MMO Populations, Free and Paying

Dyrwen66

I want to know if there is a good study of the amount of players in every MMO that is out there today.

Namely, I know about the MMOchart site that's out there that shows WoW as nearly half the graph, but I also know it only counts paying MMO games. I wonder if there's one for the more popular free games that are out there as well, that are up to date as to how many of the people in those games are still playing. It seems like it's much more difficult to tell numbers without actual money exchanging hands, but it seems like something that is possible these days, if only by simply calling every goddamn MMO's developer group and asking.

The question arose when I tried to claim WoW was the biggest MMO, and then realized upon being told, that it is only the biggest paid MMO. Games like Maplestory seem to have millions more playing it, but there's no telling how many of them still play or what, since it's free. I wonder if there's a better set of statistics out there today that details these numbers overall and where it can be found. Perhaps I just need to cross-reference a lot of sites together to get the information.

If someone could help point me in the right direction here, I'd appreciate it. The numbers game is just kind of making me wonder.

Insider

Problem with free MMO's is that you can have as many accounts as you have email addresses which makes it incredibly difficult to know how many people are playing your game. Also with free MMO's people DL them play for 3 minutes and quit never to be seen again. I don't think finding actual numbers with free MMO's woudl be possible.

ViolentChemistry

Insider wrote: »

Problem with free MMO's is that you can have as many accounts as you have email addresses which makes it incredibly difficult to know how many people are playing your game. Also with free MMO's people DL them play for 3 minutes and quit never to be seen again. I don't think finding actual numbers with free MMO's woudl be possible.

Record number of different accounts that are logged in at the moment, at 1 or 2 hour intervals across the span of a week, go with the mean. Trick is you have to do the same for all the other MMOs you want to discuss. You're not really likely to be in a position to be able to do it. But it could be done, in theory.

Dyrwen66

Hm, yeah, that sort of trouble with recording statistics does seem to be a reoccurring problem when I try to look, since I can't imagine the field of statistical study of populations in MMO is that large at the moment, given all the new MMOs all the time.

jclast

Does MMOchart only pay attention to paying subscribers to games that have both free and paying players? Granted, I only know of one, but Puzzle Pirates allows both types and if your subscription is canceled your avatars aren't deleted, you just lose the privileges of a paying player.

Zek

Yeah, the issue is that all the numbers you'll find about pay MMOs refer to number of subscribers, which is not a meaningful figure for a free MMO. Maybe if you count the number of players who have logged on in the last month it would be pretty close.