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

[David Kennerly]

Lineage does count; some people can't count.  I can empathize with
the disbelievers.  I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't lived in
Korea.  When it's in your face every day, it's useless to dismiss
it.  Lineage, as well as a few other Korean MMOGs, are huge.

Raph Koster wrote:
> 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?

> Two big reasons:

>  1) The business model throughout Asia is a mix of Western style
>  subscriptions and location-based subscriptions where internet
>  cafes pay for cafe accounts and players play in the cafes. It's
>  hard to equate these cafe accounts to actual subscribers.

The market is different and cafe accounts mean a different amount of
revenue.  So if cafe accounts don't convince a reader (including me)
on what are actual subscribers, then how about annual revenue?

NCSoft 2002 revenue was 154,820,000,000 KRW (IR Report, August 2003,
NCsoft Corp.).  This is about 132,000,000 USD at the current
exchange rate (and was equal or greater than this amount for much of
2002).

The 132M USD must be more than the revenue of Lineage subscriptions,
but it seems reasonable to suppose that the majority is from Lineage
subscribers.  If the revenue from Lineage subscriptions for 2002
were 65M USD, then there would be the equivalent revenue of 400,000
subscribers at 13 USD per month.  If the revenue from Lineage
subscriptions for 2002 were 100M USD, then it would be the
equivalent of 650,000 subscriptions at 13 USD per month.

This 2002 revenue might be less than EverQuest's 2002 subscription
revenue.  If so by what percent?

In 2002 the currency buying power in South Korea was about half of
the US.  13 USD goes twice as far for most goods in South Korea.  So
it wouldn't be unreasonable to consider the above subscription
equivalencies as the minimum of a range.  The maximum of the range
being somewhere greater than that, but less than twice the minimum
of the range.  The exact amount depending on the proportion of
revenues earned outside of Korea.

I think annual revenue is a comparable indicator, since currency
exchange rates are well established and are stable enough.  But this
is just a personal opinion based on bit of arithmetic without an
understanding of business, accounting, or economics.  I'd like to
hear of what counts from an expert in one of these fields.

> 1 million in "the Western World" would indeed be a significant
> achievement and milestone, hence why people talk about it so much.

It is a milestone for someone, but the milestone itself suggests a
scope that by definition excludes accomplishments outside of the
caucasian nations.  The one million subscribers mark would be a
significant milestone for the chest-beaters in the
caucasian-dominated nations, but what about for chest-beaters in the
whole world?  Why would it be more significant than a nation of
50,000,000 having a density of Lineage players an order of magnitude
greater than the most popular MMOG in the caucasian nations?

In what way does this stated milestone differ from ignoring other
accomplishments in Asian nations that predated their equivalent
accomplishments caucasian nations?  If someone out there is about
making excuses to say, "Oh, they don't count ... because they don't
count," then she can't be convinced otherwise because of her
prejudice.

David
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