Version 3.6 thoughts and comments

For v3.6 most important is of course Star Wars The Old Republic, which had a strong start with 1,7m subs at the beginning of February 2012. However there are some indications that numbers are going down a bit, I will keep a close eye on it, especially now between 20/02/2012 and 23/02/2012, when the bulk of the players have to resubscribe for the second time since release.

Then on to EVE Online, they went back to their roots, and despite the launch of SWTOR, the only serious competition in sci-fi mmorpg's since the launch of EVE, it's holding ground.
It looks like EVE is on route to full recovery, and SWTOR seems to be just a bump in the road. I can even imagine that SWTOR may become the boost that EVE needs to get back to their previous 370k and then over the 400k subs.

How is that you may ask, well, another interesting trend is that the Sci-Fi subgenre has grown substantially because of SWTOR, and once the novelty wears off, people may choose Sci-Fi again and pick EVE, and leave all the fantasy mmorpg's for what they are.

Now then, where did all these SWTOR subs come from? Well there is definitely a good chunk of WoW players that switched sides. If we look at the Western market, then SWTOR is close to half the numbers of WoW now. However after the initial bleed WoW seems to be stabilized. And I believe SWTOR also introduced a good chunk of new mmorpg'ers, expanding the market.

Meanwhile I am already planning v3.7
I am trying to get some numbers for Star Trek, now that they went F2P. They got a serious boost in Active Accounts, no doubt about it. I may be able to make an estimate for v3.7
I also got some weird numbers on Runescape, so I will investigate that.
And I will take another look at the Asian market and see if I can digg up some more PCU's from there.

Update :

Looks like I made a mistake on the WoW East / WoW West distribution.
Expect a new version soon rectifying this mistake and also new numbers for EVE, showing a nice growth.
Besides that, I will rate WoW East and WoW West separately from now on, it will receive a B-rating.
This on top of the already mentioned additions for v3.7
V3.7 is expected to be released on March 5.

Update2 :

I have retracted some of the WoW East / WoW West datapoints, this change is online right now on a temporary version of the 1m+ chart.
But now I found a misalignment issue on the 1m+ chart. This places the datapoints 6 months before their correct date. Keep this in mind when looking at this chart. This will be fixed in v3.7.

MMOData Charts version 3.6 is Live !

Version 3.6 notes :

General Changes :

- Added SWTOR to the 1m+ subscription chart.
- Removed WoW Global from the PCU chart and replaced it with WoW East and WoW West.
- Removed the WoW chart ( there is not enough information to have seperate listings for WoW NA and WoW EU ).
- Added WoW West and WoW East to the 1m+ chart.
- Added subscription / active account datapoints for WoW, EVE, SWTOR, WoW East and WoW West, Rift, LOTRO, Aion, SWG.
- Downgraded Rift accuracy rating from B to C.
- Added PCU datapoints for EVE, Second Life.
- Expanded sheets and charts to March 2012.
- Updated the Total Subs chart.
- Lowered the rank of Rift on the charts, it was higher ranked than it should have been. ( Rank on the list is determined by peak subscriptions of all time ).
- Added various entries to the Glossary.
- Made several small cosmetic changes to the site.

Internal Changes :

- Added various sources and information as notes in the dataset.
- Merged EVE, SL and WoW sheets into Subs and PCU sheets, simplifying the overall dataset.
- Removed market share dataview.
- Improved Checks and Sums.

Version 3.6 in the works

Hey all

It has been a while, I have mainly been waiting for some numbers on Star Wars The Old Republic before releasing new charts. And my prayers have been heard :p

They have 1,7m subscribers resubscribing after the first month, out of 2m copies sold, that's pretty impressive.

source : Reuters

Besides the SWTOR addition to the charts there will be new numbers for EVE Online, Second Life and some others.

Expect v3.6 to be released soon(tm)

Update :

Some people claimed that the 1,7m subs are from December. This is actually incorrect.
Here is a quote from EA from the Q3 conference call, note that this conference call is held on February 1, 2012 :

"Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December.
We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out."

Currently means like right now and "or have opted out" means that this is after the first 30 days since release, when the first batch of players could have opted out on their subscription.

Well EA could also be lying on their Q3 report, but I doubt that.
Anyone can check the Q3 quarterly results conference call on the EA website.