Over the past few years it seems the MMO community has gained an odd and sudden desire to "know the numbers".

How many subs?  What's the revenue?  What's the CCU?  How many servers?  What are the servers at?

My question is, why?

My first serious MMO was FFXI.  I purchased the game simply because I had liked the other FF games.  I knew nothing about it but didn't care, I wanted to try it out.  When FFXI first came out you didnt get to pick which server you wanted to make your character on, you were placed on one and had to go through a crazy process with a friend code if you wanted a specific one.  Because of this, without running to your browser, you didnt even know how many servers there were.  Even if you did go online, you would only find a server status of up or down, nothing about population, even 'low', 'medium', or 'high'.  The only way to tell what servers *seemed* to have high populations was which Allakazam FFXI server forum had the most posts each day, there wasn't even official forums.

No one said a thing about this.  Not once during the 3 years I played FFXI did I worry about how many people were playing, how many people were online, or how much Square Enix was making and no one I knew did either.  In fact, FFXI had a pretty awesome search feature where with a simple text command you COULD know exactly how many people were online on your server at any given moment.  If anyone DID care, they could easily /search all a few times during the day and get a decent idea, but no one did.  Why would it matter?

It wasn't our problem, and honestly, it still isn't.  So why do you care?

If you like a game, play it.  If you don't like, don't play it.

Why has every player suddenly become the CEO of the company responsible for 'watching the numbers' and making sure things are alright?

I promise you, someone is getting paid a whole lot of money to do that already, they don't need you telling them.

I'm not a WoW basher, but this is one area, that Blizzard, with WoW, completely turned into a number's "one Up" game.  They just kept having press releases evertime they hit a new subscriber milestone.  So much so that it influenced sales and marketing and hit the main news.  Now everyone(game companies) wants a piece of the pie so now it matters, sadly.  Players are joining this now as well to show off who's game is better, another sad state. 

So, for just this once, I truly blame WoW.  Something I never do.

For the most part posters on these forums are discussing why game XYZ is better than game ABC, so they use statistics such as sub numbers and server online figures to help validate their position.

Hard to argue a game is "best" if they have 1000 total paying subs and 200 online at any one time.

Do I really "care", no, but its true, i do try to find out what server populations are and try to play on those that are medium/high?

Why, because an MMORPG with no one online is no fun, and face it, some servers retain player population better than others.

But in the general sense, these numbers are just arguing points, and these forums are all about PVP don't you know. 

Blizzard wasn't exactly the first to show off their subscription numbers.  Most don't do it anymore, because they are so small in comparison. 

I think players are more concerned now, because of the rash of terrible games released.  It gets old dumping $50 on a game only to watch it implode 30 days later and watch the developers struggle to fix unfixable situations.  No one wants to get stuck on a dead server in a brand new game while developers drag their feet to merge servers.  It has gotten to the point that games have been cancelled when they have pre-order boxes for sale at stores or even closing down in less than 90 days.

In my opinion I think players are more nervous about getting invested into new games seeing how many flops there have been. 

About the only time I really hear player numbers brought up is when the subject is WoW or Eve Online.  If it's WoW, that 12 million is a bad thing.  If it's Eve, that 300k is a shining beacon of hope.

Originally posted by Melieza

Over the past few years it seems the MMO community has gained an odd and sudden desire to "know the numbers".

How many subs?  What's the revenue?  What's the CCU?  How many servers?  What are the servers at?

My question is, why?

My first serious MMO was FFXI.  I purchased the game simply because I had liked the other FF games.  I knew nothing about it but didn't care, I wanted to try it out.  When FFXI first came out you didnt get to pick which server you wanted to make your character on, you were placed on one and had to go through a crazy process with a friend code if you wanted a specific one.  Because of this, without running to your browser, you didnt even know how many servers there were.  Even if you did go online, you would only find a server status of up or down, nothing about population, even 'low', 'medium', or 'high'.  The only way to tell what servers *seemed* to have high populations was which Allakazam FFXI server forum had the most posts each day, there wasn't even official forums.

No one said a thing about this.  Not once during the 3 years I played FFXI did I worry about how many people were playing, how many people were online, or how much Square Enix was making and no one I knew did either.  In fact, FFXI had a pretty awesome search feature where with a simple text command you COULD know exactly how many people were online on your server at any given moment.  If anyone DID care, they could easily /search all a few times during the day and get a decent idea, but no one did.  Why would it matter?

It wasn't our problem, and honestly, it still isn't.  So why do you care?

