LOTRO has received critical acclaim from around the globe. Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG with an estimated 4 million characters calling Middle-earth their home. The game continues to grow with two massive updates that have increased the world by over 20%:" wow, talk about false advertisement. both Lineage and Lineage 2 kick Lotro's ass when it comes to size in subscriber/playerbase.
Unless you have proof to show that they do not have 4 million characters, your statement of false advertising is completely untrue.
@ JonMichael and Die scream,
I was not refering to the characters created part, I was talking about this part:
" Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG"
Lotro is faaar from the 2nd largest MMORPG. In fact, they are not even close.
so who's the first and who's the second Mr. know it all.
Since Lotro is talking characters created:
Number one would probably be Westward Journey Online 2, last thing I read is that it had over 70 million accounts created (yes, thats accounts, but I think its safe to assume that the characters created are somewhere between 150 ~ 200 million). Then there is Yulgang (Scions of Fate in NA) with over 40 million accounts. Then there are lots of other MMO's that are well ahead of Lotro in size. Legend of Mir 2, Ragnarok Online, Lineage, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, and many, many more. In fact, Lotro probably isn't even in the top 100.
Its not about proving this game is better than that. All MMOs release numbers to advertise their game. Turbine are the ones who came out and said they have 4 million charactors, of course people are going to discuss what that means. No one is saying they don't have 4 million charactors, hell, CoX released those numbers too, I think it was like 20 some-odd million, they have around 150K subscribers.
Fair enough. The whole "debating over numbers" thing just makes me wonder, though. People come out of the wood-work, and suddenly start debating like they're experts on the topic.
I do wonder if that statement was even reviewed, much less approved, though. I mean, anyone following MMOs will know that there are games out there with, even in terms of characters, far larger populations.
This isn't the first time I've heard of marketing departments fudging it, though. If it gets interest, it's a "good thing".
Anyone remember the whole "John Romero is about to make you his bitch" advertising for "John Romero's Daikatana"? Entirely concocted by the Marketing Dept.... As I remember he was against having his name used like that, but the Marketing Dept. "knew better". He ended up being the laughing stock for it.
I hate marketing departments.
I think Bill Hicks put it best. Do a YouTube search for "Bill Hicks Marketing" (caution, harsh language), if you want to see his take on it. Comedic genius at work, that man was.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
This game will be dead in a year and a half. Woohoo kill 10 wolves! No PVP except something worse than battlegrounds in WoW. Once things start coming out that break the mold no one will play this game.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now! I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
LOTRO has received critical acclaim from around the globe. Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG with an estimated 4 million characters calling Middle-earth their home. The game continues to grow with two massive updates that have increased the world by over 20%:" wow, talk about false advertisement. both Lineage and Lineage 2 kick Lotro's ass when it comes to size in subscriber/playerbase.
Unless you have proof to show that they do not have 4 million characters, your statement of false advertising is completely untrue.
@ JonMichael and Die scream,
I was not refering to the characters created part, I was talking about this part:
" Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG"
Lotro is faaar from the 2nd largest MMORPG. In fact, they are not even close.
so who's the first and who's the second Mr. know it all.
Since Lotro is talking characters created:
Number one would probably be Westward Journey Online 2, last thing I read is that it had over 70 million accounts created (yes, thats accounts, but I think its safe to assume that the characters created are somewhere between 150 ~ 200 million). Then there is Yulgang (Scions of Fate in NA) with over 40 million accounts. Then there are lots of other MMO's that are well ahead of Lotro in size. Legend of Mir 2, Ragnarok Online, Lineage, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, and many, many more. In fact, Lotro probably isn't even in the top 100.
I would like to see some proof and some links to back this up.and please no one knows how many people play LOTRO unless you work for turbine, and 2 none of you have any proof that LOTRO is not the second largest MMorpg and one person does and that is turbine.
And by the way i think they mean Second largest mmorpg by number of character made not how many people play the game.
So 240 000 european players. That is quite good number in my oppinion
As for WOW's 8 million. I read over and over people claiming that WOW counts every created account in that. By their standard , if they still keep your characters on server , it is called active account - but maybe i am wrong. Still i played WOW on servers that were ghosttowns.
IRVINE, Calif. – July 24, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has reached a new milestone, with a player base now totaling more than 9 million subscribers worldwide. The company is currently working with its partner for World of Warcraft in China, The9, to prepare the game's first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, for launch in mainland China and anticipates an influx of new and returning subscribers in conjunction with that event.
World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.
so as you can see blizzard numbers represent active accounts (not characters) who are currently paying to play WoW, so no free trials, closed/inactive, banned or canceled accounts.
so they consider subscribers the chineses? thats the easy way to claim 9 mill.
While in the US and Europe the players of World of Warcraft pay a monthly fee of around $15 directly to Blizzard, the situation in China is much different. First of all in China there is no monthly fee, but Chinese players buy pre-paid cards from which the equivalent of 5 US cents per hour is deducted. The other big difference is that the money doesn't go directly to Blizzard, the pre-paid cards are distributed by a Chinese company, The9 Ltd, and Blizzard gets only 22% of the money, that is just 1 US cent per hour per customer.
LOTRO has received critical acclaim from around the globe. Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG with an estimated 4 million characters calling Middle-earth their home. The game continues to grow with two massive updates that have increased the world by over 20%:" wow, talk about false advertisement. both Lineage and Lineage 2 kick Lotro's ass when it comes to size in subscriber/playerbase.
Unless you have proof to show that they do not have 4 million characters, your statement of false advertising is completely untrue.
@ JonMichael and Die scream,
I was not refering to the characters created part, I was talking about this part:
" Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG"
Lotro is faaar from the 2nd largest MMORPG. In fact, they are not even close.
so who's the first and who's the second Mr. know it all.
Since Lotro is talking characters created:
Number one would probably be Westward Journey Online 2, last thing I read is that it had over 70 million accounts created (yes, thats accounts, but I think its safe to assume that the characters created are somewhere between 150 ~ 200 million). Then there is Yulgang (Scions of Fate in NA) with over 40 million accounts. Then there are lots of other MMO's that are well ahead of Lotro in size. Legend of Mir 2, Ragnarok Online, Lineage, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, and many, many more. In fact, Lotro probably isn't even in the top 100.
I would like to see some proof and some links to back this up.and please no one knows how many people play LOTRO unless you work for turbine, and 2 none of you have any proof that LOTRO is not the second largest MMorpg and one person does and that is turbine.
And by the way i think they mean Second largest mmorpg by number of character made not how many people play the game.
