f13.net forums - DFC Intelligence on MMOs: Don't bother you coward

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July 18, 2025, 03:27:04 AM

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Good article, straight from Gamasutra. Highlights

This article is decidedly Western big-client 3D-based effectively-WoW/diku focused.
There's generally only one game in charge at a time
The genre actually has expanded it's playerbase
Small upstarts have it rough, big corporations have it worse.

Best quote:

Quote

In short, there is clearly a great deal of room for innovation and growth in the over crowded MMOG market. Unlike much of the traditional interactive entertainment market, it is not feasible to slap a popular license on an MMOG and hope to collect a big paycheck.

Here's the copy/paste:
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Next month DFC Intelligence will be publishing its latest research on the massively multiplayer online game (or MMOG) market. This is a well-established, but often misunderstood, segment of the interactive entertainment industry. The success of World of Warcraft (WoW) from Vivendi Universal Games is leading to interest and investment in the segment that is far above what its current market size and usage can support. Therefore we feel it is critical to look at some of the factors that could separate the handful of winners from the many losers.

Perhaps the most important point to note is that there will be a great deal of money lost. Since the emergence of the current MMOG market, which we pegged as 1997, there have never been more than a handful of hit products in a given market at the same time. In North America there has been one product (Ultima Online, then Everquest, then World of Warcraft) which stood head and shoulders above a small group of second tier products that had 25-50% of the top game’s subscriber base. Never in the over thirty year history of massively multiplayer games has there been more than five top-line products in existence at one time in a given market. Even then, the top two or three games have always commanded between 85% and 90% of the market

Below that level, there have been niche efforts and upstarts. Despite the increasing variety and number of MMOGs in the market, this quasi-network effect appears to be strengthening, not weakening. The good news, thus far, is that the overall pie does seem to be expanding. That is to say, the niche efforts now sometimes have 50,000 subscribers instead of 5,000 and the mid-level games have 150,000 subscribers instead of 50,000.

The announcements from a variety of well-capitalized companies about new MMOGs in the market is a sign that WoW’s success seems to have touched off another in a series of boom-bust cycles in the online game realm. The prize is so big that people have a hard time averting their eyes. That some companies are devoting huge sums of money to capture market share has not prevented smaller companies and passionate development shops from attempting to enter the fray. As DFC Intelligence tracks it there are currently more than fifty potentially viable MMOGs in various stages of development or private and public testing. This does not count the numerous efforts championed by two or three developers that have no chance of ever seeing the light of day. This also does not count the incredible number and variety of games being produced in Asia, not just in Korea but in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. Some of these efforts are backed by publicly listed companies with millions to throw at the world’s MMOG markets.

If history in this industry is any indication, most of these games will disappear, to be replaced by other passionate optimists. The track record of small, independent efforts with MMOGs has not been good. The track record of large, corporate efforts in the online game realm might even be worse.

MMOG games have very long development cycles and are notorious for missing initial release dates, often by several years. As we predicted, the success of World of Warcraft has resulted in the funding of many MMOG products. This last MMOG boom occurred in the 2000-2002 timeframe after the success of EverQuest. Despite numerous MMOG products being funded, EverQuest remained the largest Western MMOG until World of Warcraft was released in late 2004. Most of the projects funded in the 2001-2002 period were delayed or never released. Two of the largest products that did ship in 2002 were major disappointments, Earth and Beyond and The Sims Online, both from Electronic Arts. A major problem with both these games was that they were released with many bugs as publisher EA was in a hurry to recoup its significant investment. In 2004 there were some major MMOG projects that were cancelled well into development, including Ultima Online: Odyssey, Microsoft’s Mythica and Warhammer Online. Until World of Warcraft came out, interest in releasing an MMOG was clearly on the decline.

For the market to expand, consumers will have to be converted from more standard interactive entertainment experiences to the MMOG paradigm. This has proven more difficult than many market observers expected. A big reason could be that until very recently, the products in the market were basically variations on a theme. Aside from some expected product failures due to inexperience, bad customer service and/or poor hardware and bandwidth maintenance, the products compete with each other in terms of genre, interface and playing style.

