I don't know what the subscriber population is and I don't care. As far as populace goes, there are only two things I care about.
1) The population on my server is just right. The cities are 'bustling' the roads between villages and cites are well traveled and there is always someone to adventure with if you like. Any more people and it's going to get too crowded. For whatever reason, Tursh has become a hot-spot and is actually crowded compared to 1-2 weeks ago. Any less people, and it becomes to sparse.... I like to see the cities active with people.
2) I want VG to have enough people to pay for keeping it up and running. I love this game, it's deep, complex and there is much, much more to come. I want to play it for a long time.
So, I don't care if VG has more, equal to, or 1/100 the population of WoW. I didn't like WoW or many of the people that played it. Any comparison between the two is apples and oranges.
graphics do make a game better. Why do you think they don't create games for the ps1 anymore? Why are you here? There are older games that you can play with you computer. The only reason you're complaining is because you can't have something you want. In the real world If you want something ... you have to work for it. I can't buy the 32" widescreen lcd tv i want. Do i go up to the shops and moan about it been to expensive? No... because i understand the simple facts of life.
No, graphics dont make a game better or funner if the game is horrible in the first place, am i saying Vanguard is horrible? no, im just saying that if graphics is what makes a game superior then this game loses anyways, because there is nothing special about the look of it.
And your analogy of a 32 inch screen tv is stupid, because when you take the tv home and plug it in, it works with all the features, doesint it? Despite the fact that we all payed the same for this game and are paying the same monthly fee, most with decent computers, the game is working differently for lots of people, superior computer or not, its the coding, not your uber pc. You got lucky with the right setup and right 3d card thats not messing with your game, lol. But that doesint mean you are free of the glitches and bugs that are occuring.
Dis_ordur, I'm speaking from experience. I'm paying for the game and so are two of my friends. If you aren't, that's great for you. If you bought the game at retail then you very much are a subscriber...purchase includes a one month subscription. Shoai, why are you comparing VG to WoW? WoW and VG are completely different games, despite two facts: 1. WoW came into creation thanks to inspiration from EQ. Yep, the WoW devs played EQ and loved it and saw an opportunity to expand their Warcraft franchise. 2. VG borrows some elements from WoW. Meaning, VG is easier, more soloable, and faster-paced than EQ. No one argues that WoW captured a big market segment. Congrats Blizzard; they deserve it. But just because millions of asians and teenagers like a care-bear game with cartoony graphics doesn't mean I would.
1. Dont think your right, considering by the time they started WoW there were more than just EQ around.
2.Uhh I played VSoH and this game is not easier, anywhere near solable or faster paced than EQ. I was a necro in EQ and could easily solo, also I could solo as a beastie or a druid.
As far as graphic are concerned. Ill take gameplay over graphics any day. Most people into graphics are pervs wanting to stare at dark elf boobs
Dis_ordur, I'm speaking from experience. I'm paying for the game and so are two of my friends. If you aren't, that's great for you. If you bought the game at retail then you very much are a subscriber...purchase includes a one month subscription. Shoai, why are you comparing VG to WoW? WoW and VG are completely different games, despite two facts: 1. WoW came into creation thanks to inspiration from EQ. Yep, the WoW devs played EQ and loved it and saw an opportunity to expand their Warcraft franchise. 2. VG borrows some elements from WoW. Meaning, VG is easier, more soloable, and faster-paced than EQ. No one argues that WoW captured a big market segment. Congrats Blizzard; they deserve it. But just because millions of asians and teenagers like a care-bear game with cartoony graphics doesn't mean I would.
1. Dont think your right, considering by the time they started WoW there were more than just EQ around.
2.Uhh I played VSoH and this game is not easier, anywhere near solable or faster paced than EQ. I was a necro in EQ and could easily solo, also I could solo as a beastie or a druid.
As far as graphic are concerned. Ill take gameplay over graphics any day. Most people into graphics are pervs wanting to stare at dark elf boobs
I agree that gameplay > graphics. I disagree that VG is not easier than EQ; and I can't imagine how a fellow EQ'r would think that. Unless you mean EQ2?
