It's not a 'World of Warcraft' per-se, but more of a 'Township of Warcraft'

March 24, 2006 8:57 AM

Any idea as to the retention rates of users in online games such as World of Warcraft?

After reading the new Wired, I just started learning about virtual property where you can sell the goods and stuff you earn playing games like World of Warcraft and Everquest. I'm not a gamer, but I find the idea really interesting and may be signing up myself soon...

However, after thinking about it, I was concerned that if you don't pay for a month, or if you get kicked out of the game, that would be akin to giving away a stack of money, somewhat like closing a credit card and losing your air miles in a way. So, I was trying to figure out: in the bigger online games - Everquest, WoW, Second Life, There, whatever other big ones are out there - how many people stay on as users month after month, and keep playing? I've found a bit of info on population as a whole for a few games via Wikipedia (see WoW's), but I have no idea as to how many people play most of them month after month, where to find out what percentage stay month after month, what percentage pack up and leave, and how many new gamers come... Any clues? Hope me, AskMeFi gamers!

posted by evadery to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Retention rates are something that the game companies don't like to talk about... it's considered one of their key metrics, and they don't like to share it with competitors.

I can tell you that WoW, at the very least, had psychologists involved with the design... they explicitly _tried_ to make it addictive. I'd guess they lose no more than 5% of their population in any given month, and they get new signups far faster.

Also note that someone can stop paying/playing for awhile, and then reactivate the account again later, so a lost customer isn't permanently lost.
posted by Malor at 9:01 AM on March 24, 2006

Oh, I just saw your title... WoW has over SEVEN MILLION subscribers. At the very least, that makes it Major Metropolis of Warcraft. :)
posted by Malor at 9:02 AM on March 24, 2006

The canonical source for stats on MMORPG populations is SirBruce's MMOG charts. There's no data there that's going to directly show you the churn rate, but you can look at the decay curve of dying games like Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, and Sims Online to get an idea of how population drops off. The main lesson is it doesn't drop off very fast at all, which is something of a surprise. People still play Everquest! SirBruce's data ends in July 05 though so we're missing some of the recent shutdowns.

Most MMOGs let you suspend your account without losing your stuff. It's free to suspend an account in Eve Online and, I think, World of Warcraft. I've quit a couple of MMOGs (City of Heroes) and am still getting emails every few months encouraging me to sign up again and reclaim my character.
posted by Nelson at 9:05 AM on March 24, 2006

Also note that someone can stop paying/playing for awhile, and then reactivate the account again later, so a lost customer isn't permanently lost.

This is true.

I startted playing WoW in November 2004, stopped in April 2004. When I began playing again in October 2005, all of my characters and stuff were still there. I stopped playing again in January, but am sure I'll be back once the cold weather sets in again this fall. (Or the expansion is released, whichever comes first.)
posted by jdroth at 9:06 AM on March 24, 2006

just started learning about virtual property where you can sell the goods and stuff you earn playing games like World of Warcraft and Everquest.

As a side note, if buying and selling virtual goods with/for real money is your goal, stick to EQ2 and Second Life. They're the only games I know off that permit above-game gold/item selling. It happens in every game, but WoW, for example, will ban your account if they catch you at it.
posted by headspace at 9:14 AM on March 24, 2006

1) As a non-MMO gamer you may be missing a major point of MMO games. In games like WoW and Everquest there is no inherent need to "win" or finish. They are designed so that you will be hard pressed to run out of things to do, and if you like the game at all you'll be hard pressed to get bored.

Said another way - In typical single player games the goal is to finish. But in MMO games the goal is to immerse yourself in the game forever. There is no winning or finishing.

For example, one of the main activities in WoW and Everquest is running through the forest picking flowers. People enjoy this, and will spend literally months of real world time doing it. It's a whole different mindset.

2) Unless you are willing to act as some sort of pimp for a stable of third world sweatshop drones, you won't make much money by selling items orgold in the recent MMO games. China has warehouses full of people collecting game stuff for sale, and they work for what you'd consider slave wages. You just can't compete with that.

3) Recent MMO games have put a great deal of effort into making it harder to make real world money from in-game content.
posted by y6y6y6 at 9:31 AM on March 24, 2006

However, after thinking about it, I was concerned that if you don't pay for a month, or if you get kicked out of the game, that would be akin to giving away a stack of money, somewhat like closing a credit card and losing your air miles in a way.

In World of Warcraft, they specifically state that they won't delete your characters or items, so you can suspend your account for a period of time and come back to the characters later. So, people like jdroth can play in the winter months, stop paying the subscription fee in the warm weather, and come back the following winter and pick back up. (or, like me, burn out, stop playing for 4 months, and come back).
posted by jeversol at 12:15 PM on March 24, 2006

I used to partake in this sort of virtual economy -- on the sales side -- and a word of warning: Don't. It's not easy, and when it is easy, there are plenty of people out there who can do it more than you for cheaper than you.

I was lucky enough to get in on Earth and Beyond when they started giving bonuses for "Referrals" -- register that you'd referred a person to the game and they give your character money and xp. Additionally, they'd set up a system whereby you could buy additional "friend codes" for only $14. Use your friend's CDs to install from, use your friend code to register, and viola, you no longer needed to buy a $60 box.

However, it turned out that you could buy a friend code for $14 and sell the referral that came with it on eBay for around $30. Shortly after that $25, then $20, then sometimes only $15. It got to the point where you could only make money in large volumes, and there simply weren't large enough volumes of buyers to make it worthwhile, so I got out.

That has so far been the ONLY profitable way of selling "virtual goods" I've found. Forget gold or items. There are people in third-world countries whose living expenses are a hundredth of yours and can afford to farm for twelve hour shifts. Can you abandon your life for twelve hours each day, and then get by on the maybe $200 a month you MIGHT be able to scratch out on gold sales?

One last thing, typically Blizzard et al. won't ban you if they "catch" you farming/selling gold. Those clauses are in the EULA so that if you do get burned by an unscrupulous person on either side of the deal, Blizzard legally doesn't have to help you with it.
posted by Imperfect at 4:22 PM on March 24, 2006

I have no answers to your question, but if you are interested in the economics of virtual worlds, you should look at the work of Edward Castronova who arguably pioneered the field with his 2001 paper Virtual Worlds, in which he argues that the economy in Everquest produced a GNP per capita somewhere between that of Russia and Bulgaria. (He has followed up that paper with many more on similar subjects.)
posted by dersins at 7:55 PM on March 24, 2006