Another issue is the limited business model. Until recently, most MMOGs were only offering consumers the subscription business model, which limited their payment options. Younger consumers, without access to a credit card or unable to get their parents to agree to a $15 a month payment (“That’s as much as cable!”), have been underrepresented in the MMOG space. The average age of an MMOG player was about 25 years old. As discussed in detail in our report, more affordable games like the digitally distributed Runescape by Jagex are finally bringing younger players to the genre. Runsecape has 850,000 subscribers at $5 a month and it was never released at retail. This group of consumers have proven to be a lucrative force in the rest of the interactive entertainment market and they could be the true key for expansion of MMOGs. With the introduction of other business models, such as the Korean imported free-to-play/digital item sales model, the market could broaden even more.

Still, time is an asset too and MMOGs are the most time-intensive of all online gaming products, requiring from five to twenty hours per week for a satisfying experience. One of the big draws of these products is the community of other players which the customer is drawn into; it is one of the reasons players spend that five to twenty hours per week playing the game. Players can’t and won’t invest time in more than one or two MMOGs at any one time; for most, it is just physically impossible to do more. This is likely to result in the great bulk of the coming games experiencing some initial success, as they are ‘test driven’ by the players, only to be abandoned for other games that better meet the technology, playing and social needs of more customers. This has been a major problem for MMOG developers and operators in the more competitive markets of Korea and China.

One of the biggest trends of note in the MMOG space is the products that have experienced success by providing games for underserved segments of the market such as science fiction fans, teenagers, or children. Other games have catered more to fans of purely social worlds, changed game settings, or played with the game mechanics to incorporate new ways of “fighting.” Examples are Eve Online (science fiction), Habbo Hotel (teens), Second Life (social worlds), Toontown Online (children), City of Heroes (setting change), and Puzzle Pirates (game mechanics changes). Many games have introduced different revenue models in an effort to draw customers.

In short, there is clearly a great deal of room for innovation and growth in the over crowded MMOG market. Unlike much of the traditional interactive entertainment market, it is not feasible to slap a popular license on an MMOG and hope to collect a big paycheck. Success with MMOGs requires a disciplined approach to product development, technology, operations, customer service, emerging trends and a solid understanding of the overall competitive landscape. The MMOG business is not for the faint hearted and those that do their homework clearly have the best chance of success.

In April, DFC Intelligence will be partnering with Flybug Media to present ‘Mastering the Craft of Online Gaming Infrastructure.’ This one day event, to be held on April 19, 2007 in San Francisco, will bring together some leading industry veterans to discuss best practices for operating online games. For more details visit http://www.masteringthecraft.com/.

Darniaq, I read just about everything you post, and just this once, I'm gonna say:

I don't like this article. It says absolutely nothing we haven't said and has an advertisement for a circlej^h^h workshop at the end.

Quote

MMOG games have very long development cycles and are notorious for missing initial release dates, often by several years. As we predicted, the success of World of Warcraft has resulted in the funding of many MMOG products. This last MMOG boom occurred in the 2000-2002 timeframe after the success of EverQuest. Despite numerous MMOG products being funded, EverQuest remained the largest Western MMOG until World of Warcraft was released in late 2004. Most of the projects funded in the 2001-2002 period were delayed or never released. Two of the largest products that did ship in 2002 were major disappointments, Earth and Beyond and The Sims Online, both from Electronic Arts. A major problem with both these games was that they were released with many bugs as publisher EA was in a hurry to recoup its significant investment. In 2004 there were some major MMOG projects that were cancelled well into development, including Ultima Online: Odyssey, Microsoft’s Mythica and Warhammer Online. Until World of Warcraft came out, interest in releasing an MMOG was clearly on the decline.

I don't even need to cut certain sentences out to make this joke. I can just cut out a paragraph in the middle of the article and type "O RLY?" We can do it with all the others too.

I think what bothers me though is that this was on Gamasutra, home to a couple journos that I really, really like. And yet, on a constant basis, you (Darniaq) wrote/write far more compelling stuff than this.

DFC usually puts out solid reporting, on the supply side of the industry. Not much meat to this one though, mostly subjective observation.

I will also second that Darn puts up some insightful posts, shouldnt you be looking for a game press job soon? :)

Man, thanks guys. I agree that DFC is usually pretty good, and this one is more on the weak side. Their Casual Games whitepaper is sort of my baseline though, so I'm wondering what will be contained in that 800 page report that'll follow this abstract.

This article bothered me because coming from such a big service like DFC, it was so decidedly focused on Western MMOs, and the legacy o UO, merely paying lip-service to everyone else. It's the sort of thing I'd expect from a NY Times article, not from a company who's going to sell this report to other companies who want to get into this space. "This space" is just too broad to focus on "be WoW or leave".

