Octopus Overlords

qp wrote:Yeah it's kind of funny, here we are assuming that's all about EQ2 vs WoW, but the Lineage 1/2 stats - wow, they have the real money printing machine!

LawBeefaroni wrote:Oh, and fanbois, pipe down. Lineage I/II has everyone beat.

Valael wrote: I don't really care how many subscribers a game has in other countries. I care about how many it has in the US. Odds are, due to time zones and language barriers, they're the ones I'll be playing with 95% of the time.

Nade wrote: Edit: OK, how come Lineage hits 3 million a couple of times, but Total Active Subscribers never gets past 2.75 million? Am I missing something?

Mr. Sparkle wrote:Where does he get the numbers from?

I would think this is the kind of thing that companies wouldn't want released to the public.

There are, however, a few caveats to the data presented above.

Firstly, I rely on the companies and employees themselves to provide the bulk of the data. The numbers they give could be completely made up, and as Enron taught us, even financial reports could be misleading. However, given that none of claims seem highly outrageous, and that all companies are equally capable of lying, it would seem that the numbers given are pretty close to the truth. There is probably some minor fudging involved when a company wants to claim a major milestone, rounding up to the nearest 5K or 10K increment. But at the very least, the relative comparison between MMOGs is retained, even if individual data points may be off 10% or more.

Secondly, there’s no universal consensus on what constitutes an active subscriber. Some companies may count players currently on their traditional first “free month” as a current subscriber, whereas others might not start counting them until after that period and the customer actually chooses to subscribe. Although the accounts that don’t subscribe get “subtracted’ a month later, such accounting could create a continuous effect of inflating the overall subscription total. Most MMOGs probably do this, but some may not, and this may make them appear slightly larger than they actually are. Still, after the initial launch of a game or an expansion, the actual monthly effect of such accounts should be relatively minor… perhaps on the order of 10%.

Finally, a “subscriber” is generally counted as an individually numbered account currently in a company’s billing system. In some instances, one person may maintain multiple accounts, and thus be double or even triple-counted. Some MMOGs may even encourage this behavior more than others. There isn’t much I can do about this fact; again, the effect is probably minor compared to the overall population of a given MMOG, and in any case it’s certainly valid to count such multiple subscriptions if your goal is to evaluate the relative market share of each MMOG.

For those of you wondering, the circles on the graph indicate an expansion pack was released for that MMOG during that month. They aren’t labeled, but given the chronological order you should be able to determine what expansion pack goes with what circle on the chart. Apologies that some of them are not precisely circled; Excel won’t let me place the shapes perfectly and then in the conversion to gif some fidelity is lost, making them even further off-center. (Update: I’ve temporarily removed these pending a better solution.)

There is one additional note I should add regarding games from Sony Online Entertainment. In July of 2003, SOE introduced the special “all access” subscription, which gives customers a subscription to EverQuest, EverQuest: Macintosh Edition, EverQuest: Online Adventures, and PlanetSide, together at a reduced price. Exactly how many people have opted for this subscription is unknown, but if the numbers becomes substantial, it could distort subscription data if SOE chooses to count such subscribers for each game offered. For instance, a person may buy the all access pass and yet only play EQ and PlanetSide. If SOE also counts them as an EQ: OA subscriber in a future press release (even if they never created an EQ: OA character) it could distort the market share of that game. Similarly, a committed EQ player might play both EQ and EQ: OA, but have no interest in PlanetSide. It remains to be seen how Sony intends to count such individuals, but if their number remains low relative to those who choose the more traditional individual subscriptions, it might not distort the data too much.

Valael wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote:Oh, and fanbois, pipe down. Lineage I/II has everyone beat.

I don't really care how many subscribers a game has in other countries. I care about how many it has in the US. Odds are, due to time zones and language barriers, they're the ones I'll be playing with 95% of the time.

LawBeefaroni wrote:

Nade wrote: Edit: OK, how come Lineage hits 3 million a couple of times, but Total Active Subscribers never gets past 2.75 million? Am I missing something?

Yeah, the title of the graph.
"Total MMOG Active Subscriptions (Excluding Lineage, Lineage II, and Ragnarok Online)"

Mr. Sparkle wrote:Where does he get the numbers from?

I would think this is the kind of thing that companies wouldn't want released to the public.