General Discussion

Basically, I was just curious to know if their was a way to find out how many people are playing a particular game.  Is their some sort of application, or is there a place where a company announces its figures.  I would like to know how many people play the games I do, as well as the ones I may be interested in.  So any information would be appreciated.

mmogchart.com

Not official by any means, so be open minded about it...

Originally posted by zaxxon23

mmogchart.com

 

Not official by any means, so be open minded about it...

Yes, that's where I go as well.  Also, sometimes I google the name of the game and look for interviews/documents, since some info can be found there.

Depends how accurate you want to be

Press releases are best or having insider sources.

Educated guesses if you can see the online players and amount of servers. (estimates have it that after the initial few months after a launch about 10% of the gamers log in at prime time)

Many MMO's keep such info secret so its really hard to work out an accurate sub number.

Like someone above stated, most MMO's don't release subscription numbers, the f2p ones always count anyone who has ever thought of subscribing so most of those numbers are highly bogus.  Even MMOchart numbers are  mostly guesses.

I normally take peak-time-users and multiply by 10.  granted I could care less about accuracy

MMOchart.com is the best data that a non insider can get. There used to be MMOGData.com but they dont seem to be active any longer

another way I do it is by going to the official forums and seeing how many posts there are and how active they are, this is a great way to see what the community is like and how many players there are. some might disagree but imho it is the best way. before i commit to any game i alway check the forums and participate in some discussion it works wonders.

if anyone has any opinions on this i would love to hear it cause its the best way ive found so far.

I looked at the site mentioned above, and I was honestly quite shocked at how much of the market WoW actually has.  I like the game as I play on a rp-realm that is relatively free from idiots, and I was aware that  it had a massive 10 million subs, of which I am one, but it I didn't realise how much it dominated.

This is obviously the reason why most MMO's are just sticking to the WoW formula, instead of breaking the mould.  I thought LotR would, and it is still early days for me there, but it still is basically a WoW clone, even though it is a highly polished and entertaining MMO in its own right.

So the future is in the hands of AoC and WAR?  To be honest, AoC looks as though it will be a great game, but there is one reason why it will never compete with WoW, at least not any time soon.  That being that the system requirements are just too high.  This was EQ2's mistake, and they admitted it.  WoW, as one dev once put it, can run on a toaster, whereas AoC will have to have a high spec machine before you can play on it.

WAR?  I think there is a lot of promise here.  It is basically the game that Blizzard wanted the Warcraft series to be, way back in the day.  Games Workshop refused to sell them the rights, and therefore Blizzard went ahead and developed their own Universe which is why it is very similar to WAR.  The IP means that there is a huge potential for WAR, but my only problem is, how different a game will it really be?  Also, what age is the game going to be aimed at?.