A recent post by got me thinking about the population of various virtual worlds. Specifically, the number of players dabbling in them. It’s 5 million for WoW according to blizzard. The estimates I could find for FFXI ranged from one at least a year old of 200,000, and an undated one saying 500,000-600,000. I did find a more recent number that says more than 1.x million _characters_, but that’s hardly a useful statistic. And a page looking at that very question for several games, not including WoW, along with commentary.
I always consider the different servers different worlds. I think Eve has the highest # of users on a single ‘world.’ (Or, at the very least, the highest # of peak concurrent users.)
There was an article I read just the other day about the death of an MMO, Asheron’s (sp?) Call 2, specifically. It never really caught on, and on (I think) December 31st, the company is shutting off the last server forever. It was an interesting read.
http://wired.com/news/games/0,2101,69848,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2
http://www.mmogchart.com/ is what I use for data.
Eve is the traditional MMO that packs the most simultaneous online users into a world, but I’ve never considered that number particularly meaningful. For example, DAoC now has server clusters that combine different servers into a single one. Guild Wars (sometimes considered an MMO) all share a single world, but action happens in instances.
Also, I skimmed sabin’s post. The big thing that stuck out was the assumption that each subscriber is paying $14 a month. I pay $12, and some non-US servers charge less.
Still, any game that has the advertising budget to put promotional items in coke bottle caps is big.
I prefer the way that gamesradar.com puts it:
“World of Warcraft, Blizzard’s massively multiplayer online RPG, has reached five million players – that’s roughly the number of people living in Scotland – and it’s done it in little more than a year.
WoW is available in Scotland, of course, but more importantly it’s also played in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and many countries across Europe. It’s not like all its players are Scottish.
That would be weird.”
I found your journal through a friend so I read…and read…and read…very interesting read I might add…Oh, I also added you as a friend…KP