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Massively and GamerDNA chart the MMO market in 2008
Our good friends over at Massively have teamed up with the GamerDNA site to come up with some stats of MMO playtime this year, and the results are very interesting. Unfortunately, those results are buried under some pretty confusing charts (and these are all approximations of what's happening from GamerDNA information, not actual subscription numbers), but we'll see if we can pull out the salient points for you.In (very) short, WoW rules. Two games that most pundits thought might affect WoW playtime, Warhammer Online and Age of Conan, in fact, didn't affect WoW logons in the least, according to this data. And while guest contributor (and GamerDNA writer/analyst) Sanya Weathers says she may have spotted a short decline in WoW playtime right around the release of WAR, that was quickly overshot by the release of Wrath, as WoW's numbers jumped right back up.But while Blizzard has weathered the competition this year, things might not be so hunky dory for them in the future: while games like Lord of the Rings Online and EVE Online are showing sharper increases, WoW's population seems to be leveling out. It's still growing, sure, but not at the rate that it has been (and perhaps at the slowest rate in the game's life). And you have to think, as we said on the podcast last week, that whatever other expansions Blizzard can come up with, none will be as interesting to their players as finishing off the story of Arthas Menethil and the Lich King. WoW is still the undisputed king of MMOs, but the stats say we're closer to the end of its reign than the beginning.
GamerDNA and Massively look back at the MMO year in review
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Lord_of_the_Rings_Online_overcoming_WoW_and_2008_in_MMOS'; Continuing on from GamerDNA's year in review (pt. 1) Massively and everybody's favorite gaming social service have come together to feature some great MMO numbers for 2008. Written by the highly talented Sanya Weathers, these stats will run down the winners and not-so-much winners for the last six months of MMO gaming. This kicks off a series of article collaborations between Massively and GamerDNA - we hope you enjoy them! What a freaking year. The weather outside is frightful for newcomers to the MMO genre, with a Blizzard that's been going on for so long that no one remembers what swimsuit weather is like. WAR broke out. Expansion packs rained down like meteors, but left no craters in the marketplace. And yet, good news abounds if you know how to read the signs. Come along with us as we look over half of 2008 Today's column features data from July through December. GamerDNA being a startup, our data collection in the first half of the year was not consistent enough to use for anything but wild guessing and drinking games. Listen, a start up tech company can make ANYTHING into a drinking game. On to the Analysis >> %Gallery-40244%
GamerDNA's Year in review pt. 2
Aside from that, what do the numbers tell us? Let me begin with one caveat – GamerDNA's own growth is not accounted for with these numbers. In other words, a slight growth line is actually a function of more members for GamerDNA, NOT the product. In previous Market Trends columns, we've addressed this by using the same group of players and taken snapshots of their playing habits over time. With this year in review column, we are looking at total logins for every member. And since the number of members is growing, so too are the logins. Upward trends are not as good as they appear, and downward trends are actually worse than they look. So keep that in mind as you're reading.
GamerDNA shows their year in review graphically
In the spirit of the season, GamerDNA is giving the gift of insight to all its users in the form of a year in review column. Part one of this column describes several interesting metrics about the number of new titles tagged in user profiles by release month, platform, or specific game (no hard numbers given).Some interesting notes: The top title added by users was Age of Conan. It was released in May and correlated to a month of lower unique titles being added. No mention is made of how many users subsequently removed titles from their profiles... but maybe they're saving that for part two. There is a noticeable drop in game titles being added for the months of June and July, around the time of the re-branding effort and subsequent server issues. The largest uptick in titles added (by release date) was in September, presumably due to Warhammer Online. November is still creeping up on the September numbers with the Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Mines of Moria, and World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King still gaining traction. We are promised more phat numbers in the next few days so keep your eyes peeled... well, not literally.
GamerDNA provides insight into how we view our MMOs
Massively multiplayer online games, and our experiences within them, don't always fit into neat categories like "Fantasy" and "Sci-fi." The depth of these games -- in terms of setting, general tone, opposition faced (players or NPCs), how we envision ourselves in these games, and how that affects our playstyles -- gives way to a wide range of differing viewpoints among players on those very same games. Sanya Weathers of gamerDNA explores how we view our games in her column "MMO Focus: Traits of Popular Subscription Games". For those unfamiliar with gamerDNA, it's a social network for gamers which touts a new feature called the Discovery Engine. It allows its users to assign various traits to the games they play -- or create their own -- which in turn provides metrics for gamerDNA, and a collective glimpse into how we relate to our games. The results Weathers gathered from gamerDNA's trait system were a bit unexpected, leading her to say, "Either we have a massive identity crisis here in the gaming world, or what you think you are has nothing to do with the games you play. Rampant individualists for the win!"
