I'm trying to develop a plausible argument about what might be considered the top 5 Asian MMORPGs. I realize that definite figures are not available, and also understand that awesome-and-useful sites such as MMOGCHARTS and MMODATA need to be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, I would like to come up with a list of approximately five Asian titles that could be considered the market leaders.

By Asian MMORPG, I'm referring to games that are initially designed by an Asian company and targeted toward Asian players. So, Aion (Korea) would be considered an "Asian game" as would Final Fantasy XI and Lineage. Games like City of Heroes and Dungeon Runners -- though created by a subsidiary of a Korean company -- would not be considered "Asian" according to this definition.

After looking at subscription numbers, it seems that the market leaders are: Aion (Korea), Lineage II (Korea), Lineage I (Korea), and Final Fantasy XI (Japan). But... these numbers don't take into account the many free-to-play games out there.

In your opinion, what would arguably constitute the top 5 Asian-produced MMORPGs, whether subscripton based or free-to-play? Should subscription-based and free-to-play be considered entirely different categories?

Thanks for your time. I look forward to reading the thoughtful views/opinions of other players. This site is a terrific venue for well-informed discussion about such topics.

Aaron

http://www.mmogchart.com/ would be a good place to start, NCSoft has 3 of the 5 that i know of those being Aion, Lineage 2 and Lineage.  Gl with your research.

It's difficult to find information about asian mmorpg's player numbers. concurrent users are very different from total registered accounts.

If I had to guess, it would be like this:

1:  Fantasy Westward Journey Online

A huge game in China. It had a peak concurrent user base of 1.5 million players in may 2007. Registered user base was 25 million in april 2005, in which the game had 198 servers.


2: Westward Journey Online 2

It had a peak concurrent user base of 588k players. It has 83 million registered users as of July 2006

3: Legend of Mir 2

reports 600k concurrent users peak and has 20 million subscribers (Note: Its unclear to me if Legend of Mir 2 is a subscribtion based or F2P MMORPG) 

4: Zhu Xhian

This seems to be a really popular mmorpg and it is even said in some sources this mmorpg is actually the most popular MMORPG in China, but I'm having difficulties finding them

5: Perfect World

Another very popular chinese mmorpg

I'd like to stress this isn't by any means an educated view. I have seen a top 10 most popular chinese mmorpg list that totally differs from what I have said, but these are the asian mmorpgs I know of and I know are very popular.

Originally posted by carbonel

I'm trying to develop a plausible argument about what might be considered the top 5 Asian MMORPGs. I realize that definite figures are not available, and also understand that awesome-and-useful sites such as MMOGCHARTS and MMODATA need to be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, I would like to come up with a list of approximately five Asian titles that could be considered the market leaders.

By Asian MMORPG, I'm referring to games that are initially designed by an Asian company and targeted toward Asian players. So, Aion (Korea) would be considered an "Asian game" as would Final Fantasy XI and Lineage. Games like City of Heroes and Dungeon Runners -- though created by a subsidiary of a Korean company -- would not be considered "Asian" according to this definition.

After looking at subscription numbers, it seems that the market leaders are: Aion (Korea), Lineage II (Korea), Lineage I (Korea), and Final Fantasy XI (Japan). But... these numbers don't take into account the many free-to-play games out there.

In your opinion, what would arguably constitute the top 5 Asian-produced MMORPGs, whether subscripton based or free-to-play? Should subscription-based and free-to-play be considered entirely different categories?

Thanks for your time. I look forward to reading the thoughtful views/opinions of other players. This site is a terrific venue for well-informed discussion about such topics.

Aaron

I think you are going to have to split up P2P and F2P.   There really isn't an equivalent between them unless you only counted average concurrent users, which is probably the number that all games should be measured by.    However, my guess is Maplestory will probably be up there with 92 million registered users.

Originally posted by Gameloading

It's difficult to find information about asian mmorpg's player numbers. concurrent users are very different from total registered accounts.

If I had to guess, it would be like this:

1:  Fantasy Westward Journey Online

A huge game in China. It had a peak concurrent user base of 1.5 million players in may 2007. Registered user base was 25 million in april 2005, in which the game had 198 servers.


2: Westward Journey Online 2

It had a peak concurrent user base of 588k players. It has 83 million registered users as of July 2006

3: Legend of Mir 2

reports 600k concurrent users peak and has 20 million subscribers (Note: Its unclear to me if Legend of Mir 2 is a subscribtion based or F2P MMORPG) 

4: Zhu Xhian

This seems to be a really popular mmorpg and it is even said in some sources this mmorpg is actually the most popular MMORPG in China, but I'm having difficulties finding them

5: Perfect World

Another very popular chinese mmorpg

I'd like to stress this isn't by any means an educated view. I have seen a top 10 most popular chinese mmorpg list that totally differs from what I have said, but these are the asian mmorpgs I know of and I know are very popular.

Did you notice that the first 3 look

a) the same

b) like Diablo 2

and c) really old for recent and popular games?

Originally posted by Gameloading

It's difficult to find information about asian mmorpg's player numbers. concurrent users are very different from total registered accounts.