You must of went to the same school as Miss South Carolina in the US America. If you ever happened to look at the map and some books regarding population you'll see that that about 1/3 or more of the people on this planet live in Asia. Linage 1 and 2 and an assorted other mmo's popular in Asia have had MILLIONS of people playing them for years. Its a known fact. Theres not a chance in hell LOTRO has millions of people still playing. If they have 500k then they're doing great imo. You must be the only person on this site that doesn't know how big some of the Asian games are.
This isn't a debate on the merits of LOTRO as a game. Its about shady marketing practices. I think people would be discussing this if any other game used such a weird reference as number of characters made as a selling point. Do those include cancelled or inactive accounts? Who knows. I made 5 characters when I purchased the game and 3 during beta. Are my characters being still counted as 8? As well, like I said above, there a few more mmo's out there that have way more people than LOTRO, though I think if your talking western markets then it might be in the top 5. Maybe. If we're talking the whole world then it might not even be in the top 10, though I wouldn't be surprised if it is.
No company, whether its Turbine, Blizzard or soe should use questionable marketing tactics to sell games. If they do, then we have the right to call them on it.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
So 240 000 european players. That is quite good number in my oppinion
As for WOW's 8 million. I read over and over people claiming that WOW counts every created account in that. By their standard , if they still keep your characters on server , it is called active account - but maybe i am wrong. Still i played WOW on servers that were ghosttowns.
IRVINE, Calif. – July 24, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has reached a new milestone, with a player base now totaling more than 9 million subscribers worldwide. The company is currently working with its partner for World of Warcraft in China, The9, to prepare the game's first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, for launch in mainland China and anticipates an influx of new and returning subscribers in conjunction with that event.
World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.
so as you can see blizzard numbers represent active accounts (not characters) who are currently paying to play WoW, so no free trials, closed/inactive, banned or canceled accounts.
so they consider subscribers the chineses? thats the easy way to claim 9 mill.
While in the US and Europe the players of World of Warcraft pay a monthly fee of around $15 directly to Blizzard, the situation in China is much different. First of all in China there is no monthly fee, but Chinese players buy pre-paid cards from which the equivalent of 5 US cents per hour is deducted. The other big difference is that the money doesn't go directly to Blizzard, the pre-paid cards are distributed by a Chinese company, The9 Ltd, and Blizzard gets only 22% of the money, that is just 1 US cent per hour per customer.
Maybe thats because most Chinese don't make even half what we do? Its still a poor, borderline 3rd world country. It still has peasants for God's sake. Most of the world doesn't have the same high standard of living that we do here in the West.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
LOTRO has received critical acclaim from around the globe. Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG with an estimated 4 million characters calling Middle-earth their home. The game continues to grow with two massive updates that have increased the world by over 20%:" wow, talk about false advertisement. both Lineage and Lineage 2 kick Lotro's ass when it comes to size in subscriber/playerbase.
Unless you have proof to show that they do not have 4 million characters, your statement of false advertising is completely untrue.
@ JonMichael and Die scream,
I was not refering to the characters created part, I was talking about this part:
" Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG"
Lotro is faaar from the 2nd largest MMORPG. In fact, they are not even close.
so who's the first and who's the second Mr. know it all.
Since Lotro is talking characters created:
Number one would probably be Westward Journey Online 2, last thing I read is that it had over 70 million accounts created (yes, thats accounts, but I think its safe to assume that the characters created are somewhere between 150 ~ 200 million). Then there is Yulgang (Scions of Fate in NA) with over 40 million accounts. Then there are lots of other MMO's that are well ahead of Lotro in size. Legend of Mir 2, Ragnarok Online, Lineage, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, and many, many more. In fact, Lotro probably isn't even in the top 100.
I would like to see some proof and some links to back this up.and please no one knows how many people play LOTRO unless you work for turbine, and 2 none of you have any proof that LOTRO is not the second largest MMorpg and one person does and that is turbine.
And by the way i think they mean Second largest mmorpg by number of character made not how many people play the game.
You must of went to the same school as Miss South Carolina in the US America. If you ever happened to look at the map and some books regarding population you'll see that that about 1/3 or more of the people on this planet live in Asia. Linage 1 and 2 and an assorted other mmo's popular in Asia have had MILLIONS of people playing them for years. Its a known fact. Theres not a chance in hell LOTRO has millions of people still playing. If they have 500k then they're doing great imo. You must be the only person on this site that doesn't know how big some of the Asian games are.
This isn't a debate on the merits of LOTRO as a game. Its about shady marketing practices. I think people would be discussing this if any other game used such a weird reference as number of characters made as a selling point. Do those include cancelled or inactive accounts? Who knows. I made 5 characters when I purchased the game and 3 during beta. Are my characters being still counted as 8? As well, like I said above, there a few more mmo's out there that have way more people than LOTRO, though I think if your talking western markets then it might be in the top 5. Maybe. If we're talking the whole world then it might not even be in the top 10, though I wouldn't be surprised if it is.
No company, whether its Turbine, Blizzard or soe should use questionable marketing tactics to sell games. If they do, then we have the right to call them on it.
Shady marketing practices are done by blizzard as well.
Here are a few fun facts that people like to just gloss over, or completely extrapolate on erroneously.
1. Please, for the love of god stop with the whole "WoW's numbers are total accounts created, 7 million are chinese bots, Blizzard lies and a friend told me they only have 800k" and other such hogwash. As was posted in this thread, and every other thread pertaining to WoW's numbers, they are quite clearly defined, easily obtainable to distinguish geographic demographics, and represent active, paid subscriptions. End of story.
2. 240k connections over 3 days DOES NOT equate to 240k unique player accounts. The same players could easily be logging over over and over again. You can draw no conclusions from this data (if it is even accurate).
3. The fine print on the whole "Second largest MMORPG" reads as follows: "Developed in North America". Heck, I don't know why they don't just take it a step further, and say its the largest MMORPG in the word... that was developed in Boston.
4. Proclaiming 4 million characters is typical of the Turbine marketing machine. Does anyone remember DDO being touted as the "fastest growing MMORPG"?
So 240 000 european players. That is quite good number in my oppinion
As for WOW's 8 million. I read over and over people claiming that WOW counts every created account in that. By their standard , if they still keep your characters on server , it is called active account - but maybe i am wrong. Still i played WOW on servers that were ghosttowns.
IRVINE, Calif. – July 24, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has reached a new milestone, with a player base now totaling more than 9 million subscribers worldwide. The company is currently working with its partner for World of Warcraft in China, The9, to prepare the game's first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, for launch in mainland China and anticipates an influx of new and returning subscribers in conjunction with that event.