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon. In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
ROFLMAO "A Dozen Players in One Building" ? ? ? Do you have any IDEA how many players are in Ironforge or Stormwind (WoW) at any one time? Do you have any idea how little lag there is in WoW now, even when a 60 player PvP event is happening? I had hopes for V:SoH, but no more. This laggy mess of a game was released at least a year to early. It is going to go down just like all the similarly released-to-early games have gone down. Sure, it will hang around for months, years, on the SoE All Access network. But it will never be the Great Game it was envisioned to be. Just another failed attempt; torpedoed by over-anxious bean counters. To bad.
Who the f*** said anything about a dozen players? I said 30+ players in ONE ROOM. And yes I think we all have an idea how the drooling masses have taken to WoW and we know all to well how the 5 polygon per model engine holds up under 60 man PVP battles.
My nephew who is 12 years old has a level 63 dwarf priest on one of the PVP servers and he loves it. Do you wonder how many 12 year olds will be able to play Vanguard to max level?
Does anyone have a rough estimate how many subscribers the game needs in order to stay afloat?
100,000 subscribers [and I doubt it's that high] doesn't seem like a lot to me.
Consider that the original EQ had 200 000 subscribers in 2005 and it was considered a dwindling populaton, despite the sequal out, and many competitors, it has around 50 to 80k people playing now, and its still enough to keep them alive and going.
You dont need millions for a game to survive, Ultima online is still going with an estimated 30k pop. There was still 100k subscribers for DAOC last year, and they are doing fine.
True vanguard is probably more expensive to run, but they dont exactly have 50 servers either, anywhere near 100k is profitable enough to keep a game funded.
Only problem is both EQ and UO have paid their original investments off and their investments were more than half of what Vanguards is. Vanguard has $50-75 million of debt to payback, plus a staff of 100+, plus pay SOE for their services.
Vanguards minimum expense has to be close to 100k subs if not 150k in order to keep everything the way they have it.
As to the OP.
Vanguard Players does not magically delete the 10 day freebie accounts characters when their trial is up. They are still there so that 300k characters still includes the 10 day trials. And if your going to average you have to assume half of the possible character slots which is 4. So that would put Vanguard around 75k accounts. Now how many of those are 10 day accounts versus paid box accounts we don't know.
But each paid box came with a minimum of 1 buddy key while the CE came with 10. So there are at least double to triple/quadruple the number of box accounts worth of buddy keys out there. How many of those are used? Don't know. The fact that the servers are so busy and that they haven't opened any new ones indicates the majority of the players are on trials because they would NOT open a new server based on trial accounts. They will open another server when the box sales warrent it when all the trials are gone. They don't want empty servers when all the trial players are gone.
Anarch, I had to ROFL at the "5 polygons per model" comment. Pure genius.
Stoney, where did you hear $50 to $75mil? I read that it was "nearing $20 mil."
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon. In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
you can get a better picture of the subscription base by looking at the number of characters lvl 10 or 15 and above. Right at the moment that is 84K at lvl 10 and above, lvl 15 to 50 is a little over 25K. Watch those brackets for a good picture, in particuler the roll over to 15 and above. I figure around 60- 70 K active players at the moment plus or minus 5 K
Visiting the VG characters site, it's easy to see there are well over 300,000 characters. I "guess" the average # of characters is 3 each. That makes 100,000 subscribers. And yes, I mean subscribers; the free 10-day trial is LONG gone. Nevermind the number of "buddy key beggars" here. For a game that some libel, I"ve never seen so many people begging to play it. Every day in VG, I see areas get busier and busier. Now when I visit the crafting halls I see more than a dozen players in just one building! On the server select screen, several servers report "high" population. Form your own opinion on what constitutes "high populatoin" on a VG game server. Consider how huge the game world is. It is rare when I find myself alone in the wilderness. Even in remote areas, I pass by other players frequently. Yes I predict VG will well surpass the 500k mark. Nice work Sigil!
