Comments on: Runes of Magic claims 450,000 players

By: matthew

matthew — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:27:05 +0000

Let’s be honest here people: these figures are not that impressive when compared with P2P titles.

“I’m shocked a F2P has proven so successful in my lifetime.”

Go and looks up player numbers for titles like Guild Wars (5,000,000) and RuneScape (5,000,000). Realise that this is simply a marketing. They are aware that they aren’t the top F2P title out there but some inventive spin and partnerships with the right people mean they can twist things as much as they want.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:18:46 +0000

Thank gawd someone finally pulled their heads out of the sand and dared do what WoW did in the first place-take the best elements of previous MMO’s, and add their own.

Runes of Magic is so much more than a WoW clone.

The irony is that they love listening to the fanboys cry WoW Clone. It’s a tremendous compliment to the huge WoW fans that made RoM to hear their game compared to the biggest MMO out there. And they don’t need to hear anything else when there staring at a record number of subscribers to any F2P MMO.

And MMO players have spoken. They prefer the new insanely popular, wildly growing Free2Play business model better than Pay2Play.

I’m shocked a F2P has proven so successful in my lifetime.

By: Tipa

Tipa — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 06:24:17 +0000

I have no idea… I guess it would depend how much they liked Harry Potter; I imagine there would be a strong correlation.

By: Mikey

Mikey — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 03:59:32 +0000

I wonder, how do you think W101 would do in eastern markets(China/Taiwan/Japan/Korea)?

By: Sente

Sente — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:10:15 +0000

Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan I think, in Asia.

On the Euro side there are 7 servers, 4 German and 3 English. At least the server I play on have plenty of people in all zones I have been in so far and 3 instances of it running all the time. The majority of the players are probably in Asia. I will not be surprised if they increase the numbers quite a bit during the year.

By: Tipa

Tipa — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:22:45 +0000

Runes of Magic is also out in Taiwan, China and — I dunno what other countries. Warhammer is still just NA and Europe, right? Eastern PvP games are way more hardcore than Western ones, I wonder how the East will react to a carebear PvP Western game. With contempt, I imagine, but I wouldn’t mind being surprised. It’s in all our best interests that non-WoW MMOs do well.

By: Hudson

Hudson — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:17:00 +0000

Hey that makes it more popular than Warhammer!

By: Openedge1

Openedge1 — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:31:03 +0000

Agreed. Free games bring in tons of players. Then they offer services at a cost, and make their money that way. Or how about ads on your launcher…always a good idea..
So many ways this genre could do better monetarily, they just don’t.
I think RoM is not a very good game at all, and the caveat “You get what you pay for” applies here. It does not mean that some cannot come along and take over this market completely (SOE, NCSoft).
All I can say is if you wish to copy (WAR) other famous MMO’s (WoW), then offer it cheaper at least (LOTRO) or free for subbing (GW, W101) and RMT it to hell…

Cheers

By: Saylah

Saylah — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:31:17 +0000

That’s a healthy number and I wouldn’t doubt it overly much. The server I’m on consistently has two instances of it. The name has now been moved out of alpha order and placed at the bottom. I assume that’s to discourage people from continuing to create characters there. I’m never in a zone that is completely empty. I do hope they can do something about the lag in the cities. It’s that EQ2 city lag that irks me. Is that really the price that has to be paid for the more realistic graphics in more congested areas? Hopefully someone will create a mod like there was for EQ2 where you could have preset graphics settings. WAR tried to do it but there’s behaved very wonky and counter intuitive. Their UI design really paid the price for intentionally not copying other game features.