Since lotro doesn't release information regarding populations I used their recent deal to determine that lotro might be under 1 million players. I think this because they said, play with "thousands" and not millions. Now they could have somewhere from 1 million up to 1.999 million players, but then I would think they would phrase it as, play with more than one million players.
This has been discussed and then some come in with figures from other websites but they are all guesstimates, even with some of the evidence out there. I do not believe we are anywhere near a million. Probably not even half, but I have nothing to base this off of.
Since lotro doesn't release information regarding populations I used their recent deal to determine that lotro might be under 1 million players. I think this because they said, play with "thousands" and not millions. Now they could have somewhere from 1 million up to 1.999 million players, but then I would think they would phrase it as, play with more than one million players.
What do you all think of this obsevation
According to your logic... LOTRO has 9,999 or less.
Other wise, they could have used the term "tens of thousands" If there were at least 99,999, or "hundreds of thousands" if there were at least 999,999.
This has been discussed and then some come in with figures from other websites but they are all guesstimates, even with some of the evidence out there. I do not believe we are anywhere near a million. Probably not even half, but I have nothing to base this off of.
Just in NA I think because if you add in Europe and Asia (if it is out yet) then I would bet it's over one million total, but I think this announcement only is on NA servers.
Since lotro doesn't release information regarding populations I used their recent deal to determine that lotro might be under 1 million players. I think this because they said, play with "thousands" and not millions. Now they could have somewhere from 1 million up to 1.999 million players, but then I would think they would phrase it as, play with more than one million players.
What do you all think of this obsevation
If you go by that logic, why not estimate 2,000 to 19,999? It says "thousands," not "tens of thousands," or "hundreds of thousands." These kinds of estimations are rather silly.
Keth(65 Warden), Tula(65 Hunter), Az(Champ and Warden), Ghaele(Cpt), Mahlya(Burg), Shilly(RK), Byrena(Guard), Kahnya(LM), Naht(Mini), Rea(Burg), and others
Alt problem? *twitch* I ain't got no Alt problem! I can stop any time!
"Thousands of players" almost always points to concurrent connections...not overall subscriber base.
Besides, let's spell it out one more time... IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW MANY SUBSCRIBERS THERE ARE.
I never said anything about it mattering how many players there were. I just wanted to express my observation and see how everyone else thought about it
Even if they had 5 million players in north america alone, no server would have anywhere near a million people. A game with billions of players would still limit you to playing with the thousands on the server you pick.
"The rejection of grammatical correction is proof of the level of intelligence hinted at by your writing."
Now please keep this discussion on topic or you may be reported for causing time mismanagement
Well, you can always look at the skirmish leaderboards to get a rough feel for the number of 30+ characters played since SoM. Does it have everyone - clearly no, but it can give you a basic idea of the numbers on servers/classes/etc. Just interesting stats.
I like to compare % of the classes at 65 (lots of hunters of course), comparable numbers between servers, and see what other interesting tidbits can be found.
Does it matter at all to me? Not really, just an interesting study.
Last edited by robnkarla; Mar 26 2010 at 05:46 PM.
I never said anything about it mattering how many players there were. I just wanted to express my observation and see how everyone else thought about it
Well, what a lot of people think it that it doesn't matter.
Honestly, provided that there is sufficient revenue to keep the game going and hopefully growing, I couldn't really care less whether it is 50/500/5000/50000/500000/5000000.
Well, what a lot of people think it that it doesn't matter.
Honestly, provided that there is sufficient revenue to keep the game going and hopefully growing, I couldn't really care less whether it is 50/500/5000/50000/500000/5000000.
Well, the number of continuously-paying subscribers (sorry, Lifetimers. ) has a big impact on how much growth the game can have over a given time period, since the growth costs money.
Keth(65 Warden), Tula(65 Hunter), Az(Champ and Warden), Ghaele(Cpt), Mahlya(Burg), Shilly(RK), Byrena(Guard), Kahnya(LM), Naht(Mini), Rea(Burg), and others
Alt problem? *twitch* I ain't got no Alt problem! I can stop any time!
"Thousands of players" almost always points to concurrent connections...not overall subscriber base.
Besides, let's spell it out one more time... IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW MANY SUBSCRIBERS THERE ARE.
You're just guessing at 'concurrent connections' just like everyone else is guessing at the numbers of overall subscribers. It's also a bit naive (or foolish) to think the amount of subscribers doesn't matter, I'd bet it matters a great deal to Turbine.
I do not care how many people play LOTRO. I play to have fun.
But I will say this in regard to the thread topic. Mom and Pop hole in the wall hamburger joints are better than McDonald's any day of the week. And even though they are small they stay in business too.
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, totally worn out & proclaiming "WOW, what a ride!"