If I had to guess, it would be like this:

1:  Fantasy Westward Journey Online

A huge game in China. It had a peak concurrent user base of 1.5 million players in may 2007. Registered user base was 25 million in april 2005, in which the game had 198 servers.


2: Westward Journey Online 2

It had a peak concurrent user base of 588k players. It has 83 million registered users as of July 2006

3: Legend of Mir 2

reports 600k concurrent users peak and has 20 million subscribers (Note: Its unclear to me if Legend of Mir 2 is a subscribtion based or F2P MMORPG) 

4: Zhu Xhian

This seems to be a really popular mmorpg and it is even said in some sources this mmorpg is actually the most popular MMORPG in China, but I'm having difficulties finding them

5: Perfect World

Another very popular chinese mmorpg

I'd like to stress this isn't by any means an educated view. I have seen a top 10 most popular chinese mmorpg list that totally differs from what I have said, but these are the asian mmorpgs I know of and I know are very popular.

The top 2 spots in China actually belong to casual game one of them is Audition the other one is a QQ game from Tencent I believe, I don't remember the name at this moment. I will check. 3rd spot is Fantasy Westward Jorney, 4th is ZT Online both of these reach  2.1 million PCU in 2008. After that is Legend of Mir 2 which score around 1 million plus PCU and then Tian Long Ba Bu from Sohu, and then AskTao, then other casual games from QQ... The list get pretty vague at this point due to insufficient data. These are 2008 ranking.

Zhu Xian and Perfect World actually score pretty low in the list. They are not very popular in China at all. World of Warcraft is a little above Legend of Mir 2. Perfect World just release another game recently, Battle of Immortals. It's score pretty high among new hot games and will be very likely to be in the top 20 for a while.

AION is not in the top 5 yet. Legend of Mir 2 was converted to Free-to-play Nov 2005.

Well, I know one game, like Perfectworld.com, that's as addicting as EVE at the moment, and then there's GunZ the Duel

Asia is comprised of three very diverse markets, South Korea, China and Japan. Whilst we generally group them together, the vast majority of titles and references only apply to South Korea, not to China or Japan.

Top 5 MMOs in South Korea at the moment are, based on active players:

• Aion
• Sudden Attack
• World of Warcraft
• Lineage 2
• Lineage

Whilst it could be argued that Sudden Attack isn't an MMO, it is the second most popular online-only game in South Korea today.

I haven't looked into the Chinese market recently, but it is probably Aion, Perfect World, World of Warcraft (when its live again), and then a couple of titles local to the territory.

Japan is anyone's guess, online gaming isn't very big there, infact it is probably the smallest major market for online games in the world.

Originally posted by bobfish

Asia is comprised of three very diverse markets, South Korea, China and Japan. Whilst we generally group them together, the vast majority of titles and references only apply to South Korea, not to China or Japan.

Top 5 MMOs in South Korea at the moment are, based on active players:

• Aion
• Sudden Attack
• World of Warcraft
• Lineage 2
• Lineage

Whilst it could be argued that Sudden Attack isn't an MMO, it is the second most popular online-only game in South Korea today.

I haven't looked into the Chinese market recently, but it is probably Aion, Perfect World, World of Warcraft (when its live again), and then a couple of titles local to the territory.

Japan is anyone's guess, online gaming isn't very big there, infact it is probably the smallest major market for online games in the world.

Chinese market is very similar to Korean market (and Japanese market somewhat too) in the sense that local games perform really well compare to foreign game. The only exception is World of Warcraft which performs very well in both Chinese and Korean market. Even that, in Chinese, WoW could barely made top 5. Local Chinese made games keep holding top spots. AIOIN is not even close.

Aion is bigger than WoW in South Korea, and about half the size of WoW in China.

But yeah, local games are far more popular than import games, however when people talk Asia, 99% of the time they are talking about Korean games, not Chinese or Japanese games.

Technically speaking, if you want the top 5 Asian MMORPGs, as far as number of active players, it is just going to be whatever the top 5 are in China, because the Chinese market is the biggest in the world now as far as number of players goes, even though financially it isn't that big yet.

This has all been very helpful. Thank you for taking time to share your thoughts on this! 

Bobfish, I think you're right about making an explicit distinction between Korean, Chinese, and Japanese markets. Thinktank, your advice about splitting up F2P and P2P also makes sense. 

Thachsanh, thank you for sharing those statistics. You mentioned that the figures were from 2008. Were these published in a report somewhere? 

I'll continue to update this thread as my research continues. 

Aaron

For anyone who stumbles across this thread and is looking for documented numbers, you should be sure to check out the data posted at Pearl Research's site. For example, this press release summarizes findings from their recent study of Chinese gamers: 

http://www.pearlresearch.com/files/PearlResearch_China_April2009_IMMEDIATERELEASE.pdf  (PDF format)

Unfortunately, since they're a private research firm, one has to pay to get access to the really juicy data. But this is a good start. 

Aaron 

For Korean stats:

http://www.gametrics.com/