Archive for May, 2010

For the past few months, I’ve been doing some soul-searching regarding the MMO industry and how I approach my criticism of it. I’ve already stated my opinion of the situation in the MMO industry, so there’s no need to elaborate how much I hope it will change. The real question lies in how much of an impact I have. As it is, blogging is such a crowded field. You’re not going to make a huge impact, unless you enter the MMO industry directly as part of a development team, join a major publication, or come up with new ways to spread your ideas. So I’ve thought long and hard about what I can do to make an impact in some way.

Competition for Bloggers Is Extremely High

It used to be that only a few critics of the MMO genre stood out. Back in the days when Ultima Online and EverQuest were the prevalent entries in the industry, criticism was dominated by the likes of Scott Jennings‘s site, Lum the Mad. These days, however, becoming a prominent critic of the industry is an arduous task. Consider this (and this is just hypothetical, since no one has researched the subject):

• WoW has roughly 11.5 million players. I don’t know the exact number, because Blizzard tends not to release numbers unless they have an increase in subscriptions to announce. But for the purpose of this article, let’s assume WoW still has the 11.5 million subscribers they announced in 2008. (I’m sure they don’t, given the censorship issues in China and the lack of a recent announcement about subscribers, but let’s use the best case scenario.)
• Not all of WoW’s subscribers are individuals. Some players have more than one account. So let’s say 350,000 of these subscriptions are actually duplicate accounts for individual players. In my guild alone, I’ve seen three five-boxers  and several two-boxers (I have two subscriptions myself). But I’m not about to assume my guild is normal, so I’ve dramatically lowered the assumed percentage to 3%.
• Not all of the 11,150,000 remaining individuals speak English. I don’t have any numbers to support this, but considering the old 11.5 million mark also included Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Latin American and Russian players, you have to assume not everyone speaks English. Personally, however, I wouldn’t even begin to guess with any accuracy just how many of those players don’t speak English. So let’s say only 25% lack proficiency in English. That leaves you with a generous estimate of 8,362,500 English literate individuals playing WoW.
• So any blogger writing in English could have a potential readership of 8,362,500. But not everyone cares to read about a game. Some people are simply way too casual. Some only read news sites. And some tend to gravitate towards well-known communities for discussion and criticism.
  • So let’s assume about half of the English-speaking WoW players care to read news or commentary about WoW. That leaves us with 4,181,250 possible readers.
  • Probably half of those care only about news and patch notes, so they only visit MMO Champion and World of Raids. That leaves us with 2,090,625 potential readers.
  • Another half of those only care about theorycrafting and strategy, so they visit sites like Elitist Jerks, Arena Junkies, TankSpot, etc. That leaves you with 1,045,313 people who might care about commentary and criticism about the game.
  • There are some very well-known blogs and commentary sites out there. WoW.com is probably the most prominent with a broad spectrum of topics. For the hardcore arena scene, a lot of people like to read World of Ming (even if they don’t agree with him and his cohorts, they still read his blog because they discuss the arena ladders and tournaments). And then some hardcore raiders tend to gravitate towards blogs on the sites of hardcore raiding guilds like Ensidia. While I highly suspect these sites attract at least 75% of the potential readership, I’m going to be conservative and say only 50% do. This would leave any independent blogger with a potential readership of 522,656 readers.
  • As I said, there are many, many bloggers out there. I’d estimate there are at least a few hundred active bloggers writing about WoW. If you go to BlogAzeroth.com and look at the amount of blog introductions there currently are, you’ll find twenty-three forum pages at fifty posts per page. But the site only extends back to 2008, and not every blogger has made an introduction there. While probably half of those end prematurely, the rest tend to write for at least a year or so. Even if there was merely 300 bloggers (another conservative estimate), that’s 300 blogs competing for only 522,656 readers. While I know some people tend to read several blogs, if they only read an average of two blogs each, that’s 3484 readers per blog. And some readers are not daily, meaning the “visits” for a lot of these blogs each day would be dramatically less than 3484, if they even achieve that high of a readership.

It’s important to note that none of this is factual. This is entirely estimated. That said, I’ve been extremely generous with the numbers, and I personally suspect the actual readership for moderately successful blogs is only a few hundred per article.

Factual Assessment

What I do know is how my blog has fared in its brighter days. I’ve had seven of my articles linked by either Massively or WoW.com. And, each time, those links have resulted in spikes in readership. But these spikes are almost always temporary. They do result in the addition of some long-term readers, but nothing from which I could actually make a living. Hell, my most popular linked entry (the article which previewed Wrath based on my experiences with the beta) only generated about 9,000 unique views. But if you were to look at an average day during the blog’s heyday, you’d see a unique view count ranging anywhere from 50 and 250.

I should note my blog is definitely not the most successful independent WoW blog. I’m not about to claim that. I don’t even come close. The most successful blogs have a higher frequency of updates, a more focused subject, and a more user friendly design. Some simply go the distance to make sure the presentation of their content is incredibly unique and intuitive.

I came into blogging thinking I could generate a huge readership, but when I realized just how competitive the field was, I stopped caring about that and started caring more about what I wanted to say. So I dropped all inhibitions and simply wrote what I wanted when I had the time. I wasn’t going to generate a living, so why bother sacrificing portions of my life to meet a deadline? That being said, I did want to generate an impact. I’m not sure whether or not I did, but it is pretty ironic to know you’ve written articles about something like reshaping old world Azeroth and then seeing it happen in a new expansion. I don’t know whether some developer caught wind of my article, but you’d like to think you at least influenced players’ thoughts about the prospect (even if that’s not really the case).

That said, I was one of the more successful independent bloggers during the site’s peak, in the late summer to early fall of 2008. As you’ll note, however, the numbers for even a moderately successful blog like mine are not terribly impressive. I certainly could have built a larger audience than I did, but I was still leading a hardcore raiding guild when Wrath was released, and that demanded my full attention. So I lost much of what I’d built.

What Are You Getting at, Lume? What Should We Expect?

I’m going to be rather vague, because I don’t want to show my hand. I’m going to say my interest in commentary has recently been renewed. With so many MMOs hitting the market these days, my optimism has not died entirely. I also want to make more of an impact than I have in the past. Having faltered in a recent attempt at doing so, I’m going to go in a new direction. So you can expect me to be shifting my commentary to something different. It will still be focused on WoW, but the style will be different. It is going to be very experimental. When I’m ready, I’ll announce it. In some ways, my experience writing Lume the Mad will have been a launching pad for what I’m planning. However, I need to do some planning and setup. So it could be up to a couple months before I begin regular production.

That’s all for now
–Steve (aka Lume)