It's most likely not a good indicator for Anderson's acheivements.

Originally posted by Amalaric

It's actually  ~150k active subs 

Which is not a bad number but not as good as Turbine expected

On a side note: if Jeff Anderson, the CEO of Turbine, claims that LotRO is the second largest MMO built in the US, then he must consider EverQuest II to be a korean game or something?! 

I'm going to ask that you quote a source for your 150k, or PM me with something creative.    I have a feeling you are going to say you can't reveal your sources again, but if that's the case, then we can't really use the number either, as anyone could post, "LoTRO actually has [insert any reasonable number] active subs."

There's also a difference between "active subs" and paying subscriptions.  Generally, only paying subscriptions are used to measure a game's success.  Are you saying that there are 150k active, including free trials?

Originally posted by frkhot97

 

---

Originally posted by wolfmann

Yees... It's all about teh bling isnt it?

---

 

Speaking of worldlike game and bling. Take a look at this singleplayer game in ASCII:

Review page 1and page 2 from Games for Windows
Download here

Now, that is interesting. 

Originally posted by Symone

 

Originally posted by sempiternal

 

Originally posted by Symone

 

Originally posted by sempiternal

I think that describes the game many of us experienced MMO players are looking for.

Things as simple as sunsets and weather can dramatically increase immersion.

A long time ago, and I do mean a very long time ago in video game terms,  I found my favorite game of all time, it's an RPG that features:

• Rising and setting sun - you can actually see the sun moving in the sky, hour by hour, and the ambient level of light adjusts accordingly.

• Weather, seasons, months and a full yearly calendar -  sometimes it rains for a few hours and other times you hear the wind blowing down the streets and the frequency is all based upon the seasons.

• Inebriation, disease, hunger, thirst, cold, sleep - you actually go to taverns to eat, drink and resupply, and Inns to sleep, and you wear clothing not only for it's varying appearances, but to actually keep warm.  What you wear can have an effect on how other creatures perceive you.  If you neglect any of these things, you gradually grow weaker in varying degrees.  Of course, sleeping goes by in an instant, but the game time actually moves forward depending upon the number of hours you choose to sleep - sleeping at night results in better recuperation.  If you get drunk, your character actually does stumble around and black out - yes, the screen actually goes black for moments and you do lose some actual control as your character spins around and stumbles back and forth while you have difficulty moving in the direction that you want - it's first person perspective.

• Reputation - your reputation with other beings depends on all of your previous actions.  For example, if you kill good beings, then you become evil and most everything tries to kill you along with guards chasing you down.  Every encounter you have the freedom to choose how to react, from a sneak attacks, to saying hello, or even ignoring them.

All these things add up to make the game highly immersive, it's an experience I have not found an equal to in any other game I have played.

Now if only it was an MMO!

 

 

 

You forgot to mention what the game was... 

 

Or, maybe I wanted to see if anyone would guess.  

Alternate Reality: The City

Believe it or not, it came out in 1985 for the Atari 800!  Was programmed by one guy, in a shack in Hawaii with no running water or electricity, powering his custom computer with a generator! It had features that even today's multi-million dollar MMOs don't. 

Of course, the graphics are not going to knock your socks off, but they were some of the best in it's day.

You can play it on your Windows or Mac PC with an emulator.

 

 

Alternate Reality: The City was given a mixed review in Computer Gaming World. The graphics were praised for its attention to detail, as was the expansive city to explore. On the other hand, the game has no goal; once the city is painfully mapped out, the only thing left to do is monotonously battle enemies in preparation for The Dungeon.^[1]

 

lol, I guess they had the same problem even back then!

Actually that's just the point, Alternate Reality: The City was a sandbox, you did whatever you wanted and set your own goals.  It was one of a kind back then!  At that time, even text games had a predefined storyline to follow.  If people in general are not even used to that in gaming today, 22 years later, and are still looking for a monotonous set-story-line, leveling, and pre-defined NPC quests to follow, even in MMOGs, you can just imagine the response and reception there was to a sandbox game way back then!