Civ II rules after all these years......
Since lotro doesn't release information regarding populations I used their recent deal to determine that lotro might be under 1 million players. I think this because they said, play with "thousands" and not millions. Now they could have somewhere from 1 million up to 1.999 million players, but then I would think they would phrase it as, play with more than one million players.
What do you all think of this obsevation
well...it would be impossible to play with millions......
i dont think any mmo has the server capacity to have millions of players on one server.
closest you will ever see to that is eve online...they have 1 server for all of there 250k plus subs.
so Turbine is correct in saying thousands...heck not even WoW can say more then thousands.
Well, the number of continuously-paying subscribers (sorry, Lifetimers. ) has a big impact on how much growth the game can have over a given time period, since the growth costs money.
Originally Posted by Mark_J
You're just guessing at 'concurrent connections' just like everyone else is guessing at the numbers of overall subscribers. It's also a bit naive (or foolish) to think the amount of subscribers doesn't matter, I'd bet it matters a great deal to Turbine.
Hence the observation is that is revenue that matters, not subscriber numbers. Lifetimers represent a revenue stream over time.
I doubt that Turbine takes all the subscription as revenue in one hit. I work for a membership-based organization, and we take the annual member fees as revenue on a monthly basis, not in one hit. That way we don't run out of money halfway through the year because we spent all the receipts as soon as they came in. Turbine undoubtedly so something similar with lifetime subs, and I doubt it is as simple as taking $15/month for 20 months.
Projecting Turbine's monthly revenue is undoubtedly an interesting exercise. It is a mix of draw-down of accumulated lifetime subs, draw-down of already received multi-month subs, and estimates of non-guaranteed revenue from recurring monthly and multi-month subs which must have projected renewal rates factored into it.
Given the churn that seems to be the norm in MMOs, with people dropping out, and then possibly resubscribing again later, it all adds up to a calculation I wouldn't like to have to try and do.
And the key thing is that the number of subscribers doesn't really give you that many clues to the revenue unless you know the proportions of lifetimes/multi-months/monthly subscribers, plus the churn rates. And the number of active subscribers is unrelated to the number of accounts, and characters, with the only thing guaranteed that subscribers < accounts < characters. I actually have 6 accounts, but only 3 are active. Trying to deduce anything from one set of figures is fraught with guestimation.
The point I am trying to make, in a horribly rambling way, is that there is no way to answer the questions of how many subscribers or accounts there are, nor how much revenue they represent. Absent any statements from Turbine, anything we can come up with is effectively worthless.
"Thousands of players" almost always points to concurrent connections...not overall subscriber base.
Besides, let's spell it out one more time... IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW MANY SUBSCRIBERS THERE ARE.
Actually it does. Not a lot, but it does. If Turbine had 100 subscribers, we would have no developers making the game better.
The more subscribers lotro has, the more cash lotro has, and they can afford more developers. Yes they could not hire more developers, but they won't fire anyone at least.
That link gets wheeled out a lot. Apparently it records the number assigned to each login attempt which increases from 0 and is reset at each server restart. Based on that, I would say that the numbers are pretty meaningless.
Vilya reports 78812. Since we don't know when each session started and finished, the number is of little value.You could come up with a number based on the number of days since the restart, a guestimate of the number of times each character logs in each day, and a guestimate of the number of characters each user logged in each day.
It is probably less accurate than figuring out which numbers to plug into the Drake Equation.
Actually it does. Not a lot, but it does. If Turbine had 100 subscribers, we would have no developers making the game better.
The more subscribers lotro has, the more cash lotro has, and they can afford more developers. Yes they could not hire more developers, but they won't fire anyone at least.
That's pretty big assumption...
The more subscriber LOTRO has, the more cash TURBINE has.
What's to stop them from investing those "extra subscription" into developing a New game? Or hiring More Untested Devs and moving the seasoned ones (and by default the ones who designed the current game) into other games?
Since lotro doesn't release information regarding populations I used their recent deal to determine that lotro might be under 1 million players. I think this because they said, play with "thousands" and not millions. Now they could have somewhere from 1 million up to 1.999 million players, but then I would think they would phrase it as, play with more than one million players.
I'm sorry I made an observation. I didn't know that the population was a touchy subject here and also I have never played wow before
It's not that it's a touchy subject, cause it really isn't, it's that this same exact question pops up in the forums on a nearly weekly basis and everyone has to say the exact same things over and over, IE. "no one knows", "we can only guesstimate", "Turbine doesn't release those numbers", etc, etc.
The more people answer that question the less patience they'll have with it when it's asked again.
I love that the fans are now saying 'it doesnt matter' instead of "there are hundreds of thousands of people playing LOtro" quotes now. Mostly because they know that dog wont hunt.
