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MMO populations

DevilsOwn

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found this quite by accident this morning, do you think it's accurate or no?


it's updated, apparently, just wondering what y'all think of the numbers
 

John Knighthawke

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If I remember right you posted this on the UO.com boards too. As EA no longer releases these numbers, anything anyone can come up with is either a guess or an inference, with varying degrees of quality.
 

Victim of Siege

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found this quite by accident this morning, do you think it's accurate or no?


it's updated, apparently, just wondering what y'all think of the numbers
Personally, i would think that if they somehow were able to get the data, the large increase is somewhat close to when endless journey came out and inactive accounts would have become "active" EJ accounts ie subscribed accounts. other than that i would say that someone has a sore butt from pulling those numbers out of it. But in my opinion, the active players number would be closer to the mark of subscribers, but likely a little higher.
 

Merlin

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Does it explain anywhere how they are calculating and what they are including?

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So only 1.900% of the subscribing population is "active"? For someone who has 10+ accounts, does that only register as one 'active player' ? Where does EJ fit in?


Overall - just another strange calculation. For years, people have tried to employ some formula to back into an estimated population figure, and none of them have really held much water. Only people that know the true numbers are probably small number of developers/BS employees.
 

Danpal

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I bleave the numbers are around 15k to 20k thats with people playing the 90 day game or 9 month time game with active daily maybe 2k. Might have about 5k more Ej accounts. I believe we lose about 50 accounts a week from watching idocs. We did have a increase in accounts at the start of COVID but that is going down. More of the idocs have been younger accounts can tell from items.
 

Veldrane

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The active player number wouldn't surprise me to be "somewhat" accurate, but the subscriber number? I'd find 300k+ to be hard to believe. I wonder if this number is based on an earns call report - if so, I'd find the number suspect unless they can gauge monies spent via the store. The alternate thought is that this is based on a Boardsword earnings call, which would make these numbers even more inaccurate in terms of UO itself.
 

MalagAste

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The only people who have any idea how many subscribers there are and how many are "active" is Broadsword...

Anyone else is just guessing. Any I'm sure that some of the big-time old IDOCers would have known a rough estimate of how many homes there were and where when they would automate that and go about doing scans for IDOCs... but people don't have to do that anymore. So I'm guessing even they don't know anymore...

But I can't see the numbers being anywhere NEAR that... and showing it continually building of late... No... not seeing it... I've seen some EJ's come and a few players do return here and there but with the number of good players dying off... and the number of players who exit constantly I fail to see that it's really that high...

I'm sure there was a spike and increase since EJ came out but I know a lot of those accounts are not used by "new" players they are used by current players for nefarious reasons... ghost cams and all...

no... just no ... seems to me that's someone's pipe dream.
 

Lord Frodo

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If you look at the numbers I think they are estimating the # of subscribers the same way WoW boosts their numbers by claiming all accounts (over 1 million) weather active or not so I could see 350K+ accounts total over UOs life, now as to how many are paying accounts today only EA knows those numbers. So they are guessing 6.6K active accounts IMHO may be a little low but that still would be $66K per month just from UO in EAs pocket so lets hope that is enough for EA to think UO is still worth keeping.
 

MalagAste

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If you look at the numbers I think they are estimating the # of subscribers the same way WoW boosts their numbers by claiming all accounts (over 1 million) weather active or not so I could see 350K+ accounts total over UOs life, now as to how many are paying accounts today only EA knows those numbers. So they are guessing 6.6K active accounts IMHO may be a little low but that still would be $66K per month just from UO in EAs pocket so lets hope that is enough for EA to think UO is still worth keeping.

At only 66K a month, that's not enough to keep the staff, is it? I mean how much do you think they make a month? Then there are the server rentals, the EMs they pay (poorly)... GMs... Office... and other overhead... I don't know... is that enough to keep the lights on?
 

Nero

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Mesanna once said that UO had some 1 milllion subscribers lifetime if memory serves. This is the max value. You get a good idea about the current number of subscriptions if you guestimate the number of houses per shard as many pointed out already. I suggest to go to the Uo rennaissance website and check out the map, count the number of houses shown on there, and multiply the number by 25 as there are 25 regular shards.
 

ShriNayne

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The top 100 on that site shows UO at 13,347 players, which is probably closer to an actual number, the 348k might be the highest recorded number of subs, way back from AoS launch or thereabouts. I remember that site from a couple of years ago, it showed at least two games which had closed down some time before and it still had a number of players for them, so it's out-of-date info at best.
 

ShriNayne

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As @Lord Frodo says, most game companies count trial accounts and closed accounts in those numbers to make them seem higher, WOW still has an astonishing number of accounts ever created. The 348k may well be the number of accounts created by that point in time, I think I remember the number of players at AoS launch was about 250k but of course it went down after that. I have no idea if that was a released number or was calculated by one of these sites, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.
 