World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.
so as you can see blizzard numbers represent active accounts (not characters) who are currently paying to play WoW, so no free trials, closed/inactive, banned or canceled accounts.
so they consider subscribers the chineses? thats the easy way to claim 9 mill.
While in the US and Europe the players of World of Warcraft pay a monthly fee of around $15 directly to Blizzard, the situation in China is much different. First of all in China there is no monthly fee, but Chinese players buy pre-paid cards from which the equivalent of 5 US cents per hour is deducted. The other big difference is that the money doesn't go directly to Blizzard, the pre-paid cards are distributed by a Chinese company, The9 Ltd, and Blizzard gets only 22% of the money, that is just 1 US cent per hour per customer.
Maybe thats because most Chinese don't make even half what we do? Its still a poor, borderline 3rd world country. It still has peasants for God's sake. Most of the world doesn't have the same high standard of living that we do here in the West.
so the NA and Euro costumers are paying the costs blizzard have with game on china since they even gave them TBC for free, so this way blizzard can claim 9 mill players, very good marketing , anyway i think you all that play WOW should be concerned that blizzard didn't made any free content update in last 9 months aftr TBC, but they had the money to give TBC for free to china. sonmeone here is getting ripped off and isn't blizzard for sure.
Here are a few fun facts that people like to just gloss over, or completely extrapolate on erroneously.
1. Please, for the love of god stop with the whole "WoW's numbers are total accounts created, 7 million are chinese bots, Blizzard lies and a friend told me they only have 800k" and other such hogwash. As was posted in this thread, and every other thread pertaining to WoW's numbers, they are quite clearly defined, easily obtainable to distinguish geographic demographics, and represent active, paid subscriptions. End of story. 2. 240k connections over 3 days DOES NOT equate to 240k unique player accounts. The same players could easily be logging over over and over again. You can draw no conclusions from this data (if it is even accurate). 3. The fine print on the whole "Second largest MMORPG" reads as follows: "Developed in North America". Heck, I don't know why they don't just take it a step further, and say its the largest MMORPG in the word... that was developed in Boston. 4. Proclaiming 4 million characters is typical of the Turbine marketing machine. Does anyone remember DDO being touted as the "fastest growing MMORPG"? 5. Still no new servers since launch.
why make new servers if the ones up can haddle about 10k conections? ohh wait mabe to have more then half of the servers empty like wow has now? almost 500 servers for NA and Europe what a joke, unless their servers can't handle more then 500 players online lol.
hahahhaa god this is funny....if any of you knew anything about how they build, run, AND maintain a MMORPG game (not saying i do fully) but since these kinds of games require customers subscribing and paying for the product, they most likely have a system that counts how many accounts are currently subscribing compared to the amount of accounts that have subscribed and canceled their accounts. So those numbers are the amount of current subscribers. Not based on characters in the game PER account, just each individual account. I have worked for a company that gave a service which involved the customer subscribing and paying for the product, and with that service we had a system that gave us numbers of how many active accounts we had. Our numbers never included accounts that were banned, suspended, or canceled. Its a common way of doing things in ANY kind of business that involved large amounts of customers that paid for a service that was used on a 24/7 basis like a MMORPG game because of the fact that they need that data as record of knowing where the product is going. So why question Turbine as a business when every single one of you that has a job most likely have a system in that job that tallys up the numbers of how much of your product is sold, OR if its a business that is a subscription based service, tells you how many ppl subscribed.
LOTRO has received critical acclaim from around the globe. Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG with an estimated 4 million characters calling Middle-earth their home. The game continues to grow with two massive updates that have increased the world by over 20%:" wow, talk about false advertisement. both Lineage and Lineage 2 kick Lotro's ass when it comes to size in subscriber/playerbase.
Unless you have proof to show that they do not have 4 million characters, your statement of false advertising is completely untrue.
@ JonMichael and Die scream,
I was not refering to the characters created part, I was talking about this part:
" Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG"
Lotro is faaar from the 2nd largest MMORPG. In fact, they are not even close.
so who's the first and who's the second Mr. know it all.
Since Lotro is talking characters created:
Number one would probably be Westward Journey Online 2, last thing I read is that it had over 70 million accounts created (yes, thats accounts, but I think its safe to assume that the characters created are somewhere between 150 ~ 200 million). Then there is Yulgang (Scions of Fate in NA) with over 40 million accounts. Then there are lots of other MMO's that are well ahead of Lotro in size. Legend of Mir 2, Ragnarok Online, Lineage, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, and many, many more. In fact, Lotro probably isn't even in the top 100.
I would like to see some proof and some links to back this up.and please no one knows how many people play LOTRO unless you work for turbine, and 2 none of you have any proof that LOTRO is not the second largest MMorpg and one person does and that is turbine.
And by the way i think they mean Second largest mmorpg by number of character made not how many people play the game.
"Registered users reached 83 million by July 2006"
Now unless you want to claim that out of those 83 million registered users, 79 million users did not create a character and just created an account for the heck of it, Lotro is not the 2nd most popular MMO in terms of characters created by a long shot.
So 240 000 european players. That is quite good number in my oppinion
As for WOW's 8 million. I read over and over people claiming that WOW counts every created account in that. By their standard , if they still keep your characters on server , it is called active account - but maybe i am wrong. Still i played WOW on servers that were ghosttowns.
IRVINE, Calif. – July 24, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has reached a new milestone, with a player base now totaling more than 9 million subscribers worldwide. The company is currently working with its partner for World of Warcraft in China, The9, to prepare the game's first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, for launch in mainland China and anticipates an influx of new and returning subscribers in conjunction with that event.
World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.
so as you can see blizzard numbers represent active accounts (not characters) who are currently paying to play WoW, so no free trials, closed/inactive, banned or canceled accounts.
so they consider subscribers the chineses? thats the easy way to claim 9 mill.
While in the US and Europe the players of World of Warcraft pay a monthly fee of around $15 directly to Blizzard, the situation in China is much different. First of all in China there is no monthly fee, but Chinese players buy pre-paid cards from which the equivalent of 5 US cents per hour is deducted. The other big difference is that the money doesn't go directly to Blizzard, the pre-paid cards are distributed by a Chinese company, The9 Ltd, and Blizzard gets only 22% of the money, that is just 1 US cent per hour per customer.
