[MUD-Dev] Player statistics

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu 
> [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> Klara
> Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 7:46 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Player statistics
> 
> 
> At 13:34 1/10/2001 -0800, Wes Connell wrote:

>> All this discussion from the About.com and Lum articles made me
>> wonder (granted I work at Skotos) if there have been any good
>> studies on detailed number that the online games in question
>> receive.

>> Personally, I've always thought the size of the free MUD community
>> has actually grown steadily since the beginning.
 
> When I started playing Muds, 1990, there were about 300,000 Internet
> users I think, correct me if I'm wrong.  Today, of course the
> relative percentage of Mud-players has dropped, but I also feel that
> given the enormous current potential base, it would be hard to have
> a drop in actual player numbers.  But maybe I'm just in denial of
> competition of/new generations playing 3d games only. Also, many of
> the 'old' players now have a real life and spend much less time on
> muds. On the other hand, it's still as if not more (stuff gets more
> developed) addictive. I.e. mixed feelings here.  Maybe someone has
> some real numbers.

Well, as a separate datum, you can figure that the currect active
subscriber base of the big three commercial muds is around 600,000,
with 300,000 in EverQuest, 200,000 in Ultima Online, and 100,000 in
Asheron's Call. Those figures are ballpark--I know that both EQ and UO
are higher, and AC may be slightly lower. However, total sales numbers
for all three games combined are probably... (*does some quick math*)
oh, somewhat over a million all told, with UO over the half million
mark and EQ rapidly closing in on it.  Many of those unit sales are
misleading because they count sales of expansion packs to existing
users, though. I would guess that the number of graphic-mud-only
players is larger than the current number of text-mud-only players
because the graphic mud rode the Internet boom wave better than the
text mud did (in terms of acquisition).

-Raph

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