Zhengtu Online holds 1 million concurrent users
Filed under: World of Warcraft, EVE Online, EverQuest, Guild Wars, Business models, Culture, Game mechanics, Zhengtu Online, Massively meta
According to the Star Online, Zhengtu Online is one of only three MMOs whose userbase exceeds one million players at peak times, the other two being Journey to the West and, of course, World of Warcraft. It goes without saying that American companies would do well to do some research into the Asian markets to see what it is that they're doing over there to be so successful; it can't be a coincidence that 2 of the 3 top-played MMOs are Asian.Having said that, what, exactly is the appeal? Are these other two games simply the best of the breed, as WoW seems to be (die-hard EQ, Guild Wars, EVE Online fans can climb off your soapboxes right now; I'm just going by statistics here)? Are there congruences between the three? Similarities in gameplay? If either of the other two were to come over to these shores, would WoW suddenly find some serious competition? Have any of you played these games, O Faithful Readers? Leave a comment!
[Via the Star Online]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Scopique said on 9:14AM 11-20-2007
China has high unemployment, and young people hang out in cybercafe's all day, doing nothing but playing games. In a setting like this, there's probably more of a perchance that a single person plays multiple games over time...it might just be that a few of them get lucky at a certain time to be able to claim so many concurrent logins.
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Matt Warner said on 10:10AM 11-20-2007
Most Chinese gamers get to download MMOGs for free and pay pennies on the hour to play. Not to mention China alone equals 20% of the world's population (6.6 billion estimated globally) fielding a million shouldn't be that surprising. Also South Korea's gamers are born and raised in pc baangs. All the consoles were embargoed at one time, and that is why MMOG gaming is bigger there, oh and a little something called Starcraft. It is still pretty cool to field a million concurrent players. In the grand scheme of things it really dwarfs other MMOGs like EVE. bleh!
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Gr1zz said on 11:10AM 11-20-2007
Bots! =-P
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Coherent said on 1:39PM 11-20-2007
Eastern based players (specifically South Korean players) seem willing to accept incredibly badly repetitive (grinding) gameplay as the norm in their games of choice. So I wouldn't weight raw player numbers alone as the critical factor in determining a game's overall strength.
It seems clear that asian players LOVE MMO's in general, but as a consequence of that love, there is a very low bar for success in asian markets. I think the qualities that make a game successful in eastern markets would not necessarily be good factors to study in making a game successful worldwide.
In other words; they're okay with playing crappy games as long as they're flashy and pretty and cotton-candy like. But building games like that isn't going to help you advance the state of the art to reach a mass market worldwide. You need to explore gameplay models that increase the depth of play instead of simple trendwatching.
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