If you want to talk about RV then go to their forum and make a post, they never made a public statement that they are the second largest MMO, Turbine did. That's what this discussion is about.
The point that is being discussed here is the difference between claiming that 4 million characters have been created since the game began and paying customers, which is what most MMORPGs use as a measure of success.
Turbine claimed that LoTRO was the second largest MMO by stating that 4 million characters had been created. Why, even Knight Online (KO) has had 10 million players create accounts, let alone characters. If we are just using characters and accounts to declare how large a game is then KO has LoTRO KO'd.
If you want to talk about RV then go to their forum and make a post, they never made a public statement that they are the second largest MMO, Turbine did. That's what this discussion is about. The point that is being discussed here is the difference between claiming that 4 million characters have been created since the game began and paying customers, which is what most MMORPGs use as a measure of success. Turbine claimed that LoTRO was the second largest MMO by stating that 4 million characters had been created. Why, even Knight Online (KO) has had 10 million players create accounts, let alone characters. If we are just using characters and accounts to declare how large a game is then KO has LoTRO KO'd. http://www.knightonlineworld.com/features.php
As both a creative and technological innovator, Turbine has created three award-winning online entertainment franchises -- Asheron's Call®, Dungeons & Dragons Online™: Stormreach™, and The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™. Turbine’s most recent title, The Lord of the Rings Online (www.lotro.com), has quickly become the second largest MMORPG*. MMORPG are a particularly hot segment of the video game industry as an increasing number of consumers turn to virtual worlds and online games for entertainment.
I'll give you a clue, it's something that Turbine decided to start using a couple of weeks after making the claim that they were the second largest MMORPG.
Do you know what an asterisk is? I'll give you a clue, it's something that Turbine decided to start using a couple of weeks after making the claim that they were the second largest MMORPG.
People will believe anything they read is the problem Sempi..
Turbine said 2nd largest, so they can't be lieing according to everybody posting their copied comment...I mean really...
Also of note...news today!
"Turbine has announced they have broken through in stem cell research and have created the first fanboi clones in history....4 million clones and counting.."
Also of note...news today! "Turbine has announced they have broken through in stem cell research and have created the first fanboi clones in history....4 million clones and counting.." Cheers!
LMFAO!
"Send in the clones!"
Yes, I read LOTRO has 50 bazillion active subs who are always logged on everyday, I read it as I typed it, its gotta be true!
I can tell the reading comprehension level in general is pretty low
Number 1 item: if you enjoy LOTRO more power to ya! Who cares if it's 50 subscribers or 50 million.
Item - everyone has to remember, that WoW subscriber numbers are accurate -because- it's owned publicly. Those numbers are reported and the financial records match. They must or the SEC would be investigating.
Item - Turbine claimed 4 million "characters make Middle Earth their home". CHARACTERS. NPCs=characters. PCs=characters. How many NPCs are in the game? Are they counting each NPC on each server? We will never know. They never claimed PCs.
Item - "2nd largest MMO". Large WHAT? Large in graphical area? Memory usage? Physical size of their server farms? Fattest development team? Quantity of employees? ??
Far as Lotro going "under", I suspect it has a fairly long life. The challenge will be when the money from lifetime subscriptions runs out. Because monthly subs are your bread and butter.
Again - it's largely all irrelevant! If you enjoy the game GREAT!
Do you know what an asterisk is? I'll give you a clue, it's something that Turbine decided to start using a couple of weeks after making the claim that they were the second largest MMORPG.
People will believe anything they read is the problem Sempi..
Turbine said 2nd largest, so they can't be lieing according to everybody posting their copied comment...I mean really...
Also of note...news today!
"Turbine has announced they have broken through in stem cell research and have created the first fanboi clones in history....4 million clones and counting.."
Cheers!