Reviewers either hated the game or loved it.  It just did not fit into any pre-defined category and completely broke the mold of the typical RPG that had the exact same set path or sequence of events for every single player to follow, in exactly the same ways, until they completed the game.

On the other hand, Alternate Reality: The City cannot be "won," or completed.  It's the original graphical virtual world, if ever there was one.  This was very frustrating to all those people used to grinding out the standard RPG until they "completed" it.  And, as a result it either received outstanding reviews from those that respected what it was trying to accomplish, or horrible reviews from those that just did not get it and were used to "finishing" games and moving on to the next.

Originally posted by Symone

 

Originally posted by sempiternal

I think that describes the game many of us experienced MMO players are looking for.

Things as simple as sunsets and weather can dramatically increase immersion.

A long time ago, and I do mean a very long time ago in video game terms,  I found my favorite game of all time, it's an RPG that features:

• Rising and setting sun - you can actually see the sun moving in the sky, hour by hour, and the ambient level of light adjusts accordingly.

• Weather, seasons, months and a full yearly calendar -  sometimes it rains for a few hours and other times you hear the wind blowing down the streets and the frequency is all based upon the seasons.

• Inebriation, disease, hunger, thirst, cold, sleep - you actually go to taverns to eat, drink and resupply, and Inns to sleep, and you wear clothing not only for it's varying appearances, but to actually keep warm.  What you wear can have an effect on how other creatures perceive you.  If you neglect any of these things, you gradually grow weaker in varying degrees.  Of course, sleeping goes by in an instant, but the game time actually moves forward depending upon the number of hours you choose to sleep - sleeping at night results in better recuperation.  If you get drunk, your character actually does stumble around and black out - yes, the screen actually goes black for moments and you do lose some actual control as your character spins around and stumbles back and forth while you have difficulty moving in the direction that you want - it's first person perspective.

• Reputation - your reputation with other beings depends on all of your previous actions.  For example, if you kill good beings, then you become evil and most everything tries to kill you along with guards chasing you down.  Every encounter you have the freedom to choose how to react, from a sneak attacks, to saying hello, or even ignoring them.

All these things add up to make the game highly immersive, it's an experience I have not found an equal to in any other game I have played.

Now if only it was an MMO!

 

 

 

You forgot to mention what the game was... 

Or, maybe I wanted to see if anyone would guess.  

Alternate Reality: The City

Believe it or not, it came out in 1985 for the Atari 800!  Was programmed by one guy, in a shack in Hawaii with no running water or electricity, powering his custom computer with a generator! It had features that even today's multi-million dollar MMOs don't. 

Of course, the graphics are not going to knock your socks off, but they were some of the best in it's day.

You can play it on your Windows or Mac PC with an emulator.

 *updates at bottom*

Based on my best estimates from the publicly available facts, Lord of The Rings Online has between 130,000 to 195,000 currently paying subscriptions. Feel free to add any relevant facts you know of and we may be able to come up with a more definitive estimate; I will update as more facts are posted or are available.

The estimate of between, "800,000 and 1 million paying players in the U.S. and Europe," is highly inaccurate, as it originated by a journalist from The Boston Globe dividing four million characters ever created by a wrongly assumed maximum of five characters per subscription. The actual maximum characters per subscription is 55. Merely dividing the total characters ever created, by any number, also makes some impossible assumptions;

A) All characters ever created, were created by currently paying subscriptions - free subscriptions have been available in unlimited numbers since release.

B) All paying subscriptions that ever created characters are still active; none have been closed.

C) All copies of the game sold were converted to paying subscriptions after the free gameplay expired.

