concurrency
Latest
Riot claims 27 million daily players for League of Legends
It's no secret that Riot Games's League of Legends is the biggest MOBA on the block, but just how big might come as something of a surprise. Riot has revealed that the League playerbase has now reached 27 million players daily. Player concurrency hits about 7.5 million players during high-traffic hours; for comparison, Valve's Dota 2, which most would consider League's primary competitor, sees about seven million players per month. The high numbers have done wonders for Riot's pocketbook, helping League to generate over $624 million in revenue in 2013.
World of Tanks sets new concurrency record of 1.1 million tanks tanking
Wargaming.net's World of Tanks has again broken its own world record for player concurrency, hosting 1.1 million players simultaneously on the game's Russian cluster. This new total handily defeats the previously reported record of 190,541 online players set in March of 2013, though Wargaming.net did note in its press release that average concurrency has been hovering near the 900,000 mark "for the past few months." According to the studio, which now boasts offices in Chicago, Baltimore, Seattle, Austin, Paris, Kiev, Tokyo, and more, World of Tanks has over 75 million players. The press release was not specific on whether these are active players or simply registered accounts. [Source: Wargaming.net press release]
Blade & Soul tops 1.5M concurrent users in China
While we twiddle our thumbs in the West waiting for a game that might never come, Blade & Soul is stampeding across Asia and has the numbers to prove it. MMO Culture reports that Blade & Soul China has 1.5 million players (wait for it) online at the same time. As in concurrency, not total numbers. While that certainly smacks of popularity, what's even more astonishing is that some players in the region have to wait around six hours in a queue just to play. Other impressive statistics include the Blade & Soul beta trailer being viewed 30.4 million times, 450 million monsters killed on the first day of the game, and one player who's already sunk 1,345 hours into the title.
Final Fantasy XIV dev talks new servers and access restrictions
It's no secret that the long-awaited re-launch of Final Fantasy XIV hasn't gone very smoothly. In fact, the servers are taking such a beating that Square Enix has temporarily shut down online sales of the game. Despite the game's current woes, the FFIXV team wants fans to know that it is working overtime to get things running smoothly. In a lengthy forum post, producer and director Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi-P) outlined what steps have been taken to stabilize FFXIV's game world. Yoshida noted that all Final Fantasy XIV servers now have login restrictions to prevent a flood of logs and re-logs from causing them to crash. Login restrictions are most likely to be implemented during peak times, which Yoshida says are between 9:00 p.m. and midnight. Each server can support a theoretical maximum of 5,000 concurrent players.
League of Legends hits the five million concurrency mark
League of Legends is a runaway success train with no brakes and millions of passengers, it seems. Riot Games announced that the title "regularly exceeds" five million concurrent players across the globe, which is an increase of two million since last October. "We're humbled by the support of players and now more than ever feel the weight of those expectations," Riot Games wrote on its website. "Good luck, have fun, and please have mercy on our servers." Of course, that number would be a little higher if all of League of Legends' 32 million monthly players would log in at the same time. If someone can organize that flash mob, we'll be first in line to salute the achievement.
Dungeon Fighter Online counts over 3 million concurrent Chinese users
Concurrency is a big deal for most MMOs. Total numbers of accounts and subscribers might tell you how many people play the game, but concurrency tells you how many people actually play the game on a regular basis. So when Dungeon Fighter Online breaks its previous concurrency record in China, that's good news for the game and the development team. After setting an earlier record with 2.6 million users, the game peaked at just over 3 million concurrent users in June. Neople, the developer of Dungeon Fighter Online and a subsidiary of Nexon, has been working with Tencent Games to help adapt the game for the Chinese audience, as China has a long list of rules about what is and is not acceptable in a game. If you want to see what all the fuss is about, you can play the game now on your PC or an XBox 360, depending on your preferred platform.
World of Tanks tops its own Guinness World Record
If your hard-won Guinness World Record has to be beaten one day, it's best that you do it yourself. That seems like Wargaming.net's philosophy, as the studio just announced that it's already broken World of Tanks' previously established record for Most Players Online Simultaneously on One MMO Server. 250,000 players crammed onto the game's Russian server simultaneously in November, far outstripping the title's earlier achievement of 91,311. CEO Victor Kislyi said that its upcoming technology and software upgrades will enable World of Tanks to do even better: "We are more than happy to watch our World of Tanks win over hearts and minds of gamers all around the world. The multicluster technology will enable us to move steadily towards new milestones and records." We recently gave World of Tanks a close look in our Firing Line column. [Source: Wargaming.net press release]
League of Legends boasts 15 million registered players
League of Legends has officially surpassed the 15 million player plateau. That means it's time for a smattering of silly stats from the marketing department to help illustrate just how large that number really is. In a new press release published this morning, Riot Games touts everything from its peak concurrency numbers (500,000), to its daily player totals (1.4 million), to the headline-grabbing registered players figure. While those numbers are quite impressive, Riot doesn't stop there. "An average of ten games of LoL start every second of every day," the company says, before adding that "gamers spend 3.7 million hours in-game [...] every day." The title's first season of competitive play is coming to a close, and Riot CEO Brandon Beck has a hearty thank you in store for the title's faithful. "We're committed to continuing to match their dedication with our relentless focus on ongoing enhancements to the player experience with great new features, content, and polish – and we have some very exciting surprises in store just around the corner," he says.
