Comparing the expansion launches for WoW, EQ2, and LotRO

by Michael Zenke Nov 29th 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Culture, Expansions

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.

Tags: eq2, everquest-2, expansions, gamerdna, lord-of-the-rings-online, lotro, mines-of-moria, statistics, the-shadow-odyssey, world-of-warcraft, wow, wrath-of-the-lich-king

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

MegaSnort said on 8:19PM 11-29-2008

LoTRO seems to be busier than ever. Server queues Moria launch week for the first time in ages.

Jack said on 11:28AM 11-30-2008

I wonder how the game did when there was not LOTRO on the box if it was the same thing not base on some book... Indeed most players will not even look at it!

Anyway I will play LOTRO when they finally complete the main storyline and go beyond Frodo and the ring and go on after the main lotro story....

EQ2 is a joke sorry but this game really need a 3rd version like ones it was one on one with Warcraft but now its just a mix of instants none collected zones and grind craft and the graphics and zone design are boring and rush jobs.