24 Million EVE Online Pilots Means What?

As part of their announcement that EVE Online was now available on the Epic Games store CCP put out a press release that indicated that more than 24 million “pilots” had played the game and that more than 91 million ships had been destroyed.

Some numbers

Those are some impressive numbers.

When I write about older titles in the MMORPG genre I often refer to a game’s “installed base.”   Those are the total number of users who have played the game and who are still interested in or fond of the game. They are often a lucrative resource for a company to sell to.  There is a direct correlation between that “installed base” number and how successful an older game can be playing the nostalgia card with retro servers and the like.

EverQuest, for example, while peaking at 550K subscribers, was the biggest show in town when it came to the genre for the first five years of its run.  During that time several million people played the game and then moved on.  So, while many players didn’t stick with the game forever, they played long enough to have had good times.  When SOE, and later Daybreak, started offering old school servers based around early content, that became a significant part of the title’s business.

Likewise, we saw WoW Classic revive the fortunes of World of Warcraft when Battle for Azeroth was foundering a bit, and Old School RuneScape… playing the retro card there has gotten it concurrent player counts more than a lot of titles have total players.

So EVE Online looks to have a sizable installed base to work with.  Even if they can’t play the retro server card, they can still market to appeal to players who have played and lapsed over time.

The question is, how big the core installed base, the players that got invested enough in the game, really is.  And for that we have to first figure out what 24 million “pilots” really means.  That could mean characters, accounts, actual individual people, or some other metric they came up with after a night of too much aquavit.

Fortunately, even as I was thinking about what it could be, CSM member Brisc Rubal was using his position to find out from CCP what it really meant.  On The Meta Show on Saturday he said that he got clarification and that “pilots” really meant “accounts.”

That means 24 million accounts have been created for the game.

But he got even further clarification.  Of those 24 million accounts… and I know I keep rounding down, but I am going to get into some sloppy math in a bit and that will be my margin for error or some such… 18 million were created by unique individuals.

So the largest potential installed base for EVE Online is 18 million people.

Of course, it is not that big.  Not every one of those players spent enough time to form at attachment with the game.  After all, we’ve all seen this chart from EVE North 2019, haven’t we?

How many new players log back in as time passes

And that wasn’t even news in 2019.  We had seen a similar sort of chart back at EVE Fanfest 2014.

New Player Trajectory

People who leave without engaging, people who don’t log in after a day or two, nothing has hooked them.  They got a glimpse, didn’t find anything to their liking, and moved on.

This was the view of EVE at the time

The retention problem has changed over time.  That 2014 chart reflects the pre-F2P era, when you had to commit a bit more to even get going because the whole thing required a monthly subscription after the 14 day trial, a fact that chased a lot of people off before they took their first step towards the game.

Now, with free to play, the reality of the first chart, where nearly 90% of new players fall by the wayside in a week and the overall long term retention is something like 4%, that 10% “Group / Diverse” long term retention path probably feels like the good old days.

That means that the installed base isn’t 18 million.  But it also isn’t 720K, which would be 4% of that number.  It is somewhere in between, though much closer to the lower number I would guess.

So I am going to do a bit of hand waving with the data we have to come up with a guess that, while not solid, has some foundation in reality.  And that is where we get to that gap between 24 million accounts and 18 million individuals.

That is a gap of six million, and I am going to use that as the basis of my estimate, because to me those are the secondary and tertiary accounts that users who are committed to the game, people who would likely count in the installed base, players that CCP could reasonably be able to market to with some new initiative.

So if that is six million alts and, let’s take a 3 alts per main as an estimate… I know, somebody will say that person X has a hundred accounts, but a lot of people still just have one, and even Goons by the last participation metric count are a little past 4 to 1…. that means that there are maybe 2 million individuals out there that have committed to the game enough to manage multiple accounts.

That leaves 16 million in the total users, who can’t all have turned and run, so I am just going to somewhat arbitrarily declare a million of them…  6.25% of that total… are also in the installed base of the game.

