MMOG pie chart

(click for bigger, or see the original here)

The first thing that struck me was how well ToonTown is doing (it's not that far off Eve or SWG for user numbers)! Also, how badly Star Wars Galaxies is now doing, but that was less of a surprise.

Also, do you think there's room for more genres in the market.. or what?

(via sexingames)

Comments

[Andy``]

My god that's alot of Fantasy games. The world needs more Sci-Fi MMOs! But how exactly do they define "Social" games?

[Chris Dahlen]

Disappointed to see Auto Assault drop off the map - they recently merged servers, and it doesn't seem like it took off. A Fallout MMOG with science, vehicle and other components seems like it would make a great game, but Auto Assault didn't do it - maybe because people don't relate to cars as avatars, or maybe because (based on my half hour with it) it was no fun ... ?

I would love a Planescape MMOG. The rules could just cobble together science and fantasy elements, but the hook would be that it would be endlessly, persistently weird - maps would fold into each other and change at strange times (like the street that gave birth to a street), maybe servers could intersect randomly - you would be walking along and then fall through a portal onto a Japanese-language server ... ? It could be a meta-MMOG! Death could mean dropping into another realm and having to work your way out ... but I dunno, it would probably bomb.

[Cris]

Where is Second Life?

[Mike Kelley]

I'm shocked to see that EQ2 has fewer subscribers than EQ1!

[pusgums]

Cris, from MMOGChart's FAQ in the Why isn’t listed? section:

"The game in question is free and/or doesn’t charge a regular monthly fee. Games like Furcadia, Magic: the Gathering Online, and Project Entropia are good examples; these games are normally free to play, but some players can also pay a variable amount to access additional content in the game. This makes it almost impossible to come up with a number comparable to monthly subscribers in other games."

[bigwig]

its too bad he can't figure out a way to get population numbers on free games. i'd be really interested to see those kinds of stats and how they stack against subscriptions.

[Shard]

Toontown is a great game! Okay, I'm not it's target market, but it's got such an elegant little play mechanic, and is so well built, it deserves to be up there amongst all the other "big" names.

[bob]

Not only are 90%+ "fantasy" games, but they follow a pretty narrow definition of what constitutes "fantasy." Also, 95%+ use only minor variations of the same game play mechanics... those derived from "Dungeons and Dragons" (from which the notion of what constitutes "fantasy" also ultimately comes). Perhaps it isn't so ironic that DnD Online has such a small share- everyone was already playing (some form of) it.

Sad.

[just me]

ToonTown is the only MMOG I can think of wherein one cannot be griefed in any meaningful way, hence its popularity.

Also it is an amazingly fun game for adults. :)

[beenabadbunny]

If anyone's interested, RuneScape currently has something on the order of 9 million active free players (where active = logged in during the last four weeks) as well as the 800K+ paid accounts. I'm not sure why my beloved paymasters don't make a bigger deal of that 9 million figure, to be honest, but mine it is not to reason why :-)

[Alice]

NINE MILLION????

and hey, I didn't know you work for runescape :)

wow, nine million. I'd better take a(nother) look..

[beenabadbunny]

Alice, I wasn't yet working for Jagex when you met me (at Jez's 'Women in Games' conference in Cambridge) but I've been there for a good few months now. I'm currently working on the official RuneScape forums.

I was actually quite surprised myself to find out that we'd got to 9 million - the head-sheds give us regular updates on the number of subscribers, but the number of free players is of secondary importance. Last I heard, we were roughly neck-and-neck with WoW - now it looks like we're pulling ahead* ;-)

Have a look at this article from a month ago:

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/adwatch/?id=13256

* (yes, obviously I know that it's not a like-for-like comparison, exactly - but it's still heartening for us at Jagex)

[anonomous bastard]

Not to be rude or anything, but I just had a look in your FAQ and it looks like you've dedicated an awful lot of it in to telling everyone that you, have, integrity. So obviously it annoys you when people don't believe you, and it made me wonder why you don't supply any sources on your analysis page. I mean, if you get some of your information from official, publicly available, documents/articles then why don't you list them (or perhaps a screenshot of them) as sources?

You claim that you very rarely make an educated guess, but without real sources it kind of looks like you're doing nothing else, and don't get me wrong, that is just fine, I mean, the numbers do resemble what you can find on wikipedia anyways so it's not like it's a world of difference but if you have, publicly available sources, then why are you asking people to believe you on faith alone?

[Alice]

To "anonomous bastard": huh? What are you on about & who are you talking to?

[Ray K]

yeah... wow pwns, I OWNS!!!

my friend got me hooked on it 2 years ago, he played the beta, and he invited me over and i got a month after it came out.

I quit for about a year, and i just got back on about 4 months ago.

[A'irtaee]

Is amazing , the numbers are really amazing...Wow is really anice game for kids , very easy and plain , maybe is this te reason of the exit of this game... A easy just PvP kiddy game ...

[Runescape Guide Master]

Wow is pretty good for a while.

Recently I have been hooked on Eve, and Vanguard, though Vanguard is a little buggy but getting better.

Eve is incredibly involved and requires ALOT of patience, it is certainly a game for adults.

I also own a site on runescape which is extremely popular with the teenagers, what I find strange is that runescape is actually searched more then WOW.

Go figure.

Regards

[common Japanese words]

Lol. I don't think I have played any of these.