GamerDNA to unleash new Discovery Engine this Monday
This Monday, gamerDNA will be unveiling their newest feature entitled the Discovery Engine, specifically created for members of their social networking site. This new engine aims to show gamers what types of games they would be interested in playing based on more factors than simply what they've purchased previously or what game they might be playing right now. It is created to refine gaming interests based on the "hows" and the "whys", more than simply the "whats". We caught up with gamerDNA's founder Jon Radoff for a comprehensive tour of this new feature and an explanation of how it works to benefit the current generation of gamers immersed in a world of overwhelming choices. Follow along just after the cut below for our impressions and more information on the Discovery Engine.
Raptr founder Dennis Fong discusses the importance of social networking
In the world of social networks for gamers, the competition is certainly growing, Starting with sites like Xfire and branching into more feature-rich services like gamerDNA, any new gaming social networking site would certainly have its work cut out for it.During a recent interview with Obsessable, Raptr's founder Dennis Fong explains his company's vision in regards to providing more comprehensive features for social gamers. As a co-founder of Xfire, Fong understands gaming trends and the underlying social infrastructure of gamers. "We want to help people to know when their friends are playing games in realtime across multiple platforms." Fong says in the interview. "Our ultimate hope is that literally any platform that games are played on, if someone's playing on it and you're a user on that platform, then you'll know about it through Raptr." Read much more on Fong's vision with Raptr on his extensive interview with Obsessable.
Comparing the expansion launches for WoW, EQ2, and LotRO
World of Warcraft's second expansion did pretty well. Like, 2.8 million units in the first 24 hours well. This, we all know. The important question is, what sort of impact did Lich King have on the WoW playerbase? What kind of impact did the expansions for EverQuest 2 (The Shadow Odyssey) and Lord of the Rings Online (Mines of Moria) have on those communities? Thankfully, GamerDNA is doing its level best to answer these sort of weighty questions by datamining the heck out of their userbase. We have some hard-and-fast metrics, as a result, exploring these exact issues.Lich King's launch, purely from a 'size of the graph bars' perspective, was an unmitigated success. As Sanya puts it, "what we're seeing is the triumph of advertising combined with critical mass. Lich King was promoted harder, louder, and in more places than the other two expansions." Which is not to say that TSO and MoM were failures. In fact, both expansions resulted in some serious bumps for both games. The graphs make it apparent that their success was somewhat mitigated by the almost-simultaneous launch of Lich King, with EQ2 feeling the burn more than LotRO. What will be fascinating to see is how this story pans out months from now, when dedicated players of these other two games have full-force returned after 'completing' the content from WoW's newest expansion. We'll keep you posted.
Child's Play and gamerDNA launch Game Community Contest for charity
The online community website gamerDNA has recently announced their association with the non-profit charity Child's Play for a new online contest. This contest will run through December, gathering donations for children's hospitals across the globe in a cause that Child's Play has remained dedicated to for quite a while. In fact, last year alone, Child's Play raised over $1.3 million in donations from gamers everywhere.In this current contest held by gamerDNA, members of participating gaming communities will compete in the gamerDNA Decades of Influence Quiz, which is described as "an entertaining and nostalgic multiple-choice quiz that helps gamers learn what aspects of the past four decades of gaming have had the most influence on their individual gaming identity." From there, the participants will share their quiz results badges with as many online communities as possible. The gaming community that shares the most badges will have the power to chose which charity receives the assortment of prizes provided by gamerDNA. Sound like something you or your gaming community might be interested in? Check out their complete rules at gamerDNA.com.
Failed MMOnogamy: An analysis of multi-gamers
GamerDNA is at it once again with what they do best: crunching numbers and making pretty graphs! Ok, so it's much more than that, but we've become accustomed to some interesting analysis of our favorite MMOs and why we play them. In their most recent article, Sanya Weathers takes a look at people who play multiple MMOs, and which ones they're playing.The article explains the details of the research, as the sample set was taken from gamerDNA users who have Xfire turned on. Within this research, we learn that 76% of users only play one title. Not surprising, that one title is mostly either World of Warcraft or Warhammer Online. To be relatively fair to WAR's newness, this research was done later than one month after the game's launch.
