What about AoC?! What about LoTRO?! What about *our* needs?!

[Venkman]

Runescape is the world's largest free MMO and second largest subscription-based one. So, the game nobody plays is right behind WoW.

According to Guiness anyway.

Five years ago this'd inspire an argument over numbers and sources and sekret anonymous tips. Nowadays I'd be curious if anyone really cares.

[Nebu]

I think it just shows how many computer users there are between the ages of 10 and 14. 

[Mrbloodworth]

I think it just shows how many computer users there are between the ages of 10 and 14. 

Wut?

[SnakeCharmer]

Who honestly cares about sub numbers anymore (besides the money guys)?  Many just use it as a justification to or not to play something.

If it's fun and has good/great graphics and is reasonably stable and *not* fantasy, I'll probably give it a long look.  That's all I care about not.  Not too much to ask, I know.

[Lum]

Runescape is wildly, wildly popular among people who can't afford subscription fees.

[Nebu]

Runescape is wildly, wildly popular among people who can't afford subscription fees.

How is this known, exactly?  How do you differentiate between those that don't want to pay sub fees and those which can't afford them?  Is it done geographically?  Asking in a survey won't tell you in any reliable way. 

[Lum]

It's wildly popular among 12-15 year olds. The "unable to afford subscription fees" is a reasonable extrapolation :)

[Nebu]

It's wildly popular among 12-15 year olds. The "unable to afford subscription fees" is a reasonable extrapolation :)

Thwarted by my own snarkiness. 

I think it just shows how many computer users there are between the ages of 10 and 14. 

[Hawkbit]

It's wildly popular among 12-15 year olds. The "unable to afford subscription fees" is a reasonable extrapolation :)

I've got 5 or 6 13-16 year olds that play it daily at our tiny little library here in urban (read: ghetto) Columbus Ohio.  Free online games know no race or social barriers, it seems.  Adventure Quest gets the crap played out of it here too. 

[tmp]

Runescape is wildly, wildly popular among people who can't afford subscription fees.

It says they have "over one million paying subscribers", too.

[Trippy]

Guinness isn't counting properly. There are Chinese pay-to-play MMORPGs with far more than 1 million "paying subscribers". Also, MapleStory (your favorite game Darniaq).

[Merusk]

My daughter plays it from time to time, but hates the flickering Ass-based interface.  She likes Adventure Quest more, but has really been into her NeoPets instead over the last few months.  No interest in Dungeon runners, though. So sad.

[Venkman]

Guinness isn't counting properly. There are Chinese pay-to-play MMORPGs with far more than 1 million "paying subscribers". Also, MapleStory (your favorite game Darniaq).

Yea! Eleventy-billion eyeballimpressionclickthroughs ra ra Guinesswrong-hulk-smash!! 

(closest Hulk thing I could find in 0.5 seconds of looking)

Someone had to say the "counting properly" thing, and I'm glad it wasn't me this time The truth has been there since we'd argue about the relevance of mmogcharts and EQ1 vs Lineage 1. It's not Runescape vs WoW any more than it is Poptropica vs Guild Wars. Nobody lumps these things together because the total user experiences are so different the underlying business models present very different opportunities to very different companies. Scale, scope, audience. Blizzard's not going to make a light hearted Flash based game with hamsters any more than Electric Sheep is going to spend $100mil on a AAA retail purchased MMOFPS.

Nobody's got industry-grokked clean categorizations for it, but "MMOs" have for years been split into sub categories. Comparing between categories, well, you might as well compare COD4 with Tabula Rasa.

[UnSub]

Nobody's got industry-grokked clean categorizations for it, but "MMOs" have for years been split into sub categories. Comparing between categories, well, you might as well compare COD4 with Tabula Rasa.

The big difference is COD4 has more people paying to play it.

[sanctuary]

My son (8 yrs) and most of his friends at school play Runescape. Have to agree with the comments that it's very popular among kids, my son want me to subscribe for him so that he can get the better stuff.

[Xanthippe]

My daughter plays it from time to time, but hates the flickering Ass-based interface.  She likes Adventure Quest more, but has really been into her NeoPets instead over the last few months.  No interest in Dungeon runners, though. So sad.

I wonder how many subscribers Club Penguin has (my 9 year old's game of choice).  It's barely an mmo, in my opinion - more like a social space with lots of minigames, more like the Sims Online than Runescape.  But it sure has her sucked in.

[Calandryll]

My daughter plays it from time to time, but hates the flickering Ass-based interface.  She likes Adventure Quest more, but has really been into her NeoPets instead over the last few months.  No interest in Dungeon runners, though. So sad.