Here are the supporting facts and numbers for LoTRO having between 130-195k:

1. Turbine has said that four million characters have been created in Lords of The Ring Online (LoTRO) since release.

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/09/08/turbine_stakes_its_online_game_turf

2. There is actually a maximum of 55 characters per subscription, not five. In the above article, five was incorrectly used as the maximum by the author to arrive at the 800,000 estimate, by dividing four million by five. Even disregarding that an ongoing unlimited number of free subscriptions and canceled subscriptions have been used to create characters and dividing four million by a median of 27.5 characters per subscription (half of 55), that would equal a rough estimate of 145,455 subscriptions.

This 145k number is likely higher because the number of players that create more than the median of 27.5 characters is the extreme.  Most players likely create no more than a handful of characters, which would bring the average below the median.  However, the 145k number is also likely reduced by the probability that not all characters ever created were created by currently active, paying subscriptions.  A good number of characters have likely been created by free trial subscriptions and subscriptions that have been canceled.

3.  The CEO of Turbine, Jeff Anderson specifically said, "We're probably now the second-largest MMORPG operating that was built in the US right now, you know, built in North America/Europe."

http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/08/0410202

Using other MMOG numbers, and the CEO's statement, the actual range of paying subscriptions can be narrowed down, i.e. what is the 3rd largest MMOG made by a US company and what are the highest numbers for an MMOG owned by an asian company operating in the US.

Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot by Electronic Arts' EA Mythic are both at about 100,000 subscribers. Everquest and Everquest 2 by Sony are at about 135,00 to 182,000 respectively. Also, City of Heros (CoH) by NCSoft is at about 153,000 subscribers. Then, according to the CEO's statement, LoTRO would have been between 100,000 and 135,000 active subscribers four months ago, at a time when 172,000 copies of LoTRO had been sold in the US.

http://au.gamespot.com/news/6176030.html

4. As of less than a week ago, LoTRO has sold about another 28,000 copies in the US, for a total of about 200,000 copies so far. Using this information and estimating that about another 30,000 copies have likewise been sold in Europe and elsewhere at the same time, for a total of 58,000 more copies in the last three months, LoTRO's current range of actively paying subscribers is more likely to be in the 130,000 to 195,000 range.  195,000 would be at the high end, because it would mean that all new copies sold in the last three months are still actively subscribing.

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/sep2007/id20070928_550277.htm

5. Not all boxes sold have likely been converted to paying subscriptions. Some try it for the free month, some a few months longer, and then they quit.

6. Free trial subscriptions, which are marketed across the Internet in unlimited quantities, are also capable of creating up to 55 characters and do not have to pay at all. Characters created with these free accounts would not be considered paying subscribers.

7.  There has only been one new server addition, 17 days after LoTRO was released. Turbine has said that each server is capable of supporting about 10,000 players and there are 25 servers; 11 in the US, 11 in Europe, 2 in Japan, and 1 in China. If each server supports about 10,000 players, multiplying that by 25 servers, results in support for about 250,000 active players.

Therefore, all things considered, I would say a fair estimate of currently paying subscribers of LoTRO is in the 130,000 to 195,000 range. Since Turbine does not release active subscription numbers, there is no way to tell exactly, but this is a far more accurate estimate than the 800,000 number that was wrongly calculated with the misinformation that only 5 characters can be created per account, and the assumption that all the characters ever created were created by currently paying subscriptions.

*update 1*

It's clear that Turbine is now backpedaling.

Originally, on, August 29, 2007, Turbine posted news to their company website that, "Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG with an estimated 4 million characters calling Middle-earth their home."

However, on, October 5, 2007, Turbine posted similar news on their site, but this time included an asterisk, "Turbine’s most recent title, The Lord of the Rings Online (www.lotro.com), has quickly become the second largest MMORPG*."

*Comparison data includes subscription-based MMORPG titles developed in North America based on reported data.

The day before the October 5th news posting, CEO Jeff Anderson was replaced with Jim Crowley.

