A couple weeks ago I briefly discussed a few talking points about virtual economies such as that of Everquest. What originally piqued my interest enough to post the discussion was this question: When is the best time of year to release an MMORPG? It was penned by Ren Reynolds over at the Terra Nova collaborative blog specializing in virtual worlds.
Upon reading his quagmire, I sent him the following email:
Although I do not have an answer to your question (and have concluded similarly, that games are nebulously/ambiguously released), I have a question that someone could do a thesis/dissertation on: demographics of MMORPGs. I am actually more interested in seeing how many current MMORPG participants play more than one MMORPG (I have a couple friends that play 3 or more at times).This is where my thought process coincides with your original question, it has been my observation (via personal experiences) that many MMORPGs cannibalize the same market repeatedly, with multiple genres saturating the marketplace (such as Tolkien-based themes). I would be interested in seeing which MMORPGs each of these players had played, the duration of the subscription and specific dates on which they switched over to a different game. Maybe there is an exodus en masse from one genre to another (I know many friends that went from EQ to DAoC within days of it hitting the store shelves) and some publishers try to figure out days in which current gamers are on the diminishing marginal return curve. However mining any of this data could be difficult as many of the developers are not forthcoming on specific details regarding total subscriptions. Additionally, as you pointed out, there could simply be no reason to this rhyme, just happenstance.
While I have not received a response I noticed a comment by Luca Girardo wondering the same thing:
Well 60k Users for Lineage 2 is a brilliant result if we think that the game was designed for an Asian market and the US market in this case is just a side market. It would be interesting to know the provenience of the 160k subscribers, if they are moving from other MMOGs to the new ones, if they are adding new accounts to their existing account pool or if they are just new customers. But I suppose we will never know (even if it is reasonable to assume at this stage that EQ, SWG, UO and DAOC did not increase their subscriber pool in the last months and most probably they lost subscribers).
In any case a source of hope for the several dozens of MMOGs in development. (emphasis added)
With regards to the adding new accounts by an existing subscriber (meaning user John Doe has more than one account), Dan Hunter points to a South Korean news release discussing NC Soft (creators of Lineage I & II and City of Heroes). The release stated a very large number of accounts at the end:
Since the game [Lineage] was launched in 1999, 520 million accounts have been opened in Korea alone. That figure can include multiple accounts for an individual subscriber.
While the story does not detail how many accounts are currently open or active, 520 million is a mindboggling number. Although, after reading this Wired story discussing South Korean bangs (cybercafe’s with a unique twist), the large number makes more sense (as you begin to understand the social context of the game). Additionally, a number of my MMOG-playing friends have opened multiple accounts in games such as Everquest for uses ranging from a pack mule (mobile inventory), twinks (low-level characters that are given high-level items) and even as scouts (if you have two computers next to one another you can as an attacker and leave the other character to act as a look-out for any problems).
This post brought to you by the Corner Home Owners Association, wouldn’t you like to live on a corner too?