I wonder how many subscribers Club Penguin has (my 9 year old's game of choice).  It's barely an mmo, in my opinion - more like a social space with lots of minigames, more like the Sims Online than Runescape.  But it sure has her sucked in.

Last thing I read was they had 700,000 paying subscribers. Unless I am mistaken, they reported about $40 million in revenue from subscribers. Assuming that's gross revenue, that's the equivalent of having an average of about 225,000 mmog subscribers over the course of a year. That of course doesn't include any micro transactions and merchandise sales.

[UnSub]

My daughter plays it from time to time, but hates the flickering Ass-based interface.  She likes Adventure Quest more, but has really been into her NeoPets instead over the last few months.  No interest in Dungeon runners, though. So sad.

I wonder how many subscribers Club Penguin has (my 9 year old's game of choice).  It's barely an mmo, in my opinion - more like a social space with lots of minigames, more like the Sims Online than Runescape.  But it sure has her sucked in.

According to this, it has 6.7 million monthly users.

It's things like Club Penguin and Runescape that make me smile when people claim MMOs are doomed because they didn't like AoC or WAR.

[CharlieMopps]

You're forgetting the biggest reason people play runescape. You can play it on ANY computer at ANY time. As long as you've got a browser and Java works on it, you can play it. A lot of these kids parents gave them some 10 year old computer they got second hand from their brother-in-law and this is the only sort of game they able to play on it. The fact that you can play it on some getto library computer should tell you something.

[Ratman_tf]

Are we trying to summon Raph now? 

[Mrbloodworth]

Are we trying to summon Raph now? 

Chants: "aggregate, aggregate, aggregate!!"


 

[Grimwell]

[IMO]# of users really does not count for much of anything to be honest. Profitability counts for everything.[/IMO]

Obviously every company in the business wants as much profit as they can possibly get, and ramping up the user base is a sure fire way to magnify any potential profits you can acquire, but at the end of the day the fundamental question is: "Are we making more money than we are spending?"

Had I the funding, I'd be more interested in building a suite of games that could each profit nicely off of 100K users. It may not allow me to send out press releases showing the size of my subscriberbasepeen but it would improve the odds of making money.

See, it didn't even have to wait for Raph. :)

[VickeVire]

I searched (for real) the replies in this thread for the word 'Dune' and I got no hit, so... without DIKU restrictions the answer is DUNE!!!!

[Calandryll]

Had I the funding, I'd be more interested in building a suite of games that could each profit nicely off of 100K users. It may not allow me to send out press releases showing the size of my subscriberbasepeen but it would improve the odds of making money.

IMO for that to work I'd want to be profitable at quite a bit less than 100k. Lots of big budget / long development time titles have struggled to attain even that, let alone games with smaller budgets or more accelerated schedules.

[Grimwell]

I agree, I used 100K because it seems like a small number these days to most folks, so it's easy shorthand for "Think about numbers that can sustain your business, not numbers that make headlines."

The fewer customers required to hit profitability within an expected time line, the better.

[Slyfeind]

Andrew Tepper once said he needed a minimum of 1,000 users for A Tale in the Desert to be profitable. But back then it was just him and one other guy.

[UnSub]

CoH (at launch) was reportedly profitable at 50 000 subs.

[CharlieMopps]

I agree, I used 100K because it seems like a small number these days to most folks, so it's easy shorthand for "Think about numbers that can sustain your business, not numbers that make headlines."

The fewer customers required to hit profitability within an expected time line, the better.

Then why not just start pron site?

[Oban]

Why is there no MMOpron?

[Tannhauser]

It's hard to type one-handed?

[Venkman]

As the world realizes the U.S. is no longer the major MMO market, expect more of it.

You can play it on ANY computer at ANY time

And it's got a freebie front end. Browser-based MMOs are appealing to companies because they don't come with any of the rules that the big budget ones do, don't have the conditioned embedded audience and, importantly, are a much lower financial risk.

You've heard this all before though. Basically, unless you're one of a handful of companies that have the cash, you're looking at browser-based MMOs. And mostly likely you're NOT looking to find an engine where you can develop the game inhouse. Rather, you're looking for a company that can build the whole thing for you and then take on the service/support or let you inhouse that part.

AAA MMOs are not going away. But neither does anyone include WoW in the projections for how much growth there is in this type of title. That is as much a abnormal spike in general more moderate growth as Club Penguin's $700mil purchase and any of the whacky numbers SL puts out.

[Ratman_tf]

Why is there no MMOpron?

Second Life.

[Hawkbit]

Why is there no MMOpron?

There is. 

[taolurker]

Why is there no MMOpron?

There is. 

http://www.redlightcenter.com/

[Oban]

Second Life.

Flying dildos without insertion does not make MMOporn.