[MUD-Dev] MMORPG Cancellations: The sky is falling?

[Matt Mihaly]

From: Michael Sellers
> Matt Mihaly wrote:
>> From: Amanda Walker

>>> The only current mass market MMO that is really taking that bull
>>> by the horns is Second Life, a game that is actively distasteful
>>> to most d20-oriented players.

>> Well, if 10,000 subscribers (Forbes article in June said that's
>> how many subscribers they have) is mass market, then what about
>> Puzzle Pirates or Neopets? Neopets is WAY more mass market than
>> Second Life. Heck, what about TSO? They still have over 10k
>> subscribers don't they?

> Not all customers are created equal.  Neopets has lots (millions?)
> of users I believe, but it's also free and I suspect has a very
> low running cost compared to a MMOG.

Sure, of course, but we weren't talking about profitability here.

> Unless you can 'monetize' those users, as they say, they don't add
> to the commercial success of the game.  Second Life's numbers are
> low, but then with their pay-for-land model they probably get
> significantly more than $13/month from their average user.  (OTOH
> I'm frankly surprised they let out that number, as it really is
> pretty low for the expectations given what they've done.)  Last I
> heard TSO still had something over 80K subs and probably isn't
> growing, but that's fairly old news (if we could get Bruce
> Woodcock to update his page more often, we'd all know more ;-) ).

Judging by what I've read, land sales aren't that massive over
there. I have absolutely no first-hand experience though. I'd be a
bit wary of using Bruce's numbers as gospel too. Too heavily based
on info put out by marketing departments.

> I don't know where Puzzle Pirates subscriptions are right now, but
> I think you can make the case for that game being the most
> successful -- in terms of ROI -- and most mass-market of any MMOG.

Last I heard they had about 6-7000. In terms of ROI I think it'd be
difficult to hold a candle to our games. Our last two text MMOs paid
for their development cost in the first month of operation.

--matt
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