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

[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.  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 ;-) ).

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.

Mike Sellers
Online Alchemy
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