I've been a skeptic of his numbers before, but this version of the chart seems to be the most accurate one I think I've seen. So let's begin.
Ultima Online:
UO experienced fairly predictable growth until April 2001, where it peaked at 240,000 subscribers shortly after the release of UO: Third Dawn. Subsequently, press releases from EA consistently quoted the 225,000 figure, and the growth was flat for over a year. It is likely that the actual trend during this period was slowly downward to the 208,000 mark in December 2002. With the release of UO: Age of Shadows, UO seemed to reach new highs, but the latest data, confirmed by EA’s latest quarterly earnings, seem to indicat that UO has fallen substantially in the past few months, and is now around 165,000 – 170,000 subscribers worldwide, with a large portion of those in Japan.
Ahhh, the glory days of my youth, I shed a sweet tear for your PKing goodness. Or not. Ultima Online, has, and always will be, regarded as one of the greatest MMOs of all time. That said, the game, upon retrospect in my opinion, was never really that good. It had its moment, but it was a fleeting one at best, which is now certainly reflected in its primary Japanese, nostalgic market. My problem with Ultima Online, is, the expansions never really helped it reach its full potential. They kind of just 'were'. And I think it shows. In the original Big 3, while in many ways Ultima Online gave a unique experience to many players, I think, EverQuest, as much as I'm not interested in its current manifestation, became something great.
Epic. Huge even. Admittedly, this hasn't been without its own cons and downfalls. But it certainly has worked hard at evolving and become something far different than it originally was. Which to me, is probably one of the best lessons to be learned from it.
If you're an MMO, Evolve or croak. Ultima Online? A veritable dinosaur in this fast paced competitive market that will steadily decline until finally only a few 'Nostalgia' shards are left up. At least that's my guess.
That said, hell, if Sir Bruce is right, 165k subs is nothing to scoff at. Plus, they have Ninjas.
Lineage
Lineage: The Blood Pledge has been a gaming phenomenon in South Korea for years, and has since been exported, with somewhat lesser success, to China, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States. Some press reports will say Lineage has over 4 million “subscribers”. Lineage actually has a variety of different pricing schemes, and many players access the game via Internet cybercafes rather than a more traditional monthly subscription. The numbers I have chosen to use are the “monthly access” numbers, which I feel are the most directly comparable to other monthly subscription MMOGs. As of June, Lineage has just under 2.4 million such users worldwide, but only 7,000 in the United States.
7,000 in the United States? WHAT ARE THEY THINKING. Seriously though, I played Lineage, briefly, I heard the word ZugZug, I was assraped. Literally, some guy who looked like every other guy screamed obscenities mixed with what I assume was Korean while attempting to violate my corpse. Well, I don't actually know if he was attempting to violate it, that was, just, you know, the vibe I got with all the screaming of 'cock', 'ass' and 'fuck' and all.
It may have the most subscribers in the world, but I blame that on the need that market has for games like this. Aggressive. Realistically playable (IE. Not EQII). Accessible. Plus, when fads hit in Asia? Man, they really hit. It's like an American fad, except with a few billion extra people to go crazy about it. I still am not convinced that for those reasons, this style of game has some sort of mysterious value that should be emulated by other MMOGs.
EverQuest
EQ’s figures pretty much speak for themselves. At one point their growth seemed nearly unstoppable, but the trend began to slow, and after peaking at about 460,000 subscribers, it now appears EQ is shrinking. Indeed, the latest press releases from SOE are quoting only “over 430,000” and in their announcement of EQ’s 5th anniversary the claim only “over 420,000”. While some press reports have cited as many as 500,000 subscribers for EverQuest, Sony’s own marketing has never claimed numbers that high. I previously speculated if EQ would ever actually reach the 500,000 mark, and if the latest data is correct, EQ’s subscription base has declined back to 2002 levels.
Unstoppable? Since when? The reality is, EverQuest basically stopped 'growing' at the end of Velious (release of Luclin). That was when a few things happened, the obscene level of ascent halted and evened out, and also when Dual Boxing started becoming very popular. Once the Luclin expansion was released, there was a hell of a lot of players who made their exodus, likewise, there were fewer and fewer new players. On the other hand, with third party programs, players were finding that not only was it a benefit playing two players at once, it was fun as well. So while large numbers sort of drifted away, there was a new surge of accounts from the the dual boxing movement. Even now it's very hard to actually know how many real players EQ has, but either way, they definitely have a hell of a lot of accounts.
