Version 4.0 thoughts and comments

Hey all

It took a long time, but here I am back again, presenting you v4.0 of the MMOData.net charts.

While this version has a reasonable amount of additions and changes, I expect following versions to have quite a bit less. It is becoming increasingly difficult to get any subscription numbers. Not in the least, because subscription based MMORPG’s are the exception these days. Most of them go free to play.

I definatly do not like this evolution, because I am a gamer who prefers fair competition, and therefore prefer a level playing field. Still, this is the direction the genre is heading for a couple of years now.

That does not mean there are no options for the true gamers amongst us. There is EVE Online, Ryzom, Ultima Online and a few more.

World of Warcraft is taking its second nosedive after a small recovery around oktober 2012. Landing at around 7,7 million subs. Still the biggest MMORPG out there, but at this rate EVE Online may overtake WoW in a couple of years :p

Talking about EVE Online, that is still the example of how to do things in the post - WoW era. While CCP thought they were becoming the dinosaur of the industry, and therefore had to implement a cash shop with micro transactions. They realized their mistakes in time ( after their customers reminded them where their loyalty must lie Riots-in-eve-against-microtransactions ). And turned around and got back on track making EVE Online a better game.

CCP is being rewarded now, with a PCU ( peak concurrent users ) of over 65.000 and over 500.000 monthly playing subscribers and a continued growth every year since release, now more than 10 years ago.

At this moment EVE Online is the second biggest subscription based MMORPG in the west, and the only subscription based MMORPG that is still growing in the west and probably in the world.

If you make a game for gamers, with good features, it will sell and people will pay a monthly fee.

The new PCU for EVE also means it is now the MMORPG with largest shard ( single game world ) in the world, passing Second Life which has now a PCU of around 63.000 players. It will be still a while before the absolute record will be broken tho ( 88.000 PCU in Second Life a few years ago ).

Then some notes about requests I received, following MMORPG’s have my interest, but I have no reliable data for them and can't add them to the charts : Tera, The Secret World, and many more.

About World of Tanks, no I can't add it to the charts, because it isn't an MMORPG. And no they haven't gotten the record PCU for MMO's on a single shard, because a chat room combined with several 30 player games does not make one single game world, but several instances of tiny game worlds :)

So that's about it for now. If there is something new, you will be notified via twitter ( or you can regularly check the site :p ).