And yes numbers do matter, whether Turbine had the forethought to put the lifetimers submoney into an escrow account to siphon from on a monthly basis is unknown, I somehow doubt it. So that revenue is more than likely gone. Therfore, it is reliant upon new SUBSCRIBERS, people that pay every month, not for a moth and leave or play for free and leave and never pay anything and just come back every month for one of these "Come back and play for free" periods we have. Why would anyone subscribe to this game? Really.
How many free weekends have we had in 2010? 2 at least, if not 3. And the year is less than 100 days old. And this free tie is more than a weekend.
No one is going to pay to play a game you have a LONGGGGGGG history of giving away for free. And some random update that was slammed on the boards for its lack of time needed to see anything new surely isnt going to help. Nor should it. And that type of 'content" ( I use that word VERY loosely) is exactly what you get when you dont have any revenue coming in and the developers are putting out the cheapest content they can because they dont want to spend any extra money.
Hell, they are going to put more time, money and effort into a game they just went F2P with than this one apparently. And please stop with the DDO and Lotro dont share resources bull****. A company as small and seemingly as strapped for cash as turbine cant afford to be compartmentalized.
And more than likely that is related to funds.
It is no coincidence, at least to people with a brain that games that have proven populations and decent player bases will add new content and develop the game at a reasonable rate. The list is pretty short actually so it isnt too hard to follow.
I will give turbine some credit for trying, but when you have an intellectual property like Lord of the Rings in your pocket the standards are much higher. So in theory this game should develo itself since the story is written, and the presentation is what makes or breaks peopel into wanting to play it. getting them to play seemingly isnt a problem, getting them to stay is. I have said it time and time again, until they figure out how to make people want to play more steadilly and for longer sessions the game is a semi failure.
Hence the observation is that is revenue that matters, not subscriber numbers. Lifetimers represent a revenue stream over time.
Lifetime 'Subscriptions' are still representative of the Subscriber base, just because they pay their fees up front doesn't exclude them from being revenue generating Subscribers. A Subscriber of ANY plan generates revenue, which is exactly why the number of Subscribers certainly does matter.
Originally Posted by mjk47
The point I am trying to make, in a horribly rambling way, is that there is no way to answer the questions of how many subscribers or accounts there are, nor how much revenue they represent. Absent any statements from Turbine, anything we can come up with is effectively worthless.
I totally agree, I think any and all opinions concerning the numbers of Subscribers is unsubstantiated guesswork.
The best educated guess is Turbine had about 250k subs. I think that number is way high to be honest. There is no way of knowing as Turbine doesnt have to release this information. They are not a publically traded company and have no shareholders to report to.
I also do not think you can simply look how many people are online at one time right now and judge total subs. A lot of people could simply be playing another game and taking a break from this one (but still paying). Another thing could be since we have been pretty light on content for a while now that people who are not raiders might be waiting for a paid expansion with some meat on it before they come back.
In the end it doesnt really matter. Noone can touch WoW's numbers in north america. So comparing this game to WoW's subs is pointless. WoW is this monstrosity that noone can touch its an entity all on its own.
Actually no...they said "huge tracks of land". I'm guessing for giant sprinters?
Not sure what you're saying here. The word is "tracts". A tract of land is a piece of land. The quote often gets misspelled as "tracks of land", which makes no sense, of course.
Here's the text from the final shooting script:
PRINCE But I don't like her.
FATHER Don't like her? What's wrong with her? She's beautiful ... she's rich ... she's got huge tracts of land ...
"Thousands of players" almost always points to concurrent connections...not overall subscriber base.
Besides, let's spell it out one more time... IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW MANY SUBSCRIBERS THERE ARE.
Wow, that was very loud for being so wrong.
Of course it matters. Not enough subscribers means not enough dollars to work on new content, lack of new content means a deteriorating subscriber base,
Less and less subscribers ultimately leads to a dead game or worse, a free to play game.
Nobody works at Turbine for the fun of it and server farm and the bandwidth and on and on, you need subscribers to pay the bills.
I'm all for supporting the game and saying I enjoy it, but I am not so naive to think it won't go away if there aren't enough people.
Now, if you meant, it doesn't matter if they have as many subscribers as WoW and I would probably agree with you. There is far more truth in that statement.
So do not kid yourself, the MMO market requires constant attention to keep people interest and subscribing.
Ok let me appease the ones who couldn't seem to grasp it...
For any average player, it doesn't matter how many subscribers there are. For Turbine it doesn't matter how many subscribers there are for as long as they continue to break even into the green.
This insane and unhealthy obsession that the number of subscribers equals the quality of the game is asinine, which 9.75 times out of 10 is what it all boils down to.