Hysterical Problem is we have a generation of people who have been proactively taught not to be perceptive, precoucious, critical thinkers, investigative or skeptical of people with power. Here's a previous reply I posted that speaks to this:
"Figured I'd redisplay your message in white so people can at least see what it is they're supposed to be ridiculing. The fact is in your ignorance of the way history, education and the world works you are unable to come to conclusions that don't come out of a textbook or a newspaper. Observations in the context of study. Mindlessly discounting the possibility is what these various groups hope you do. THAT is why public school is free. It teaches you how not to think. How not to question the official story. Tell me, when you were in school, did anyone ever question HOW the teacher knew the things he/she taught you? Maybe, but was it questioned as to its truth? Probably not. Questions weren't a litmus test on truth, they were for clarification. Research methods and Critical thought are, for the most part, not taught or cultivated in our youth unless you went to a specialized or private school that did. I mean,does grading on whether a child can regurgitate "facts" an accurate assessment of intelligence? Isn't it true one of the characteristics people want attributed to themselves more than any is intelligence? Doesn't it then become easy to just accept what you hear and be considered smart than to question it and be considered stupid or crazy? Its how you control thought, and therefore conversation, and again, why public school is free. Sound crazy? Its one of the tenets of Marx's Communist Manifesto. Here's a test for how evidence or dogma based your thinking is:
1) In the above link appears a thousand year old piece of pottery depicting a man riding a triceratops. If a) man and dinosaurs are seperated by 65 million years and b) should therefore not know what a triceratops looks like. Why is it depicted as perfectly as it is?You can read the whole site here: http://www.bible.ca/tracks/peru-tomb-art.htm
The question now is, does anything you've seen in these videos cause you to question anything you thought you knew before? Does it make you question the way the world works? If so, and this is the world we live in, isn't it more intelligent to seek the truth and find it than to blindly accept what we are told and really never know? Could so few control so many while being 100% honest and things be as they are? Who told you that everything is based on coincidence? Even nature has laws that it follows like cause and effect, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, or the law of entropy, all things in the universe tend towards chaos, nothing falls together, everything falls apart. If these laws display themselves throughout the observable cosmos, why then are we taught that the universe is random and that order came from the chaos of a Big Bang? Why do they teach things just happen, nothing means anything and no matter what, conspiracies are relegated exclusively to the realm of theory?"
Turbine announced they would be adding free zones and content before the game even launched. It has been part of their marketing strategy for some time, including their other games. Asheron's call for sure, I don't know enough first hand about D&Donline, but I've read lots of content updates for it.
You should really do some research before making such wild claims.
That Gamespot article is just as bad as this Boston Globe article. Don't quote either one if you want to be somewhat reliable.
Gamespot derived their numbers of boxes sold from Midway's quarterly report... which made no mention of Lotro or boxes sold. It did mention a $10 million dollar profit... but that's it. Gamespot then used some kinda magic mojo formula to come up with the box sales.
To see the table I have included below... you'll have to go to the PDF that they have a link for in the above link, I've included a link to the PDF here as well:
MIDWAY GAMES INC. Net Revenues by Platform (in thousands) Three Months Ending June 30, 2007
2007
2006
Personal Computer
$ 10,026
31.5%
$ 4,978
19.2%%
If you don't believe me... look on the internet for as long as you want to try and find an official release of box sales. You won't find it. The box sales number is just like Boston Globes 800k subs. number... a complete guess without any clue as to it's accuracy.
Lets also take into account various high traffic or high profile gaming sites that seem to make remarks about LOTRO's health and well being that seems to shed some light on the overall success and likability of the MMO in question...
Basically, these comments are coming after the initial WoW factor...as I will agree the game is good at first...but it then falls into the "Been there, done that" category.
So, I believe overall, it will be difficult for Turbine to keep their numbers up, unless they start making some radical changes to the overall game play. They decided to keep it safe, and try to fall into the WoW gameplay mind set..But, I believe people are ready for something new, and games like LOTRO will fall onto the backburner...
To me the real test of LoTRO is how many people that don't fall into the "Been there, done that" crowd have they attracted. I suspect those players will be with the game for a long time because they haven't burnt out from other MMO's and they are fans of Middle Earth. This was where WoW really broadened the genre because a ton of players that had never experienced a MMO before and were fans of the Warcraft franchise were blown away. My first MMO was AC1 and I was blown away back in 99 and I stayed with that game for quite a while and eventually moved onto AC2.
Every single new MMO that launches will never keep veteran mmo players in this day and age. They cannot supply the content fast enough and whatever system they try and build will ulitimately be a treadmill type grind. I think Turbine's design philosophy is sound by not trying to cater to the hardcore gamer, because you can never satisfy those players anyway. The main players that will stay subscribbed are the ones that are totally new to MMO's and have not "been there and done that" in other games to burn out.
I myself am a little bit more bullish on Turbine as a company now that the game has launched. LoTRO was one of the smoothest launches of a MMO that I am aware of. I hope that with the new CEO they are gearing up for and IPO because they have one invester right here.
