I think you can roughly divide Europe into three zones when it comes to gaming preferences, including MMOGs (example countries included):

1. Southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Spain); mainly casual community, reluctant to pay subscriptions, micro-transaction games might do very well, still some strong PvP focus e.g. in Spain

2. Western and Central Europe (UK, France, Germany, Hungary); very much like the US in play-style and game preference

3. Northern and Eastern Europe (Nordic countries, Netherlands, Russia); highly competitive and very active gamers, high PvP/PK focus

As an example, look at the PvP/PvE realm division in Europe for each language. "English" and Russian is much more PvP-sided than the others and the US. Russia is even more PvP-heavy than Korea.

My impression anyhow, from talking with friends from around Europe and going to some of the big LANs and other game events around here.

EVE is highly Euro populated if that says anything, while WoW is mostly Americans/Asians.

Originally posted by Netzoko

EVE is highly Euro populated if that says anything, while WoW is mostly Americans/Asians.

www.wow-europe.com/realmstatus/index.html

Well, RPGing seems to be bigger in EU than US... Bioware sold a lot of it's Baldurs gate and Neverwinter nights here.

But it is hard to say, certain games go better in one place or another, WAR and EQ2 goes a lot better in US than EU. AoC on the other hand is far more popular in EU while Wow seems to be doing fine in both places.

It might be because many companies fucos on US, SOE EU servers laggs more than the US ones, everyone I know have moved to US servers because of that... And Mythic have GOA running their games here.

So it might just be that certain US companies think that they can give EU worse service than US that is the problem. I don't know about you but it does irritate me a bit when companies seems to consider me a second priority.

I really don't think we differ so much even though americans tend to have different moral values and are more into religion than at least people from Nothern and western Europe. Anyways Europe is not really right to put in the box anyways, take someone from Malta and someone from England, they differ a lot in many ways. Or Spain and Scandinavia...

Still, gamers are gamers.

My vote for Euros + L2 still stands, my L2 alliance of 120 ppl is about 70% Euro, and represents about 40 different countries. Private L2 servers are full of Euros, retail L2 servers are mostly Euro, 3/4 of the big servers are completely Euro, and the other 5 NA servers also have large Euro player bases.

But in more broad terms, it would be PvP clan based games, not really faction/RvR PvP.

Wow 4 pages

Originally posted by saint4God

I don't think you can draw boarders when it comes to the internet.  I haven't met any Asians who prefer grinders, or Venezuelans who only like sailing ship games, or Scotsmen who only like golf.  Those stereotypes may exist, but the danger with pigeonholing others is being wrong more often than not.  As an American, I guess this means I eat cheeseburgers everyday and get angry when I don't get my way, right?

Let's not do this:

This

Seriously it's pointless trying to find out differences between countries when it comes to gaming. You will find people that prefer certain types of games in all societies and you will also find good/bad/retard players in all countries and games. No point in trying to generalise countries into certain stereotypes.

I am not sure about other countries but the UK does not push MMO very much (IMHO). They are having a series of adverts for WoW so hopefully more interest in the genre will occur.

Originally posted by Ekibiogami

Wow 4 pages

Protip: Set forum settings to max amount of posts per thread page.

Originally posted by Netzoko

Originally posted by Ekibiogami

Wow 4 pages

 

Protip: Set forum settings to max amount of posts per thread page.

Lol my brain is small. I like the tight spaceing. :P (Food for the liberals in Off topic)

In all Honesty i turned it back to the smaller pages Because of Monster posts Responded to in Monster posts. It was Massive Unreadable walls of text.

Originally posted by Raztor

Seriously it's pointless trying to find out differences between countries when it comes to gaming. You will find people that prefer certain types of games in all societies and you will also find good/bad/retard players in all countries and games. No point in trying to generalise countries into certain stereotypes.

You are so right, everyone believes in certain stereotypes. I do believe that all french people are bad healers (that is a long Guildwars story). But life isn't really so simple.

It would probably be more correct (but still wrong) if you tried to figure out the players basing on what music they listen too than what country or continent they come from.

Besides gamers do have a lot in common wherever they are from...

The differences between EU and US gamers is so small it is hard to distinguish them (if in fact there are any).

As it would be hard to distinguish between UK and German gamers.

Whereas the difference between East and We stark.

More people play MMOs in the US simply due to the larger population and then to get a better service, having said that if GOA managed US servers then i am sure people would give up on MMOs as well.

Originally posted by Raztor

Seriously it's pointless trying to find out differences between countries when it comes to gaming. You will find people that prefer certain types of games in all societies and you will also find good/bad/retard players in all countries and games. No point in trying to generalise countries into certain stereotypes.

I respectfully disagree. While there are definitely all kinds of players in each country, the general mentality concerning games and much more is very different between e.g. Italy and Sweden. Culture, society, economy, climate, etc have an impact on people's spare time habits. subscription gaming acceptance and inclination towards competitive and/or cooperative gaming.

