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What are the heavy hitters among the MMOs?
LadyAlibi
Member UncommonPosts: 297
I used to follow the MMO industry as a spectator sport, but now there are so many releases and new games coming down the pike, I am wondering what you, the good people of mmorpg.com, think are the ones that are major titles, and perhaps which are better than average minor league (niche) games. (I am not LFG, just looking for opinions on what games are big titles.)
WoW is obviously still the 800 pound gorilla in the room. What's beyond WoW? I see that EQ2 and LOTRO are both each coming out with some version of f2p... which is just interesting news, I guess. Are they still contenders? What else is worth caring about?
I am not sure if you'd define this in numbers of active players, or revenue, or server population or just marketing... Opinions on what makes a major title are welcome too.
Comments
Depends if you care about the global market or just America.
WoW, EQ2, LoTRO, AoC, AION, EVE are major titles. Don't really have a definitive criteria, but when i think of "what are the major MMOs out there to play?" that's what comes to mind. I probably missed a couple.
Upcoming major releases: Rift, Tera, GW2, SWTOR, FF#whatever.
Upcoming major releases beyond 2011: Copernicus, TSW, WoD.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
WoW
.
And some also rans.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
I would say for the western market that EvE is in a distant 2nd place. After that there are a lot of games tied for an even more distant 3rd (Aion, WAR, AoC, LOTRO, EQ2)
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
Hmmm. Opinions will vary on this one but I'm sure you'll find some constants as more people post. Those are probably the "big" ones.
Here is my list:
WoW
Lotro
EQ2
Eve
FFXI
little bit more niche or on the edge of being great or horrible: Darkfall, AoC, Aion
Upcoming: FFXIV, SWTOR, Rift, GW2, Tera, Secret World
P2P games with more than 1 million subscribers:
WoW, Aion, Lineage, Lineage 2 (Lineage games don't have much more than 100k subscribers each in North America, however)
P2P games comfortably above 100k (in order of popularity): EVE, LOTRO, EQ2, and I don't think it's unreasonable to add AoC to the list...Since major content updates in early 2010, it's been on a steady incline of about 50k players in the last 6 months.
You made me lol. I award you with 10 internets.
FFXI also belongs in the "comfortably above 100K" list. Last figures I've seen for it were 500K, but those are pretty old figures. Probably still at least 300K, though.
If you just want population numbers, a quick google comes up with this:
200k+
70k-700k
0-120k
...leaves me wondering wtf is Dofus..
You may want to check out this other thread in relation to these charts, however.
I guess there's a newer version of these charts, too...
1m-12m
150k-1m
50k-150k
I'm still wondering about Dofus though...
There's more graphs on the site.
Don't forget City of Heroes/Villians! Shiny new expansion released yesterday and it's been regularly updated since 2004.... just like WoW.
Xfire's data shows:
World of Warcraft (P2P)
Aion (P2P)
Guild Wars (B2P)
Eve Online (P2P)
Runes of Magic (F2P)
This shows only the Xfire users so it is what it is but it gives some indication where the B2P and F2P MMOs fall among the subscription based games.
Pretty much everyone except WoW is a lightweight right now. Calling any other title a "heavy hitter" seems funny because WoW is so, so far ahead of everyone else regarding number of players.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Aion is in the millions aswell, hardly a lightweight
remember the market doesnt start and end with the west
True enough.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
depends on what you consider lightweight to mean really? But yea WoW and certain Eastern MMO's are definatly the most populated. Quite happy with EvE tho ammong indy games its king.
Another great example of Moore's Law. Give people access to that much space (developers and users alike) and they'll find uses for it that you can never imagine. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates 1981
over half of WoW's players are in Asia anyway.
There is only 2 games that have had a major iumpact on players in a positive way and those 2 are WoW and Guild Wars. Everything else has been either overhyped, failed or just mearly average.