Nero

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The website guesses numbers based on "online sentiment". I think they just look at something like recent blogposts, fb, twitch or reddit activity or recent search engine results (or a combination of those) and guess the subscription numbers based on generally known associations (e.g. 1 new reddit post on a given mmo game generally correlates with x new subscribers). My 2 cents.
 

Lord Frodo

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At only 66K a month, that's not enough to keep the staff, is it? I mean how much do you think they make a month? Then there are the server rentals, the EMs they pay (poorly)... GMs... Office... and other overhead... I don't know... is that enough to keep the lights on?
That is just UO you also have to take into account DAoC so I do not know BSs budget or how much EA pays BS to its job.
 

MalagAste

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That is just UO you also have to take into account DAoC so I do not know BSs budget or how much EA pays BS to its job.
Well that's also just guestimating the number of active subscriptions and not including all other sales like Sovereigns and expansions and such but that's not to say UO gets that income but EA certainly does... so that "counts" towards their sustainability I would say...
 

John Knighthawke

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As someone pointed out on the version of this thread on the UO.com boards, the only thing we can know for sure is that it's enough that EA hasn't dumped it.
 

Mandrake of DF

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It cant be right, cuz according to that grph - its a all time high peak now...and lowest was in 2005 - just after tokono release...but then it was all time high... and servers where populated... so donno where you got that graph from, but its not this game.
 

GarthGrey

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Here's my .02. Unless there's an Asian fan site forum with lots of members asking questions, between Stratics and the main page, I doubt there's 500 active individual players combined. I guess we can assume a majority of players don't post on any fan sites, but that's a hard pill to swallow in 2021. Stratics does show 18999 members, but we all know those aren't all UO players.
 

Lord Frodo

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Here's my .02. Unless there's an Asian fan site forum with lots of members asking questions, between Stratics and the main page, I doubt there's 500 active individual players combined. I guess we can assume a majority of players don't post on any fan sites, but that's a hard pill to swallow in 2021. Stratics does show 18999 members, but we all know those aren't all UO players.
And of all those 18999 Stratic members how many have been active in the last year alone, what maybe 10%, 189 members.
 

Quickblade

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Yes lets not discuss population in UO, we all know it's dying off , not many ''vets'' left

When you log in and you see your shard dead , there's nothing else to figure out , its just dead. Subscribers means nothing really it just means that the game will keep going. Active players is the reality and its what reflect all the dead shards ( except atlantic )

When I say *dead* I mean 20-60 players online on one shard, in my book that's pretty dead for a mmo.

I will say that tho, there is around 1400 players maximum at all time connected online. multiply that by x 3 ( 8 hours shifts and diff time zone prime times) and you get around 4200 active players , which is not too far from the estimate from the website.
 
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Loriel

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The problem is it isn’t sustainable and Kyronix admitted as much when he said the reason they are developing New Legacy is to bring new players to the game as they have a responsibility to EA to do that to continue their involvement in the game. Sounds like without it the game won’t be going for much longer if they don’t do that.
 

Quickblade

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Oh yea I totally agree on that , the new Legacy thing is surely an idea coming from EA, its a big trend in all compagnies right now to remake original game, hopefully it will pays off, and bring lot of players.
 

Spartan

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The problem is it isn’t sustainable and Kyronix admitted as much when he said the reason they are developing New Legacy is to bring new players to the game as they have a responsibility to EA to do that to continue their involvement in the game. Sounds like without it the game won’t be going for much longer if they don’t do that.
That sounds like a "new blood or else" option to me. With the "or else" being lights out.
 

ShriNayne

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New Legacy won't bring in any new players if they don't bother advertising at all, as usual.... either way I don't think it will bring in a huge amount of new people, mostly just curious current players, some returners maybe, further diluting the numbers and making less populated shards worse off. I really find it difficult to see anything positive in New Legacy, I don't really like the name either. At the moment all information is just too vague to get excited, they should give us some actual facts, rule-set etc not just some video of stuff that's irrelevant. Surely they must have worked on this for almost 18 months?
 

Lex Darion

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Wont attract a lot of new players unless the game caters to the streaming crowd.
2021, it's a fact that games need to be both playable and also watchable.

Is UO enjoyable on twitch? eh... I dunno.
 

Ning

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I don't see New Legacy bringing in many new players at all. I love UO more than any game I've ever played, but let's face it, considering the last 20+ years of game development it'd be like trying to convince the kids to give up their smartphones because landlines are still cool.
 

Xare

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What, you guys don't love the videos we've seen of them running around in glorious 15 fps showing off various seasons?
 