Maybe thats because most Chinese don't make even half what we do? Its still a poor, borderline 3rd world country. It still has peasants for God's sake. Most of the world doesn't have the same high standard of living that we do here in the West.
so the NA and Euro costumers are paying the costs blizzard have with game on china since they even gave them TBC for free, so this way blizzard can claim 9 mill players, very good marketing , anyway i think you all that play WOW should be concerned that blizzard didn't made any free content update in last 9 months aftr TBC, but they had the money to give TBC for free to china. sonmeone here is getting ripped off and isn't blizzard for sure.
The9 paid for The Burning Crusade, not the blizzard customers. In fact, when TBC was released in the US and Europe, The9 didn't plan to give TBC for free yet. this decision came many months after the Burning Crusade release. The reason they did this is because The9 pushed back the release date of the burning crusade for another game, SUN (Soul of the Ultimate Nation)
They should have just said "we can't touch Blizzard's numbers but we kicked SOE's ass hard". Everyone could have agreed on that.
That is true. Still, that is not what they have done. They came up with a number of character number... WOW. Impressive. Of course, SOE games are no where near 4 million characters. They don't hide how many characters they have... Use EQPlayers and you will know.
The thing is... 4 million characters is a silly metric and does not prove anything.
EQ2 character slots are way less by the way.I found it stupid to cap 6 slots for the whole game but there it is.So using charcter slots is actually a terrible measure.A game that permits people to make 20+ charcters per game will naturally have more characters then a game with a 6 charcter cap.
For instance on my last count i had at least 12 LOTRO characters littering somewhere.
My honest take is that someone in marketing screwed the pooch. "4 million characters" means almost nothing, and it's obvious if you think about it for more than a half-second. I nearly did a forehead slap when I read that press release.
Based on crowds on my server I'd say the game is growing, but we still have no f-ing idea how many subs there are overall. I'm guessing that they have fewer than half a million subs in all three current territories, but really who the hell knows. Until, we get some real numbers (if ever) this debate is pointless. Is the game poular? Yes. Is it WoW popular? No, not even close. Now can we all go home?
[Largely irrelevant aside deleted]
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
The devil as they say is in the details and it seems many people are arguing a point that is irrelevant to what Turbine released in their press release. If you notice above, "Comparison data includes subscription-based MMORPG titles developed in North America based on reported data."That is where they base their info from. Can you provide the official numbers of characters created for all major NA MMOs? My bet is you can't. Since Turbine has has to gather this information the same way as us... this statement is misleading. The last line is very telling. If they have no official data to pull from they can claim anything they want. Is it correct? no... but they can claim anything with that disclaimer. This makes that disclaimer invalid. Basing a statement on ignorance is not a good PR move. That means ANY comparison to ANY out-of-the-United States-developed MMO is completely worthless. They are not comparing LOTRO to Lineage or any other game. It is a valid comment when take in context. Is it entirely accurate? WHO CARES! Its called marketing for a reason and if they have the numbers to back it up and and prove it, so be it. First they do not have the numbers to back it up. Second they claimed to be the second largest MMO, not the second largest NA MMO. Again your argument is invalid. As to who cares when a company is misleading and offers false advertising... um every consumer should care. Marketers are charged with creating information like this so we, the gullible masses, fall for it. Such things as the word "new" or lowering the price or anything to make it sell. Why did thousands stand in line for The Burning Crusade? Or wait days in some cases for a PS2 or Xbox 360. Welcome to marketing and if you want to find out who and why it works, I recommend going to college and getting a degree.
The consumers are responsible for keeping the marketing firms honest. If you would like to know how consumer law works, I recommend going to college and getting a degree.
-Atziluth-
- Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.
Here are a few fun facts that people like to just gloss over, or completely extrapolate on erroneously.
1. Please, for the love of god stop with the whole "WoW's numbers are total accounts created, 7 million are chinese bots, Blizzard lies and a friend told me they only have 800k" and other such hogwash. As was posted in this thread, and every other thread pertaining to WoW's numbers, they are quite clearly defined, easily obtainable to distinguish geographic demographics, and represent active, paid subscriptions. End of story. 2. 240k connections over 3 days DOES NOT equate to 240k unique player accounts. The same players could easily be logging over over and over again. You can draw no conclusions from this data (if it is even accurate). 3. The fine print on the whole "Second largest MMORPG" reads as follows: "Developed in North America". Heck, I don't know why they don't just take it a step further, and say its the largest MMORPG in the word... that was developed in Boston. 4. Proclaiming 4 million characters is typical of the Turbine marketing machine. Does anyone remember DDO being touted as the "fastest growing MMORPG"? 5. Still no new servers since launch.
why make new servers if the ones up can haddle about 10k conections? ohh wait mabe to have more then half of the servers empty like wow has now? almost 500 servers for NA and Europe what a joke, unless their servers can't handle more then 500 players online lol.
You realilze that even if/when Turbine do add more servers (it wouldn't surprise me with the way they've been activating the "limited awareness" so much lately, due to server draw), there are people who will simply claim they're only doing that to make people think more people are playing than actually are.
This is part of what I was touching on in my first post.
There is no amount of evidence, provided by anyone that will be enough for people who want to bash on a game to say "Oh. Okay, we were wrong". No numbers indicating success will ever be "genuine"; they'll always be manufactured or false. Every promotion is going to be "a sign that the game is failing and the developer is desperate for subscribers". Right in these forums, someone raised the question if the game is in trouble because they're offering a free trial. Everything the game has that's a different twist on the usual will be "stupid" for not being done the "right way"; or, the way other games do it (see PvMP). Everything they do that's similar to other games makes them "a rip-off" or "clone". In short, no matter what the devs do, it's "wrong" and is why the game "sucks". It's a no-win situation for the game or developer with these people.
And likewise, the die-hard fans of a game will denounce anything that's less than glowing about "their game". Any numbers indicating the game is struggling will be "false" or "manufactured". They'll insist that a game is doing fine, even when it's very clearly not. Or, when it becomes clear and undeniable the game is drowning, they start blaming everyone but the developers, and/or occasionally, the publishers for it. See Horizons: Empire of Istaria for a great example of this; or even Vanguard and Sigil pre-SOE for a more recent example - there are people blaming everyone *but* Sigil for that game's rolling trainwreck.
In short, many people have a severe lack of objectivity.
This is why posting numbers - of any kind, in support of any point-of-view is pointless. It will only result in constant back-and-forth over whether they're accurate, whether they're not, whether they're genuine, whether they're bogus, etc. etc. Neither side can be "right" definitively, because neither side knows for sure.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
You realilze that even if/when Turbine do add more servers (it wouldn't surprise me with the way they've been activating the "limited awareness" so much lately, due to server draw), there are people who will simply claim they're only doing that to make people think more people are playing than actually are.
