A lot of people try it, because they know at _least_ one person that plays it, heck I know a few families that play together in it, and it’s not uncommon to here managers chatting about their characters, so in a way the old “You can’t go wrong buying Big Blue” rule is in effect, people can get that “feel good” feeling of not making a “wrong” purchase going with WoW.

The “arguments” start from what a person/organisations definition of “success” is, size is only one metric (and not the metric I personally use to judge whether I want to play a game). Accountants, G4 and other “size conscious” folks obviously use “size” as the yard stick, which isn’t a surprise, a lot of people _do_ use those metrics to measure “success” (Hollywood, the music industry, etc).

Take restaurants as an example. There are two metrics to look at with food, one is the quality and the other is quantity/value. You won’t get a good quality steak or roast cutlets of Castricum lamb with braised neck, creamed potato and piperade sauce at McDonalds, but they are one of the largest, most successful food outlets in the world. You’ll get a good value meal and you’ll know you can get that same standard of meal from any of their stores. Should all other restaurants shut down because McDonalds is the biggest?

My own humble opinion is that WoW is a run-a-way success in the quantity/value department, but isn’t so hot in the quality side of things (I am NOT referring to build quality here, Blizzard seem to have a high standard there, I’m referring to design quality and the “lowest common denominator”/no innovation/sameol,sameol thing).

I found it boring as bat shit after only 3 months, having capped one character in short order and had several on the way to the cap (I’m a 45 yo IT professional, I only play nights, I have a full time job and family so I class myself as a “heavy casual”). It’s far and away it’s the easiest MMO I’ve ever played, and while I had fun early on, it isn’t what _I’m_ looking for in entertainment…

I fully recognise that there are at least 9 million other people out there who don’t agree with my opinion in that regard though, 9 million burgers a day can’t be wrong, right ;o)

“Everytime a MMO has planned to released, talk was that it would kill DAoC. It never did.
The same was true with WoW. Most came back to DAoC in just a few months.”

WoW didn’t kill DAOC. ToA killed DAOC.

True story.

“Whats G4?

Is that like a new Golden Girls or something?”

Golden Girls Gone Grandma

But, it’s all pretty silly, I think. As pointed out in the original post, you don’t have to have the biggest and the best to be rather successful. Speaking of Turbine, take a look at what they did. Just by running one of the smaller games back in the day, Asheron’s Call, they were able to turn around and obtain the license for two major properties, even after a failure with AC2. The fact that AC had less than 50% of EQ’s peak subscribers means that you can still have a huge success with modest numbers that don’t dominate over everyone else. That’s G4’s problem here: games that come afterwards can still be huge successes, even if they don’t have 5-6+ million Chinese “subscribers” to add to their press release figures.

I think that we’ll see a lot of smaller games come out and be huge successes even if they don’t get much more than “only” 100,000 subscribers. Bigger doesn’t always equal better, even in business.

I would agree with you if you were looking at each piece of ‘evidence’ individually. Taken as a whole, though it’s convincing enough for me to believe that LOTRO isn’t doing as well as the as it should be.

The servers play like an older, lower population WoW or DAoC server. Lower end zones have very few people in them and broadcast channels are surprisingly quiet.

Nearly every extended review or game journal/blog I’ve read about LOTRO mirrors my sentiments about it turning into a dud.

Nearly every person I’ve spoken to in real life about the game expressed disappointment with the finished, live game.

Mediocre blogosphere reviews/experiences + personal experience + friends’ experience + low population servers + catatonic broadcast chat channels = game that’s dying out

The idea of hard data and your post appear to have a tenuous relationship. I maintain that it is absolutely pointless to make wild speculation based on a blog, your friends, or the local equivalent of a /who command.

All such guesses (including mine) amount to: I like Game X, therefore I interpret observed data as supporting my preferences.

This is the MMOG equivalent of Pauline Kael’s celebrated remark: “How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him.” (try not to have an emotional reaction if you happen to be of the liberal persuasion, it’s a statement about how we tend to surround ourselves with like-thinkers and what that does to our perceptions).

Dungeons and Dragons had an even shorter peak time with most people publishing mediocre to bad reviews for the game right away. While LOTR most likely broke the 300k mark at one time I doubt DDO broke 100k subscribers.

City of Heroes has probably been the most successful and was between 150,000-200,000 subscribers for the first two years of its creation. Unfortunately despite that earlier link I doubt they have much more then 120,000 people playing right now.

Is that like a new Golden Girls or something?

What! How dare you call William Shatner an aged “80s TV star.

He’s An aged ’60s TV star.

Oh yeah, T.J. Hooker. nevermind.