FFXI Census Info. Interesting breakdowns.

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '><b>Link:</b> <a href="http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/survey/index.html">I play a popular combo! Judging from how I'm received, I'm one of the few to play it WELL.</a>

FFXI Census Info. Interesting breakdowns.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Or around five and a half years if maintenance expenses are zero, but I highly doubt that since they need to hire at least a few people to maintain those servers, not to mention that development costs are likely quite high for those types of games, as well as server costs. I am not sure if 500K is a good number for online RPG's, it just does not sound very impressive to me since Square has sold around 7.5 million copies of Final Fantasy 7 and 8 (according to the community at ffonline.com) each. That's roughly 375 million USD each; Now I am not sure the price of Final Fantasy Online, but for 500K accounts to generate that amount of money in a 5 year period, they would need to chrge $12.5 USD per month; and that is before considering the high maintenance, update, and extra development costs; costs which do not exist for the other Final Fantasy games. In other words, until they at least pass a couple million sales, then I won't be impressed.</div>

[Eric]

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>500k for any MMORPG is considered a success, hell 100k is a success.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>That's just an excuse online RPG fans come up with to cover up the fact that sales for their games absolutely suck =)</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>500k even if it's inflated by Japanese numbers is quite impressive. It's also certainly profitable. Also 500K subscribers could be more than 500K copies sold. EQ certainly has a lot more than 400K copies sold (400K subscribers)</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Less people are willing to pay for a game that costs $10-15 a month but each user that is willing is also more profitable, hence the smaller number of sales. Even the average EQ Hater seems to play EQ for at least 2-3 years, add the cost of 3-4 expansions you're looking at $400 per person</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>And yet I've gotten more cumulative playtime out of FFXI than I have all of the PS1 FF games combined. By several orders of magnitude. But you know, sales are the only thing that matter in the gaming industry.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I hate most other MMOG players. I don't care if the sales aren't as good as the latest generic console sports game, so long as I can log in and have fun.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Yeah, that I will never understand. "Fucking EQ...come out with ANOTHER expansion I HAVE to buy..." People like that need to be slapped around and get addicted to something else, like heroin.</div>

[Derithian]

<div style='font: italic bold 14pt ; text-align: center; '>yeah, it'd be cheaper that way</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Except expansions feature things like, oh, content. God forbid they add more content.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>It's a goddamn MMO. It's not based around content, but making your numbers go up by level building. Seriously, it's like bitching that Dragon Warrior 1 doesn't have any more content. When I realized that I didn't like games like DW, I realized that I didn't like MMOs. (Took me long enough...)</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Sure, it's more expensive, but at least the high would be much better. People hooked on MMOs only play because they're addicted. People hooked on heroin/crack/whatever at least enjoy their high. Either way, you'll lose your wife, lose your job, and become a catass to whatever your addiction is.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>And, if people's statistics are to be believed, about half of EQ quit when the last expansion came out because it was too hard, and the other half quit when it was tuned easier to appease the no skillz population (who already all quit, obviously).

At any rate those people you hear about also do not matter in any way. First of all the companies know that they're just whining and threatening to quit. Second even if they do they're a minority to begin with so no one cares if they go. FF11 managed to bleed about 30-40K subscribers from EQ and it's a very quiet thing, and that's how MMORPG subscriptions actually get exchanged. If people really lost interest, they'll just quietly pack up and go. People who complain loudly and threatening to leave are either not leaving or they are beyond salvaging anyway, and smart companies like SoE correctly ignores the whims of such players.

The notion about EQ being addictive is wrong. There are a surprisingly number of players who pay for the account with minimal activity in the game. EQ is a lot like a $12.95 a month chat room for a good deal of the playing populace, and if you look at the things people spend money on, that's not really a bad choice either. I mean if you think about it, $12.95 a month is really cheap entertainment, and sitting in front of a computer is no less healthy than 'get a life' consider 'get a life' usually doesn't mean going out and exercise and live a healthy life anyway.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I am in a typical uber guild and we rarely have any raids that run past midnight EST anymore. Even the most demanding of uberguilds have a raiding schedule that starts out after most people's work hours are done and end well before midnight (at least midnight of their primary playing time zone). Sure it'll eat up most of your time not at work or sleep but even people who work do not consider EQ a bad alternative to going out and get drunk, which is certainly not as healthy as staring at your computer for 5 hours.