Asheron’s Call
AC has been one of the most difficult games to get good subscription numbers for. Historically, both Microsoft and Turbine were reluctant to give out their figures, perhaps because they were not the big success that UO, EQ, and DaoC were. Still, I’ve managed to get a few data points when I consider reliable, and removed a few that I have since determined to be erroneous. AC saw a peak of around 120,00 subscribers after the release of its first expansion pack, AC: Dark Majesty, but not long thereafter their numbers the 80,000 level. Since then, I’ve been told off the record by multiple sources that the current subscriber base has fallen to somewhere in the neighborhood of 37,000 – 41,000 subscribers.
Asheron's Call. Not much I have to say about this, except that people 'did' like the game. This is an even better example of evolve or die though. The game only released one expansion while it was popular, and players who loved the franchise even got bored with it. Asheron's Call certainly brought a lot of interesting things to the table though, a lot of good concepts, including being the first true popular MMO to do monthly story arcs and content. I think Asheron's Call could've been up there in the 100,000+ range if more content had been regularly made for the game. If it had evolved into something 'more' than what it was. As it stands though, it's stagnant and dying, and can't say I really care.
Anarchy Online
Thanks to some new inside sources I’ve been able to get more accurate numbers for AO, for which industry estimates were previously anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000! Initially AO had a bad launch, and after peaking at about 60,000 subscribers shortly thereafter, they began to rapidly hemorrhage customers. Funcom eventually hired The Themis Group, a MMOG consulting firm, to stop the bleeding. Subscriptions settled down at around 30,000 and have since shown a slight rise to about 40,000 after the release of their first expansion pack, The Notum Wars. However, actual announced subscription figures from Funcom have been rare.
Anarchy Online is still that really fat chick you knew in high school, who has all reappeared in your life, and is insanely smoking hot, but, like, won't give you any. Seriously. This game is good. Yeah, it started out nightmarishly painful, but now there's a lot of love design wise for it to share.
Sadly, Bruce is right in the fact that the launch did cripple it, and, well, once you're crippled you never really recover. Funcom has a lot of intelligent people working for them and Anarchy Online, if they could actually afford another foray into MMOGs, I suspect they could potentially become a major player simply based on the fact that a lot of people, since the original pain of AO, have discovered that it's not all bad.
That said, I knew AO had about 30k players for a long time. If they've risen to 40k, they're doing good, but the game they eventually created (about two years after the fact) deserved a lot better than it got.
WWII Online
WWII Online’s data uses a combination of public statements and inside sources for its data points. Over the past year the trend has been upward, with an approximate 10% annual growth rate resulting in a current count of 12,000 – 13,000 subscribers.
This game really was War online. In the fact that it was horror, and bleeding, and nightmares, and, well, hell, I still wake up screaming Charlie's name sometimes. People. War is bad. And. So is this game. If it has 12k subs (which I can't imagine, but hey, Furcadia has like 100k players right?), considering they filed some form of Bankruptcy at some point in time, they're doing pretty good. I can't imagine how long it will last though.
Dark Age of Camelot
DAoC has released numbers fairly consistently via press releases, following the lead of UO and EQ. However, something very interesting happened in August of 2002. After a rather low-key announcement about having passed 250,000 subscribers, starting in October they released three consecutive press releases quoting only a “over 200,000” figure. So what happened? Well, I suspect that they briefly did peak at 250,000 subscribers, perhaps due to their Korean release, but then actually lost subscribers for a while, perhaps to AC, UO, and E&B. The actual trend is probably much smoother than the chart shows. It is also possible that the 250K figure was a mistake or a miscalculation. Over the past year, DaoC has climed back in the neighborhood of 245,000 – 250,000 subscribers.
DAOC has always been a paragon of 'doing MMOGs right'. I never liked the game, but, if anything, the fact that I hugely respect them, is a testament to me in how much they deserve the success they've garnered. 250k people is a hell of a lot, but pretty much the same numbers I've heard for the past few years. At least they're stable.
