[MUD-Dev] [News] NCSoft + Richard Garriott

[Freeman]

> From: Richard Aihoshi aka Jonric [mailto:jonric at vaultnetwork.com]

> This line of thinking would seem to be based on the assumption of
> similar play patterns;

I start with the assumption that referring to people who do not
subscribe to the game as "subscribers", is inherently inaccurate.

> i.e. about 15 to 20 hours average per person per week.  However, if
> we assume the great majority of Korean players are paying by the
> hour, it seems reasonable to assume that the average playing time is
> lower.

A "subscriber" to EQ, AC and UO is a guy (or gal, or a guy pretending
to be a gal), that pays $10 per month.  What's a subscriber for
Lineage?  Someone paying anything from a penny on up?

> If it's half, to use a simple figure, then ratio between the
> concurrent user and total user numbers should also be half.  So if
> EQ's ratio is around 4 (90k concurrent to 370k total) with 15-20
> hours per week average usage, then **IF** Lineage's average usage is
> 7.5 - 10 hours, the expected ratio would be about 8.  Extending
> this, 180k concurrent users would project to 1.44 million total
> users.  Dropping the average usage to 5 to 7 hours makes the ratio
> 12, and 12 times 180K equals 2.16 million.

But comparing those users to EQ's users and concluding that Lineage is
therefore a whopping 5 times larger than EQ - when it only ever has
about twice as many people actually playing it at one time - is what
strikes me as being inaccurate.  This is comparing apples to grapes.
Even with the same volume of food, of course it's a lot more grapes.
But is that at all meaningful?  If you were comparing the amount of
grapes imported to the amount of apples imported, would you just count
them and conclude that grapes were 5 times more popular than apples?

> Two million active users for Lineage may seem unlikely, but having
> more than EQ, UO and AC combined does seem credible, at least to me.

Seems like one of those "From a certain point of view" deals.  :)
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