If you like a game, play it.  If you don't like, don't play it.

Why has every player suddenly become the CEO of the company responsible for 'watching the numbers' and making sure things are alright?

I promise you, someone is getting paid a whole lot of money to do that already, they don't need you telling them.

FFXI gamers are a unique breed in the MMO community.

• You'll rarely find them trying to convince others that they should find FFXI awesome
• If you ask them what their server pop is they will usually tell you that they don't know, and almost always relay their linkshell in case you feel like playing.
• They are part of one of the largest MMO communities but one would never guess that if they used any forum, chat room or 3rd party gaming tool (Garena, XFire, Raptr, etc) as a measuring tool.

The sub number concern seems to be prevalent among forum posters. From what I've gathered in conversations at fan faires, expos and such the people who don't really visit forums don't seem to really care about such things.

I don't care, at least not for the most part. The only way that it really matters is when the numbers are so low that an MMO starts to feel like a single player game.

ignorace is bliss

but otherwise, if i'm throwing down 50 bucks for a videogame, im gonna wanna know if it is gonna be worth my money.

if i want to gamble, ill go to a casino. as for mmorpgs, ill be looking for just enough information to give me a reason to buy it, but i'm not going to go in blind.

Originally posted by Melieza

Over the past few years it seems the MMO community has gained an odd and sudden desire to "know the numbers".

How many subs?  What's the revenue?  What's the CCU?  How many servers?  What are the servers at?

My question is, why?

WHOA!

I was (honestly) "just" thinking of the same thing. I was also thinking that if I was a privately owned game company I wouldn't give out the numbers.

I think some people want to know about such things because it will reinforce their opinion as to whether or not the game is worth it.

"Losts of servers?"/"Huge population"/"billions on any one server?"

well then it must be worth playing.

What a shame really.

Originally posted by otter3370

About the only time I really hear player numbers brought up is when the subject is WoW or Eve Online.  If it's WoW, that 12 million is a bad thing.  If it's Eve, that 300k is a shining beacon of hope.

Nah .. WOW is a great and polished GAME. Eve is niche. The numbers prove it.

I care because the number game is almost as fun as the real game.

Plus, i don't want to play something like Tabula Rasa which crashed and burnt within a few months.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by otter3370

About the only time I really hear player numbers brought up is when the subject is WoW or Eve Online.  If it's WoW, that 12 million is a bad thing.  If it's Eve, that 300k is a shining beacon of hope.

 

Nah .. WOW is a great and polished GAME. Eve is niche. The numbers prove it.

EVE may be niche, it may not be all that polished, but if anything it certainly is GREAT in ways that WOW can never be.

It's mucho more fun to follow the MMO sales than actually playing them. That's why.

Numbers that are low to me might be the high value for the gaming company. If I am an indie game company and my bean-counters tell me i need to have 10K regular subs to stay in business, if I get 11K permanents subs I am ecstatic (of course I want more but at least I am making my numbers!)

Now I am happy but if  folks who don't know anything about the back end of business - minimum cash flows, project revenue, forecasted sales etc get hold of the 11K number they (many) will walk away thinking 'WoW has 12 million subs..how can a game with 11 THOUSAND be any good' when in reality I have a good game  that just needs those 11K subs to operate (and hopefully keep growing).

11k is perfectly healthy for me but given the 'big numbers = success' mentality, I can be hurt by false perceptions based on my 'low' numbers.

Games today are quite expensive, and knowing that the game has alot of subscribers would ensure that atleast there's some action going on, rather than buying a game and running around almost alone in a stagnat world.

Originally posted by Sideras

Games today are quite expensive, and knowing that the game has alot of subscribers would ensure that atleast there's some action going on, rather than buying a game and running around almost alone in a stagnat world.

I think that is true and I am nervous I think if I play a game and only few people play. It means game is going to get canceled soon.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

FFXI gamers are a unique breed in the MMO community.

 

^this.

I wish FFXI was brand new and updated. Would definitely go back.

I think the reasons we care are that MMO's are a large financial sink.

We dont want to buy a game that will be dead in a year.

We dont want to buy a game knowing theres nobody to play with.

We dont want to buy a game and continaully invest x per month to it if its going to die before we get going

People want to be informed as it is what fuels the purchase and commitment of futue spend.

These arent single player games that we can play through then sell at your local GAME etc

People want to make sure the Massive is one of the M's in their game and not just Some What Possibly Populated by a Few People Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.