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The Boston Globe has an interesting article online about Turbine’s two upcoming MMOGs.  The reason I want to comment on it here is that I spoke with the Boston Globe reporter about my research and my resources and methods before the article was posted, yet he did not ask me specifically about what he was writing in the article.

Firstly, I disagree with Mr. Goodman, the Yankee Group analyst, on his assessment of the market potential for the two games; I think both DDO and LotRO can potentially reach 500K subscribers, but I believe DDO has a much better chance of achieving that goal, and will certainly do better than 150K subscribers.  Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the reporter not only misrepresented my data - which shows a market share for fantasy MMORPGs specifically, not RPGs in general, and is based on current subscribers, not on industry sales - but he made it seem that I felt this supported his statement that Turbine was in the right sector.  Had he asked, I would have said that I thought the fantasy MMOG sector was actually overcrowded, and that companies making a new MMOG should instead be concentrating on other genres like science fiction, pulp adventure, wild west, etc.  However, DDO and LotRO would be exceptions to this observation, because they have such strong IP behind them; those companies with the more generic fantasy setting are the ones who should be worried.