This is part of what I was touching on in my first post.
There is no amount of evidence, provided by anyone that will be enough for people who want to bash on a game to say "Oh. Okay, we were wrong". No numbers indicating success will ever be "genuine"; they'll always be manufactured or false. Every promotion is going to be "a sign that the game is failing and the developer is desperate for subscribers". Right in these forums, someone raised the question if the game is in trouble because they're offering a free trial. Everything the game has that's a different twist on the usual will be "stupid" for not being done the "right way"; or, the way other games do it (see PvMP). Everything they do that's similar to other games makes them "a rip-off" or "clone". In short, no matter what the devs do, it's "wrong" and is why the game "sucks". It's a no-win situation for the game or developer with these people.
And likewise, the die-hard fans of a game will denounce anything that's less than glowing about "their game". Any numbers indicating the game is struggling will be "false" or "manufactured". They'll insist that a game is doing fine, even when it's very clearly not. Or, when it becomes clear and undeniable the game is drowning, they start blaming everyone but the developers, and/or occasionally, the publishers for it. See Horizons: Empire of Istaria for a great example of this; or even Vanguard and Sigil pre-SOE for a more recent example - there are people blaming everyone *but* Sigil for that game's rolling trainwreck.
In short, many people have a severe lack of objectivity.
Agreed. However (and despite my implication above that I consider this "4 million characters" issue to be a stillborn colt) you have to admit that this board wouldn't be as entertaining if all the posts were objective
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
WoW probably has four million characters created by gold farmers, no this isn't good. I just wanted to point out that four million characters is a pointless achievement.
LOTRO has received critical acclaim from around the globe. Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG with an estimated 4 million characters calling Middle-earth their home. The game continues to grow with two massive updates that have increased the world by over 20%:
###
Comparison data includes subscription-based MMORPG titles developed in North America based on reported data.
"The Lord of the Rings Online," "Shadows of Angmar," "Middle-earth," "The Lord of the Rings," and the names of the characters, events, items and places therein are trademarks or registered trademarks of The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Tolkien Enterprises under license to Turbine, Inc. Turbine and the Turbine logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Turbine, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
__________________
Meghan "Patience" Rodberg - Online Community Manager - Turbine, Inc.
For account and technical support, please contact our Customer Service department.
Last edited by Patience : Aug 29 2007 at 11:15 PM."
What does the red thing means? Thats how they tell us teh game is popular?
The devil as they say is in the details and it seems many people are arguing a point that is irrelevant to what Turbine released in their press release. If you notice above, "Comparison data includes subscription-based MMORPG titles developed in North America based on reported data."That is where they base their info from. That means ANY comparison to ANY out-of-the-United States-developed MMO is completely worthless. They are not comparing LOTRO to Lineage or any other game. It is a valid comment when take in context. Is it entirely accurate? WHO CARES! Its called marketing for a reason and if they have the numbers to back it up and and prove it, so be it. Marketers are charged with creating information like this so we, the gullible masses, fall for it. Such things as the word "new" or lowering the price or anything to make it sell. Why did thousands stand in line for The Burning Crusade? Or wait days in some cases for a PS2 or Xbox 360. Welcome to marketing and if you want to find out who and why it works, I recommend going to college and getting a degree.
Even if including Only North American MMO's, I seriously doubt that Lotro has more characters created than games like Everquest and City of Heroes, which have been running for years.
Comments
Unless you have proof to show that they do not have 4 million characters, your statement of false advertising is completely untrue.
@ JonMichael and Die scream,
I was not refering to the characters created part, I was talking about this part:
" Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG"
Lotro is faaar from the 2nd largest MMORPG. In fact, they are not even close.
so who's the first and who's the second Mr. know it all.
Since Lotro is talking characters created:Number one would probably be Westward Journey Online 2, last thing I read is that it had over 70 million accounts created (yes, thats accounts, but I think its safe to assume that the characters created are somewhere between 150 ~ 200 million). Then there is Yulgang (Scions of Fate in NA) with over 40 million accounts. Then there are lots of other MMO's that are well ahead of Lotro in size. Legend of Mir 2, Ragnarok Online, Lineage, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, and many, many more. In fact, Lotro probably isn't even in the top 100.
Fair enough. The whole "debating over numbers" thing just makes me wonder, though. People come out of the wood-work, and suddenly start debating like they're experts on the topic.
I do wonder if that statement was even reviewed, much less approved, though. I mean, anyone following MMOs will know that there are games out there with, even in terms of characters, far larger populations.
This isn't the first time I've heard of marketing departments fudging it, though. If it gets interest, it's a "good thing".
Anyone remember the whole "John Romero is about to make you his bitch" advertising for "John Romero's Daikatana"? Entirely concocted by the Marketing Dept.... As I remember he was against having his name used like that, but the Marketing Dept. "knew better". He ended up being the laughing stock for it.
I hate marketing departments.
I think Bill Hicks put it best. Do a YouTube search for "Bill Hicks Marketing" (caution, harsh language), if you want to see his take on it. Comedic genius at work, that man was.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
This game will be dead in a year and a half. Woohoo kill 10 wolves! No PVP except something worse than battlegrounds in WoW. Once things start coming out that break the mold no one will play this game.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now!
I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
Unless you have proof to show that they do not have 4 million characters, your statement of false advertising is completely untrue.
@ JonMichael and Die scream,
I was not refering to the characters created part, I was talking about this part:
" Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG"
Lotro is faaar from the 2nd largest MMORPG. In fact, they are not even close.
so who's the first and who's the second Mr. know it all.
Since Lotro is talking characters created:Number one would probably be Westward Journey Online 2, last thing I read is that it had over 70 million accounts created (yes, thats accounts, but I think its safe to assume that the characters created are somewhere between 150 ~ 200 million). Then there is Yulgang (Scions of Fate in NA) with over 40 million accounts. Then there are lots of other MMO's that are well ahead of Lotro in size. Legend of Mir 2, Ragnarok Online, Lineage, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, and many, many more. In fact, Lotro probably isn't even in the top 100.
I would like to see some proof and some links to back this up.and please no one knows how many people play LOTRO unless you work for turbine, and 2 none of you have any proof that LOTRO is not the second largest MMorpg and one person does and that is turbine.And by the way i think they mean Second largest mmorpg by number of character made not how many people play the game.