Pure fanboi speculation. And right now they have 0 subscribers, because everyone still is in their first free month. In your fanboi state you are free to believe whatever you want.
you can get a better picture of the subscription base by looking at the number of characters lvl 10 or 15 and above. Right at the moment that is 84K at lvl 10 and above, lvl 15 to 50 is a little over 25K. Watch those brackets for a good picture, in particuler the roll over to 15 and above. I figure around 60- 70 K active players at the moment plus or minus 5 K
I hate to agree with this guy, but hes probably right. Maybe if they'd start pushing out patches faster, instead of spending the days playing the unfinished game they created, those numbers would be more than doubled. There is no excuse for the performance of this game. I know everquest2 was the exact same at launch, and has come a long way, but EQ2 also had the name to ride one. VGSoH does not.
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50-75mi ? i heard something around the second most expensive mmo out there . . .
20-40mi MAX.
He said before they left MS they had about a ~$20 million budget so far. BUT since leaving MS and going to SOE they stated they were the 2nd most expensive MMO. EQ2 was stated to cost $45 Million to make, WoW was $75 million. Hence $45-75 million.
you can get a better picture of the subscription base by looking at the number of characters lvl 10 or 15 and above. Right at the moment that is 84K at lvl 10 and above, lvl 15 to 50 is a little over 25K. Watch those brackets for a good picture, in particuler the roll over to 15 and above. I figure around 60- 70 K active players at the moment plus or minus 5 K
I hate to agree with this guy, but hes probably right. Maybe if they'd start pushing out patches faster, instead of spending the days playing the unfinished game they created, those numbers would be more than doubled. There is no excuse for the performance of this game. I know everquest2 was the exact same at launch, and has come a long way, but EQ2 also had the name to ride one. VGSoH does not. Dont forget that after the free 30 days runs out that number will easily be cut in half or maybe by 2/3s depending on how many ppl keep the faith. So come march or the middle of march you looking at maybe 25k subs? SOE will cut funding, cut over time and the game will stay in the state it is in. I only see the numbers dwindaling not increasing.
To my surprise, I'd guess this game has around 85-90k players this month. (including trials)
However, selling the box doesn't really matter. 1 charge of $50-$80 bucks is NOT where the profit is at for the game;, it's the long term subscribers.
I would guess, however, that if this game is like the average MMO, 20-25% of that playerbase will leave after the free month is up.
I'd say no more than 60k players retain their subscription to Vanguard past the first month (from the initial wave). This does NOT include any new purchases in February.
My 2 cents.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
No chance VG will ever reach 300k subs - i like VG but its not that good.
The reason WoW does so well is it is simple you can do 2 things in the game which is PVP or RAID and its not hard at all which means you can be a complete dullard and still manage to reach level 70 and do well in pvp and get some epic gear. Not to mention you can run WoW on some average rigs and it even runs on Linux which means it is much more accessable then Vanguard which means more people are able to play it.
Vanguard on the other hand has major performance issues, bugs and at the moment to get the very best out of the game you need a very good rig to get acceptable performance, regardless what people say. It doesn't rely on a spoon fed style of game play which means any one new to the MMO genere will find it very difficult to get their head round the game play so you instantly cut a massive number of people out of the equation as long term subscribers. Vanguard also offers nothing new interms of innovation, game play etc so there is nothing to make people want to play the game other than it's another phantasy MMO and the fact that SOE is connected to the game is another big turn off for people.
So at the end of it your actual audience willing to play this game is people like myself who have nothing better to do who have been wondering from MMO to MMO since SWG was killed off (refering to the NGE implementation), people who have grown tired of their existing MMO and want to give VG a shot, existing Station subsribers or people who have been playing SOE games for a number of years etc and the loyal SOE fan base (believe it or not they do have fans).
So if you want to see VG break the 300k mark or 500k mark the game needs a major redesign already. The only MMO's I can see in the near future which have the potential to be huge hits are Age of Conan which is a proper 3rd Gen MMO and offers some new aspects to MMO gaming, Star Trek due to its huge fan base and infinite potential and the Stargate MMO again because of it's popularity and infinite potential.
