How many plays AoC? Funcom spills the beans

[Dren]

My guess is that the 50% that did drop were the "hardcore."  They got through the content and said, "Where's the steak?"

The remaining are that "older" customer base that seems to play less.  Thus, they get through the content slower.  Thus, they haven't hit their wall yet.

I'm one of those "older" guys that plays enough to be considered "hardcore", but at a slow and steady rate.  Normally, when I start an MMO, I go at least 1 month into subscription.  I think my shortest stay was AO (funny that.)  I tried it on their free trial download (EVERYONE should do this.)  I really did it just to experience a game that was important in the timeline of MMO's and stuck around for an extra month.

Most of the time I go about 3 months before I figure out an MMO is not for me (CoH, SWG, EQ, FFXI, SB, etc.)  UO and WoW are the only ones I can measure in years so far.  I did last shorter times, but that's because I never made it out of Beta (DDO, LotR, etc.)

[waylander]

So we're back to the educated guesses of people with inside sources.

--Dave

So we're back to Sir Bruce and his MMO chart guestimates?

[HaemishM]

I'd be much happier if we had a organized industry group that tracked such things.  But it's just not mature enough for that.

Actually, I call bullshit on that. The money is there, WoW's numbers are quite public - it's just that everybody in the medium is still on the mentality that there can only one big boy and everyone else is an abject failure. And that hasn't been true since DAoC released. Now if by "not mature enough" you mean the people in charge are still immature twats who like to measure e-peen only if they are winning, you might be right. 

Maybe we were getting close, but WoW messed that up by becoming such a big part of the market, there's no advantage for them in helping "the industry" when in dollar terms they are most of it.  So we're back to the educated guesses of people with inside sources.

But they don't ever obfuscate their numbers, while most others do. SOE won't give a straight answer to the "how many subscribers" question to save their lives. Same goes for Turbine. Releasing subscriber numbers doesn't hurt them, because the stat is so meaningless - 100k subscribers for Eve is a fucking fantastic success while for AOC it's an abject failure and for Habbo Hotel it's a slow day.

[Kirth]

What would be interesting to see is the number of "first time" mmo players who bought in and also who still subscribe. That in itself would be a better indication of market growth outside of the WoW factor.

[Khaldun]

I doubt they have good data on numbers of that kind, but I'm guessing they're very very low. There's not that many rabid fans of the IP who were dying to play it in a MMOG (unlike SWG, say) and I can't see anything that would draw a first-timer to AoC otherwise--it requires top-end machines, it's got a Diku design that really does nothing to encourage newcomers, etc.

[Slyfeind]

...it's got a Diku design that really does nothing to encourage newcomers, etc.

Now that's interesting. Do you think all dikus are discouraging to newcomers? Or just AoC's particular design? Because it seems to me that initially, diku is the best kind of rpg to get players involved. Kill a monster, take its stuff.

[Khaldun]

I think the core design of a diku is relatively easily grasped, but you could underestimate how difficult even some of its basic conventions are for players who've never tried one. Stats, levelling up, classes (which aren't unique to diku, but are pretty basic to it) aren't intuitive. Add to that some complexity about the loot (what's good? what's not? what do I do with it?) and the monsters (what can I fight? how?) and things get more confusing. Then layer in all the stuff that's become part of the basic vanilla WoW/EQ design and it's not at all intuitive. I can't imagine someone who'd never played a MMOG before sitting down and deciding that Age of Conan was the easiest to understand and engage. Now, if someone who'd never played one before just happened to give AoC a whirl for whatever reason and liked the basic core gameplay of a MMOG, then they might well fall in love with AoC as their first engagement with the entire genre. I just don't see any reason why AoC should get *more* of that kind of person at the present and lots of reasons why it shouldn't.