Xare

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People watch others play a game? Sounds like others games suck if watching someone else play is more enjoyable than playing.
People watch other people play sports ball? Sounds like they suck if watching someone else play is more enjoyable than playing.

Do you realize how stupid that sounds now? Quit being so narrow minded and telling other people how to have fun.
 

Ning

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Actually, I do suck at sports ball. Anything involving physical prowess and coordination is not my strong suit.
 

Xare

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I mean, I suck too. But still not right to make fun of someone because they enjoy something that you don't.
 

Pawain

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People watch other people play sports ball? Sounds like they suck if watching someone else play is more enjoyable than playing.

Do you realize how stupid that sounds now? Quit being so narrow minded and telling other people how to have fun.
Really? You think I can play sports well enough for someone to watch? No. Watching someone click on a computer is STUPID.

Wanna watch me watch some funny clips on YouTube?

(I would rather play than watch golf and disc golf and bowling)
 
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Ning

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There is a point to be taken about streaming though. Many "kids" these days learn about and find their next games by watching a Twitch stream or one of the YouTubers they follow playing it. UO really doesn't fit those platforms too well. I know plenty of thirty something gamers that have never even heard of UO despite it's long legacy in the market. Streaming and console portability is where it's at. It's a shame if New Legacy is what's being counted on to lure an influx of new blood or else
 

Lex Darion

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Really? You think I can play sports well enough for someone to watch? No. Watching someone click on a computer is STUPID.

Wanna watch me watch some funny clips on YouTube?

(I would rather play than watch golf and disc golf and bowling)
Stupid yes. But does it work ? Yes.
Streaming has brought in countless players to unknown games compared to traditional advertising.
Kids and a large part of the gaming crowd these days dont really buy a game cause it's written about in PC gamer. They play games that their peers talk about, what they can show off doing cool stuff etc.
They learn from watching youtube or streams.

You are a very great tamer. But advertising and guerilla marketing is not your niche.
We got 3 million players in a game I worked on in less than 3 months thanks to twitch and word of mouth marketing.

I'd like to ask, what can we do to bring in a ton of players for UO in 2021?
 

Quickblade

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Twitch is definitly a platform that can help bringing numbers, if you look at freeshards streamers. Sometimes all it takes is one very popular streamer with thousands of viewers to play one game and bring ton of subscribers, in just one night.

Pawain like to express his personal opinions on subjects, that he likes or dislikes, and he sometimes feels like everyone think like him which isn't the case.
 

ShriNayne

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My younger son constantly watches other people playing games, in fact I think both my sons do, they seem to find it very entertaining, although my older son tends to do it after he goes to bed and then falls asleep. Each to their own... :rolleyes:
 

Pawain

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I'd like to ask, what can we do to bring in a ton of players for UO in 2021?
I thought the rumor of UO going to steam would be an option since it seems they are doing nothing for advertising. But, it seems that offended Mesanna and she shot that rumor down quick.

Pawain like to express his personal opinions on subjects, that he likes or dislikes, and he sometimes feels like everyone think like him which isn't the case.
What? there is more to the world than what I like? Crazy talk!
 

Lord Frodo

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I thought the rumor of UO going to steam would be an option since it seems they are doing nothing for advertising. But, it seems that offended Mesanna and she shot that rumor down quick.
I bet EA shot it down quicker when BS took it to EA for DAoC and UO and were told to nip it in the bud NOW.
 

Pawain

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You can but EA games on Steam but not UO.
 

railshot

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Here's my .02. Unless there's an Asian fan site forum with lots of members asking questions, between Stratics and the main page, I doubt there's 500 active individual players combined. I guess we can assume a majority of players don't post on any fan sites, but that's a hard pill to swallow in 2021. Stratics does show 18999 members, but we all know those aren't all UO players.
I have no idea how many active players there are, or, more importantly, how many make the game sustainable, but most of the people I know on my shard do not post on or even read the forums. This is especially true of many longtimers who have their routine and don't care about much else.
 

Lord Frodo

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How many houses are on each prodo shard and that will give you a starting point of paid accounts.
 

Pawain

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I have no idea how many active players there are, or, more importantly, how many make the game sustainable, but most of the people I know on my shard do not post on or even read the forums. This is especially true of many longtimers who have their routine and don't care about much else.
Yes, very few players on LS read any forums. And most only play 1 game. I have always concentrated on 1 game at a time. Its been UO for a few years right now.
 

DevilsOwn

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If I remember right you posted this on the UO.com boards too. As EA no longer releases these numbers, anything anyone can come up with is either a guess or an inference, with varying degrees of quality.
no sir, wasn't me :) only posted this question here
 
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