*update 2 - 6/10/08*

Well, finally we've got an updated chart from Sirbruce, the guy that has been tracking the numbers since the beginning, over 10 years ago.  If there is anyone with reliable numbers, it is SirBruce; nobody spends more time talking with companies, reading reports, and plotting subscription numbers than him.  His numbers coincide with the data I analyzed a few months ago in the original post in this thread.

As such, it's now more clear than ever that the news articles that came out at that time estimating near 1 million subscribers based upon total characters ever created, were indeed highly inflated.  And the most likely number for LoTRO subscription numbers is right about where I estimated, between 130-195k.  Sirbruce received a 150k number from inside sources in December; well within that range.

To be more fair, the median of my estimate would be 162.5k, that's probably very close.  According to Sirbruce, LoTRO subscriptions have been dropping or were initially estimated on the high side though.

LoTRO at 150k in December 2007

From Sirbruce's site:

The Lord of the Rings Online (Accuracy Rating: B)
Launched on April 24, 2007, LotrO has been a big success for Turbine, winning several awards and garnering many positive reviews. While exact subscriber numbers have never been officially released, in August 2007 Turbine claimed LotRO was the second largest MMORPG developed in North America. This leaves out games like RuneScape, Dofus, and EVE Online; essentially, Turbine was indicating that the game had more current subscribers than EQ or EQ II, but less than World of Warcraft. Based on this statement, I estimate that as of August 2007 LotRO had approximately 200,000 subscribers. Inside sources place the number of active subscribers at 150,000 as of December 2007.

I think that describes the game many of us experienced MMO players are looking for.

Things as simple as sunsets and weather can dramatically increase immersion.

A long time ago, and I do mean a very long time ago in video game terms,  I found my favorite game of all time, it's an RPG that features:

• Rising and setting sun - you can actually see the sun moving in the sky, hour by hour, and the ambient level of light adjusts accordingly.

• Weather, seasons, months and a full yearly calendar -  sometimes it rains for a few hours and other times you hear the wind blowing down the streets and the frequency is all based upon the seasons.

• Inebriation, disease, hunger, thirst, cold, sleep - you actually go to taverns to eat, drink and resupply, and Inns to sleep, and you wear clothing not only for it's varying appearances, but to actually keep warm.  What you wear can have an effect on how other creatures perceive you.  If you neglect any of these things, you gradually grow weaker in varying degrees.  Of course, sleeping goes by in an instant, but the game time actually moves forward depending upon the number of hours you choose to sleep - sleeping at night results in better recuperation.  If you get drunk, your character actually does stumble around and black out - yes, the screen actually goes black for moments and you do lose some actual control as your character spins around and stumbles back and forth while you have difficulty moving in the direction that you want - it's first person perspective.

• Reputation - your reputation with other beings depends on all of your previous actions.  For example, if you kill good beings, then you become evil and most everything tries to kill you along with guards chasing you down.  Every encounter you have the freedom to choose how to react, from a sneak attacks, to saying hello, or even ignoring them.

All these things add up to make the game highly immersive, it's an experience I have not found an equal to in any other game I have played.

Now if only it was an MMO!

Yeah, that's also assuming that everyone that bought the game is still subscribing, which is never the case.

Originally posted by AgtSmith

...the 800k number came from some lazy ass so called journalist who saw a press release saying '4 million characters' and figured if he divided it by the incorrect max character per account number of 5 he could figure the subs.  So - bogus 4 million character number divided by wrong max character per account number of 5 equals fanboy holy grail false subscription number of 800k - walla.

"Fascinating stuff.  Thanks for passing it on.  You a gamer?" - Hiawatha Bray

Nope.  They are trying to finish guild halls right now, which will allow players to claim their own one square kilometer of the world.

Ballistics will probably be quite a ways off, at least six months to a year.

Originally posted by andyjd

 

Originally posted by sempiternal

 

Originally posted by Amalaric

LotRO peaked at about 180k active subs a few months ago and the active subs have now declined a little.