Unless you have some fiduciary interest in the game, what does it matter how many subs it has?
I can see that you might want to be sure there were others to play with, but beyond that it appears to be an attempt to make sure you are playing what everyone else is playing.
The amount of subs has absolutely no bearing on the quality of the game. Britney Spears has sold millions of CDs and her music sucks.
Gamespot did not derive the 172k number from Midway's quarterly report, they even specified right in the article that they got the number from NPD Group, Inc. Not only that, but they corrected it, which means they checked the number with NPD at least twice.
"The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar sold over 172,000 copies during the quarter, including the special edition of the game. (GameSpot originally reported erroneous NPD Group data putting the number at 71,000 units, and regrets the error.)"
More recently, Businessweek also reported a similar number of 200,000 from NPD.
"According to Anita Frazier, an analyst with NPD Group, since April the Lord of the Rings Online has sold some 200,000 copies at retail in the U.S. During that same period, World of Warcraft sold just over 335,000 units."
So the only thing you could possibly question is NPD's accuracy; and this is a reliable corporation that has made it their business to specifically track retail sales and markets.
The NPD Group, founded in 1967, is the leading global provider of consumer and retail market research information for a wide range of industries. We provide critical consumer behavior and point-of-sale (POS) information and industry expertise across more industries than any other market research company.
dragonace, Gamespot did not derive the 172k number from Midway's quarterly report, they even specified right in the article that they got the number from NPD Group, Inc. Not only that, but they corrected it, which means they checked the number with NPD at least twice.
"The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar sold over 172,000 copies during the quarter, including the special edition of the game. (GameSpot originally reported erroneous NPD Group data putting the number at 71,000 units, and regrets the error.)"
More recently, Businessweek also reported a similar number of 200,000 from NPD.
"According to Anita Frazier, an analyst with NPD Group, since April the Lord of the Rings Online has sold some 200,000 copies at retail in the U.S. During that same period, World of Warcraft sold just over 335,000 units."
So the only thing you could possibly question is NPD's accuracy; and this is a reliable corporation that has made it their business to specifically track retail sales and markets.
The NPD Group, founded in 1967, is the leading global provider of consumer and retail market research information for a wide range of industries. We provide critical consumer behavior and point-of-sale (POS) information and industry expertise across more industries than any other market research company.
Yes, I do question NPD Group and their accuracy. Do some digging into the whole business and you'll see what I mean. For one, NPD doesn't include any numbers from large discount stores... WalMart and Costco being the biggest examples. They also don't include any direct download sales. So yeah, I'd say their numbers... are a bit off.
I'm not saying that NPD Group is for or against LoTRo, it's just that the industry as a whole hasn't kept up with the changing times. The way they used to figure out total game sales worked for the 80's and into the early 90's... but times have changed. The way that NPD Group figures the box sales hasn't.
Another problem is that there isn't really any other place anyone can turn to get numbers on box sales of games. So, NPD Group has this monopoly on "fuzzy numbers". Seriously, do some checking at how NPD Group comes up with their box sales on PC Games; you might be a bit surprised.
"...NPD data does not include the largest mass merchandiser, Wal-Mart..."
"...Wal-Mart, the largest retailer of games, which in 2001 decided to stop supplying sales data to any researchers..."
Which goes back to what I've been saying. The only number that means anything is Midway's financial report. If you read the whole article from above it does state that NPD data is consistent, just not necessarily accurate. So you can use the data to see trends, just don't read a whole lot into the numbers themselves.
Edit:
Found the other article I had read before as well. It's not as revealing about NPD itself, but still interesting for those who haven't read it before:
Have I missed the point, is there a problem with LOTRO...?
Heh... nope.
The OP was wanting to speculate on subscription numbers, so I pointed out what I think are some flaws in the sources that he quoted, which I gave links to as well.
For those that care... they can decide which source they want to believe. I just thought it important for everyone to know that there is another side to the story that the OP was presenting.
For those that don't care one way or the other... they can flip a coin.
"...NPD data does not include the largest mass merchandiser, Wal-Mart..."
"...Wal-Mart, the largest retailer of games, which in 2001 decided to stop supplying sales data to any researchers..."
That's outdated information. Recently, June 6, 2007, Wal-Mart made an agreement with NPD Group, Inc. Why would Wal-Mart do this? Because they know that NPD data is reliable and valuable and they want access to it.