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I think it would have stood a chance at 500k if had reasonable performance requirements, and weren't such a mess of a release. Doesn't have to be Finished, but would sure have had to be a lot closer. Also, if it left a better first impression, word of mouth would be a lot better, but Sigil seems to think thier target audience has enough faith in them that first impression "fluff" wasn't that important.
Still, I think people hold onto the idea that Vanguard will be much better in six months, or a year, at which point subs will come pouring in. That's just not going to happen. Not with all the new games that will be out, while Vanguard will be old news. It's vital for an MMO to grab thier audience as soon as the gates open, and Sigil totally dropped that ball.
So, looks to me like they'll hover around 100k. May eventually grow, as the game improves, but not much. May hit 200k if they're lucky. At least the audience that does hang in there is likely to be in for the long haul.
What concerns me about those numbers is not fear that the game will be shut down - its clearly safer than that. However, I don't know how much SOE will want to pay for continuing development, if its going to take them years just to get thier investment back. And Vanguard really needs that, or those numbers will only go down, not up.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Originally posted by Fignar So if you want to see VG break the 300k mark or 500k mark the game needs a major redesign already. The only MMO's I can see in the near future which have the potential to be huge hits are Age of Conan which is a proper 3rd Gen MMO and offers some new aspects to MMO gaming, Star Trek due to its huge fan base and infinite potential and the Stargate MMO again because of it's popularity and infinite potential.
I agree with most of what you're saying, but that last part? AOC, Star Trek and Stargate? Three mediocre IPs (in terms of popularity and MMO potential) that are mostly hype right now, and likely to be bungled somewhere along the way. I'd put money on both WAR and LOTRO pulling in more than twice the subs any of those three get.
Well i've looked at Vanguard characters and only 60k characters are level 11-50 :P Theres like 260k that are 1 - 10 and 90k who are level 1! Most people are just spamming the characters list with names like aaaa aaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaa etc etc. and arn't real characters. Also people will atleast have 2 characters.
I'm going to say teh active sub base after the free month will be around 30k
Before people keep on burning brain cells trying to figure out numbers, a small note. SOE's pages of counting toons, displaying discoveries, deaths etc , never have and probably never will work correctly in any game. So dont really try to figure out something based on wrong data . One way to do it would be to find how many people are needed to be online to tag a server high (If I am not mistaken for Vanguard is 5-7K) and see how many people are playing at peak time. Still that doesnt tell you what is the turnover , and how many people dont play at peak hours etc , but can easily give you a minimum. I mean if 10 servers at some point tag as high population , this means that current population is at minimum 50k .
Personnaly I get the feel this game currently has about 80-100k subscribers. Which is a normal for a game of its kind. For comparison here are some of the numbers during the first few months of some MMORG's with their peak suubscription numbers.
Asheron's Call 60k first 3 months peak at 120k.
Anarchy Online 60k after 2 months which was its peak
Horizons 35k after 2 montsh which was the peak
DnD online 90k after 2 months
Everquest 100k after 6 months peak was 4 years later at 550k
Ultima Online 50k after 3 months peak was 3 years later 250k
Dark Age of Camelot 110k after 1 month peak was 1 year later at 250k
EVE online 15k after a few months, currently at 120k and rising
EQ2 320k after 1 month which was a peak, stabilized at around 200k after a few months
SWG 300k after 1 month was a peak.
I am not including MMORG's with no subscription (guild wars, lineage's) and WoW who's numbers are the exception and not the rule of the genre.
I think the peak of Vanguard will come at the end of this year. Most people will come following word of mouth when the game is more polished and bug free, and if I can judge by myself this isnt happening yet. I cant really recomment it to my friends just yet. For two reasons. First because the game is not ready yet. There a lot of things they must work, fix, balance etc. Second is that I need a big head start so I can use my dragon to harrass all my newbie friends when they come over.
