[MUD-Dev] Why doesn't Lineage count as the most popular MMOG ever?

[Jason Smith]

From: Daniel Anderson

> When a developer is asked what is the most popular MMOG, they will
> typically say EQ.  When they are asked about Lineage, an often
> heard response is, "Well, that doesn't count."  My question is,
> why doesn't Lineage count?  It does in fact have the highest
> subscription rate, right?

Among other reasons (ameri/euro-centricity, etc...), a major reason
that the numbers aren't taken quite the same way as most US numbers,
purposely, are that the comparisons never seem to line up in quite
the same way.

Differences in reported revenues by subscription numbers is a good
example.  Most US/EU-based MMOG's end up with ~$100-180 of yearly
revenue per account.(Many numbers follow. Financial amounts are in
USD. Converted based on the current 1,170:1 conversion rate for won
whenever necessary.)

A recent NCSoft presentation (which was posted to this list a few
weeks ago - http://www.ncsoft.net/eng/txt/IR_Report_Eng(FY2002).ppt
) had revenue numbers included. Based on that report, Lineage earns
more in the range of ~$30-45 yearly per account (~$135m revenues /
~3-4m reported subscribers).  Because of the vast difference, it's
very difficult for the two different subscription styles to line up
in direct comparison.

The same presentation showed that, in Korea, Lineage has
approximately 220k direct subscribers (paying ~$23 USD/month I might
add). The rest of the accounts must come from net cafes and other
bulk arrangements (~2m accounts log in each month in Korea).

In the case of cafe-based subscriptions, the players themselves
aren't necessarily subscribing any more than they would be
subscribing to Counterstrike or Starcraft played via the same
means. They're paying fees to rent the PCs and software from their
local establishment, but it doesn't correlate to the 'subscriptions'
metric in the same way that most US developers and media look
at. The cafe pays ~$35-50 per PC monthly, but any number of accounts
could be based from that location.

The question really comes down to what the definitions for "popular"
and "subscription" are, because two different people can easily see
these terms as being used in different ways.

If by "popular" you mean most accounts logged in per month, then
Lineage easily outstrips the competition (~3 million
worldwide/month). On the other hand, you may also want to factor in
that by the numbers, players are paying a lot less for Lineage than
they do for EverQuest (and how many times have you heard "I'd play
this game but I don't want to pay a subscription fee."  in relation
to an MMOG?).

With so many people paying for time at net cafes in Korea for any
gaming at all, the bulk of those Lineage players must not even
consider that the game has a subscription price (they could be
playing any number of non-MMOG games for the same fee). In this
scenario, one could concievably compare the online numbers to Diablo
or Counterstrike even though they aren't MMOG's. We tend to not
compare these games to western MMOG's, because they have no
subscription fee - which comes right back around to the Korean
cafe-based MMOG plans.

"Subscription rate" has the same problem. Do you count the net
cafes, or only direct subscriptions? If so, how do you correlate the
number of accounts/pc (many:1) to the same metric that we consider a
'subscription'?  If not, then how do you factor in all those
additional accounts? Perhaps the best way would be to total up the
number of personal subscribers and the number of cafe PC
subscriptions, and completely ignore the 'accounts' metric -
unfortunately, I can't find this information, but it may be a better
comparison.

I guess it boils down to the fact that with vastly different methods
of subscriber-accounting, due to vastly different playing cultures,
you can't actually compare the products directly. Most journalists
and developers will therefore go with their native culture - I'm
sure that it works the same way in Korea as well.

-Jason "Virgil" Smith
 Themis Group
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