This 800k figure is about three times the amount of game boxes sold world wide.

It's sad or funny depending on your point of view that mmogdata.com can't check the amount sold of the game and come to the conclusion that it's nowhere near 800k. 

 

That sounds about right.  Please give a reference for 180k subs, otherwise it means nothing.

Are you going off box sales?

"The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar sold over 172,000 copies during the quarter, including the special edition of the game." Aug 2, 2007

http://au.gamespot.com/news/6176030.html

As you know, sales are not the same as current subscriptions.

 

Thats April-June, and only US sales, as codemasters does it in the EU.

That's a good point.  If we could find codemasters sales for the quarter, we could pin down the range of current paying subscribers, much more closely.  If they are about the same at 170k, then a rough estimate of total sales is likely 340k for their first quarter.

That would lead me to believe that active subscriptions are probably closer to 182k than 100k.

Well, I think I put the puzzle together, LoTRO has between 100k and 182k currently paying subscribers:

1. The author of the article is guessing that there are 800,000 paying subscribers by dividing 4 million characters ever created since release by five characters per subscriber. However, we all know that just because 4 million characters were created by subscribers since release, does not necessarily mean that any of those subscriptions are currently active at all.

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/09/08/turbine_stakes_its_online_game_turf/

2. Turbine did not specify that the characters were created with paying subscriptions; and they do have free subscriptions.

3. The author incorrectly claims, "each LOTRO subscription lets the player create up to five characters," and then uses this to arrive at the 800k guess ( 4 mil / 5 chars = 800k ). However, the fact is that each US and European subscription can create 55 characters, or five characters per server. And, many players have said that they do create all 55 characters, just so that they can reserve their character names on all servers; even though they don't play them. Others share their accounts with friends and family, each person creating 5 characters on the same subscription, but each person using a different server.

4. The author of the article writes that LoTRO, "...is now the second-most popular massively multiplayer online game..." But, what Turbine CEO, Jeff Anderson actually said is, "We're probably now the second-largest MMORPG operating that was built in the US right now, you know, built in North America/Europe."  This is important, because, "...built in the US..." means he is not including Sony and their MMOs in his statement, nor NCSoft or their MMOs. What does this mean? If Everquest 2 is currently at about 182k paying subscriptions, and Turbine cannot even say that they are leading Sony, then current LoTRO paying subscriptions are less than 182k. If LoTRO is the second largest "...built in the US..." MMO, then it is at least leading Ultima Online, which is currently at about 100k. That puts current paying LoTRO subscriptions at between 100k and 182k.

http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/08/0410202

5. Last, but not least, Midway Games reported that, "The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar sold over 172,000 copies during the quarter, including the special edition of the game." If they sold 172k copies, obviously, current paying subscriptions are less than that.

http://au.gamespot.com/news/6176030.html

Originally posted by Amalaric

LotRO peaked at about 180k active subs a few months ago and the active subs have now declined a little.

This 800k figure is about three times the amount of game boxes sold world wide.

It's sad or funny depending on your point of view that mmogdata.com can't check the amount sold of the game and come to the conclusion that it's nowhere near 800k. 

That sounds about right.  Please give a reference for 180k subs, otherwise it means nothing.

Are you going off box sales?

"The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar sold over 172,000 copies during the quarter, including the special edition of the game." Aug 2, 2007

http://au.gamespot.com/news/6176030.html

As you know, sales are not the same as current subscriptions.

"Turbine said this week that its Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) game is now the second-most popular massively multiplayer online game, after World of Warcraft, which claims 9 million subscribers. Turbine said that LOTRO subscribers have created 4 million fantasy characters since the game was introduced in April.

Privately held Turbine refuses to reveal the number of actual subscribers, who pay $50 for game software and a monthly subscription fee of around $15. But since each LOTRO subscription lets the player create up to five characters, the game has attracted at least 800,000 subscribers in just four months."