I also think it's a shame a place like Gamasutra doesn't provide better coverage of contemporary and broad MMO than it does. We've filleted that stuff already though.

But then, I guess it's hard to talk in public media about anything but WoW. Who cares about Eve when it's so obvious all players go to WoW and all metaverse service providers go to Second Life?

This unfortunately skews the perceptions of business. It's like the old days when businesses quoted SirBruce. Nowadays we're smarter, but not by a whole lot it seems. So it falls to folks who do see a broader view to ensure folks who do want into the industry understand there's way many more ways into it than just through the $80mil wunderbeast approach.

It strikes me that this article was not aimed at the likes of us, but rather at the explosion of clueless moneybagses who might be interested in getting involved in MMOG investment. As such it seems to succeed, since it puts into 12 paragraphs a good synopsis of the entire MMOG discussion forum here.

I read this as a well written executive summary targeted at potential investors who are not familiar with the day to day workings of the industry. I've read pieces written in a similiar format on Russian Oil drilling and Cod Fishing.

Quote from: Darniaq on March 28, 2007, 12:16:39 PM

But then, I guess it's hard to talk in public media about anything but WoW. Who cares about Eve when it's so obvious all players go to WoW and all metaverse service providers go to Second Life?

Eve is considered a failure since the initial investors lost their shirts and sold the rights back to the developer for pennies on the dollar.

I agree with the sentiment above. I hesitated to comment as I often feel that I'm not nearly as well informed as the majority of you. Not a lot of meat to this, but it does make a nice summary for the less informed.

I also agree with Schild about your work Darniaq. Agree or not, I always appreciate the blurbs you publish/post.

Good point on Eve slog. That was Simon & Schuster right? I wonder if they could have made it all back if they stuck around.

Quote from: slog on March 28, 2007, 12:31:07 PM

I read this as a well written executive summary targeted at potential investors who are not familiar with the day to day workings of the industry.

And that's what bothers me. It's pretty telling that a slanted article to these investors specifically implies they have a chance of failure. The irony is that their chance of failure would be based on too narrowly focusing on one way of delivering one type of MMO experience, which just so happens to be the primary numbers they seem to be relying on for the research.

Basically, in my opinion, it's a waste of most people's time to project business potential based on WoW. Most don't have the capabilities needed to match them. And the few that do wouldn't need this report to convince them. Focus instead on everything else. Stickiness can be huge, you just need to scale your business to match the realities of your target user.

Throwaway statement though. People get excited and ratchet up their expectations irresponsibly all the time.

On one side you have a bunch of wanna be developers promising money hats galore if you just give them 20 million dollars to make their MMOG. On the other side you have a bunch of experienced investors who understand that 1) They don't know all the details 2) Wow makes a lot of money 3) Lots of people beg for their money that don't deserve it.

So you get companies that offer seminars for the investors that give them hints on what to look for.

If somebody wants to come up with a plan to crash this thing that doesn't involve paying $600 I'd so be there, could be interesting.

Quote from: slog on March 28, 2007, 12:33:06 PM

Quote from: Darniaq on March 28, 2007, 12:16:39 PM

But then, I guess it's hard to talk in public media about anything but WoW. Who cares about Eve when it's so obvious all players go to WoW and all metaverse service providers go to Second Life?

Eve is considered a failure since the initial investors lost their shirts and sold the rights back to the developer for pennies on the dollar.

Thats funny, I haven't heard of anyone calling Eve a failure. Maybe in the MMO investor's circles the do :)

One man's trash (S & S) is another man treasure (CCP). Shortsightedness by investors does not a failure make.

Actually, Eve is anecdotal evidence against what you just said. As in, it's a one time thing. It's not even case by case. Shortsightedness by investors does make a failure. UXO? Asheron's Call 2? Vanguard? True Fantasy? Seed?

Edit: In other words, while it's TERRIBLY hard to be successful with crappy, stupid, unknowledgable investors. ONE game ended up being just that. Also, Eve is successful in spite of itself. Without the intensely passionate community, that game would be some of the worst shit in the genre. They should thank their lucky stars that the game is full of smart, (reasonably) politically savvy folks.

Amazing what a lack of elves will do to a community...

Quote from: schild on March 28, 2007, 07:42:44 PM

Point taken. Eve seems to be the exception and not the rule in a lot of things. I disagree with the "some of the worst shit in the genre" thing because comeon, this genre produces turds like no other. They at least went out of the fantasy box from the get-go. It's at least some innovation, which scores largely in my book.