Aside from that, NPD has a panel of over 3.5 million consumers that report what they purchased and from where. When consumers are reporting their purchases, then a cross-section of all sales from all locations is captured, including Internet sales and companies that do not even participate.
Scroll down:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and NPD Group Announce Agreement
"...NPD data does not include the largest mass merchandiser, Wal-Mart..."
"...Wal-Mart, the largest retailer of games, which in 2001 decided to stop supplying sales data to any researchers..."
That's outdated information. Recently, June 6, 2007, Wal-Mart made an agreement with NPD Group, Inc. Why would Wal-Mart do this? Because they know that NPD data is reliable and valuable and they want access to it.
Aside from that, NPD has a panel of over 3.5 million consumers that report what they purchased and from where. When consumers are reporting their purchases, then a cross-section of all sales from all locations is captured, including Internet sales and companies that do not even participate.
Scroll down:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and NPD Group Announce Agreement
Heh... nice for WalMart. Don't see where it changes anything from those articles I quoted though.
I see a two-fold problem with this helping your argument:
1) The number you've been quoting from the GameSpot article which is supposed to be from NPD Group's numbers is for the 2nd quarter (April-June). Are you telling me that an agreement with WalMart reached on June 6th will reflect WalMart's customers from April-June? Heh... try again.
2) From the article you quoted showing that NPD Group and WalMart have reached an agreement... here is the important part:
"...whereby NPD will provide Wal-Mart and Sam's Club with consumer tracking data..."
"...NPD will produce reports customized for Wal-Mart, enabling the retailer and select vendors to view information for Wal-Mart and Sam's Club consumer segments..."
Do you see any part in that agreement that shows that WalMart data will be made available or included in anything outside of internal WalMart reports? I sure don't.
Edit: Almost forgot to mention. You have forgot to mention to everyone that NPD Group data for PC games sales ONLY represents U.S. data. They are NOT including any data outside of U.S. sales. Just thought in your effort of totally truthful information... that should be made clear to everyone.
The original post had quite a few errors and logical errors in it;
1. The game has not been free to play until recently - factual error. The game did ship with a free trial for friends, but that is only one per sale.
2. If EQ2 has 185K subscribers, and LOTRO claims to be #2, it would have at a minimum 185,001 subscribers (WoW and EQ2 both being North American developed games) Factual Error
3. Trial players are not going to make 55 characters or anything close to that. In a week, maybe they make 10 characters. Even if you say the average player made 10 characters (which I think is probably still a bit high, but about the number I made) that's 800K people at the start of September. They would have to just get one in four to be suscribing to beat your estimate.- Logical Error
dragonace, you clearly do not understand what NPD Group Inc. is or what their business involves. That's your fault, go read up on them, I'm not going to give you lessons.
Why do you think Wal-mart, one of the largest retailers in the world, values NPD's data?
Answer that and it should help you understand that NPDs numbers are reliable.
grimfall, your post is not worth replying to, but what the heck, I'll include you in my bump.
Are free trials for friends not free trials?
You don't understand the relationship presented, try reading it again. EQ is developed by Sony which is a Japanese company. If anything is likely true, Lord of The Rings Online has less than 182,000 subscribers.
Of course trial players are not likely to make 55 characters, nor are most people. You missed the point. The point was that there are some that create one character and some that create 55, most fall somewhere inbetween and the average likely is on the lower end, but the maximum characters is certainly not five. Also, not all characters ever created are now active on paying accounts. This was only used to obtain a rough estimate initially and correct the 800k error, the other facts were used to arrive at the final estimate.
dragonace, you clearly do not understand what NPD Group Inc. is or what their business involves. That's your fault, go read up on them, I'm not going to give you lessons. Why do you think Wal-mart, one of the largest retailers in the world, values NPD's data? Answer that and it should help you understand that NPDs numbers are reliable. Heh... you clearly didn't read any of that article I posted. The numbers are good for seeing trends... not for being accurate. Here is the quote: "Nevertheless, Markovich echoes a universal complaint about overall accuracy. "The numbers themselves don't correlate highly with the actual sales numbers the publishers put out." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- grimfall, your post is not worth replying to, but what the heck, I'll include you in my bump. Are free trials for friends not free trials? You don't understand the relationship presented, try reading it again. EQ is developed by Sony which is a Japanese company. If anything is likely true, Lord of The Rings Online has less than 182,000 subscribers. Of course trial players are not likely to make 55 characters, nor are most people. You missed the point. The point was that there are some that create one character and some that create 55, most fall somewhere inbetween and the average likely is on the lower end, but the maximum characters is certainly not five. Also, not all characters ever created are now active on paying accounts. This was only used to obtain a rough estimate initially and correct the 800k error, the other facts were used to arrive at the final estimate.