Umbrood, hmm, I'm not sure I agree. Everquest did not have a massive launch. When I started EQ (July 1999) it was months after lanch and the game only had maybe 3 to 6 servers. EQ grew to perhaps 30 servers. That is a growth of 500% to 1000% from launch. I do think Sigil would be happy with 1000% growth. That would mean 1 mil subscribers. Now my numbers are rough so if anyone has hard evidence (with links) about EQ subscriptions from launch to maturity, please point me in the right direction.
1 million eh? I'd be suprised to see Vanguard ever get that many paying customers.... maybe if they fix the game, in a year or two they'll have 500,000 at most. it's a game not designed for massive appeal, but for those who want something more "hardcore" but unfortunately they got a bug ridden alpha phase game in a shiny box...
WoW will break 10 million before Vanguard gets 500,000
So if you want to see VG break the 300k mark or 500k mark the game needs a major redesign already. The only MMO's I can see in the near future which have the potential to be huge hits are Age of Conan which is a proper 3rd Gen MMO and offers some new aspects to MMO gaming, Star Trek due to its huge fan base and infinite potential and the Stargate MMO again because of it's popularity and infinite potential.
I agree with most of what you're saying, but that last part? AOC, Star Trek and Stargate? Three mediocre IPs (in terms of popularity and MMO potential) that are mostly hype right now, and likely to be bungled somewhere along the way. I'd put money on both WAR and LOTRO pulling in more than twice the subs any of those three get.
Where have you been for the last 40 years. Star Trek is anything but a mediocre IP. It's an industry unto itself. Not that I have faith in the mmo, but definitely not a mediocre IP.
Comments
I don't know what the subscriber population is and I don't care. As far as populace goes, there are only two things I care about.
1) The population on my server is just right. The cities are 'bustling' the roads between villages and cites are well traveled and there is always someone to adventure with if you like. Any more people and it's going to get too crowded. For whatever reason, Tursh has become a hot-spot and is actually crowded compared to 1-2 weeks ago. Any less people, and it becomes to sparse.... I like to see the cities active with people.
2) I want VG to have enough people to pay for keeping it up and running. I love this game, it's deep, complex and there is much, much more to come. I want to play it for a long time.
So, I don't care if VG has more, equal to, or 1/100 the population of WoW. I didn't like WoW or many of the people that played it. Any comparison between the two is apples and oranges.
And your analogy of a 32 inch screen tv is stupid, because when you take the tv home and plug it in, it works with all the features, doesint it? Despite the fact that we all payed the same for this game and are paying the same monthly fee, most with decent computers, the game is working differently for lots of people, superior computer or not, its the coding, not your uber pc. You got lucky with the right setup and right 3d card thats not messing with your game, lol. But that doesint mean you are free of the glitches and bugs that are occuring.
1. Dont think your right, considering by the time they started WoW there were more than just EQ around.
2.Uhh I played VSoH and this game is not easier, anywhere near solable or faster paced than EQ. I was a necro in EQ and could easily solo, also I could solo as a beastie or a druid.
As far as graphic are concerned. Ill take gameplay over graphics any day. Most people into graphics are pervs wanting to stare at dark elf boobs
1. Dont think your right, considering by the time they started WoW there were more than just EQ around.
2.Uhh I played VSoH and this game is not easier, anywhere near solable or faster paced than EQ. I was a necro in EQ and could easily solo, also I could solo as a beastie or a druid.
As far as graphic are concerned. Ill take gameplay over graphics any day. Most people into graphics are pervs wanting to stare at dark elf boobs
I agree that gameplay > graphics. I disagree that VG is not easier than EQ; and I can't imagine how a fellow EQ'r would think that. Unless you mean EQ2?
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
Who the f*** said anything about a dozen players? I said 30+ players in ONE ROOM. And yes I think we all have an idea how the drooling masses have taken to WoW and we know all to well how the 5 polygon per model engine holds up under 60 man PVP battles.
My nephew who is 12 years old has a level 63 dwarf priest on one of the PVP servers and he loves it. Do you wonder how many 12 year olds will be able to play Vanguard to max level?
You dont need millions for a game to survive, Ultima online is still going with an estimated 30k pop. There was still 100k subscribers for DAOC last year, and they are doing fine.