MapleStory hits more than 136,000 concurrent players
Concurrent users are one of those interesting things to track in MMOs -- while they're mostly an indication of how robust the hardware supporting the servers happens to be, they're also a decent look at how many players are enjoying the game at any given moment. MapleStory has managed to set a new record for itself, with 136,000 players simultaneously active in the North American version of the game. That's nearly double the previous high-water mark back in July of 2009. Daniel Kim, the CEO of Nexon America, issued a statement concurrent with the record: "This milestone represents a new high point for MapleStory and is a testament to the growing popularity of the game into its fifth year." Said milestone is also coming on the heels of the first two parts of the Big Bang update, with a third part set to hit the game in early 2011. That means a great deal of new content and two new classes for MapleStory players to enjoy, which turns out to be good news for Nexon.
Second Life user-concurrency spends year in slow decline
Back in March this year, Second Life was closing in on Everquest in terms of peak popularity. Everquest itself peaked at approximately 90,000 concurrent users during its most popular period and Second Life came within a whisker of that at 88,199. Since then, though, Second Life's user-concurrency (as you can see in the chart above, covering the last two years) has been slowly declining.
Second Life median concurrency declines as bots/campers progressively purged
While running some routine analyses of the user concurrency figures for Second Life from 2006 to the present, we noticed some interesting things. Median concurrency, one of the indicators we've traditionally eyeballed to indicate the health and growth of Second Life took a recent dive after many years of steady increase. We had a number of theories, such as the notion of a periodic (Northern Hemisphere) Summer decline, but really the data doesn't bear out the notion of any periodic Summer declines, let alone this being one of them. As it turns out, the result appears to be due to the steady removal of bots from the Second Life grid. Far more bots, it seems, than even we had imagined.
It's Sunday and the Second Life grid is behaving badly [Updated]
We shouldn't be surprised really, but after a few good weeks of shopping, rezzing, teleporting, sending money, group IMs and the rest, many of Second Life's In World Services are acting up. There are about 57,500 people online at the moment (depending on exactly when you try to log in and get the numbers) which is a slight increase in the peak concurrency from last week, and it appears just enough to make the asset cluster scream in agony for the first time in a few months.No word on the official blog as yet, but be warned your Second Life experience may be rather poor at the moment. Update: The official blog has been updated to say they're experiencing a temporary interruption of In World Services and, "Please refrain from land and L$ transactions until we give an all clear."Update #2: Though Linden recently gave the all clear, they're now reporting there are still some functionality issues. We don't have any specifics, only, "We are looking into this and will update you as soon as we have information."Update #3: As of 5:19 PM EST (2:19 SLT), "In world services are beginning to resume. Some transactions were delayed and are catching up."Update #4: As of 2:47 SL Time the problem is re-opened. Do not conduct land or L$ transactions.Update#5: As of 3:15 SLT it is meant to be fixed again. Some caution might be in order, but back in the pool everyone!
Trinity to be released first week of December
We got an official release date for EVE Online's next expansion, Trinity, at the FanFest over the weekend. If you're an EVE player, make sure to leave the first week of December open, because that's when you'll be playing with all the cool new ships and updates in Trinity. Of course, the fun starts tomorrow, when Revelations.2.3 arrives, but in just a month from now, we'll have access to Trinity (the new name of what used to be Revelations 3).GamesIndustry also has an interview up with CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson, who tells them that the old graphic engine isn't actually going anywhere-- players will be able to switch from old to new via the configuration screen ingame. There's also a new ingame concurrency record-- it's a whopping 37,200 players all in one game (I think all of them were in Jita yesterday afternoon, because it was horrible there). Petursson also gives feedback on CCP's decision to hire a real-life economist to help them with the player-driven economy-- apparently "he's validated some of our assumptions, but he's also shattered a lot too." Man, I'd love to sit in on a few of those meetings.Mark your calendars: Trinity is coming the first week of December. And unless you change that setting, EVE will never look the same.