LOL! Oh, I understand alright. I just don't think they are the all-omnipotent God that you seem to think they are.
You obviously don't understand the meaning of the word monopoly and understand how money is made in the information business. It's all about marketing... nice to see it's working on you.
Heh... nice dodge of answering my 2 faults to your argument though.
Like I said... you can spin your information any way you want... that's your right, it's your opinion. I'll just come along behind you and make sure that people know there is another side to that coin as well.
You are still complaining about NPD Group, Inc. numbers? Even without NPD sales numbers the other facts, provided by Turbine themselves, still put LoTRO subscription numbers at between 100,000 - and 182,000.
Multi-billion dollar companies like Wal-mart, EMI Music, T-FAL, Valvoline, Hasbro and Toshiba trust NPD's research and numbers, but they are not good enough for Mr. Internet poster, dragonace.
Comments
If you want to talk about RV then go to their forum and make a post, they never made a public statement that they are the second largest MMO, Turbine did. That's what this discussion is about.
The point that is being discussed here is the difference between claiming that 4 million characters have been created since the game began and paying customers, which is what most MMORPGs use as a measure of success.
Turbine claimed that LoTRO was the second largest MMO by stating that 4 million characters had been created. Why, even Knight Online (KO) has had 10 million players create accounts, let alone characters. If we are just using characters and accounts to declare how large a game is then KO has LoTRO KO'd.
http://www.knightonlineworld.com/features.php
As both a creative and technological innovator, Turbine has created three award-winning online entertainment franchises -- Asheron's Call®, Dungeons & Dragons Online™: Stormreach™, and The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™. Turbine’s most recent title, The Lord of the Rings Online (www.lotro.com), has quickly become the second largest MMORPG*. MMORPG are a particularly hot segment of the video game industry as an increasing number of consumers turn to virtual worlds and online games for entertainment.
Do you know what an asterisk is?
I'll give you a clue, it's something that Turbine decided to start using a couple of weeks after making the claim that they were the second largest MMORPG.
Turbine said 2nd largest, so they can't be lieing according to everybody posting their copied comment...I mean really...
Also of note...news today!
"Turbine has announced they have broken through in stem cell research and have created the first fanboi clones in history....4 million clones and counting.."
Cheers!
"Send in the clones!"
Yes, I read LOTRO has 50 bazillion active subs who are always logged on everyday, I read it as I typed it, its gotta be true!
I can tell the reading comprehension level in general is pretty low
Number 1 item: if you enjoy LOTRO more power to ya! Who cares if it's 50 subscribers or 50 million.
Item - everyone has to remember, that WoW subscriber numbers are accurate -because- it's owned publicly. Those numbers are reported and the financial records match. They must or the SEC would be investigating.
Item - Turbine claimed 4 million "characters make Middle Earth their home". CHARACTERS. NPCs=characters. PCs=characters. How many NPCs are in the game? Are they counting each NPC on each server? We will never know. They never claimed PCs.
Item - "2nd largest MMO". Large WHAT? Large in graphical area? Memory usage? Physical size of their server farms? Fattest development team? Quantity of employees? ??
Far as Lotro going "under", I suspect it has a fairly long life. The challenge will be when the money from lifetime subscriptions runs out. Because monthly subs are your bread and butter.
Again - it's largely all irrelevant! If you enjoy the game GREAT!
People will believe anything they read is the problem Sempi..Turbine said 2nd largest, so they can't be lieing according to everybody posting their copied comment...I mean really...
Also of note...news today!
"Turbine has announced they have broken through in stem cell research and have created the first fanboi clones in history....4 million clones and counting.."
Cheers!
