Shall I Compare Thee To Another Launch? (LOTRO, EQ2, and WOW Launch Expansions)

There’s no rest for the wicked, or for intrepid start up companies. When the start up company is wicked AWESOME, forget turkey-induced comas – GamerDNA is on the job. I hope all of our readers in the USA had a good feast. For the rest of the world, today is just another day, and we’re not serving up leftovers – here’s your fresh Trends column.

Last week, we took a look at the playing patterns of WoW users, and how those patterns were affected by the launch of their expansion pack. You can check it out here (http://blog.gamerdna.com/blog/2008/11/21/wow-what-a-week/) or take my word for it that the short version is that out of the pool of every GamerDNA member who has World of Warcraft listed, one percent fewer people logged in every week leading up to the launch of the expansion pack. (By the way, to be clear, that does not mean 1% of all accounts fell into disuse. WoW has long since hit critical mass, and there are unknown numbers of new users being added each day. The 1% reduction was the net. Also, please note that we’re talking about usage patterns, which may or may not correlate to subscription numbers. I hate seeing statistics used as weapons when the wielder doesn’t seem to know which end is the sharp one. Yes, I am talking about YOUR message board. This has been a public service announcement.)

This week, let’s take a look at the other titles to launch expansion packs this month: Lord of the Rings Online and EverQuest II.

Let’s first take a look at the other games being played. Before we get to the trend data, we should establish the kind of player we’re talking about. We think the best way to know a player is by the sum of all the games he plays. First, Lord of the Rings Online:

This chart is looking at everyone at GamerDNA who ever played LOTRO, and what they played the week of the launch of Mines of Moria. We are not looking at current subscribers or current players, but everyone with the game in their profile. 17% of that group played at least some LOTRO last week. Not bad! 30% were playing WoW, 13% were playing WAR, and 12% were trying that new multiplayer game from Valve where the world’s population has mostly turned into zombies – fast ones – and you and the other players are somehow unaffected, but you must work together to survive.

Notice the LOTRO list has five MMOs – WOW, LOTRO, WAR, GW, and EVE.

Now let’s turn our gimlet eye to EQ2, and what their players (past and present) were doing when The Shadow Odyssey was launched.

At first glance, it looks a lot like the other chart – so much so that I made the bars a little narrower just to keep them straight. But oh, those tasty details.

We used the same type of pool – everyone at GamerDNA who has listed EQ2 as a game they’ve played. 13% of everyone who ever played EQ2 logged into that very game during the week of their expansion launch. 29% played WOW, and 15% played WAR. 10% were going for zombies on their Xboxes.

But they also played LOTRO. And players with EQ2 in their past also played Star Wars Galaxies and Vanguard. LOTRO players didn’t play EQ2 enough to hit our chart, and SWG and Vanguard didn’t show up at all.

I’m going to draw two conclusions here. One, that Station pass (where SOE customers can play multiple SOE products, such as EQ2, Vanguard, and SWG, at a discount) is really working out for them, drawing customers who might not otherwise bother with smaller or older titles. And two, EQ2 players are more devoted fans of the genre than players who are newer to the field, and who might therefore be fans of individual games as opposed to a style. Agree? Disagree? That’s what the comments are for.

Now let’s hit what you’re itching to see – the drop off rates leading up to the launch of expansion packs, and how the three titles compare. We’re using the exact same time frames for each title to ensure you are comparing apples to apples.

The green lines are what you remember from last week, of course.

Blue is LOTRO. Three months ago, nearly a quarter of all GamerDNA members with LOTRO in their profiles were logging in. Two months ago, that total was down to 18%. They leveled off a bit, and enjoyed a small bump for the expansion launch.

Red is EQ2. The difference between their three month and two month snapshots is minimal, which makes sense for a game that launched in late 2004. However, they were clearly far more affected by the launch of Lich King than LOTRO was – you can see their numbers taking a bigger hit than LOTRO’s did at the same relative time. But in terms of proportion, they followed the same pattern as LOTRO – the expansion packs took them back to the activity levels of two months earlier.

In my opinion, 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. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this column, Blizzard has the advantage of critical mass in that the numbers of new players coming in every day mitigates the effect of players leaving. None of the evidence that I have access to indicates that WoW customers subscribe for longer than other MMO customers do, but the pool of potential customers is simply an order of magnitude larger than the audiences reached by the other titles.

At any rate, you can see the curves. Three titles is not sufficient to prove a trend, but it could be that we have the beginnings of an algorithm to prove the effect of a solid expansion pack on activity levels.

What do you think?
 

Tags: EQ2, expansions, LOTRO, wow