There's a lot wrong with every game. But Eve is successful, now, in knowing who it's audience is and catering to them. I personally doubt they really knew who their audience was back in the day though. I remember an E3 either just before or after Eve launch in the S&S booth, which was just off the main lobby. The guy spent literally 45 minutes walking me through the game. It felt much more like Homeworld than EQ, more esoteric than action. Heck, it's still an outlier today. Back then when there was not much in the way of new MMOs, it was, err, "wierd". I can see why CCP got this back. In a way it's like Microsoft dumping VG. It's just too niche for a big company with big overhead to support.

Quote from: Slayerik on March 28, 2007, 07:32:50 PM

Quote from: slog on March 28, 2007, 12:33:06 PM

Quote from: Darniaq on March 28, 2007, 12:16:39 PM

But then, I guess it's hard to talk in public media about anything but WoW. Who cares about Eve when it's so obvious all players go to WoW and all metaverse service providers go to Second Life?

Eve is considered a failure since the initial investors lost their shirts and sold the rights back to the developer for pennies on the dollar.

Players generally don't give a shit whether the initial investors made any money or not.

Quote

be WoW or leave".

Darniaq, you keep saying that the point of the article was that the WoW model is the only way to go (or at least I'm interpreting your posts as such). I read the article as a series of bullet points detailing what has succeeded:
- WoW - you better have a ridiculous budget and a lot of genre knowledge, and you will probably still fail
- niche title - you better offer something that people want, and do it better, such as
- non fantasy
- a payment model that appeals to some underserved segment
- a non diku model, such as pure social space or PvP oriented
- something else no one has considered

... most of which are not "be WoW or leave".

Also, Schild, I would think this statement alone would earn the article a kudo from you:

Quote

In short, there is clearly a great deal of room for innovation

"There's a lot wrong with every ~~game~~ business . But ~~Eve~~ XYZis successful, now, in knowing who it's audience is and catering to them. I personally doubt they really knew who their audience was back in the day though.

Most people don't have a clue who their eventual audience will be, or even why, for any product.

This is much like any venture, startup, medium size company (not large companies they are to slow, mostly), you "think" you know what the market and target audience is, and you "think" you know what the business model is and you "think" you know how much money you might make.

But what happens is all that is a pile of steaming guess work. You knock out a prototype, throw some oatmeal at the screen then let some beta testers use it and tell you the 900 things you did wrong and how it would be better suited elsewhere. Then you readjust, rework and iterate. Thats how a startup works, what ends up happening is 95% of the time you suck and fail. Its the getting back up and trying again that differentiates 99% of people with good ideas from the 1% that actually try them.

OK so why is it that otherwise successful developers end up shipping crappy games after awhile?

a. Fear and a lack of it
b. Failure to listen

What I mean by fear is a fear of failure, this is the same fear the chokes otherwise good writers and bands by their second novel or album. Lack of fear of impending poverty, fear of not having a roof over your head, food to eat or an income does amazing things to motivate people to succeed.

This is why housewives with home based businesses and middle level managers with after work part time businesses fail 99.9% of the time. Its a failure to "shit or get off the pot" as it were.

Failure to listen, is when otherwise creative people start believing their own press, stop listening to the awesome little creative voice and start listening to the ego. Stop listening to the fans who brought them there, and start listening to idiots who dont have a creative or risk taking bone in their bodies. Its people with their ear to the ground and understand change who hit one home run after another.....

Thats the secret sauce

As to EVE and CCP, they are successful, if S&S didnt have the nads to stick by them in bad times then its a failure on the investors part due to a lack of faith, and a testament to CCP's faith in thier product and tenacity.

I'm not sure why, but this thread made me think of a Syndicate MMO, now that would kick ass. Seriously.

Quote from: DataGod

Most people don't have a clue who their eventual audience will be, or even why, for any product.

I somewhat disagree. There are a lot of examples of programmed successes because companies do know who they are catering to. They mostly come from the bigger companies that can't afford to take chances. This is how we get the same sports game with new graphics and stats every year. The same driving game. The same WWII FPS game.