Hysterical
Problem is we have a generation of people who have been proactively taught not to be perceptive, precoucious, critical thinkers, investigative or skeptical of people with power. Here's a previous reply I posted that speaks to this:
"Figured I'd redisplay your message in white so people can at least see what it is they're supposed to be ridiculing. The fact is in your ignorance of the way history, education and the world works you are unable to come to conclusions that don't come out of a textbook or a newspaper. Observations in the context of study. Mindlessly discounting the possibility is what these various groups hope you do. THAT is why public school is free. It teaches you how not to think. How not to question the official story. Tell me, when you were in school, did anyone ever question HOW the teacher knew the things he/she taught you? Maybe, but was it questioned as to its truth? Probably not. Questions weren't a litmus test on truth, they were for clarification. Research methods and Critical thought are, for the most part, not taught or cultivated in our youth unless you went to a specialized or private school that did. I mean,does grading on whether a child can regurgitate "facts" an accurate assessment of intelligence? Isn't it true one of the characteristics people want attributed to themselves more than any is intelligence? Doesn't it then become easy to just accept what you hear and be considered smart than to question it and be considered stupid or crazy? Its how you control thought, and therefore conversation, and again, why public school is free. Sound crazy? Its one of the tenets of Marx's Communist Manifesto. Here's a test for how evidence or dogma based your thinking is:
http://www.bible.ca/tracks/peru-tomb-rock-art-man-riding-triceratops.jpg
1) In the above link appears a thousand year old piece of pottery depicting a man riding a triceratops. If a) man and dinosaurs are seperated by 65 million years and b) should therefore not know what a triceratops looks like. Why is it depicted as perfectly as it is?You can read the whole site here: http://www.bible.ca/tracks/peru-tomb-art.htm
2) Have you ever seen this? http://www.iwilltryit.com/fixed1.htm "It's not the votes that count, it's who counts the votes."
-- Josef Stalin --
3) Did you know? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo61EI8guSU
4) Flouride in your water and in your toothpaste? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-ho282kv5o&mode=related&search=
5) the NAU? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kjsy2Z3kdI&mode=related&search= , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxzs46Nxohk
6) Free Energy Myth? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWOxnXKB8VQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt5z8L4LBJE&mode=related&search= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6MDHF39XmU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFGiWiXMHn0&mode=related&search=
7) Martian Chronicles? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u-20g7Bwdw
The question now is, does anything you've seen in these videos cause you to question anything you thought you knew before? Does it make you question the way the world works? If so, and this is the world we live in, isn't it more intelligent to seek the truth and find it than to blindly accept what we are told and really never know? Could so few control so many while being 100% honest and things be as they are? Who told you that everything is based on coincidence? Even nature has laws that it follows like cause and effect, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, or the law of entropy, all things in the universe tend towards chaos, nothing falls together, everything falls apart. If these laws display themselves throughout the observable cosmos, why then are we taught that the universe is random and that order came from the chaos of a Big Bang? Why do they teach things just happen, nothing means anything and no matter what, conspiracies are relegated exclusively to the realm of theory?"
Unplug and seek for yourself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTN3s2iVKKI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dib2-HBsF08
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
U know the # has be low if they are giving out free expansion or addon if u want to call it.
Turbine announced they would be adding free zones and content before the game even launched. It has been part of their marketing strategy for some time, including their other games. Asheron's call for sure, I don't know enough first hand about D&Donline, but I've read lots of content updates for it.
You should really do some research before making such wild claims.
I really dont care if they have 200K or 1 million subs as long as they have a good thing going like now.
It all comes down to how many that is playing on the server you are playing on.
___________________________________________
Read this thread for more details:
www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/147560
Here is a snippet of the details:
That Gamespot article is just as bad as this Boston Globe article. Don't quote either one if you want to be somewhat reliable.
Gamespot derived their numbers of boxes sold from Midway's quarterly report... which made no mention of Lotro or boxes sold. It did mention a $10 million dollar profit... but that's it. Gamespot then used some kinda magic mojo formula to come up with the box sales.
Here is the link to Midway's sales # :
www.midway.com/rxpage/mpr_12064.html
To see the table I have included below... you'll have to go to the PDF that they have a link for in the above link, I've included a link to the PDF here as well:
www.midway.com/assets/press/documents/MWY_Q2_2007.pdf
MIDWAY GAMES INC. Net Revenues by Platform (in thousands)
Three Months Ending June 30, 2007
If you don't believe me... look on the internet for as long as you want to try and find an official release of box sales. You won't find it. The box sales number is just like Boston Globes 800k subs. number... a complete guess without any clue as to it's accuracy.
Lets also take into account various high traffic or high profile gaming sites that seem to make remarks about LOTRO's health and well being that seems to shed some light on the overall success and likability of the MMO in question...
For example
Kotaku
Ancient Gaming Noob
To name just a couple...
Basically, these comments are coming after the initial WoW factor...as I will agree the game is good at first...but it then falls into the "Been there, done that" category.