So 240 000 european players. That is quite good number in my oppinion
As for WOW's 8 million. I read over and over people claiming that WOW counts every created account in that. By their standard , if they still keep your characters on server , it is called active account - but maybe i am wrong. Still i played WOW on servers that were ghosttowns.
Going off topic but just to set Lobo straight:So what do you know....
www.blizzard.com/press/070724.shtml
IRVINE, Calif. – July 24, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has reached a new milestone, with a player base now totaling more than 9 million subscribers worldwide. The company is currently working with its partner for World of Warcraft in China, The9, to prepare the game's first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, for launch in mainland China and anticipates an influx of new and returning subscribers in conjunction with that event.
World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.
so as you can see blizzard numbers represent active accounts (not characters) who are currently paying to play WoW, so no free trials, closed/inactive, banned or canceled accounts.
so they consider subscribers the chineses? thats the easy way to claim 9 mill.While in the US and Europe the players of World of Warcraft pay a monthly fee of around $15 directly to Blizzard, the situation in China is much different. First of all in China there is no monthly fee, but Chinese players buy pre-paid cards from which the equivalent of 5 US cents per hour is deducted. The other big difference is that the money doesn't go directly to Blizzard, the pre-paid cards are distributed by a Chinese company, The9 Ltd, and Blizzard gets only 22% of the money, that is just 1 US cent per hour per customer.
Unless you have proof to show that they do not have 4 million characters, your statement of false advertising is completely untrue.
@ JonMichael and Die scream,
I was not refering to the characters created part, I was talking about this part:
" Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG"
Lotro is faaar from the 2nd largest MMORPG. In fact, they are not even close.
so who's the first and who's the second Mr. know it all.
Since Lotro is talking characters created:Number one would probably be Westward Journey Online 2, last thing I read is that it had over 70 million accounts created (yes, thats accounts, but I think its safe to assume that the characters created are somewhere between 150 ~ 200 million). Then there is Yulgang (Scions of Fate in NA) with over 40 million accounts. Then there are lots of other MMO's that are well ahead of Lotro in size. Legend of Mir 2, Ragnarok Online, Lineage, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, and many, many more. In fact, Lotro probably isn't even in the top 100.
I would like to see some proof and some links to back this up.and please no one knows how many people play LOTRO unless you work for turbine, and 2 none of you have any proof that LOTRO is not the second largest MMorpg and one person does and that is turbine.And by the way i think they mean Second largest mmorpg by number of character made not how many people play the game.
You must of went to the same school as Miss South Carolina in the US America. If you ever happened to look at the map and some books regarding population you'll see that that about 1/3 or more of the people on this planet live in Asia. Linage 1 and 2 and an assorted other mmo's popular in Asia have had MILLIONS of people playing them for years. Its a known fact. Theres not a chance in hell LOTRO has millions of people still playing. If they have 500k then they're doing great imo. You must be the only person on this site that doesn't know how big some of the Asian games are.This isn't a debate on the merits of LOTRO as a game. Its about shady marketing practices. I think people would be discussing this if any other game used such a weird reference as number of characters made as a selling point. Do those include cancelled or inactive accounts? Who knows. I made 5 characters when I purchased the game and 3 during beta. Are my characters being still counted as 8? As well, like I said above, there a few more mmo's out there that have way more people than LOTRO, though I think if your talking western markets then it might be in the top 5. Maybe. If we're talking the whole world then it might not even be in the top 10, though I wouldn't be surprised if it is.
No company, whether its Turbine, Blizzard or soe should use questionable marketing tactics to sell games. If they do, then we have the right to call them on it.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
So 240 000 european players. That is quite good number in my oppinion
As for WOW's 8 million. I read over and over people claiming that WOW counts every created account in that. By their standard , if they still keep your characters on server , it is called active account - but maybe i am wrong. Still i played WOW on servers that were ghosttowns.
Going off topic but just to set Lobo straight:So what do you know....
www.blizzard.com/press/070724.shtml
IRVINE, Calif. – July 24, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has reached a new milestone, with a player base now totaling more than 9 million subscribers worldwide. The company is currently working with its partner for World of Warcraft in China, The9, to prepare the game's first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, for launch in mainland China and anticipates an influx of new and returning subscribers in conjunction with that event.
World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.
so as you can see blizzard numbers represent active accounts (not characters) who are currently paying to play WoW, so no free trials, closed/inactive, banned or canceled accounts.
so they consider subscribers the chineses? thats the easy way to claim 9 mill.While in the US and Europe the players of World of Warcraft pay a monthly fee of around $15 directly to Blizzard, the situation in China is much different. First of all in China there is no monthly fee, but Chinese players buy pre-paid cards from which the equivalent of 5 US cents per hour is deducted. The other big difference is that the money doesn't go directly to Blizzard, the pre-paid cards are distributed by a Chinese company, The9 Ltd, and Blizzard gets only 22% of the money, that is just 1 US cent per hour per customer.
Maybe thats because most Chinese don't make even half what we do? Its still a poor, borderline 3rd world country. It still has peasants for God's sake. Most of the world doesn't have the same high standard of living that we do here in the West.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
Unless you have proof to show that they do not have 4 million characters, your statement of false advertising is completely untrue.
@ JonMichael and Die scream,
I was not refering to the characters created part, I was talking about this part:
" Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG"
Lotro is faaar from the 2nd largest MMORPG. In fact, they are not even close.
so who's the first and who's the second Mr. know it all.
Since Lotro is talking characters created:Number one would probably be Westward Journey Online 2, last thing I read is that it had over 70 million accounts created (yes, thats accounts, but I think its safe to assume that the characters created are somewhere between 150 ~ 200 million). Then there is Yulgang (Scions of Fate in NA) with over 40 million accounts. Then there are lots of other MMO's that are well ahead of Lotro in size. Legend of Mir 2, Ragnarok Online, Lineage, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, and many, many more. In fact, Lotro probably isn't even in the top 100.
I would like to see some proof and some links to back this up.and please no one knows how many people play LOTRO unless you work for turbine, and 2 none of you have any proof that LOTRO is not the second largest MMorpg and one person does and that is turbine.And by the way i think they mean Second largest mmorpg by number of character made not how many people play the game.