That gives the game an installed base to draw on of maybe 3 million individuals, and I am going to use the slop in my rounding down to 24 million at the top to hide the current player base, where CCP has said they have an active monthly user count that runs between 200K and 300K.

That is pretty healthy.  But EVE Online has had some promising numbers of late, like that floor of 110K subscribers that the redeemed ISK token line in the July/August MERs seemed to indicate.

Of course, the question is what CCP does with this installed base.  As I noted above, they don’t really have the retro server option, the New Eden economy being a bit precarious as it is.  Splitting the player base with another server would likely doom both, leaving aside the giant elephant in the room of what an EVE Online retro server would even be.

So they have untapped potential.  Can they do something with it?  What would lend itself to getting the installed base engaged and back to the game?  Or is the installed base really a thing at all for New Eden?  When you “win” EVE and log off, do you want to come back?  It is a game that can absorb all the effort and dedication that you have, so would you miss it when it was gone or just feel relieved?

Honest Trailers Looks at Streaming Services

I just want to point out that I wrote my two posts about streaming services, yesterday’s and the previous one, before this video came out.

That said, the profusion of streaming services and their popularity now during the pandemic makes it a timely topic, and the Screen Junkies teams looks into services beyond what I have explored so far.

 

Of course, since I just wrote about some of those services, it is interesting to see where my opinion aligns or diverges from theirs.  Also, I forgot that Netflix was no longer the place to watch Friends as HBO paid a bunch of money to have it on HBO Max.  I might know that if I could access HBO Max rather than whatever HBO service I’m allowed to have on the Roku.

Still, I feel solid with my own assessments.

And even Honest Trailers cannot plumb the full depth of channels out there.  My wife keeps asking me at bed time, when the lights are out and I have no electronics handy, if we can get Acorn or Britbox or some other oddball channel because she saw an ad for a show that we might want to watch and it is on that particular service.  And don’t get me started on trying to explain how the PBS app works.

If you are really hot on this topic, then you will probably enjoy the Honest Trailers Commentary video that goes along with the above, where they run through the trailer and talk about why they said what they did and expand upon their opinions.  I enjoyed it.

EverQuest Progression Servers vs WoW Classic

For the last few years one of the key arguments to my mind in support of the idea of something like WoW Classic were the progression servers that SOE and the Daybreak rolled up for the EverQuest community over the years, starting back in 2007 with The Sleeper and The Combine.

A splash screen of many expansion splash screens

There was a lot to be learned from even that first rough run, including the idea that it might be more popular than expected requiring the company to roll out another server.

After running lukewarm-to-cold on the whole special server idea during the SOE years, where they would launch with some fanfare and then never mention the servers again in any official capacity, Daybreak has turned the special server nostalgia thing into a part of their ongoing business plan.  When Holly Longdale says that EQ has more players in 2019 than it did in 2015, it is in part due to the cottage industry for Norrath nostalgia they have created.

So now Blizzard is in the nostalgia business with WoW Classic, and is clearly seeing some success from having done so.  But it is interesting to see the different paths Daybreak and Blizzard took to get to their respective positions, both in how the went after the idea and how their respective games evolved over time.

The Classic Splash Screen

The idea for this post came via a comment from Bhagpuss on the post where we were having trouble finding a definitive answer on the functionality of meeting stones.  He noted that information about mechanics in WoW Classic were not as readily available as they were for Daybreak’s games.  While places like WoW Head have been able to recreate WoW Classic versions of their site with quests and locations pretty well covered, they are not quite complete as we discovered.

Meanwhile, if you start digging up stuff on EverQuest you will find old articles, often not updated for a decade or more, are pretty spot on, both for live and progression servers.

Part of this is, of course, due to how SOE and then Daybreak approached the nostalgia idea.  While Blizzard set out to recreate the 2006 experience running in its own version of the client, an EverQuest progression server runs on the same client as live and draws on the same assets and resources.

This was no doubt due to a few reasons, with a lack of resources being at the top.  Blizzard has the personnel and the budget to create something like WoW Classic while the EverQuest team hasn’t had that sort of opportunity since the early days, at which point it probably seemed like a silly thing to take on.  The team was cranking out two expansions a year for quite a stretch, and expansions made money and kept people subscribed.