Final Fantasy XI
FF XI has finally laucnched in North America, and according to their latest press releases, the response has been very strong. They currently have somewhere in the range of 550,000 – 600,000 subscribers; approximately half of those are believed to be in North America. They’ve also released an FFXI census with a graph that purports to show subscriber growth over time, but the data doesn’t match up with Square-Enix’s previously released figures, so I can only conclude the graph is somewhat abstract. It should be noted that there are many Asian MMOGs that claim to have millions of users, but getting good data to compare them to the traditional subscription market is not an easy task.
Final Fantasy Online was a poor man's version of the original EverQuest. More bland, less fun, lots of grind, but, like, it had MOOGLES! The game offered a bit of innovation, but not without offering just as much excrement. Plus, the interface felt like hot death every time you logged into the game. If anything, FFXI's only real claim to fame in my opinion is that they merged PC users and Console users into the same world, the same game, and it worked fantastically, really paving the way for future games to do it.
Asheron’s Call 2
Like AC1, getting good subscription figures for AC2 has been difficult, but new sources have helped me pin down a more accurate picture. At one time the game had perhaps as many as 50,000 subscribers, but currently it is believed to have 18,000 – 20,000 subscribers.
Considering it manages to hold the prestigious title of worst MMOG ever (Hell, I'd rather play with ze germans), Asheron's Call 2 has a surprising amount of subscribers as far as this chart goes. Admittedly, I have a slightly hard time believing it, as, that suggests if they consolidated entirely into one server, they would commonly have about 2 - 4k people playing at pretty much all times. Which leads me to believe the number is lower. That said, they are planning an expansion oddly enough, which would suggest they either think they can fix the game and rerelease it to the public (uh, no), or the subscribers they do have, they can keep by fixing it.
Both concepts sort of baffle me as, on the most fundamental levels the game was flawed in every conceivable way (as far as I was concerned). Which sort of leads me to think that the only people left subscriber are those absent minded few who forgot to unsubscribe (which is a crime I've been guilty of more than once). Bruce's numbers on this one still leave me unsettled, and I wait for the imminent announcement of the games fiery demise any day now.
The Sims Online
TSO has not been the runaway success EA had hoped for -- they initially projected 400,000 subscribers by the end of 2003, then they cut their expectations to 200,000 by the end of the year shortly after the game came out, and then again to only 125,000 players by May of 2004. The disappointing subscription figures for the game have been widely reported in various news articles, although with some conflicting numbers that took me a while to sort out. After reaching a peak of 105,000 subscriptions began dropping dramatically. Many estimates had put the current number at close to 80,000, but an article in the New York Times published in April 2004 quotes EA as providing an official number of 57,500.
Man, 57,000? Shows how much this game sucked. The vaguely amusing thing about it, is, I can't say it ever came as a surprise to me. After all, if you know anything about the sims, and you know anything about MMOGs, you'd sort of feel that there were some fairly major differences. Hell, nearly Myst-esque level of differences. After all, the sims is about being a God and having an absurd level of micromanagement to produce zany results.
Playing an MMOG is much the virtual equivalent of being violated by a dragon. You purposely subject yourself to peasant status, where you are literally worthless in a massive world, and sort of hope to make your way up the sadistic ladder. It's kind of insane when you think that most other normal games let you play god. Either way, the fact that The Sims, and a half assed, oddly designed MMO didn't mix, I don't think comes as a surprise to anybody. 57k subscribers and falling consistently!
Of course, assuming EA had learned anything, they would've released some expansions for now, which would help stabilize their numbers. Got to love it when one of the largest video game publishing companies in the world is run by somebody with the intelligence of an orangutan.
EverQuest: Online Adventures
At last report, EQ: OA had about 40,000 subscribers, down slightly from an earlier figure of 50,000, and far below Sony’s initial expectations of 100,000 subscribers by March 2003.
In my opinion, this is one of the sadder tales in the industry. I played the game, it had all the potential in the world. And in my mind, there's no question that it sold over a 100k copies when it came cheap with the Broadband adapter. Unfortunately, the project was doomed the moment it hit shelves, and the eulogy it was singing was the same one we've heard countless times before.
Graphics not up to par. Clumsy interface. More importantly though, UNFINISHED GAME. I've never actually played a more half assed MMOG. Though, it was quite apparent that it didn't start that way. It just ended up going in that direction, the exact reasons of which, are still unknown. There was well thought out, class/race specific, engaging content up to about level twenty (which could be completed in two days, before the grind really hit home). Then the game just sucked hardcore for about thirty levels. Not because the world was poorly designed, but because the game could not survive on a world alone. The quests beyond level twenty were class generic, not to mention they were few and far between (like every four levels or something). The world loot system was a mess, and the balance of the game, as well as the mentality behind those who played it, often hard to deal with.
