Version 23.0 Available
Version 23.0 is now available! I’ve updated a few games through March and April, as well as filled in some historical data points for other MMOGs. Also new to this version is Pirates of the Burning Sea. In addition, check out the new World of Warcraft chart with breakdown by territory.
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on April 8th, 2008 at 4:28 pmThe Excel file has been updated as well; you can find it in the Downloads section. I still haven’t updated the Asian market ACU / PCU numbers; I’ll get back to those charts in a future release I hope.
I appreciate all questions, comments, donations, etc.
applmak says:
Added on April 9th, 2008 at 3:48 amThank you again for your detailed data collection. I noticed that Vendetta Online isn’t listed among your surveyed MMOs. Is there a reason for that?
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on April 9th, 2008 at 4:49 amI looked into Vendetta Online but I could only find limited information on it and it seemed pretty small; only a few thousand subscribers. If I get more data from their developers in the future I’ll surely use it.
crooon says:
Added on April 12th, 2008 at 1:47 amI don’t have Excel installed, but I just checked http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html
Are you suggesting that LoTR:O had 1 Million users in 1999? Or maybe I don’t know how to read a chart.
crooon says:
Added on April 12th, 2008 at 1:52 amDoh, nevermind, I don’t know the difference between a triangle and a diamond.
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on April 12th, 2008 at 10:11 amIt’s okay; I know the charts can be quite difficult to read. The Excel file is really the best way to look at the charts, if you have something that can read it.
Yeebo (blog author) says:
Added on April 13th, 2008 at 12:46 amDoes the 150K count lifers or not? Based on my experience in an off flavor LoTRO server (arkenstone) and the most popular EQ II server (Antonia Bayle) I find it hard to believe that there are only 150K folks playing LoTRO. You list EQ II as having more total subs, but it seems to me as if there are about as many folks on my off flavor server as the most popular server in EQ II. Yes I know it’s subjective. But based on my recent experience in both games, I find it very hard to believe that EQ II has so many more folks playing (let alone EQ 1).
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on April 13th, 2008 at 8:25 amHey, you’re not the blog author. Silly WordPress.
Yes, the LotRO numbers should count lifers, although I honestly don’t know how many of those there are. Probably less than 50K.
Yeebo says:
Added on April 13th, 2008 at 10:49 pmHa, you mean I’m not in charge of this whole thing?
Thanks for the clarification.
On the subject of lifers in general, to me it seems fair to count them as “subs” at least until the sub time that they pre-paid for has expired. Not really sure if they should be counted after that. In the case of LoTRO that would mean counting lifers for at most one year and 8 months (200/ 10).
Counting lifers as subs gives you an idea of the size of the community, but not really of how much money is coming into a game every month. Seems to me that some of your sponsors would be more interested in the latter than the former. Hellgate also had a lifer plan (heaven help anyone that went for that), I would not be surprised to see more MMOs do it in the future. Seems like you should have a consistent policy on them…or at least add a sentence to your methods if you already do
dirk45 says:
Added on April 14th, 2008 at 6:09 amI also have some problems with the LotRO numbers for I see the number of people playing definitely go up when I walk through Middle-earth. You mentioned inside sources for the number of subscriptions. Could it be that you missed the European gamers in it that are not Turbine but CM players?
Best regards
Dirk
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on April 14th, 2008 at 10:03 amDirk, there’s been some discussion of this over om the MMORPG forums, and while I stand by the 200K-300K estimate earlier, the more recent 150K number may be mistaken on the part of the source. However, there’s little I can do at this point until I get another source inside Turbine or until Turbine provides some official data.
Cronin says:
Added on April 15th, 2008 at 8:26 am> Dirk, there’s been some discussion of this over om the MMORPG forums
What MMORPG forum are you refferring to?
Thanks.
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on April 15th, 2008 at 12:32 pmOh, sorry, I’m referring to MMORPG.COM. Mind you, the discussion got a bit contentious and heated, and I don’t want to drag that into here, but if you’re brave enough to weather the storm you can check it out yourself:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/173950/page/1
Cronin says:
Added on April 16th, 2008 at 11:53 amThanks. I was just curious to check any forums that covered MMORPGs in general.
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on April 16th, 2008 at 1:04 pmCheck out the “News and Forums” section on the right-hand side of the page for more places to go. Some of the links in Research and such have good discussion forums as well.
BWilhite says:
Added on April 16th, 2008 at 11:01 pmFYI
Within the FFXI game this week there is a comment on the Odin Server Population. Included within this brief “news” are some general FFXI statistics - accuracy unknown:
“At present, FINAL FANTASY XI boasts a total of 32 Worlds populated by 1.7 million characters and half a million registered users.
When compared with the average numbers of 55,000 characters and between 15,000 and 16,000 users per World the Odin World in particular stands out…”
15,500 registered users x 32 worlds –> 496,000 registered users
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on April 17th, 2008 at 10:14 amThanks BWilhite. This seems to be in agreement with the 2006 Vana’diel census, which also reported 1.7 million characters. It’s interesting to note, however, that they passed the 500K mark back in 2004 with only 1.2 million characters, which could indicate as much as 700K subscribers now, but FFXI has only recently ever claimed “over 500,000″ so it’s hard to really know the exact figure. It seems likely that the ratio wouldn’t remain constant as older players make more alts, but who knows for sure.
littletak (blog author) says:
Added on April 18th, 2008 at 1:41 pmSo, how do you figure that Asheron’s Call 1 has gained subscribers?