Now, there is a difference between discovering who you audience is going to be and knowing who that is going in. That may sound like sophestry, but to me that's the difference between invention and derivation. Examples:

Activision making another Call of Duty game. That's freakin' easy. They know exactly who's interested. Whether that group buys it or not is based on game quality and availability. Pure programmed success.
Spore. Who the frick is this game for? Bored housewife God-mode Bejeweled Sims-lovers? Viva Pinata animal whackers? MySpaceYouTubeCustomizedAvatar Gen-Yers? This is an all around whacky game, no clear genre, no clear channel. It thrives on "Will Wright" and "buckets of cash". I would love to know who EA thinks their audience is, because I'd bets lots of money they're off in the way that prompted them to evolve SimCity to The Sims back in the day.

So yea, there's lots of people who take chances. CCP can take more financial chances than Simon & Schuster than SOE than Vivendi though. It's risk inverse to investment. WoW is EQ1 because at $80-friggin-million dollars it needed to be.

Sorry I'm sorta all over the place on this post. It's been a long week and we're finally winding down from the crazy at work. "Burned out" doesn't begin to cover it...

I'm not shocked that DFC has written their article the way they did. Heck, I get emails from the folks at Gartner, Inc. about similar stuff from time to time. I actually have a powerpoint presentation on my hard drive that was sent to me by a friend who is a research veep at Gartner. It's basically a handfull of slides that tries to explain the MMO genre to the other folks at Gartner, largely as a research motivator for those looking for new projects. Expect more, "Yeah, duh!" moments from the IT consultancy sector as WoW and SL garner more media hype.

What helped EVE more than anything was the closing of Earth and Beyond, and the clusterfucks of SOE. They'd still be making money, but those two alone probably kicked up their subs by 30%.

This seems to come down to basics: Games either fail (most common), have a moderate success that pays the bills and a small profit (second most common), make fuck-tons of money (least common). If you want to try for the gold ring, it takes a shit-ton of money -- but then you can't settle for the most common profitable outcome (niche game).

Quote from: Jayce on March 29, 2007, 07:10:19 AM

Also, Schild, I would think this statement alone would earn the article a kudo from you:

Quote

In short, there is clearly a great deal of room for innovation

Maybe if the article weren't an advertisement for their seminar, it would have.

Quote from: Morat20 on March 29, 2007, 02:25:21 PM

What helped EVE more than anything...

Was sheer perseverance.

Or the whole, having a vision for a game and sticking to it not pussy'ing out of all your innovations and going with the "let's clone the top seller and use new art!" plan. You know, the one damn near every video game dev seems to think will work.

Sometimes I think EVE is to its niche what EQ was to MMO's originally. No one has done it better yet, so what is a game with enormous flaws gets to be successful despite it self.

Heck, is there anything else even remotely EVE like that isn't total turd vapor?

Quote from: slog on March 29, 2007, 06:34:17 AM

Quote from: Slayerik on March 28, 2007, 07:32:50 PM

Players generally don't give a shit whether the initial investors made any money or not.

But players aren't the target market for a DFC Intelligence white paper, industry executive and potential new investors are. That Eve was a failure from the viewpoint of the original investors is germane there, and if they hadn't cashed out for pennies on the dollar, it might have sunk without a trace (if, for example, they had insisted all surplus revenue be paid out, rather than put into ongoing development).

I think they're a little conservative on their financial projections for the overall market, but not by any major margin (my own projections are about 50% higher, but I'm basing that on wider adoption of pay-for-stuff business models). Otherwise it's a much-needed dash of cold water to fend off a potential dot.com style feeding frenzy, and although I personally would almost rather see the feeding frenzy, I can't fault DFC for trying to do their jobs.

--Dave

I appreciate the effort at objectivity, and agree it's definitely needed. The amount of conversations about entering this space is fairly large. But the part I struggle with his their admitted active lack of attention paid to the Far East, both in the history of "successful" games and in the activities taking place.

Does, say, Vanilla Cat (Naviya) matter to Bioware? Not necessarily. But I have to wonder about a report that doesn't account for the global view because that globalization accounts for way more than half of WoW's current success.

Let's say WoW was only launched in the U.S., like so many MMOs have been previously (with a token effort at EU). If WoW was only launched in the U.S, sure it would still be big. But at it's estimated 1.2-1.5mil U.S. subscribers, it would merely be a bit more than double what EQ1 hit at its max. This was at a time wtih FFXI hitting similar numbers (though I don't know how much of that is accounted for by Japan) and Guild Wars also breaking the million. All of these factors would allow the developers, publishers and punditry alike to continue to think this genre is only capable of minimally incremental growth. Double EQ1 is impressive, but not the omggitmesomeofdatmoney awesome!!1!