You must of went to the same school as Miss South Carolina in the US America. If you ever happened to look at the map and some books regarding population you'll see that that about 1/3 or more of the people on this planet live in Asia. Linage 1 and 2 and an assorted other mmo's popular in Asia have had MILLIONS of people playing them for years. Its a known fact. Theres not a chance in hell LOTRO has millions of people still playing. If they have 500k then they're doing great imo. You must be the only person on this site that doesn't know how big some of the Asian games are.This isn't a debate on the merits of LOTRO as a game. Its about shady marketing practices. I think people would be discussing this if any other game used such a weird reference as number of characters made as a selling point. Do those include cancelled or inactive accounts? Who knows. I made 5 characters when I purchased the game and 3 during beta. Are my characters being still counted as 8? As well, like I said above, there a few more mmo's out there that have way more people than LOTRO, though I think if your talking western markets then it might be in the top 5. Maybe. If we're talking the whole world then it might not even be in the top 10, though I wouldn't be surprised if it is.
No company, whether its Turbine, Blizzard or soe should use questionable marketing tactics to sell games. If they do, then we have the right to call them on it.
Shady marketing practices are done by blizzard as well.
Here are a few fun facts that people like to just gloss over, or completely extrapolate on erroneously.
1. Please, for the love of god stop with the whole "WoW's numbers are total accounts created, 7 million are chinese bots, Blizzard lies and a friend told me they only have 800k" and other such hogwash. As was posted in this thread, and every other thread pertaining to WoW's numbers, they are quite clearly defined, easily obtainable to distinguish geographic demographics, and represent active, paid subscriptions. End of story.
2. 240k connections over 3 days DOES NOT equate to 240k unique player accounts. The same players could easily be logging over over and over again. You can draw no conclusions from this data (if it is even accurate).
3. The fine print on the whole "Second largest MMORPG" reads as follows: "Developed in North America". Heck, I don't know why they don't just take it a step further, and say its the largest MMORPG in the word... that was developed in Boston.
4. Proclaiming 4 million characters is typical of the Turbine marketing machine. Does anyone remember DDO being touted as the "fastest growing MMORPG"?
5. Still no new servers since launch.
Perception is Reality.
So 240 000 european players. That is quite good number in my oppinion
As for WOW's 8 million. I read over and over people claiming that WOW counts every created account in that. By their standard , if they still keep your characters on server , it is called active account - but maybe i am wrong. Still i played WOW on servers that were ghosttowns.
Going off topic but just to set Lobo straight:So what do you know....
www.blizzard.com/press/070724.shtml
IRVINE, Calif. – July 24, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has reached a new milestone, with a player base now totaling more than 9 million subscribers worldwide. The company is currently working with its partner for World of Warcraft in China, The9, to prepare the game's first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, for launch in mainland China and anticipates an influx of new and returning subscribers in conjunction with that event.
World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.
so as you can see blizzard numbers represent active accounts (not characters) who are currently paying to play WoW, so no free trials, closed/inactive, banned or canceled accounts.
so they consider subscribers the chineses? thats the easy way to claim 9 mill.While in the US and Europe the players of World of Warcraft pay a monthly fee of around $15 directly to Blizzard, the situation in China is much different. First of all in China there is no monthly fee, but Chinese players buy pre-paid cards from which the equivalent of 5 US cents per hour is deducted. The other big difference is that the money doesn't go directly to Blizzard, the pre-paid cards are distributed by a Chinese company, The9 Ltd, and Blizzard gets only 22% of the money, that is just 1 US cent per hour per customer.
Maybe thats because most Chinese don't make even half what we do? Its still a poor, borderline 3rd world country. It still has peasants for God's sake. Most of the world doesn't have the same high standard of living that we do here in the West.
so the NA and Euro costumers are paying the costs blizzard have with game on china since they even gave them TBC for free, so this way blizzard can claim 9 mill players, very good marketing , anyway i think you all that play WOW should be concerned that blizzard didn't made any free content update in last 9 months aftr TBC, but they had the money to give TBC for free to china. sonmeone here is getting ripped off and isn't blizzard for sure.
why make new servers if the ones up can haddle about 10k conections? ohh wait mabe to have more then half of the servers empty like wow has now? almost 500 servers for NA and Europe what a joke, unless their servers can't handle more then 500 players online lol.
hahahhaa god this is funny....if any of you knew anything about how they build, run, AND maintain a MMORPG game (not saying i do fully) but since these kinds of games require customers subscribing and paying for the product, they most likely have a system that counts how many accounts are currently subscribing compared to the amount of accounts that have subscribed and canceled their accounts. So those numbers are the amount of current subscribers. Not based on characters in the game PER account, just each individual account. I have worked for a company that gave a service which involved the customer subscribing and paying for the product, and with that service we had a system that gave us numbers of how many active accounts we had. Our numbers never included accounts that were banned, suspended, or canceled. Its a common way of doing things in ANY kind of business that involved large amounts of customers that paid for a service that was used on a 24/7 basis like a MMORPG game because of the fact that they need that data as record of knowing where the product is going. So why question Turbine as a business when every single one of you that has a job most likely have a system in that job that tallys up the numbers of how much of your product is sold, OR if its a business that is a subscription based service, tells you how many ppl subscribed.
Unless you have proof to show that they do not have 4 million characters, your statement of false advertising is completely untrue.
@ JonMichael and Die scream,
I was not refering to the characters created part, I was talking about this part:
" Since its launch in April, LOTRO has quickly become the second largest MMORPG"
Lotro is faaar from the 2nd largest MMORPG. In fact, they are not even close.
so who's the first and who's the second Mr. know it all.
Since Lotro is talking characters created:Number one would probably be Westward Journey Online 2, last thing I read is that it had over 70 million accounts created (yes, thats accounts, but I think its safe to assume that the characters created are somewhere between 150 ~ 200 million). Then there is Yulgang (Scions of Fate in NA) with over 40 million accounts. Then there are lots of other MMO's that are well ahead of Lotro in size. Legend of Mir 2, Ragnarok Online, Lineage, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, and many, many more. In fact, Lotro probably isn't even in the top 100.
I would like to see some proof and some links to back this up.and please no one knows how many people play LOTRO unless you work for turbine, and 2 none of you have any proof that LOTRO is not the second largest MMorpg and one person does and that is turbine.And by the way i think they mean Second largest mmorpg by number of character made not how many people play the game.
Sure thing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westward_Journey
"Registered users reached 83 million by July 2006"
Now unless you want to claim that out of those 83 million registered users, 79 million users did not create a character and just created an account for the heck of it, Lotro is not the 2nd most popular MMO in terms of characters created by a long shot.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yulgang
"with 45 million registered players"
Again, unless you want to claim 41 million users did not create a character, Lotro isn't the 2nd most popular mmorpg
www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/swordofthenewworld/news.html
"Ragnarok Online, which has more than 25 million subscribers worldwide."
Now I'm not going to look up the other press releases of the other games I mentioned because it takes some time and I'm sure you get the point.
