SWG? No wonder they have no subscrubers left.
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:2)
It's prime time for most MMORPGs. When do you think most people have free time, Tuesday mornings?
(actually you'd think that if you read WoW's forums on Tuesdays..)
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:2, Informative)
The worst offender for out of date information in popular MMORPGs (defined as "it appears on Chart 1, 120,000+") is Dark Age of Camelot, which hasn't had updated figures in over a year.
Note that this information is from the Excel sheet, not trying to trace li
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:2)
Even so, it looks like WoW really took the wind out of the sails of Lineage and Lineage II.
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:1)
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:2)
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:1)
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:2)
Some of the numbers are pretty decent. Some companies are forced to report the number of active subscriptions they have because they're publicly traded and need to release membership statistics to their shareholders. Others are far more vague and are based on things like press releases and other marketing spin.
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:2)
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:1)
I think this is more a reflection of people who have multiple memberships paid up for a year. It should drop steadily soon, but SWG still does have a fair number of users.
Re:SWG numbers completely wrong (Score:2)
All of their subscriptions seem to run together via that. And a lot of folks have signed up for that, just so they can play whatever game they want.
Link to the site (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.mmogchart.com/ [mmogchart.com]
-prator
still out of date (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, is any of it valid?
Perhaps he attempts to claim validity by overwhelming us with numbers and pretty graphs? I admit that he first started his charts I believed there was valid data. As it has gone on I begin to seriously doubt its relevance.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:still out of date (Score:2)
Well, Blizzard does explicitly say in their press releases that their figures include trial subs (which by this point must only make up a tiny fraction of the whole, anyway), but it does say it excludes expired subs - got a link to this proof? I'd be very intersted to see it (preferably an up-to-date one, obviously)
Re:still out of date (Score:2)
Wow, okay, so it's been a while. I updated my data last November, but for some reason the data never got pushed to the web site. I've temporarily released a new Version 19.0 with some of that data, going up to approximately January. I'm going to try to complete a fully revised set of data and analysis as soon as possible. In the meantime, enjoy the new release."
Re:still out of date (Score:2)
If you examine each individual MMORPG, very rarely do you see declines in subscriber base. Typically, you see a growth period followed by an eternal plateau. I'm suspicious that the lack of news isbeing interpreted by the author as a "no change" wh
How about XFire? (Score:2)
I'm sure getting the information out of them would be a tall order though!
Re:How about XFire? (Score:2)
Re:still out of date (Score:1)
Regardless of how the companies reported it, they're going to report their best, biggest numbers. Assume that all the companies fudge their numbers in the same way. Therefore, all of the games start on an even, though falsified, basis: "At some point, we had this many players."
I think pointing out the obvious of "out of date" is a bit harsh on the chart's author, too. Of course it's out of date. He even states t
Re:still out of date (Score:2)
RuneScape (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:RuneScape (Score:1)
Re:RuneScape (Score:2)
Re:RuneScape (Score:2)
Re:Guild Wars? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Guild Wars? (Score:1)
Re:Guild Wars? (Score:2)
City of Heroes has a very similar game model. The only significant difference, as far as the charts are concerned, is that CoH has a subscription model.
Re:Guild Wars? (Score:1)
Re:Incomplete (Score:1)
And AC Closes in 3..2.. (Score:1)
Sigh (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sigh (Score:2)
If I was in a job that required solid facts on these numbers, I'd pay the money and (hopefully) get something more exact. But I'm blessed with only having to worry about selling single-player games, so tracking MMOG numbers is just a hobby. :)
Re:Sigh (Score:1)
Hazzah!
eve online (Score:2)
Re:eve online (Score:1)
Note that eve's primetimes are bit different than other games. I often see tons of people sunday afternoon.
-Jeff