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Top Ten Most Popular MMOs by Active Users
GreenChaos
Member Posts: 2,268
gigaom.com/2007/06/13/top-ten-most-popular-mmos/
According to GigaOM (short version)
1. World of Warcraft, released 2004 - 8.5 million subscribers.
2. Habbo Hotel, released 2000 - 7.5 million active users.
3. RuneScape, released 2001 - 5 million active users.
4. Club Penguin, released 2006 - 4 million active users
5. Webkinz, released 2005 - 3.8 million active users.
6. Gaia Online, released 2003 - 2 million active users.
7. Guild Wars, released 2005 - 2 million active users.
8. Puzzle Pirates, released 2003 - 1.5 million active users.
9. Lineage I/II, released 1998 - 1 million subscribers.
10. Second Life, released 2003 - 500,000 active users.
According to GigaOM (short version)
1. World of Warcraft, released 2004 - 8.5 million subscribers.
2. Habbo Hotel, released 2000 - 7.5 million active users.
3. RuneScape, released 2001 - 5 million active users.
4. Club Penguin, released 2006 - 4 million active users
5. Webkinz, released 2005 - 3.8 million active users.
6. Gaia Online, released 2003 - 2 million active users.
7. Guild Wars, released 2005 - 2 million active users.
8. Puzzle Pirates, released 2003 - 1.5 million active users.
9. Lineage I/II, released 1998 - 1 million subscribers.
10. Second Life, released 2003 - 500,000 active users.
Comments
I just looked at Habbo Hotel, wow does it look stupid. What kind of idiots go to this thing?
The west likes to think it has the "best" or "biggest", fact is it doesn`t and hasn`t for a long time. Once Korea got into the market their LOCAL player base was enough to rocket everything their into orbit. This includes blizzards old game starcraft, which I guarantee has more active players than WoW ever could hope for.
This active subscriber discussion is pretty much useless, anyone who REALLY knows games worldwide can tell you there are many games that dwarf the supposed WoW juggernaut.
- Burying Threads Since 1979 -
The west likes to think it has the "best" or "biggest", fact is it doesn`t and hasn`t for a long time. Once Korea got into the market their LOCAL player base was enough to rocket everything their into orbit. This includes blizzards old game starcraft, which I guarantee has more active players than WoW ever could hope for.
This active subscriber discussion is pretty much useless, anyone who REALLY knows games worldwide can tell you there are many games that dwarf the supposed WoW juggernaut.
Which is all great. But of course none of those games that "dwarf" WoW make more money then WoW does. And that is all that matters. The eastern market might have 100x more players then the Western market does, but the western market is still more profitable.
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
I'll see you all on Webkinz, I'm gong to get my plush now. I hope they have PvP servers.
It was nice of them to do some field work in trying to determine active accounts (meaning people who regularily play the game and haven't cancelled or in the case of free games became inactive like 4 million out of the 9 million in Runescape)
My issue is they don't offer insight into how they collect their data so it leaves things open for debate for skeptics like tunabun.
In retrospect, I'm surprised Final Fantasy has been displaced by Second Life.
99.00001% of the time I dont know what im saying
99.99% of the time I know I spelled the word wrong or repeated a sentence.. I did it so you can better your grammar
100.00% of the time if to many people post after my post very mad ill most likely with a 5% chance saying something like ....""
100.00% of the time I lack sleep and magical things come out of my head and type my posts for me? Please yell at the magical things not me... I am but a puppet
They just need to add pvp.
I'd rather see the statistics for the MMOs that you: a.) dont have to pay for b.) dont have to pay a monthly fee for and c.) you have to purchase and pay a monthly fee for.
Personally I don't care if WoW has a huge community as I'm more a modern/sci-fi MMO player. I'm not much of an MMO compatable person so I've been searching out a sci-fi game to play with a possible social community on the side.
Currently playing: EVE Online and anticipating Tabula Rasa!
Whatever... I play what I like
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
If you say that about habbo hotel.....dont check Club Penguin =X
Omfg i dont know whats the worst =O
_____________________________________________________
Currently Playing: GTA4, Urban Terror, Aion,Dreamfall:TLJ,Fahrenheit
Some of the titles listed barely meets the definition of MMOs.
Webkinz and Gaia Online operator more like portals.
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/RZetlin
Perception is Reality.
Games I don't consider MMO are Diablo/guild wars (they aren't massive, just simple instances) and games like Club Penguin (just little chat rooms, not a world at all)
Until you can walk across a world from point A to point B, its not an MMORPG.
-Selek
something interesting in the list , some games have active players , other games have subcribers ...
Guild - http://lightness.goodforum.net/
Blog - http://www.pierrecarlier.com/
where's all the asian mmos?
pretty small sampling if wow is top on the list. i know guild wars is f2p, second life as well, so that should mean that f2p asian games aren't excluded either.
as it stands, that top ten thing looks pretty much like rubbish.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Ive also played guild wars not long ago and there is no way 2 million people are loging in. Maybe boxes sold but not "active" players. 500k at best.
Real Lineage Info
Gaia - a forum game, not a mmo
Habbo? --its a chat room with mini games,, meh this may as well be a mmo, probably better than some (do you remember Irth Online)
Penguin Party I wouldn't really call this massive, but who am I to judge....
Webzinz --from what I understand, this isn't even a game, its a toy made by the people that made beanie babies?
All in all, pretty inaccurate information, probably why I have never heard of gigiom.com
I also have a hard time believing that there are 7.5 million active accounts and one million paying customers in runescape.
Probably with WoW there is only maybe between maybe 500K to a max of 2.5 million active users in normal month(Lot more the First Month of the Expansion). I don't think there is any games out there that has near the active users of WoW.
Also what they never tell you will WoW is how many of the 8.5 million subscribers they have had since the game went live have been Closed do to Exploiting, Gold Farming and Related Spam, and other reasons. Which means that other games probably have a lot of Closed accounts as well.
I will start believing Game company active users when they start posting every month the Total Subscribers, Closed Accounts(Banned) and Monthly New Subscribers, Closed Accounts, Accounts Logged and a chart showing the amount of hours played per account that month.
This subject has come up before, and been vioulently shot down,
The fact you put "active users" as your definition means you must cross off some of the games on your list. Runescape is the most obvious example. It allows 1 user to make as many characters as they want. AND it keeps each character forever, even if theplayer stops playing for months or years. Active user does not = active characters.
Then there is the question of bots, and mules. Lineage is famous/infamous for this, as well as many other mmorpgs. WoW has its share of bots and mules since item storage is limited. Some mmorpgs count numer of player characters as their numer of accounts/users. Other mmorpgs count number of accounts as numer of users. Example: Joe plays EverQuest. Joe has 1 account, but 5 characters. Sony counts it as 1 user. Other mmorpg complanies would count it as 5 users. See how skewed the results can be?
And last, there is the question of PAID to play mmorpgs vs FREE to play mmorpgs. Obviously free mmorpgs will have far more active users than paid to play mmorpgs.
BTW, another site you should look at is this one:
www.mmorpgchart.com/
This site not only gives numbers, it tells what its SOURCES are for each mmorpg, and how reliable each source is.