If another year of content implementation had been added onto this dev cycle, with a few more advanced graphics (which we know can be done, using FFXI as an example) as well as the ability for PC users to play with PS2 users? I'd say 200k no problem.
As it stands though, I'd be surprised if it still had 30k subscribers.
Shadowbane (NA)
After peaking at over 50,000 subscribers, Shadowbane has declined, although just how far is uncertain. Wolfpack’s initial projections were for 50,000 – 70,000 subscribers in order to be cash-flow positive. At last report, Shadowbane had approximately 40,000 subscribers, although some estimates put the current number as low as 20,000. Note that this figure is for North America only; Asian operations for Shadowbane have closed.
20k subscribers? Ouch. I would've guessed more... but then, I only played Shadowbane for a short stint, and have never looked back. The somewhat surprising thing about this in my opinion, is the fact that Shadowbane's marketing campaign was so much more successful than their design strategy. Hell, I think they should've taken some tips from themsevles and said: "players like lesbians, insulting each other, and Player vs Player. How can we incorporate those things into our game?"
Instead they tried to make a game, which, sadly, was not based on lesbians, and after a very strong launch, have had one of the quickest declines (next to AC2 I believe) in MMOG history. Here's the question I see it presenting, obviously there is a demand for PvP in the industry, in fact, one might even go as far to say... a void. Players want it, they just don't want it to suck.
So, does Shadowbane have what it takes to turn their current struggle around into something worthwhile? I'm not sure. I'll never go back, but then, I have enough other games on my list to play.
Eve Online
I now have some very reliable numbers for Eve Online which I hope to keep updated on a monthly basis. As of November 1st, Eve has passed 53,000 subscribers.
This one leaves me a bit speechless. I played EVE in beta, and said to myself: "this game is less fun than eating my own teeth." And it was. I found the entire game, the business side of it, the combat side of it, the mining asteroids side of it, the flying around in endless black for hours side of it, to be so deeply boring, it was disturbing.
Now, admittedly, I met some of the Icelanders at E3 2002, and thought they were brilliant. Unfortunately for them, or so I thought at the time, too brilliant for their own good. They were mathematicians, strategists, and had designed their game around academic concepts literally far above my head. I thought it would never work. They proved me wrong. Kudos to them.
I never imagined this game would see these sorts of numbers.
PlanetSide
After peaking at some 60,000 subscribers at the time of the release of its first expansion pack, Core Combat, in October 2003, PlanetSide has since fallen to approximately 50,000 subscribers.
This in my opinion is the first game that really throws the whole subscription numbers thing into serious problems. After all, I know a lot of people who are being tempted into purchasing the SOE ALL ACCESS pass, not so much so they can subscribe to Planetside, but so they can have the option of playing Planetside for what they see an appropriate cost (apparently about five dollars is what people currently think an MMOFPS is worth per month).
Which sort of throws some of the numbers we do have, any number involving a game that is included in the all access pass into doubt. This of course includes EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Planetside. Personally, I think you might be able to argue that Planetside has been a huge draw for people purchasing the AAP subscription. But then, one must ask, does an AAP subscription count as a sub for all three games? If EQII has drawn 150k subs, can SOE say that Planetside has 150k players? And if SOE is claiming that EQII has 150k active accounts, how many of those are existing EverQuest accounts?
As of now though, I'll assume that Planetside has 50k players, and be curious to see where it ends up in the coming few years.
Star Wars Galaxies
Star Wars Galaxies initially showed some impressive growth, but appears to have reached its peak fairly quickly. Their last official press release stated they had “over 500,000 registered users” but this is not the same as active subscribers. An official statement released by John Smedley, President of SOE, in March 2004 suggest there are currently between 200,000 and 300,000 subscribers and that SW:G is “second largest MMO in the North American market”. I assume he was discounting Ragnarok Online and possibly FFXI in that statement, so I put the number at that time at 275,000. Since then, I’ve received varying reports of between 275,000 and 300,000 subscribers.
275k? Sure. That sounds about right. Though, arguably, still a poor showing for such a heavy IP. I'm assuming this number collected was before the Jump to Lightpseed expansion was released though, and could imagine it to currently be 300k+.