Men are from the Horde, women are from the Alliance
Sanya Thomas continues a look into the demographics behind all of you World of Warcraft players -- last time around, we examined gender and how players measured up in the Bartle test (and crashed their servers -- sorry about that), and this time, it's all about the Horde and the Alliance, and why and when players choose a faction. No surprises until the very end -- the majority of players in game (though I swear it's become less of a majority since the game's launch a few years ago) choose Alliance, whether it's because of a "human bias," or just because they've usually been the heroes, and gamers tend to play with their friends.But things get more interesting when you start putting classes and gender into the mix. Women are pushing the average on Alliance side (men even out around 58/42, but women prefer to "grab their sword and fight the Horde" at 65/35). And when you compare the classes to faction choice, as above, then the stats really start showing signs of life:clearly, women prefer Alliance Druids (and when you look at the Druid forms, there's no question why). You can see the Alliance/Horde separation in the Hunters (that's all those Night Elves), and you can see the gender separation again in the Priests. And the Warriors probably have the weirdest stats: Men play more Warriors overall, but the gender gap is even wider on the Horde side. While there are some women playing Horde Warriors out there (I know an Orc played by a female that will tank anything you can throw at her), Horde Warriors are much more likely to be men.Very interesting. Keep in mind, as last time, that these gender numbers aren't character genders -- they're self-identified on the gamerDNA site, so we can be reasonably certain that we're looking at an (at least slightly) realistic stack of data here. There's probably lots more data to be explored, too -- it would be interesting to see what Blizzard knows about their players that we don't. What class, for example, logs in the most on any given week?[via Massively]
World of Warcraft's Horde and Alliance fight it out in data sets
Sanya Weathers (who you may recognize from Massively Speaking Episode #25), continues the march to data-fueled enlightenment with her Market Trends column over at GamerDNA. She's been using the site's great player database to draw some conclusions about the overall World of Warcraft gaming populace. You may recall last week's discussion of WoW avatars based on their Bartle Type? Or perhaps (prior to that) how your Bartle choice influences your pick of a Warhammer class? Or their data-driven examination of the Warhammer Online launch?This lastest article tackles World of Warcraft players with gusto, specifically looking at Horde vs. Alliance choices based on classes and real-world gender differentiation. The results are interesting if not earth-shattering. Fun facts: There are still slightly more Shamans on the Horde-side than Alliance. Warlocks are significantly more popular on the Horde side than the Alliance side. Women are preferentially drawn to Druids and Hunters. Women prefer Alliance characters to Horde, even over the general statisical preference for Alliance over Horde. And of most import to the single male player out there, straight from Sanya Weathers: "The moral of this story, gentlemen, is that if you want to talk to a woman in game, find yourself an Alliance Druid. Half of them are actual females." Well worth a look.
How your Bartle Type influences your class choice: WoW style
Last week we showed the Massively readers a research report done at gamerDNA regarding MMO players' Bartle Type and how it influences their Warhammer Online class choices. In the comments at their site, and at ours, many asked if this could be done for other games as well, namely World of Warcraft. Well this week they treat us to just that, and the results might surprise you.While not as clearly-defined as the WAR/Bartle results, this report shows some interesting statistics relating to WoW players and their gender, personality, class type and more. Keep in mind though that these results are based on around 45k+ members at gamerDNA who play WoW, not every single player out there. Even so, it's always enlightening to see these things in solid numbers. I mean, who knew there were more Hunters than any other class? /cough One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Bartle, gender, and the demographics of WoW's classes
A little while back the gamerDNA blog did a nice breakdown of how WAR classes correlate with how gamers do on the Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology, a widely used test that can break down exactly what type of player you are (Achiever, Explorer, Socializer, or Killer). It was such an interesting writeup that I hoped they'd do it with WoW classes, and apparently I wasn't the only one -- they've got a new post up now examining which classes in Azeroth align with which types of players.They throw gender into the mix as well -- turns out that while the classes have generally the same percentage of players (not surprising, given that gameplay dictates the classes should be fairly balanced), things start to break up when you add gender to the mix. Priests and Warriors seem to have the biggest separation: according to their data (obtained via the profiles on their site), most Priests are played by females, and most Warriors are played by men. Paladins as well tend to be male, though not as much as Warriors, and Druids tend to be female, though not as much as Priests. Women also tend to prefer the elven races (Blood and Night), while guys apparently prefer Orcs and Dwarves (which helps my -- sexist, I admit -- theory from way back on the WoW Insider Show that the Dwarven starting area appeals to guys more than women).The Bartle breakdown is interesting, too -- Killers prefer Rogues (duh), Warriors tend to be Achievers, and Hunters have the slight Explorer edge, but in general, the classes have a fairly even distribution across the board. All of the different roles can be filled by all the classes, which speaks to the way Blizzard has built the classes -- you can really solo, PvP, or group up with any of them. WAR's differences were distinct, but in WoW, Blizzard has done their best to make it so that whatever Bartle type you are, you can log in with any class and do what you want. gamerDNA promises more research here (including a Horde and Alliance breakdown), and we can't wait to see it.