If people really want to lose their job or whatever to play EQ that's more of a problem with the individual not the game. People who are actually responsible knows how to budget their time.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>The leveling treadmills exists to allow content to be consumed in a reasonable manner. If your game doesn't have content then yes leveling up is all there is but such games can be avoided by doing some research, and even if you bought it, it is usually obvious what games uses leveling as a means to pace content and what games exist only for leveling up.

There's no difference between EQ's content which takes months to consume versus say a RPG that takes tens of hours. Sure any game can screw up the pacing of content, but that's nothing new. At least in MMORPG you get to consume poorly paced content with your friend as opposed to me playing another RPG and wonder why there are all these stupid random battles that do not serve any purpose, whereas in EQ I can do it while chatting about why RPGs suck (and probably progress slower due to multi-tasking, but it's certainly more bareable than not multi-tasking). If anything, EQ probably paces its content better than anyone else out there right now. Content that works from the start is simply not good content at all. Players are smarter than designers and they will always surprise you one way or another and you'll have to redesign what you screwed up, so it's pointless to finish everything early on only to have to rebalance everything anyway. Well, I think a lot of new MMORPGs are moving toward the smaller scale thing, and that is easier to balance than EQ's 54-72 man raids, which is virtually impossible to get it right the first time, and SoE smartly doesn't even try to get it right the first time by making important big raids just downright impossible.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I'd rather play EQ for 40 hours than play another pointless battle engine. At least I can play EQ while talking to people instead of just wasting my own time.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I'd rather play EQ for 40 hours than play another pointless battle engine.  At least I can play EQ while talking to people and waste time together instead of just wasting my own time.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>The problem is that an RPG actually has storyline, and the periods between content is much shorter. The trick is to pace it in such a way that new content gets placed before you run out. IOW, if you're bitching about content, you're catassing too much.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>I'm not talking about responsible people. If somebody doesn't like the game, they should stop playing, not buy the expansion.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>I achieve the same effect wasting my time talking to you folk, or going on IRC.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Ummm, I don't care how many hours you played the game. I am replying to your post above which is focussed on the success of the title, not how many hours you played the game.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Seriously, with that kind of time I could have finished Xenosaga and Xenogears, and replayed Final Fantasy 8 and Chrono Trigger (the longest route), and maybe even get a good start on Skies of Arcadia. That's about what I would play for RPG's in 6 months to a year.</div>

[Derithian]

<div style='font: italic bold 14pt ; text-align: center; '>note to Don.....it's called making a joke</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I see it as a way to liven up the mood of parties. Generally though, if I'm going to spend 3-10 hours of my free time every day on something, it's going to be something that will improve myself in some way. I've been running now for a good 10+ years, and I've got my distance up to over 20k of steady running, that is something to be proud of, not a level 185 character with 40,000,000 Gc in his bank account =P

That's just my view though.

Running is also free, well generally, you still need proper gear for it, but that's pennies compared to heroin addiction or gaming habit. Yeah, I don't think gaming is adictive, I think that people play it based on habit, I mean, if Chrono Trigger was a 5000 hour game, I would probably still be playing it even if I got sick of it years ago, generally just out of habit. Reading is also ssomething I do a lot of, if anything, I'm addicted to accumulating knowledge; reading is one very important way of improving ones self, though reading trash like comic books can do quite the opposite =P</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>No matter what the topic, Seeker takes it and somehow uses it to talk about mainly about himself (which sometimes is interesting, but usually not) and also makes sure he gets the point across that whatever he does/thinks/says is right and anything else is wrong.