So, I believe overall, it will be difficult for Turbine to keep their numbers up, unless they start making some radical changes to the overall game play. They decided to keep it safe, and try to fall into the WoW gameplay mind set..But, I believe people are ready for something new, and games like LOTRO will fall onto the backburner...
Cheers!
To me the real test of LoTRO is how many people that don't fall into the "Been there, done that" crowd have they attracted. I suspect those players will be with the game for a long time because they haven't burnt out from other MMO's and they are fans of Middle Earth. This was where WoW really broadened the genre because a ton of players that had never experienced a MMO before and were fans of the Warcraft franchise were blown away. My first MMO was AC1 and I was blown away back in 99 and I stayed with that game for quite a while and eventually moved onto AC2.
Every single new MMO that launches will never keep veteran mmo players in this day and age. They cannot supply the content fast enough and whatever system they try and build will ulitimately be a treadmill type grind. I think Turbine's design philosophy is sound by not trying to cater to the hardcore gamer, because you can never satisfy those players anyway. The main players that will stay subscribbed are the ones that are totally new to MMO's and have not "been there and done that" in other games to burn out.
I myself am a little bit more bullish on Turbine as a company now that the game has launched. LoTRO was one of the smoothest launches of a MMO that I am aware of. I hope that with the new CEO they are gearing up for and IPO because they have one invester right here.
Unless you have some fiduciary interest in the game, what does it matter how many subs it has?
I can see that you might want to be sure there were others to play with, but beyond that it appears to be an attempt to make sure you are playing what everyone else is playing.
The amount of subs has absolutely no bearing on the quality of the game. Britney Spears has sold millions of CDs and her music sucks.
dragonace,
Gamespot did not derive the 172k number from Midway's quarterly report, they even specified right in the article that they got the number from NPD Group, Inc. Not only that, but they corrected it, which means they checked the number with NPD at least twice.
More recently, Businessweek also reported a similar number of 200,000 from NPD.
So the only thing you could possibly question is NPD's accuracy; and this is a reliable corporation that has made it their business to specifically track retail sales and markets.
http://www.npd.com/corpServlet?nextpage=profile_s.html
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=1051427
More recently, Businessweek also reported a similar number of 200,000 from NPD.
So the only thing you could possibly question is NPD's accuracy; and this is a reliable corporation that has made it their business to specifically track retail sales and markets.
http://www.npd.com/corpServlet?nextpage=profile_s.html
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=1051427
Yes, I do question NPD Group and their accuracy. Do some digging into the whole business and you'll see what I mean. For one, NPD doesn't include any numbers from large discount stores... WalMart and Costco being the biggest examples. They also don't include any direct download sales. So yeah, I'd say their numbers... are a bit off.I'm not saying that NPD Group is for or against LoTRo, it's just that the industry as a whole hasn't kept up with the changing times. The way they used to figure out total game sales worked for the 80's and into the early 90's... but times have changed. The way that NPD Group figures the box sales hasn't.
Another problem is that there isn't really any other place anyone can turn to get numbers on box sales of games. So, NPD Group has this monopoly on "fuzzy numbers". Seriously, do some checking at how NPD Group comes up with their box sales on PC Games; you might be a bit surprised.
Found the article I had read before. Thought the OP and maybe some of the others might find it interesting since it's relevant to this thread:
findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PJQ/is_19_2/ai_n6227089
Here is the key point from this article:
"...NPD data does not include the largest mass merchandiser, Wal-Mart..."
"...Wal-Mart, the largest retailer of games, which in 2001 decided to stop supplying sales data to any researchers..."
Which goes back to what I've been saying. The only number that means anything is Midway's financial report. If you read the whole article from above it does state that NPD data is consistent, just not necessarily accurate. So you can use the data to see trends, just don't read a whole lot into the numbers themselves.
Edit:
Found the other article I had read before as well. It's not as revealing about NPD itself, but still interesting for those who haven't read it before:
www.rampantgames.com/blog/2007/01/why-pc-game-industry-figures-are.html
Have I missed the point, is there a problem with LOTRO...?
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Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
The OP was wanting to speculate on subscription numbers, so I pointed out what I think are some flaws in the sources that he quoted, which I gave links to as well.
For those that care... they can decide which source they want to believe. I just thought it important for everyone to know that there is another side to the story that the OP was presenting.
For those that don't care one way or the other... they can flip a coin.