GamerDNA rolls out their guild roster API
Remember that super nifty Warhammer Online signature API we showed you a little while back? Well, GamerDNA is back but this time with a guild roster tool that throws together a pretty nice website with little effort. They have a quick and dirty example for guild leaders to check out, but emphasis that more could be done with a larger portion of time. GamerDNA seems more than able when it comes to making use of all this data, in fact we're inclined to say they're data-masters to some degree -- mostly because it sounds kinda cool.We're sure there'll be more cool code coming from the guys 'n gals over at GamerDNA as Mines of Moria and Wrath of the Lich King see their release dates roll up.
How your Bartle Type influences your WAR class choice
A few weeks ago, gamerDNA made a push to get 500k gamers to take the Bartle test located on their site. Not only did they crush that number, but they've put the statistics to good use. In an interesting research article by Sanya Weathers (who was just recently on the Massively speaking podcast), you'll notice some fascinating results combining the Bartle Type of gamers as it pertains to their Warhammer Online class choice.First off, this article shows the interesting distribution of class choices in WAR (from the people with that information in their gamerDNA profiles). Then that information is broken down to show gender preference per class and ultimately the Bartle Type in relation to each class. The entire article is certainly a worthwhile read, and says a lot about the balance of the game's classes and how the game can appeal to as many people as it has. Hopefully, as hinted in the article, gamerDNA will do research like this for other popular MMOs in the future. Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
A data-fueled examination of Warhammer Online's launch
GamerDNA has a very interesting article taking a look at the effect of Warhammer Online's launch on games like World of Warcraft and Age of Conan. It was written by our most recent guest on Massively Speaking, Sanya Weathers. They've primarily watched the login rates of 250 players since beta who'd been certain that they'd pick up the title on launch day and the results are quite interesting. Neither World of Warcraft nor Age of Conan seem immediately affected by the game's launch, but that hasn't stopped its numbers from skyrocketing among the group of test players. Strangely enough, it also seems like the launch of Warhammer Online has caused people to play more games in general, including Lord of the Rings Online and Spore. The coolest thing about all of this is that GamerDNA plans to continue its data mining over the coming months in order to build up a big pile of information. WAR has undoubtedly made a big splash in the ocean of MMOs and we can't wait to see if any big waves -- either good or bad -- come of it. Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
GamerDNA's new WAR signature generator
We've been hearing quite a bit about gamerDNA lately, and for good reason. Following our interview with their CEO, Jon Radoff, during PAX this year, they've been steadily making headlines everywhere. In fact, just last week they surpassed 500,000 sign-ups for the quizzes on their site, and now they've announced their very own Warhammer Online Signature Generator.This handy little generator isn't a separate downloadable app, like others, but instead is done straight through the gamerDNA site itself. It displays your class, rank, reknown rank, server name and guild name. Check out their press release for complete info on getting one for yourself. Also, don't forget about their 60-day WAR game card contest still going on! Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out all of our previous Warhammer Online features, and don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
Play Warhammer Online for free!
With today's retail launch of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, what could possibly make your game experience any better? How about if you played it absolutely free for 60 days? The good folks at gamerDNA have announced a contest that will give you the chance to do just that. From Friday, September 19th through Sunday, September 28th, you can enter to win one of five 60 day Warhammer Online prepaid time cards.To play, you simply need to create a profile on the gamerDNA site and add any WAR-related information to your profile, post a WAR experience or play WAR. Then on Wednesday, October 1st, they'll announce the lucky winners drawn randomly. Be sure to check out the complete rules on the site, and good luck!
PAX08: GamerDNA interview focuses on subscription numbers
During our time at PAX08 this year, we got together with Jon Radoff, Founder and CEO of GamerDNA, a company that focuses on the community aspect of today's online games. Radoff was kind enough to give us an overview of what the company is about and how it pertains to the ever-growing MMO market. Originally this rough audio was meant for notes only, but it came out fairly well, so we thought we'd go ahead and post it for all to hear themselves.So in this audio interview that you'll find enclosed below, Radoff explains something that we found quite peculiar. "Interestingly, a high percentage of those people who quit Age of Conan didn't go back to WoW, they actually just went off MMORPGs in general," he explains. This is the type of number-crunching that they do at GamerDNA to discover not only subscription numbers and box sales, but who is actually playing what, and how dedicated they are to their games. We encourage you to learn more about this truly unique company at their website, and be sure to listen to the complete interview below.