And honestly, it doesn't matter what the OP was getting at other than it was painfully obvious attempt to create a discussion on just how few subscribers LOTRO has to 'other games', like all of the previous ones before it.
I also never said that the game wouldn't go away when the subscribers disappear, and trying to insinuate that I did just went to show just how well you could understand the purpose of what I said.
Give a guy a pound of gold...he'll complain about how heavy it is. Enmity of Forum Trolls: 106/5000Of the Egaads clan
For any average player, it doesn't matter how many subscribers there are.
I don't think that's true - if Turbine had 1+ million paying subscribers, they'd almost certainly be able to afford a larger live team for the game: more content, more new features, etc. Most players would be thrilled with that.
For Turbine it doesn't matter how many subscribers there are for as long as they continue to break even into the green.
Not true at all. Subscribers (and in particular, western subscribers) are a reasonable proxy for revenues - and to a lesser extent, profits. Every company cares a lot about profit, because that has a rather large impact on what they can do now, and what they can do in the future. Turbine raised over $100 million in venture capital during several rounds fundraising in the past 6 years, used for multiple projects, and they absolutely want to offer those investors a good return on investment (which will help keep new investment $$ available for current and future projects).
This insane and unhealthy obsession that the number of subscribers equals the quality of the game is asinine
Absolutely correct. Judging an MMO's quality based on subscriptions is sort of like judging a hamburger chain's quality based on number of burgers sold .
I think LOTRO has maybe 200K subscribers world-wide, with a bunch more coming in China. That's a healthy number, but I'm sure both Turbine and players (on average) would be happier if it were growing, becoming increasingly profitable. Those extra profits could (and very likely would) translate into larger investments in the game.
Ok let me appease the ones who couldn't seem to grasp it...
For any average player, it doesn't matter how many subscribers there are. For Turbine it doesn't matter how many subscribers there are for as long as they continue to break even into the green.
This insane and unhealthy obsession that the number of subscribers equals the quality of the game is asinine, which 9.75 times out of 10 is what it all boils down to.
And honestly, it doesn't matter what the OP was getting at other than it was painfully obvious attempt to create a discussion on just how few subscribers LOTRO has to 'other games', like all of the previous ones before it.
I also never said that the game wouldn't go away when the subscribers disappear, and trying to insinuate that I did just went to show just how well you could understand the purpose of what I said.
You're right, as players on an individual server, the numbers don't really matter. Those that like to play on higher pop servers will and those who like low pop will play there. Overall subs don't weigh heavily in that situation.
I think you're undervaluing how important those numbers are, to Turbine and the rest of the industry. Turbine probably has better numbers than most Western MMOs that use a subscription model. Here is an interesting look at the upcoming SW:TOR MMO and numbers - Great Expectations - SW:TOR. Numbers are really important and may have a significant impact on future game and MMO development.
Ok let me appease the ones who couldn't seem to grasp it...
For any average player, it doesn't matter how many subscribers there are. For Turbine it doesn't matter how many subscribers there are for as long as they continue to break even into the green.
This insane and unhealthy obsession that the number of subscribers equals the quality of the game is asinine, which 9.75 times out of 10 is what it all boils down to.
And honestly, it doesn't matter what the OP was getting at other than it was painfully obvious attempt to create a discussion on just how few subscribers LOTRO has to 'other games', like all of the previous ones before it.
I also never said that the game wouldn't go away when the subscribers disappear, and trying to insinuate that I did just went to show just how well you could understand the purpose of what I said.
As a business owner who depends on monthly recurring revenue streams (IE Subscriptions) I can't begin to tell you how wrong your opinion on this matter is.
I would almost guarantee that to the last person currently employed at Turbine (especially those in management) they would all welcome hiring additional employees to speed up their production and improve the quality of their service. Unfortunately you don't hire more people unless you can pay them and in this case Turbine gets the bulk of their income from Subscriptions.
Honestly sub number really does not matter any more.
All one has to do is look at the excepaist round 3 to realize there are serious subscription issues now. they cant even muster 3000 fanboy votes. That should say it all.
Senior Member Online status:
Reputation:
Senior Member Online status:
Counter of Stairs Online status:
Reputation:
Senior Member Online status:
Originally Posted by Warbeast21
Grand Member Online status:
Grand Member Online status:
Grand Member Online status:
Counter of Stairs Online status:
Senior Member Online status:
) has a big impact on how much growth the game can have over a given time period, since the growth costs money.
Grand Member Online status:
"The rejection of grammatical correction is proof of the level of intelligence hinted at by your writing."
Grand Member Online status:
Fashion Hero 2010 Online status:
Member Online status:
Grand Member Online status:
Grand Member Online status:
Grand Member Online status:
Senior Member Online status:
Reply With Quote
Posting Permissions