In China, Korea, Taiwan et al, WoW is not up against the likes of VG, EQ1 or DAoC. Those are not serious contenders for attention over there. The entire competitive landscape is different by both player experience and business model, just as WoW's business model itself is different over there.

The dot.com-edness WoW is causing is based on a lack of these sorts of insights. It's fine to talk about the $80mil, the importance of a long-established game-based IP, and the presence of an established community in B.Net as success factors others may not be able to match no matter how much money they throw around. But, people need to also talk about the other parts of the brass ring WoW created. And in doing so, they'll eventually realize a few things:

It's not the only way to do things.
It's not the only way to make money
There's others making a healty chunk of profit as well (comparing revenue alone is too limited)
MMOs are fairly awful for licenses
You need global relevance
You need to accept local operating conditions (microtrans in one country, monthly fee in another, Internet Cafe in a third).

There's simply too many ways to be successful in this genre to think only about what SOE started with EQ1 or OSI started with UO.

Quote from: Darniaq on April 01, 2007, 07:49:27 AM

You need to accept local operating conditions (microtrans in one country, monthly fee in another, Internet Cafe in a third).

WoW does not use microtrans in China or anywhere else -- i.e. time cards != microtrans. Also in S. Korea players pay a subscription fee to Blizzard on top of any applicable Internet Cafe usage fees.

my two cents:

1) nice write up
2) awful article. F13 could do better. Schild, you should start collating posts like Darn's and make a Quarterly or Seasonal almanac to post.
3) DFC seems more conflicted with itself than anything. I have parts of their last report on VW's and it's sloppy in places (bad spelling, comments like, "don't know what you meant here" in the published doc) and it's totally beholden to SOE, NCSoft, Mythic and a few others for filling in their surveys. That data is their lifeblood. But with so few examples, the data seem weird in places (e.g. on connectivity and datacenter costs). Dunno what to think all in all, but so far they are the only IDC/Gartner-like firm out there for MMO's and VW's, so they're worth watching.
4) nothing is new about MMO's in their current recipe. You want to sell pastries, everything will have a crust. Nobody wants to buy just the filling -- or at least, be seen doing so. Things won't change when there are fundamentals (like how character progression occurs) every single title shares and won't innovate.
5) Eve will outlast us all. Don't underestimate the value of a very dedicated and over-emotional community. Only something close to an NGE-like change would cause that ~200k of people to leave. Eve is the Shadowbane of today, and unlike that title, CCP's has the technology to scale their expansion and grow in new ways. People will be PvP'ing and building in there for a long, long time.

Quote from: Trippy on April 01, 2007, 05:59:16 PM

Quote from: Darniaq on April 01, 2007, 07:49:27 AM

You need to accept local operating conditions (microtrans in one country, monthly fee in another, Internet Cafe in a third).

WoW does not use microtrans in China or anywhere else -- i.e. time cards != microtrans. Also in S. Korea players pay a subscription fee to Blizzard on top of any applicable Internet Cafe usage fees.

Valid points of course, something I should have specified as not being specifically tied to WoW. However, the reason I mentioned them is because WoW is successful in places where these sorts of practices are popular. In the U.S, most people assume flat monthly fee. But in the other territories I cite as not ones to ignore, other revenue models are far more prevalent.

It's about how the competitive landscape is different in more ways than just theming, something I think DFC is missing.

Quote from: Darniaq on April 02, 2007, 09:25:36 AM

Quote from: Trippy on April 01, 2007, 05:59:16 PM

Quote from: Darniaq on April 01, 2007, 07:49:27 AM

You need to accept local operating conditions (microtrans in one country, monthly fee in another, Internet Cafe in a third).

WoW does not use microtrans in China or anywhere else -- i.e. time cards != microtrans. Also in S. Korea players pay a subscription fee to Blizzard on top of any applicable Internet Cafe usage fees.

Ahhh but the pricing structure is much different also, the fee paid in time cards is adjusted to income levels, just like every other service.

As to DFC, and the "quality" of the report:

1. Understand that DFC's strength is in reporting supply side industry statistics, worldwide.
2. Reporting the demand side is a function of either quantifcation or qualifacation.
3. Because no one has sucessfully quantified the demand (I wont go into the "why" of this its to overly complex to address here) of the market, and the currently available data is basically crap, biased, or unreliable what reports are available rely heavily on inferences, aggregated statistics and supply side information.

Therefore ANY treatment of the MMOG space is inherantly flawed, based on subjective opinion or reliant on supply side data to infer demand.