Jack Emmert: City of Heroes had 180,000 subscribers

[JaguarX]

But how many of us were on the 7+1 or 12+2 plans?  The 12+2 came out to be about $10.25 a month and the 7+1 was $11.10 a month.  That drops it to $615-666K per month.

ah yes. Forgot about those.

[Defcon Kid]

 

I don't have the numbers but how many players have to be in zone before it spawns a new instant?  Times that by 32 add some more for those on 33 and other zones. 

Then you do more math.  How many players does it take to max a server?

Afaik there was a cap of 50 players to make an instance to spawn a new one, that's at least the people allowed in RWZ for Raids before it spawned RWZ 2, 3, etc... so 33 x 50 = 1.650... plus all those standing in the other servers, or playing normal missions, so easily up to 2.000 - 2.500 people might've been online that moment if my estimations are correct.

[srmalloy]

Afaik there was a cap of 50 players to make an instance to spawn a new one, that's at least the people allowed in RWZ for Raids before it spawned RWZ 2, 3, etc... so 33 x 50 = 1.650... plus all those standing in the other servers, or playing normal missions, so easily up to 2.000 - 2.500 people might've been online that moment if my estimations are correct.

RWZ and the Hive were capped at 60, but I believe that one of the devs alluded to the regular zone limit being about 100. This is working purely from memory, though.

[Codewalker]

Only a few zones were 100, Pocket D was one. Most of the city and hazard zones were 75 post-freedom, Atlas Park included. RWZ, The Hive, and The Abyss were 50.

Unity Rally had 2,600 on Virtue (maxed), and around 4,300 total logged in at the height of the event, but not all of those were there for the rally. I'd estimate around 3,500 - 4,000 who were there for the event.

[srmalloy]

Only a few zones were 100, Pocket D was one. Most of the city and hazard zones were 75 post-freedom, Atlas Park included. RWZ, The Hive, and The Abyss were 50.

It was much higher in the early days; I recall it taking something on the close order of 250 people in The Hive to spawn The Hive 2 -- although I participated in back-to-back Hami raids where we filled The Hive, spawned a second instance with Hamidon up (since he was on a timer, this was an opportunity not to be wasted), had someone who was double-boxing stick a placeholder there to keep it open, ran the Hami raid in the first instance, then trooped over to the second instance to run a second raid immediately afterward.

Of course, this was back when you got your HOs by getting the defeating hit on one of the Hamidon Buds that spawned after Hami went down, so the rewards were not evenly distributed... but it was still entertaining to run a pair of raids in quick succession.

[Surelle]

The whole joke here is that I can name you probably 20 MMOs off the top of my head, without even trying, that have got to have LESS than 100,000 players never mind playing customers than CoH did when it was shut down....and they're all still up and running!

Don't believe me?  Let's see....  Saga of Ryzom.  Allods.  Anarchy Online.  Dark Age of Camelot.  Warhammer Online.  Hellgate:  London (now Hellgate:  Global).  A.P.B.  Gods & Heroes.  Age of Conan.  Pirates of the Burning Sea.  Vanguard.  Everquest 1.  Everquest 2.  Lineage 2.  Guild Wars 1.  R.O.H.A.N.:  Blood Feud.  Dungeons and Dragons Online.  Lord of the Rings Online.  Asheron's Call 1.  Asheron's Call 2. 

Not to mention that I more than suspect a lot of other newer games like The Secret World, Rift and Path of Exile are barely breaking that mark, or have similar player numbers/financial breakdowns to what CoH had in its final months.

Heck, I'd be surprised, after the Real Money Auction House and always-online DRM fiasco that were Diablo III, if even D3 sported many more players than that these days, lol.

[JWBullfrog]

I've always thought that 100K regular players (free or otherwise) was a pretty good number. Yes I know there are a thousand reasons that can be given by business types why that's not enough, but the fact still is that you have 100,000 customers.  Any company worth it's salt will figure out a way to work with that.
 
 

[Ironwolf]

I agree 60,000 + subs is a nice healthy living if you were only supporting the one game and slowly working on part 2.

[JaguarX]

The whole joke here is that I can name you probably 20 MMOs off the top of my head, without even trying, that have got to have LESS than 100,000 players never mind playing customers than CoH did when it was shut down....and they're all still up and running!

Don't believe me?  Let's see....  Saga of Ryzom.  Allods.  Anarchy Online.  Dark Age of Camelot.  Warhammer Online.  Hellgate:  London (now Hellgate:  Global).  A.P.B.  Gods & Heroes.  Age of Conan.  Pirates of the Burning Sea.  Vanguard.  Everquest 1.  Everquest 2.  Lineage 2.  Guild Wars 1.  R.O.H.A.N.:  Blood Feud.  Dungeons and Dragons Online.  Lord of the Rings Online.  Asheron's Call 1.  Asheron's Call 2. 

Not to mention that I more than suspect a lot of other newer games like The Secret World, Rift and Path of Exile are barely breaking that mark, or have similar player numbers/financial breakdowns to what CoH had in its final months.

Heck, I'd be surprised, after the Real Money Auction House and always-online DRM fiasco that were Diablo III, if even D3 sported many more players than that these days, lol.

Any of them owned by NCSoft and American based?

[downix]

Any of them owned by NCSoft and American based?

Yes, a big one:  Guild Wars

[JaguarX]

Yes, a big one:  Guild Wars

yup. Guild Wars. The usual MMO fare, good game but nothing much outstanding from the rest of the thousands of grind fantasy game.

Yet, COX was chosen. The only one basically of it's kind in their entire line up.


They may not see it now, but I think eventually games that give creative freedom like COX will become more standard, yet, they had a big head start and squandered it. I think by the time they realize what they have done, they will have to fight a up hill battle to gain a foothold again when they could have been the ones that owned the hill. COX just was ahead of it's time.


Why the feeling of MMOS losing ground? Because people are tiring of the same ole elf and sword storlines grind for gear games that all look alike. And it seems that NCsoft is placing all of it's eggs in one basket like GM did with the SUVs.

[Absolute]

The whole joke here is that I can name you probably 20 MMOs off the top of my head, without even trying, that have got to have LESS than 100,000 players

A.P.B.

What?

APB hit 3 million players. They've never dipped anywhere near 100k. (http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/15/previously-a-dud-relaunched-apb-game-gets-3-million-users-in-a-week/)

Unless you meant the original one, which made the studio bankrupt.

I agree with your point though. A lot of MMOs with similar populations haven't been closed, and for a good reason.

[General Idiot]

You know... APB did that well on a relaunch. Has there been any other game that relaunched and didn't do extremely poorly? Because that seems like something we should be using as an example.

[downix]

You know... APB did that well on a relaunch. Has there been any other game that relaunched and didn't do extremely poorly? Because that seems like something we should be using as an example.

At this time, they're the only one with enough time to tell. Asheron's Call 2 and Final Fantasy XIV are both coming out, again, soon, so we will see how things go.