True vanguard is probably more expensive to run, but they dont exactly have 50 servers either, anywhere near 100k is profitable enough to keep a game funded.
Only problem is both EQ and UO have paid their original investments off and their investments were more than half of what Vanguards is. Vanguard has $50-75 million of debt to payback, plus a staff of 100+, plus pay SOE for their services.
Vanguards minimum expense has to be close to 100k subs if not 150k in order to keep everything the way they have it.
As to the OP.
Vanguard Players does not magically delete the 10 day freebie accounts characters when their trial is up. They are still there so that 300k characters still includes the 10 day trials. And if your going to average you have to assume half of the possible character slots which is 4. So that would put Vanguard around 75k accounts. Now how many of those are 10 day accounts versus paid box accounts we don't know.
But each paid box came with a minimum of 1 buddy key while the CE came with 10. So there are at least double to triple/quadruple the number of box accounts worth of buddy keys out there. How many of those are used? Don't know. The fact that the servers are so busy and that they haven't opened any new ones indicates the majority of the players are on trials because they would NOT open a new server based on trial accounts. They will open another server when the box sales warrent it when all the trials are gone. They don't want empty servers when all the trial players are gone.
Anarch, I had to ROFL at the "5 polygons per model" comment. Pure genius.
Stoney, where did you hear $50 to $75mil? I read that it was "nearing $20 mil."
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
I miss DAoC
E8400@ 4.0Ghz ~ Saphire HD 4870 ~ 6GB DDR2@ 860MhZ
not sure i follow on why the 10 day thing is gone. me and the 2 people i know irl still have 14 buddy keys combined(1 only is mine i dont get ce)
but anyway, lvl 10 takes a few hours only. alot of people have multiple lvl 10+ i have 4 personaly and don't play all that much.
~70k accounts i think, max.
50-75mi ?
i heard something around the second most expensive mmo out there . . .
20-40mi MAX.
M
However, selling the box doesn't really matter. 1 charge of $50-$80 bucks is NOT where the profit is at for the game;, it's the long term subscribers.
I would guess, however, that if this game is like the average MMO, 20-25% of that playerbase will leave after the free month is up.
I'd say no more than 60k players retain their subscription to Vanguard past the first month (from the initial wave). This does NOT include any new purchases in February.
My 2 cents.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I think vanguard will do "okay", I don't believe it'll pass the 500k mark. In fact if it did, I'd be absolutely astounded.
Shadus
The reason WoW does so well is it is simple you can do 2 things in the game which is PVP or RAID and its not hard at all which means you can be a complete dullard and still manage to reach level 70 and do well in pvp and get some epic gear. Not to mention you can run WoW on some average rigs and it even runs on Linux which means it is much more accessable then Vanguard which means more people are able to play it.
Vanguard on the other hand has major performance issues, bugs and at the moment to get the very best out of the game you need a very good rig to get acceptable performance, regardless what people say. It doesn't rely on a spoon fed style of game play which means any one new to the MMO genere will find it very difficult to get their head round the game play so you instantly cut a massive number of people out of the equation as long term subscribers. Vanguard also offers nothing new interms of innovation, game play etc so there is nothing to make people want to play the game other than it's another phantasy MMO and the fact that SOE is connected to the game is another big turn off for people.
So at the end of it your actual audience willing to play this game is people like myself who have nothing better to do who have been wondering from MMO to MMO since SWG was killed off (refering to the NGE implementation), people who have grown tired of their existing MMO and want to give VG a shot, existing Station subsribers or people who have been playing SOE games for a number of years etc and the loyal SOE fan base (believe it or not they do have fans).
So if you want to see VG break the 300k mark or 500k mark the game needs a major redesign already. The only MMO's I can see in the near future which have the potential to be huge hits are Age of Conan which is a proper 3rd Gen MMO and offers some new aspects to MMO gaming, Star Trek due to its huge fan base and infinite potential and the Stargate MMO again because of it's popularity and infinite potential.