I think to ignore these differences when dealing with them as customers is not exactly helpful if you aim to be successful in different countries and regions. Knowing your audience is never pointless. ;-)

Originally posted by Zorndorf

There is no Europe.

There are different markets within Europe.

A lot can be seen  in buying behaviour on amazon.de and co.uk etc...

(and of course my biased view )

The Germans are always the first to be interested in new projects and markets, but they are very harsh when it comes to failures. If you want to see how a particular trend is going off or on, amazon.de is the first to watch. Be it board games, computer games etc.

Consoles market in Germany is the least developped. They like MMORPG's more than PS3/XBox. Because they have the most money they jump on everything new and massively, but at the same time a German is very demanding and likes to analyse a game to death. Their review magazines aren't as easy as others and PC magazine articles are a kind of nucleair science to the rest of us mortals.

Edit: I also notice on German servers that they tend to end their sessions sooner in the evening. The german servers are sooner up but their gaming sessions end sooner.

The British have less money to spend. So they tend to be very conservative and jump ship when it is all too expensive. They like football games and .... well football games. They are the Wii people - even more than the US, but more conservative. Brittain is the home of historical miniatures and .... football of course.

France, well France is France. Everything with a French title sells 10 times more than an English title. "La Colère du Roi Lich...". Aweful title, but the French like it that way. The French market is always the last one to follow a trend. They still do play many board wargames, I guess because of Napoleon and other "grandeur". They like history games more than others.

Russia has 13 Wow servers now and they are always on full/locked status for 20 hours a day. I guess they are catching up, coming from 3 servers three months ago. A lot of grow potential there for every gaming branche (not only MMORPG's).

Biased view of course with awful generalisations, but indeed there is not a "common" games market in EU.

 Edit: More and more nice games are developped in Eastern Europe (most succesful was The Witcher), but also a lot of trash. It's a growing development market in Eastern Europe, but I think the economic depression that is going to hit us will be terrible for these developpers.

 

Germans are not that demanding or quality proof look at god awefull runes of magic man that game sucks.

But germany is even most dense populated country in world if it comes to pc owners.

Holland have most user online in europe

Sweden best internet connections and some good top players in many games.

Europe enlish speaking, England(offcorse)Holland Belgium and Scandinavian countrys all most can speak english, rest of europe mostly wanne play on servers with there own language, thats main problem in europe they will never be united.

You will always have language servers

German

French

Spain

Russia

Poland

Italy

and many more

English speaking are mainly

England

Holland

Belgium

Scandinavian countrys

Europe is to much devided.

Originally posted by VultureSkull

The differences between EU and US gamers is so small it is hard to distinguish them (if in fact there are any).

As it would be hard to distinguish between UK and German gamers.

Whereas the difference between East and We stark.

 

More people play MMOs in the US simply due to the larger population and then to get a better service, having said that if GOA managed US servers then i am sure people would give up on MMOs as well.

Europe have more population then US.

 Its just that europe is so damn devided and different language that we allways been a third world gaming continent:P

What i find funny is you go too the UK for Example... when a game comes out in North America... then does good it come out in the UK then it does good there but usually UK dont get anything till after North America... yet.... Sci Fi Shows (the good ones anyways) comes out in the UK first and if it does great there then it comes too North America... take Doctor who for example... Or even better... An American show (StarGate  SG1) stargate was an american show made and produced by americans. then after a few seasons... it stayed that way but the episodes started too come out in the UK and after 6 months would finally come out in North America... I used too download all the episodes from the UK torrent sites and 6 months later you saw the episode on North American Channels and it would say NEW lol... So it seems that UK gets the good tv shows first and North America gets the games first... (USUALLY)

english tv > rest of world put together.

saying that its still bad overall ( I blame all the american imports). I don't even own a tv anymore, but I do miss never mind the buzzcocks and mock the week.

Here's a prime example for European playstyle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtvIYRrgZ04

You have probably all heard it, but Its dang funny after the 50th time...

Europeans and North Americans share the same culture and values.
We like the same movies, same music, same games (of course with some localised variations) but overall everything that is succesful in NA is successful in EU and viceversa.
In fact we are referred as the Western market or Western culture (Western Market is not just NA, like some of you might thing).

The only thing we are a bit different is sports.
We will never understand American Football and Baseball and Americans will never like our Football (or Soccer).
But for the rest there is not too much difference.

MMO are generally more successful in NA because up until now all MMOs were made in US, which means that US companies like SoE were never been able to market their game appropriately in Europe.
MMO that are succesful in Europe, are so because they are published by large European publishers.
WoW is owned by French Vivendi, therefore they have a great distribution and marketing machine in EU, LOTRO is published by Codemasters the second largest publisher in EU, and WAR failed because in Europe is published by a tiny company like GoA.
So it is not a difference in taste between NA and EU that makes the difference, but the lack of proper marketing in Europe for the majority of US MMOs

The music is different, European music doesnt suck hard.