Should this site cover Habbo Hotel?

Yeebo

I personally don't have much interest in Barbie Online or whatever, but what few gamers seem to realize is that WoW is on the verge of being marginalized in MMO space by browser games for kids and soccer moms.  The top ten MMOs (at least a few months ago):

gigaom.com/2007/06/13/top-ten-most-popular-mmos/

From the article, the top five MMOs, in terms of active users are:

1. WoW (8.5 million)

2. Habbo Hotel (7.5 million)

3. Runescape (5 million)

4. Club Penguin (4 million)

5. Webkinz (3.8 million)

You have to go down to seven to pick up another game that this site convers, GW, which is also FtP.

What made me think of this was a more recent article, where developers were interviewed about the strengths of the Habbo Hotel approach versus the WoW approach:

www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php

 

From a response in that article:

"I am far more likely to remain an active part of the Habbo community even after my initial interest has waned because I am not paying $15/month like I am with WoW. $15/month virtually ensures that as soon as I am done playing the game, I am constantly evaluating whether it's worth paying to remain in the game world just to socialize. With free to play/web based gaming, I can stay in the game world for free, interacting with others and therefore providing them "content" (in the form of me, a real live player), who in turn are convinced by that activity to participate in the world financially. Everyone's happy."

Food for thought.

 

brihtwulf

It's not even a GAME...  It's a teen chat room (probably filled with middle-aged pedophiles), and it's completely web-based...  You might as well put mIRC on the list if you allowed this up there.  Granted, there are some "games" on the list like Second Life (which should also be OFF the list), but this Habbo Hotel garbage is CLEARLY not acceptable.

SBC3

That game is so stupid...

Ozmodan

You know it is kind of embarrassing when you don't think before writing a post citing numbers without thinking about the relativity of them.

If you had spent just a little time thinking, you would realize that the f2p games all report anyone that ever even applied for an account, while pay to play only report active subscriptions.   Pretty big difference.

That kind of throws your silly numbers out the window.   There is really no way to actually compare the free to play verses the pay to play. 

 

SBC3

Originally posted by Ozmodan


You know it is kind of embarrassing when you don't think before writing a post citing numbers without thinking about the relativity of them.
If you had spent just a little time thinking, you would realize that the f2p games all report anyone that ever even applied for an account, while pay to play only report active subscriptions.   Pretty big difference.
That kind of throws your silly numbers out the window.   There is really no way to actually compare the free to play verses the pay to play. 
 

This is True...  Unless they count who logs in for at least so much time a day but why would they?

Aguy

I personally don't think any game deserves to be an MMO if it has an option to (or you are forced to to actually do anything) buy stuff for real money.  I tried Habbo and it's just a useless way for people to socialize who can't do so in real life.

Think about it: if you get Habbo Hotel, to even possibly do anything remotely useful, you will probably have to pay more then $15, about every 2 weeks.

Shoal

This site does cover it.

Didn't you even bother to look at the 'Game List'?

Probably does not look like it because no one cares much for this style of game and they do not advertise here.

So, no visibility.

Have fun with it, though.

Munki

Different audience, different costs, different fish.

I know first hand that any mmorpg that costs 15 bucks a month cost a LOT more to develop than Club penguin. I know because I live in the town where it started and its a local hero. It was very small, with little overhead, and their server room is raindrop in the ocean compaired to what game like WoW have to deal with.

Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin are chatrooms with a few flash/java games thrown in. There are no stats to track, combat to watch, 3rd dimension to calculate. No physics, no raids, no dungeons. No groups, several hundred people aren't on the same map.

This is why its free. The overhead to run it is fractions of what it take to run WoW.

But then again, look at the product. I have no interest in playing Habbo hotel, where as WoW is a fun way for me to pass my time. Not to mention the 15 dollars stopped being an issue once I moved out of home. 15 bucks = 2 drinks at the bar = gas to drive around town once = a movie ticket and a drink = 1 month of entertainment. I think more people are realizing this. I mean heck, my cell is 35 bucks a month, and I play EQ2 way more than I use my Cellphone... not that I really play EQ2 that much with all my mid-terms happening around now.

When you boil it down. This is a site for mmorpg's, not virtual chat rooms. The audience here isn't interested in decking out our igloo or picking up a 13 year old girl by the swing set ala Habbo. They aren't really mmorpgs, they are chatrooms with large subscriber #'s. These numbers are hard to generate because you dont have to count paying accounts, so joe could make an account, and play for 5 mins, ooh theres another "subscriber."

