
WoW No Longer World’s Biggest MMO? - Mystalic
http://gigaom.com/2008/06/26/warcraft-no-longer-worlds-biggest-mmo/
======
teamonkey
Raph Koster did a presentation at GDC2007 that touched on this:
<http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdcprime2007.shtml>

The slides that struck me were this one:
<http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdcprime2007/Slide61.JPG> followed by this
one: <http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdcprime2007/Slide62.JPG>

Note that even back then Habbo had more active monthly users than WoW.

Of course Habbo and Runescape are free to play (at the basic level at least),
but the costs of running them are so much smaller. Last I heard, Blizzard's
WoW team numbered close to 1000 full-time staff. Jagex has a very small team
that has only very recently started to expand.

------
motoko
(WoW) paying subscribers vs (Habbo) free active user accounts

Not even a contest: WoW wins. Also, according to the Habbo site:

    
    
        * 2262 Habbos online now!
        * 2,845,022 visits in the last 30 days
    

How do these numbers translate to 9.5MM active accounts?

