Developing Online Games: An Insiders Guide (Nrg-Programming)

Important facts about the top four MMOGs are presented in the following sections.

Lineage: The Blood Pledge

Developer/Publisher: NCSoft in Korea

Type: Fantasy/Medieval

Style: Isolinear ("bird's-eye view")

Released: September 1998

Territory: Korea and Taiwan; opened in US in the fourth quarter of 2001

Subscribers: Four million registered subscribers at various price plans, with the bulk of revenue coming from PC gaming clubs in Korea, known as "PC baangs"

Total revenue from release to this date: Estimated at approximately $140 to 170 million USD. Current revenue flow is approximately $10 million in monthly revenues as of late 2002. Fiscal year 2000 sales were 58.2 billion won, or $44,838,212 US. Sales for 2001 were approximately $96 million USD (see www.ncsoft.co.kr/eng/ir/financial.asp for details). It is commonly believed in the industry that over 90% of NCSoft's revenues are derived from Lineage , due to statements by Jake Song, NCSoft's US representative. Lineage currently owns well over 40% of the Korean market.

COMMENTS:

Lineage is the current big success story in non-US MMP games . South Korea is probably the most "wired" nation in the world, not excluding the US. This game went from $6 million in revenue in 1999 to the current levels, mainly by cutting deals with Internet caf s in South Korea. Internet caf s are a huge industry in South Korea, with over 200,000 seatings in play at peak hours (think 200,000 simultaneous players). The Internet caf s pay NCSoft per seat for access; each caf usually buys between 16 and 64 seats for Lineage play.

Notably, Lineage has seen far less success in US subscription rates, even with the venerable Lord British (Richard Garriott of Ultima fame) at the helm.

EverQuest

Developer/Publisher: Verant Interactive/Sony Online Entertainment

Type: Fantasy/Medieval

Style: 3D, first-person

Released: March 1999

Territory: Mostly in English-speaking countries; accessible worldwide by any English-speaking player. Recently available in Korea via an agreement with NCSoft and in European countries via an agreement with UbiSoft. EQ expects to open in China, Taiwan, and Japan early in 2003.

Subscribers: 430,000 monthly subscribers at $12.95 each

Total revenue from release to this date: Estimated at approximately $100 “130 million USD, including monthly subscriptions and retail sales of the boxed game. Retail sales figures are estimated at about 900,000 units, totaling about $27 million in revenue for Sony.

COMMENTS:

The most high-profile success in MMORPGs; this one gets quite a bit of press. This game sold about 30,000 units the first day of availability in 1999 and garnered almost 250,000 subscribers in the first year from launch. It passed the 400,000-subscriber mark 24 months after release.

EQ is now the "gold standard" for US MMP games.

Ultima Online

Developer/Publisher: Origin Systems/EA

Type: Fantasy/Medieval

Style: Isolinear ("bird's-eye view")

Released: September 1997

Territory: Available worldwide in several languages, including English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, German, French, and Japanese

Subscribers: 208,000 monthly subscribers at $9.95 each

Total revenue from release to this date: Estimated at approximately $120 million USD, including monthly subscriptions and retail sales of the boxed game

COMMENTS:

UO is widely considered the game that broke open the Internet for subscription gaming in 1997. For the first six months, UO was the fastest -selling product in parent corporation EA's history. The fact that it has fewer subscribers than EQ , even though it has been out 18 months longer than EQ , is due to the sheer complexity of the game and the technical and gameplay problems the game experienced from launch in 1997 until major changes were made in the game.

What is key to note is that, despite the complexity of the game, UO has grown steadily over the years until recently. It has had more subscribers every quarter than the last quarter until about June 2001; since then, the game has slowly been losing subscribers, but the rate of churn is low compared to the total subscriber base, which is about 5% annually. The recent release of the Lord Blackthorne's Revenge expansion pack has probably caused a temporary spike in subscription rates.

Dark Age of Camelot

Developer/Publisher: Mythic Entertainment/Vivendi Universal

Type: Fantasy/Medieval

Style: 3D, first-person

Released: October 2001

Territory: US and Canada; European launches in Germany and France expected in late 2002 and in Asia in early 2003

Subscribers: Approximately 250,000 monthly subscribers at $12.95 per month, as of December 2002

Total revenue from release to this date: Approximately $25 million, including monthly subscriptions and retail sales of the boxed game

COMMENTS:

Camelot is considered to have had the smoothest launch of any of the big MMORPGs; it premiered virtually without a hitch. It is also the current fastest-growing MMORPG, with 200,000 subscribers in the first six months post-launch and approximately 250,000 as of December, 2002. The European and Asian launches of the game will add another 100,000 subscribers to the growth. If Mythic can sustain its US growth gracefully, it is estimated that will have well over 350,000 subscribers by October 2003.