Even by characters created Lotro isn't the 2nd most popular MMORPG by a long shot. We do know this for a fact because Turbine released the numbers.
So 240 000 european players. That is quite good number in my oppinion
As for WOW's 8 million. I read over and over people claiming that WOW counts every created account in that. By their standard , if they still keep your characters on server , it is called active account - but maybe i am wrong. Still i played WOW on servers that were ghosttowns.
Going off topic but just to set Lobo straight:So what do you know....
www.blizzard.com/press/070724.shtml
IRVINE, Calif. – July 24, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has reached a new milestone, with a player base now totaling more than 9 million subscribers worldwide. The company is currently working with its partner for World of Warcraft in China, The9, to prepare the game's first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, for launch in mainland China and anticipates an influx of new and returning subscribers in conjunction with that event.
World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.
so as you can see blizzard numbers represent active accounts (not characters) who are currently paying to play WoW, so no free trials, closed/inactive, banned or canceled accounts.
so they consider subscribers the chineses? thats the easy way to claim 9 mill.While in the US and Europe the players of World of Warcraft pay a monthly fee of around $15 directly to Blizzard, the situation in China is much different. First of all in China there is no monthly fee, but Chinese players buy pre-paid cards from which the equivalent of 5 US cents per hour is deducted. The other big difference is that the money doesn't go directly to Blizzard, the pre-paid cards are distributed by a Chinese company, The9 Ltd, and Blizzard gets only 22% of the money, that is just 1 US cent per hour per customer.
Maybe thats because most Chinese don't make even half what we do? Its still a poor, borderline 3rd world country. It still has peasants for God's sake. Most of the world doesn't have the same high standard of living that we do here in the West.
so the NA and Euro costumers are paying the costs blizzard have with game on china since they even gave them TBC for free, so this way blizzard can claim 9 mill players, very good marketing , anyway i think you all that play WOW should be concerned that blizzard didn't made any free content update in last 9 months aftr TBC, but they had the money to give TBC for free to china. sonmeone here is getting ripped off and isn't blizzard for sure.
The9 paid for The Burning Crusade, not the blizzard customers. In fact, when TBC was released in the US and Europe, The9 didn't plan to give TBC for free yet. this decision came many months after the Burning Crusade release. The reason they did this is because The9 pushed back the release date of the burning crusade for another game, SUN (Soul of the Ultimate Nation)
The thing is... 4 million characters is a silly metric and does not prove anything.
EQ2 character slots are way less by the way.I found it stupid to cap 6 slots for the whole game but there it is.So using charcter slots is actually a terrible measure.A game that permits people to make 20+ charcters per game will naturally have more characters then a game with a 6 charcter cap.For instance on my last count i had at least 12 LOTRO characters littering somewhere.
NICE!
My honest take is that someone in marketing screwed the pooch. "4 million characters" means almost nothing, and it's obvious if you think about it for more than a half-second. I nearly did a forehead slap when I read that press release.
Based on crowds on my server I'd say the game is growing, but we still have no f-ing idea how many subs there are overall. I'm guessing that they have fewer than half a million subs in all three current territories, but really who the hell knows. Until, we get some real numbers (if ever) this debate is pointless. Is the game poular? Yes. Is it WoW popular? No, not even close. Now can we all go home?
[Largely irrelevant aside deleted]
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
-Atziluth-
- Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.
why make new servers if the ones up can haddle about 10k conections? ohh wait mabe to have more then half of the servers empty like wow has now? almost 500 servers for NA and Europe what a joke, unless their servers can't handle more then 500 players online lol.
You realilze that even if/when Turbine do add more servers (it wouldn't surprise me with the way they've been activating the "limited awareness" so much lately, due to server draw), there are people who will simply claim they're only doing that to make people think more people are playing than actually are.
This is part of what I was touching on in my first post.
There is no amount of evidence, provided by anyone that will be enough for people who want to bash on a game to say "Oh. Okay, we were wrong". No numbers indicating success will ever be "genuine"; they'll always be manufactured or false. Every promotion is going to be "a sign that the game is failing and the developer is desperate for subscribers". Right in these forums, someone raised the question if the game is in trouble because they're offering a free trial. Everything the game has that's a different twist on the usual will be "stupid" for not being done the "right way"; or, the way other games do it (see PvMP). Everything they do that's similar to other games makes them "a rip-off" or "clone". In short, no matter what the devs do, it's "wrong" and is why the game "sucks". It's a no-win situation for the game or developer with these people.
And likewise, the die-hard fans of a game will denounce anything that's less than glowing about "their game". Any numbers indicating the game is struggling will be "false" or "manufactured". They'll insist that a game is doing fine, even when it's very clearly not. Or, when it becomes clear and undeniable the game is drowning, they start blaming everyone but the developers, and/or occasionally, the publishers for it. See Horizons: Empire of Istaria for a great example of this; or even Vanguard and Sigil pre-SOE for a more recent example - there are people blaming everyone *but* Sigil for that game's rolling trainwreck.
In short, many people have a severe lack of objectivity.
This is why posting numbers - of any kind, in support of any point-of-view is pointless. It will only result in constant back-and-forth over whether they're accurate, whether they're not, whether they're genuine, whether they're bogus, etc. etc. Neither side can be "right" definitively, because neither side knows for sure.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Agreed. However (and despite my implication above that I consider this "4 million characters" issue to be a stillborn colt) you have to admit that this board wouldn't be as entertaining if all the posts were objective
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
WoW probably has four million characters created by gold farmers, no this isn't good. I just wanted to point out that four million characters is a pointless achievement.
The devil as they say is in the details and it seems many people are arguing a point that is irrelevant to what Turbine released in their press release. If you notice above, "Comparison data includes subscription-based MMORPG titles developed in North America based on reported data." That is where they base their info from. That means ANY comparison to ANY out-of-the-United States-developed MMO is completely worthless. They are not comparing LOTRO to Lineage or any other game. It is a valid comment when take in context. Is it entirely accurate? WHO CARES! Its called marketing for a reason and if they have the numbers to back it up and and prove it, so be it. Marketers are charged with creating information like this so we, the gullible masses, fall for it. Such things as the word "new" or lowering the price or anything to make it sell. Why did thousands stand in line for The Burning Crusade? Or wait days in some cases for a PS2 or Xbox 360. Welcome to marketing and if you want to find out who and why it works, I recommend going to college and getting a degree.
Even if including Only North American MMO's, I seriously doubt that Lotro has more characters created than games like Everquest and City of Heroes, which have been running for years.