MMOData Charts version 3.0 is Live !

A few key changes and thoughts :

I added Star Trek Online to the charts, it started not so bad at a bit over 100k in the first month, but declined in the following months.

A remarkable recovery can be seen by Age of Conan, which dropped to an estimated low of 79k but then revived to around 115k. It seems the dev team is focussed on improving the game and it pays off.

Lord of the Rings online had a serious drop in subs since last datapoint from June 2009, so it was only logical Turbine introduced the free to play ( try ) model, especially as it worked so well with Dungeons and Dragons Online. If LOTRO has the same increase in subs as DDO had, then we may look at a 400k subs game this time next year.

EVE Online had it's biggest increase ( 40k ) of month over month since it's release, which is pretty amazing for a 7 year old game. It now has 361k subs. Do note that there were some special marketing actions running, and CCP expects to lose many of the newcommers, still if they can hold on to half of them they will have around 340k subs which is still more than the previous high of 329k in March.
They also scored a new PCU record of 60k.

Second Life PCU is going back up well, still not at the same level as before the new bot policy and enforcement, but they will get there eventually I am sure.
Also got 2 numbers which I can't put in a chart yet but are interesting nonetheless : Unique residents spending L$ per month is at 517k and Monthly Unique User Repeat Logins per 30 days is at 826k. Especially the 517k is interesting because it is similar to subscription based numbers and can be used to give an idea how many "subs" second life has.

Aion looks to hold steady now after a bit of a decline, while Warhammer Online keeps going down.

Version 2.9 - 3.0 notes :

General Changes :

- Added Star Trek Online to the charts.
- Added and/or revised subscription datapoints for following mmo's :
Age of Conan, The Matrix Online, Star Trek Online, The Lord of the Rings online, Everquest II, Warhammer Online, Aion, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Everquest, EVE Online.
- Added PCU datapoints for following mmo's :
Second Life, EVE Online.
- Added WoW datapoints representing the extended China downtime during 2009.
- Renamed PCU on the largest single cluster shards into PCU on the biggest shards.
- Removed some spam/advertisement comments/posts from the site.
- Fixed some spelling errors.
- Expanded the date range for several charts.
- Revised market share genre chart.
- Improved some color codings.
- Made the site better viewable for resolutions of 1200 x 900 or higher.
- Made a seperate section for the site hit counter.
- Re-ordered mmo's from charts Subs-40k-150k and Subs-0-40k into Subs-50k-150k and Subs-0-50k.
- Renamed the links to most of the charts, if you directly linked to the charts you will need to update most links, I made the names more universal so I don't have to rename them in the near future when individual charts expand or collapse.

Internal Changes :

- Added and revised notes and/or links to datapoints for several MMORPG's.
- Added xfire information.
- Added MUURL datapoint for Second Life.
- Added Unique Residents Spending L$ per Month datapoints for Second Life.
- Expanded all sheets to Juli 2010.
- Revised Cas Derivations sheet.
- Changed names of internal charts for easier updating.

New version 3.0 will be released this week

I have a bit delay with getting the new version ready, but I am confident I will release it somewhere this week.

New EVE numbers and next release of MMOData.net

I just received new numbers from CCP and they look very good, they actually have their biggest increase in active payed subscriptions, month over month, for this month ( Juli 2010 ), since the release of EVE Online.

EVE Online now has 361,389 active paying subscriptions.

EVE is slowly becomming an unreplicated success story in the MMORPG genre. After LOTRO going free to play and even WoW declining in numbers, EVE remains as one of the few, if not the only, premium MMORPG that is still growing.

Realising the biggest increase in subscriptions 7 years after release is something to be proud off, and therefore I congratulate you CCP, for doing this and most importantly for how you did it.

Edit : I just got word from CCP that the increase in subs is due to a reactivation campaign and a $2 Steam offer, so add to that the Tyrannis expansion and that explains the big increase. We will have to wait and see how much they can keep from that, but I have no doubt it will be still more than their last high.

I will release the numbers in v2.9 of the MMOData charts, which I hope will be live on Sunday 18 Juli.

So Tobold questions my WoW numbers ...

And is certain I made them up : Tobold's numeracy, but perhaps he should have done some research first.

And right when I want to make a reply on his blog, he locks it because someone apparently was critisizing it ... mmkay then.


Either way, here are the sources :

Links for 11,5m subs on Jan 10 2010 :
http://seekingalpha.com/article/203610-activision-blizzard-q1-2010-earnings-call-transcript?source=bnet
and
http://kotaku.com/5469063/world-of-warcraft-no-growth-since-2008
and
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98245-Only-30-Percent-of-WoW-Players-Get-Past-Level-10

Link for 11,6m subs on may 2009 :
http://www.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/e3_2009_blizzard_accepts_guinness_world_record_awards/

Link for 12m subs on January 2009 :
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL246439220090302?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
and
http://kotaku.com/5469063/world-of-warcraft-no-growth-since-2008

Link for 11,5m subs on December 2008 :
http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?081223

Furthermore, even tho WoW has been down due to some difficulties in China, it was only down for a month and there were people playing in both June and July ( downtime was from June 7 till the end of July ).
But in July it was closed beta ( free to play ), so I agree technically it was incorrect to not show it on the graphs.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25337
http://www.jlmpacificepoch.com/newsstories?id=149114_0_5_0_M
Commercial operation relaunched in Sept 19 http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0245010720091102

I will change my charts on the next update to represent the downtime, so the critics have even less basis to their arguments.