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/09/08/turbine_stakes_its_online_game_turf/

I have to agree with AgtSmith on this one.  The quotes are clear and It's easy to see what happened here.

The only thing said by Turbine was that subscribers have created 4 million characters since the game was introduced in April.

The part about the game being the second-most popular leaves out the "...built in the US..." part of the quote and, "attracted at least 800,000 subscribers in just four months," is the author's bad guess, using the 4 million characters statement from Turbine.

What also makes it ambigous is that they don't specifically say "paying" subscribers, like WoW does.  So, are they including those that had free trial subscriptions and beta subscriptions?

The problem with "characters," is that anyone can create as many as they want with as many free accounts as the like, and total characters created since release does not represent currently paying subscribers at all; not everyone that ever created a free account and made characters, or even that subscribed at one time and made characters, is still playing, nor paying.

If 4 million characters have been created in total, since release, including all the thousands of free trial subscriptions, then actual currently paying subscribers is much, much less than 800k.

This needs to be corrected on MMOGData's chart.

"Jeff Anderson: It couldn't really be much better. We've had just terrific response from the community, the sales have been great, we've managed the number one position off and on; the response from the editors, the reviewers, it's racking up the rewards, game of the month, editor's choice awards ... it's really gratifying. You know a bunch of people poured their heart and soul into making this product, and so I'm enthusiastic for them that they can finally see the true value of the hard work that they've put in. We're probably now the second-largest MMORPG operating that was built in the US right now, you know, built in North America/Europe."

"...probably now the second-largest MMORPG..." means nothing, Mr. Anderson knows EXACLTY where they are, so why not spit it out?  And, then he makes the disclaimer "...built in the US..."  Well, just what does that mean?  Is Sony considered a Japanese company?

If Sony must be ignored in his statement, then we are talking about a much smaller number than 800k.

As for, 4 million characters, that is completely meaningless also; especially with free trial subscriptions.

The only thing that counts is currently paying customers, not characters created or even total subscriptions ever.

I see back on Jun 7, mmogdata had LOTRO at 430k and on Jul 7, they have it at 670k.  It would be good to see these references also.

P.S. keep clicking each sub-component of the longsword to see how each component is produced all the way back to the raw resources such as ore.

Roma Victor is probably the extreme of crafting MMOs.

Everything is crafted as it was historically, 2000 years ago, using the same raw resources, tools, and devices that were used in real life.

The game is small and it's got it's share of problems, but I don't consider any other MMO an equal.

Image & Crafting of a Roma Victor long sword:

http://www.roma-victor.com/community/live/wiki/index.php/longsword_a

Yes, overall, it's a good thing to finally see KFR so active.

Anyway, did anyone ever say how long the mine had been there?  Just imagine, if it had been there a year ago and it was simply a matter of nobody finding it...

If that were the case, I would give KFR kudos for keeping it quiet.

What I wonder, is how long was that mine sitting there waiting to be discovered?

I would be respectful if the mine had been added long ago, and KFR just could not hold his mouth shut about it any longer, but I suspect that he only added it in recently as a stunt.

Originally posted by Cynewulf

I'll try Age of Conan as well. It isn't anything like the game RV claimed to be, but it will be polished.

Darkfall comes closest to the original vision of RV--far beyond it actually--and will always be there, eternally in development, whenever I feel like dreaming of what could be.

 

- Augir's alt

Is this the real Cyne?  I wonder. 

Darkfall is the only other MMO that I have even a little interest in trying; it does look pretty cheesy riding around on giant pigs and fighting lizardmen.

I checked out Age of Conan and even though it professes to be "hardcore," from spending time on their forums, it's clear it's just another big commercial enterprise trapping themselves into seeking the quick buck over the long-term growth and stability of innovative and outstanding gameplay.

If you can handle space battles, I recommend EVE.  I just can't get into the space thing.