Lineage II
The sequel to the highly successful Lineage, Lineage II launched first in South Korea in November of 2003 and then the United States in April of 2004. As of June 2004 they had nearly 1.5 million subscribers worldwide, with over 75,000 of those in the US.
Ahhh, Lineage II. When I see the numbers for these games that draw heavily on the asian markets, it reminds me how little any of the actual numbers mean at the end of the day. It's all about the price point, and if you have 1.5 million asians paying four rubles a month to play, or two hundred thousand North Americans paying fifteen dollars US a month to play, which one has a significant lead over the other?
I've given a lot of thought to the MMOG price point, where they're headed, and what the future is likely to look like. And sometimes I think charging more for a game and targeting a market who will pay more for a premier game, is a far more intelligent way to go than trying to achieve 1.5 million subscribers, and in turn, manage them.
Communities, in some ways, become increasingly more difficult to deal with the larger they get. And in any given MMOG, the entire subscriber base is a collective community. And, honestly, in my opinion, this has always been part of my problem with the asian based MMOGs.
Where there may have been some glimmer of potential in these games, it was impossible to find through the ocean of monkeys who swamped every last area. Plus, the cheating I've heard in regards to them, the poor Customer Service on the part of the provider, and overall chaos of them really doesn't sound all too appealing to me.
On the flip side of course, part of the reason these asian games are so strong, is because they have such massive communities, their player retention and interest seems to be far higher than other games. In the future though, I think some smart N.American companies will approach both the price of their game, their projected community size (subscriber base) with a lot more strategy based on what they think is the most realistic, the most cost effective, and the easiest to manage.
Horizons: Empire of Istaria
Horizons launched in December of 2003. After peaking at around 35,000 subscribers, they have since fallen to somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 subscribers. Court documents for July contain a statement that Horizons currently has “over 20,000 players”, and that is consistent with both reported revenues and projected expenses; subsequent documents suggest a current figure of about 17,000.
This is my favorite number on the list, mainly because, of course, when I talked to Bowman last E3, he assured me that Horizons did not suck, that it was doing QUITE WELL and was well on its way to a BAJILLION subscribers. 17k subscribers is more than I would've actually guessed it currently having, but then, I guess some people like paying to be tortured. There's something for everybody.
City of Heroes
Launched in April of 2004, City of Heroes is proof that a well-executed MMOG can still garner substantial numbers even in the current competitive climate. Although CoH quickly reached over 180,000 subscribers, the latest reports from NCSoft indicate a slight decrease to about 163,000 subscribers.
I'm not sure if I believe this. When I played, which was about three weeks after release, there's no chance there were 10 full servers. Perhaps there are now. I couldn't say, because, after checking my credit card bill sometime in September, I realize I was one of the idiot 'subscribers' who had simply forgotten to cancel my account. Now, maybe there are another 80 thousand people out there like me... it's not impossible, but I don't see City of Hereos to be a game on the rise unless they can revitalize it with City of Villains. Of course, I think the very concept of City of Villains and what they're doing with it is silly to be something released a year after the original release as an 'expansion' because I can't imagine it fixing the game enough to keep players playing until the next expansion comes out.
Either way, I don't think City of Heroes will die, just slowly decline, possibly become a sort of mimic of Asheron's Call, where after some notable popularity, it slips into a steady downward spiral, eventually leaving it more as a 'good' memory than a strong contender.
Which leaves us, finally, with one that did not make Bruce's list.
EverQuest II.
Just recently, I received an email from Viccard pointing this Vault Network board statement, made by an admin there, out to me:
Deathstryker wrote: "At the launch event Loki_d20 and I attended last Thursday night in San Francisco, they announced that they had almost 200k active accounts already, and that it set a record for the fastest MMO to hit 150,000 active accounts (a record I'm sure will be broken by that "other" MMO to release soon)."
I found this interesting. First of all, we note the wording 'active accounts'. I spent some time thinking about this, and decided that the reason they referred to this number is because there's a good chance there was a significant part of these that were previous AAPs. Perhaps EverQuest/Planetside players who had an AAP and decided to pick up EQII.
On the other hand, I respect the fact that it doesn't sound like they are including every AAP. Just people who have actually created a specific account for EQ2. Either way though, the number is significant, the question on whether they can keep it up though once the other Juggernaut is released this month is the real question.