There was also something of a lack of commitment to the nostalgia idea.  While I give SOE props for even getting into it back in 2007, just eight years after EverQuest launched, it wasn’t until well into the Daybreak era that the company really took the idea seriously, that resources were dedicated to make the nostalgia server idea a thing and address some of the problems that the fans had been complaining about since the first round of them.

But SOE and then Daybreak were able to get away with their half-assed approach to progression servers largely due to the way the game have developed and evolved over time.

The thing is, if you log into an EverQuest live server today you can wander around a lot of old zones that have remained pretty much untouched since they were launched.  The EQ team has released expansion after expansion, adding zone after zone, while never doing anything to really reform or consolidate the world.

Yes, there is the Plane of Knowledge, the travel hub of Norrath, and SOE updated a few old world zones like Freeport, but a lot of content was just left where it was dropped and rarely looked after again.  Somebody might add a new zone connection for another expansion, and a few places got a Tome of Knowledge added to get people to the Plane of Knowledge, but for the most part if you wander through old zones they look like they did back in the day.

And you can add to that the fact that the team didn’t go hog wild on revamping classes with every expansion.  If you roll up a warrior on a live server or a progression server, they still start with the same old skills from back whenever.  Spells got a bit of a revamp, losing the every five level aspect at some point, but otherwise you still get Spirit of the Wolf at about the same point you got it in 1999 or 2007 or 2011 or 2018.

In that environment where you haven’t really added a bunch of new stuff to the old zones, where classes are about the same now at level 1 though 20 or 50 as they were back in 1999, where content has been delivered in nice little stand-alone silos, a company can get away with a low effort, same client nostalgia experience.  Fippy Darkpaw is still running at the 1999 gates of Qeynos. delivering his line, over and over again.  So they can fiddle with some toggles about which zones you can access and play with the experience slider and call it a day.

Yes, there is Project 1999 and the purist attempt to really recreate every little detail of the original game. (They have a new server coming too.)  I admire the effort, but it does feel a bit like a niche of a niche, the desire to get back the entire experience.  Daybreak delivers about 80% of the experience already in a… I was going to wite “modern client” but let’s not be silly… supported client that gets updates on servers that get a lot of traffic.

Compare this with Blizzard’s lot.

The elephant in the room is the Cataclysm expansion, which redid the old content, updated the old world to allow flying, and added zones that adjoined to classic zones, and basically stirred the pot radically.  This is ground zero of the “missing old content” movement.

But that is only the most stark example of change.  Blizzard stirs the pot with every expansion.  Occasionally I see a call for “WoW 2.0″ and I laugh, because we’ve been there already.  The Burning Crusade was literally WoW 2.0, and while its changes were not as sweeping as Cataclysm, the game changed the day it dropped, as it did with Wrath of the Lich King and Mists of Panaria and so on and so forth.  And while Blizz gives us a new city to hang out in each expansion, it also pushed to keep us in Stormwind and Orgrimmar as well, with portals to ease getting back and the auction house to serve as a draw.

I have written about how the hunter in WoW Classic is so different that retail, but even the simple classes have seen change.  Compared to rolling a warrior in EverQuest today, rolling one in retail WoW is nothing like the 2004 or 2006 experience.  You go through different content with skills that work differently up a different skill path to unlock different talents on a different talent tree.

In that environment there is no cheap way out to create anything like a vanilla WoW experience.  You cannot half-ass an attempt to test the water, you cannot just roll out a new server with only the level 1-60 content unlocked, because that 1-60 looks different, plays different, and for the most part is different.

I think this is why, as Bhagpuss noted, that some info is just difficult to find about WoW Classic.  With Blizzard shaking up the game and every class with each expansion, there hasn’t been the sort of static, almost sedimentary, layers of development the way there was with EverQuest over the years.  Fifteen year old articles at Allakazam are still relevant because SOE and Daybreak laid down some content and moved on.  Blizz doesn’t play that way.  Blizz changes the whole world, touches most everything, in a regular ~24 month cycle.  There was no simple path back to vanilla because it was so well and thoroughly gone.