That's outdated information. Recently, June 6, 2007, Wal-Mart made an agreement with NPD Group, Inc. Why would Wal-Mart do this? Because they know that NPD data is reliable and valuable and they want access to it.
Aside from that, NPD has a panel of over 3.5 million consumers that report what they purchased and from where. When consumers are reporting their purchases, then a cross-section of all sales from all locations is captured, including Internet sales and companies that do not even participate.
Scroll down:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and NPD Group Announce Agreement
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=1051427
That's outdated information. Recently, June 6, 2007, Wal-Mart made an agreement with NPD Group, Inc. Why would Wal-Mart do this? Because they know that NPD data is reliable and valuable and they want access to it.
Aside from that, NPD has a panel of over 3.5 million consumers that report what they purchased and from where. When consumers are reporting their purchases, then a cross-section of all sales from all locations is captured, including Internet sales and companies that do not even participate.
Scroll down:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and NPD Group Announce Agreement
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=1051427
Heh... nice for WalMart. Don't see where it changes anything from those articles I quoted though.
I see a two-fold problem with this helping your argument:
1) The number you've been quoting from the GameSpot article which is supposed to be from NPD Group's numbers is for the 2nd quarter (April-June). Are you telling me that an agreement with WalMart reached on June 6th will reflect WalMart's customers from April-June? Heh... try again.
2) From the article you quoted showing that NPD Group and WalMart have reached an agreement... here is the important part:
"...whereby NPD will provide Wal-Mart and Sam's Club with consumer tracking data..."
"...NPD will produce reports customized for Wal-Mart, enabling the retailer and select vendors to view information for Wal-Mart and Sam's Club consumer segments..."
Do you see any part in that agreement that shows that WalMart data will be made available or included in anything outside of internal WalMart reports? I sure don't.
Edit: Almost forgot to mention. You have forgot to mention to everyone that NPD Group data for PC games sales ONLY represents U.S. data. They are NOT including any data outside of U.S. sales. Just thought in your effort of totally truthful information... that should be made clear to everyone.
The original post had quite a few errors and logical errors in it;
1. The game has not been free to play until recently - factual error. The game did ship with a free trial for friends, but that is only one per sale.
2. If EQ2 has 185K subscribers, and LOTRO claims to be #2, it would have at a minimum 185,001 subscribers (WoW and EQ2 both being North American developed games) Factual Error
3. Trial players are not going to make 55 characters or anything close to that. In a week, maybe they make 10 characters. Even if you say the average player made 10 characters (which I think is probably still a bit high, but about the number I made) that's 800K people at the start of September. They would have to just get one in four to be suscribing to beat your estimate.- Logical Error
dragonace, you clearly do not understand what NPD Group Inc. is or what their business involves. That's your fault, go read up on them, I'm not going to give you lessons.
Why do you think Wal-mart, one of the largest retailers in the world, values NPD's data?
Answer that and it should help you understand that NPDs numbers are reliable.
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grimfall, your post is not worth replying to, but what the heck, I'll include you in my bump.
Are free trials for friends not free trials?
You don't understand the relationship presented, try reading it again. EQ is developed by Sony which is a Japanese company. If anything is likely true, Lord of The Rings Online has less than 182,000 subscribers.
Of course trial players are not likely to make 55 characters, nor are most people. You missed the point. The point was that there are some that create one character and some that create 55, most fall somewhere inbetween and the average likely is on the lower end, but the maximum characters is certainly not five. Also, not all characters ever created are now active on paying accounts. This was only used to obtain a rough estimate initially and correct the 800k error, the other facts were used to arrive at the final estimate.
LOL! Oh, I understand alright. I just don't think they are the all-omnipotent God that you seem to think they are.
You obviously don't understand the meaning of the word monopoly and understand how money is made in the information business. It's all about marketing... nice to see it's working on you.
Heh... nice dodge of answering my 2 faults to your argument though.
Like I said... you can spin your information any way you want... that's your right, it's your opinion. I'll just come along behind you and make sure that people know there is another side to that coin as well.
You are still complaining about NPD Group, Inc. numbers? Even without NPD sales numbers the other facts, provided by Turbine themselves, still put LoTRO subscription numbers at between 100,000 - and 182,000.
Multi-billion dollar companies like Wal-mart, EMI Music, T-FAL, Valvoline, Hasbro and Toshiba trust NPD's research and numbers, but they are not good enough for Mr. Internet poster, dragonace.