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
Still, I think people hold onto the idea that Vanguard will be much better in six months, or a year, at which point subs will come pouring in. That's just not going to happen. Not with all the new games that will be out, while Vanguard will be old news. It's vital for an MMO to grab thier audience as soon as the gates open, and Sigil totally dropped that ball.
So, looks to me like they'll hover around 100k. May eventually grow, as the game improves, but not much. May hit 200k if they're lucky. At least the audience that does hang in there is likely to be in for the long haul.
What concerns me about those numbers is not fear that the game will be shut down - its clearly safer than that. However, I don't know how much SOE will want to pay for continuing development, if its going to take them years just to get thier investment back. And Vanguard really needs that, or those numbers will only go down, not up.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I agree with most of what you're saying, but that last part? AOC, Star Trek and Stargate? Three mediocre IPs (in terms of popularity and MMO potential) that are mostly hype right now, and likely to be bungled somewhere along the way. I'd put money on both WAR and LOTRO pulling in more than twice the subs any of those three get.
Well i've looked at Vanguard characters and only 60k characters are level 11-50 :P Theres like 260k that are 1 - 10 and 90k who are level 1! Most people are just spamming the characters list with names like aaaa aaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaa etc etc. and arn't real characters. Also people will atleast have 2 characters.
I'm going to say teh active sub base after the free month will be around 30k
Before people keep on burning brain cells trying to figure out numbers, a small note. SOE's pages of counting toons, displaying discoveries, deaths etc , never have and probably never will work correctly in any game. So dont really try to figure out something based on wrong data
. One way to do it would be to find how many people are needed to be online to tag a server high (If I am not mistaken for Vanguard is 5-7K) and see how many people are playing at peak time. Still that doesnt tell you what is the turnover , and how many people dont play at peak hours etc , but can easily give you a minimum. I mean if 10 servers at some point tag as high population , this means that current population is at minimum 50k .
Personnaly I get the feel this game currently has about 80-100k subscribers. Which is a normal for a game of its kind. For comparison here are some of the numbers during the first few months of some MMORG's with their peak suubscription numbers.
Asheron's Call 60k first 3 months peak at 120k.
Anarchy Online 60k after 2 months which was its peak
Horizons 35k after 2 montsh which was the peak
DnD online 90k after 2 months
Everquest 100k after 6 months peak was 4 years later at 550k
Ultima Online 50k after 3 months peak was 3 years later 250k
Dark Age of Camelot 110k after 1 month peak was 1 year later at 250k
EVE online 15k after a few months, currently at 120k and rising
EQ2 320k after 1 month which was a peak, stabilized at around 200k after a few months
SWG 300k after 1 month was a peak.
I am not including MMORG's with no subscription (guild wars, lineage's) and WoW who's numbers are the exception and not the rule of the genre.
I think the peak of Vanguard will come at the end of this year. Most people will come following word of mouth when the game is more polished and bug free, and if I can judge by myself this isnt happening yet. I cant really recomment it to my friends just yet. For two reasons. First because the game is not ready yet. There a lot of things they must work, fix, balance etc. Second is that I need a big head start so I can use my dragon to harrass all my newbie friends when they come over.
1 million eh? I'd be suprised to see Vanguard ever get that many paying customers.... maybe if they fix the game, in a year or two they'll have 500,000 at most. it's a game not designed for massive appeal, but for those who want something more "hardcore" but unfortunately they got a bug ridden alpha phase game in a shiny box...
WoW will break 10 million before Vanguard gets 500,000
that's my bet
Wishfull dreaming at best.
Let's wait till the 30 days free trial is up on all the box sales and see where it stands.
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I agree with most of what you're saying, but that last part? AOC, Star Trek and Stargate? Three mediocre IPs (in terms of popularity and MMO potential) that are mostly hype right now, and likely to be bungled somewhere along the way. I'd put money on both WAR and LOTRO pulling in more than twice the subs any of those three get.
Where have you been for the last 40 years. Star Trek is anything but a mediocre IP. It's an industry unto itself. Not that I have faith in the mmo, but definitely not a mediocre IP.