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on April 19th, 2008 at 1:44 pmHmm, I wonder if the new version of WordPress would fix that bug.
Anyway, I don’t know that AC1 has for sure gained subscribers. Perhaps the 10K figure was simply too low before.
Lightfinger says:
Added on April 29th, 2008 at 9:22 amTwo MMOs that are not on the list, that have a mix of free and premium accounts, are Guild Wars and Hellgate:London.
Do you have any numbers about the subscribers of these two games? I know folks who play both, so was curious.
Drew says:
Added on May 5th, 2008 at 9:29 amim interested in guildwars numbers also
The Anon Ranger says:
Added on May 6th, 2008 at 3:28 amI second the Guild Wars notion.
Jarish says:
Added on May 9th, 2008 at 6:31 amhttp://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/online-subscriptions-exceed-1-billion-a-year-says-npd
Oh…so you might wanna put LOTRO up above that 500k sub mark. As you can see from this article.
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on May 11th, 2008 at 10:19 amI don’t think Guild Wars has premium accounts? In any case, NCSoft only releaes numbers on total registered players, not active players. Also, I consider neither Guild Wars nor Hellgate: London to be true MMOGs.
Jarish, regarding LotRO, I haven’t seen NPD’s raw numbers yet so I’m not sure exactly where they have it pegged. They rely on surveys, and their survey period was November through March, so they could have caught LotRO during it’s busier period before it started to go back down. Or perhaps my latest number is wrong. Nevertheless, if it’s larger than FFXI in the US that would still put it in the 200K - 300K range; unlikely to be 500K.
Nexus says:
Added on May 11th, 2008 at 11:41 pmOn your charts you decreased LOTRO’s sub count from 200k to 150k. Yet the trend I have felt while playing the game and talking to fellow LOTRO players is that server populations have been going up. In fact I’m not surprised that LOTRO is ranked #3 in the NPD report. I have long felt that to be true as the game is quite popular both here in the US as well as in Europe. I’m pretty sure it beats out FFXI on all fronts. There is no doubt in my mind that LOTRO is above the 500k mark.
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on May 14th, 2008 at 12:17 pmWell I’m starting to suspect you may be right, but I need some guidance from Turbine before I’m willing to make any corrections.
Joiry says:
Added on May 15th, 2008 at 2:26 pmDeclaring Guild Wars not a true MMO is a pretty subjective judgement. Now, I can understand not including it because its not a subscription based game - or that its buy-once model is just inherently hard to track. But it is most definitely multiplayer, massive, and online. And it remains popular and widely played. Even if something like the xfire stats have a bias in representation (tho it pegs WoW at the same “market share” as your own analysis), I don’t think you can ignore its somewhere in the top most played games, even if not #2 (tho I bet it is).
Trey says:
Added on May 16th, 2008 at 3:38 pmOk, Guild Wars is not an mmorpg, therefore, why would you include it in a chart that records the SUBSCRIPTION numbers for games?
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on May 16th, 2008 at 4:07 pmWhen I start tracking non-subscription MMOs I might include Guild Wars.
koogco says:
Added on May 19th, 2008 at 1:56 pmhttp://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=2489&table=CONTENT
according to their own website, age of conan will be shipping 700.000 preorders, and have already ordered additional servers, since 700.000 is the current limit.
wether there will actually be opened that many accounts on may 20th and 23th (USA and EU launces) is hard to say, but it gives a general idea. and as far as i can gather from your charts, might become the highest launch number for any MMO to date.
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on May 19th, 2008 at 2:03 pmYeah, I’ve been telling people that I expect AoC to sell 1 million copies because so many people pre-ordered it, but I doubt those people will stick around to play. Age of Conan will be lucky to get 500K subscribers. If performance at launch is as bad as it was in beta, they’ll be struggling just to retain 200K subscribers after a few months.
koogco says:
Added on May 19th, 2008 at 2:30 pmill try my best to answer that since i have been in both beta and are now in early access.
the last month in beta, the performance increased greatly with each patch, and i find the performance in the early access client to be mostly on par with other videogames (that is concerning FPS and loading times)
i cannot say for sure how many people are struggling with serious problems (crashes etc.) i have had alot of crashes/BSOD/freezes, but thos have been due to my Graphiccard causing problems (also does in other games)
but in general i would say that the performance is better thn that of beta, the largest problem at this point is that the UI is not very handy yet, and the Chat can be bugged.
i think you might be right about not everyone sticking around, even if the game where well polished, but i also think the game will come a long way even in the first months.
koogco says:
Added on May 19th, 2008 at 2:33 pmanyhow, i was merely here to make sure you had seen the link.
SirBruce (blog author) says:
Added on May 19th, 2008 at 2:37 pmI have been monitoring those updates to investors; they’re very interesting and quite useful. I only hope that FunCom is going to continue that atmosphere of transparency and be willing to talk about their subscriber numbers post-launch.