So really, the #'s used by that article are simply comparing size to amount of seeds. Just like comparing Apple mmorpgs to Orange chatrooms.

I dont beleive we should include really seedy oranges among our very large apples, not matter how impressivly seedy they are. Let somebody else run a site for compairing virtual chat rooms. I dont beleive that, as a whole, we care about oranges.

Yeebo

 

Originally posted by Munki


Different audience, different costs, different fish.
I know first hand that any mmorpg that costs 15 bucks a month cost a LOT more to develop than Club penguin. I know because I live in the town where it started and its a local hero. It was very small, with little overhead, and their server room is raindrop in the ocean compaired to what game like WoW have to deal with.
Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin are chatrooms with a few flash/java games thrown in. There are no stats to track, combat to watch, 3rd dimension to calculate. No physics, no raids, no dungeons. No groups, several hundred people aren't on the same map.
This is why its free. The overhead to run it is fractions of what it take to run WoW.

But then again, look at the product. I have no interest in playing Habbo hotel, where as WoW is a fun way for me to pass my time. Not to mention the 15 dollars stopped being an issue once I moved out of home. 15 bucks = 2 drinks at the bar = gas to drive around town once = a movie ticket and a drink = 1 month of entertainment. I think more people are realizing this. I mean heck, my cell is 35 bucks a month, and I play EQ2 way more than I use my Cellphone... not that I really play EQ2 that much with all my mid-terms happening around now.
When you boil it down. This is a site for mmorpg's, not virtual chat rooms. The audience here isn't interested in decking out our igloo or picking up a 13 year old girl by the swing set ala Habbo. They aren't really mmorpgs, they are chatrooms with large subscriber #'s. These numbers are hard to generate because you dont have to count paying accounts, so joe could make an account, and play for 5 mins, ooh theres another "subscriber."
So really, the #'s used by that article are simply comparing size to amount of seeds. Just like comparing Apple mmorpgs to Orange chatrooms.
I dont beleive we should include really seedy oranges among our very large apples, not matter how impressivly seedy they are. Let somebody else run a site for compairing virtual chat rooms. I dont beleive that, as a whole, we care about oranges.

This is the kind of thoughtful response I was hoping for. 

And for the record, I don't think this site should cover these games in any more detail than it does.  Mainly because so few of us care about them or play them.  Of corse if I put that in the OP it kind of kills the discussion before it can get going.  I chose the title that I did to get responses more than anything.

 

Yeebo

Originally posted by Ozmodan


You know it is kind of embarrassing when you don't think before writing a post citing numbers without thinking about the relativity of them.
If you had spent just a little time thinking, you would realize that the f2p games all report anyone that ever even applied for an account, while pay to play only report active subscriptions.   Pretty big difference.
That kind of throws your silly numbers out the window.   There is really no way to actually compare the free to play verses the pay to play. 
 

They aren't my numbers, they are from the article.  That's what i meant by "from the article." 

You do rasie a valid point.  Note, however, that the article specifies "active users."  I presume that to be counted as active a user must have logged in within a certain amount of time (that is the clear implication of active).  But , I'm certain many of those publishers are being less stringent in their reporting than we would like.

Munki

1) I know it wasn't your number I was refering to the article.

2)"active players" is incredibly subjective. Active in the last day? week? month? 6 months? how active? etc...

Gameloading

 

Originally posted by Ozmodan


You know it is kind of embarrassing when you don't think before writing a post citing numbers without thinking about the relativity of them.
If you had spent just a little time thinking, you would realize that the f2p games all report anyone that ever even applied for an account, while pay to play only report active subscriptions.   Pretty big difference.
That kind of throws your silly numbers out the window.   There is really no way to actually compare the free to play verses the pay to play. 
 

 

The article clearly says "ACTIVE users". If the numbers only included accounts created, then those games wouldn't even be in the list. Westward Journey Online 2 has over 56 million accounts registrated, and Legend of Mir 2 has over 20 million accounts created.

Yeebo

Originally posted by Munki


1) I know it wasn't your number I was refering to the article.
2)"active players" is incredibly subjective. Active in the last day? week? month? 6 months? how active? etc...

I think you got mixed up as to who I was responding too in the post above your last one.  If you look at my response to your post all I do is compliment you and basically agree with you. 

Orca

My younger sister actually played this I found out.

I wouldn't want this site to cover it, as I couldn't imagine my 12y/o sister posting on a "gaming" site.

Habbo is a chat.

Munki

lol sorry about that.. ive gotten into the habit of ignoring peoples quotes half the time because they are generally irrelivant >.<