Am i off base on this?</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>on the flip side, i would consider playing 40 hours of an online RPG a waste of time since in that time you can probably only gain a few lvls and possibly venture only a few towns away from where you started. 40 hours of a console RPG tells a great story, gets you through the game, and makes you feel you did something.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Sounds about right.</div>

[Lox]

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>If by off base you mean completely accurate, then yes.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>You're the one who wants to turn every game into a sales/marketing discussion. I'm pointing out that I've paid for multiple months, covering probably two and a half to three times the original box purchase worth of subscription fees. That's pretty fucking relevant.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Quite right.</div>

[Eric]

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>According to PA it's suppose to have a battle system similar to FFXI or .hack//</div>

[Eric]

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Bing!</div>

[Ganath]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>That sums it up pretty well.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>I don't mind if a RPG is long. (Hell, FF7 is long, even if you -do- know what you are doing.) But, if most of that time is spent dying and level-building, forget it.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>No, your link points out how many customers are using the service, and I am replying to that. You're the one who's illogically changing the subject because you know I am right.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I'm making the point that subscription fees do add up, but you know, it's not worth arguing with you about. You're such an excellent and impartial observer of the MMOG industry, how dare I dare to discuss them in your presence.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>The description I've read struck me as a blatant ripoff of the Infinity Engine system from Baldur's Gate and others - real time combat that you can pause, AI scripts you can override with commands, no set battle formation, etc.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Then you replied to that stating how much you as an individual has played the game, and sarcastically stated that sales were the only thing that matters; in this post sales are the only thing that matters because that is essentially what the topic is about; and the individual is not what is important, it is the total number which is of importance when discussing sales.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I had forgotten, however, that around here the only thing that matters in terms of MMOG discussions is how many people are playing, how many servers are running, and how the subscription/profit numbers look.

I'll be sure to keep that in mind next time I contemplate posting anything MMOG related here. Apparently I missed the memo stating that when we rolled Gamethought and OGT into one forum that the online aspect was purely fiscal discussions.</div>

[Ganath]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I thought basic math was $20 multiplied by 500K players equaled $10 million per month.</div>

[Ganath]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I thought basic math was $10 multiplied by 500K players equaled $5 million per month.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>And if you want to be anal, it's $13 per account and an additional dollar per extra character. Wait, did that just improve your point?</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>5 million bucks per month is 60 million per year it will be five years before 300 million dollars is generated; provided that 500K remain on for the next 5 years which is highly doubtful. That is ignoring all of the accompanying costs which come with running a massive 100 server game with 30 game worlds; which will include maintenance and running costs, as well as additional employee wages. That 60 million dollars that they will potentially make over the next year will turn into a much smaller number, plus you have to include the marketing and development costs it took them to create that game and market it. I am not sure on development costs, but I assume they will be higher for much larger games like Final Fantasy Online than one of the normal games (afterall, they have to develop a game that supoorts not one player, but thousands).</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>That's not irony Tort.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I felt that Final Fantasy 10 was a very good game, but that it could have been a better game had they taken another 6-12 months and focussed on level design, it was fairly repetetive throughout most of the game. Now, taking FF12 into account, looking at the time they're taking with the game, it shouldn't have the rushed feel that 10 had, and it should be a massive improvement over the tenth game. I am considering that it has a good possibility to go down as the best RPG on the system. There's going to be some serious competition coming up from Namco in the near future with Baten Kaitos, a few Tales games, and Xenosaga (the first one in my opinion was more than twice as good as Final Fantasy 10, so good that I replayed it twice in a year)</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>From my perspective it is. I fully expected one or two comments from the other FFXI players about the job/level distributions. What I got was this massive MMOG economic clusterfuck thread, complete with not one, but TWO separate derailments. Good enough for me.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Can we point out that not only do prices on games go down with time, but that the FF games also traditionally get put in the Greatest Hits lineup for the whopping sum of $20? Or did you forget to factor that into your startlingly comprehensive economic analysis of 7.5 mil x $50? Just curious.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>That is why I only included sales in my data before any price drops occured. Final Fantasy 7 and 8 both sold around 10 million units a piece world wide if you include price drops.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>That's still not irony. Your statement lacks any sort of focus and meaning in relation to the data in the article, so it is ambiguous.</div>