And so we got Blizzard pushing off the idea of vanilla WoW and things like J. Allen Brack’s now infamous line for at least a decade.  I was already referencing calls for “classic” Azeroth servers back in August 2009.  Private servers offering a vanilla experience were already pretty common seven years back when I dabbledwith the Emerald Dream server.  But for Blizzard to get there required such commitment that it was only after retail kept sagging that they decided to play the nostalgia card.

Daybreak got their imperfect nostalgia merely due to their rather silo focused content delivery.  Blizzard got more perfect nostalgia but had to rebuild it as a new client due to their propensity to change the world.

I suppose the lesson to take out of this is to plan for nostalgia… at least if you think your game is going to run 15 or 20 years.

SuperData Shows WoW Way Up, League of Legends Down

As September winds to a close SuperData Research has released their digital revenue numbers for August, and the month saw quite a shake up in the status quo.

SuperData Research Top 10 – August 2018

This is only the third time since SuperData started publishing this set of monthly charts that League of Legends has not held the top spot in the PC column and it is the only time it has been lower than second place.

Last month Dungeon Fighter Online took the first place position from LoL.  Not only did DFO hold that spot, but now World of Warcraft has come in and pushed LoL down another notch.

Certainly, with the launch of the Battle for Azeroth expansion in August, it was expected that WoW would surge as last minute buyers grabbed the new content and resubscribed.  But passing LoL is another thing, and it certainly brings into question the “WoW is dead” crowd.

Of course, I do wonder how much this has to do with Riot Games, the studio responsible for LoL, and the toxic workplace revelations that have been showing up in the press, starting with the expose at Kotaku.  LoL has long had a reputation for its horrible player base, but it appears that this is something of a reflection of how the company is run.  As noted below, LoL is not having a good performing year and maybe its reign at the top of the chart is over.

Then there was Monster Hunter: World which jumped onto the chart in the fourth place position, pushing Crossfire and Fantasy Westward Journey II, long staples of the top of the chart, down to fifth and sixth spots respectively.

All of that put the battle royale games, Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds down to seventh and eight positions.

Also popping up onto the chart was Hearthstone, which managed a ninth place entry, leaving the bottom of the stack to World of Tanks, which at least held on to its long streak onto the chart even if it dropped a couple spots.

So this is why I like to track this chart every month.  An individual month is cool but not all that informative.  Trends over time though, reaction to events and launches and that sort of thing, that is the interesting bit for me.  Even if you question SuperData’s data gathering techniques, even flawed data, gathered consistently over time, has value.

On the console chart Fortnite held on to the first spot for another month and FIFA 18 returned in second and Grand Theft Auto V, long a staple of the console chart, stayed in third.

Madden 19 debuted strong on the console chart while Overwatch returned to the chart, ringing in at eighth place, giving Blizzard another title on the overall report.

And on the mobile chart the rankings was almost identical with the July chart, with Pokemon Go holding on to third.  The only change was Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga which swapped positions, putting them at ninth and tenth respectively.

So kind an interesting chart at the PC end, but not much change on consoles and almost no change for the mobile end.  It will be interesting to see if Blizz’s mount bribe will keep WoW high in the ranks for September and then if it will collapse because the core audience won’t have to pay again until March.

Supplementary data with the chart:

• Madden 19 sets new franchise launch record. We estimate Madden 19 sold 664K digital units on console. This easily made it the best ever launch month for the franchise, though sales benefited from an earlier release date this year.
• League of Legends heads towards its worst performing year since 2014. League of Legends revenue is down 21% compared to the same time period in 2017.
• Blizzard hits a home run with World of Warcraft expansion. World of Warcraft made $161M in August following the release of its “Battle of Azeroth” expansion, not including all pre-sales in the months leading up to launch. Subscribers for WoW West hit its highest point since 2014.
• Monster Hunter World sells 2M units on PC. Capcom’s action game had a successful launch on console earlier this year, and the PC version looks to be doing even better. Monster Hunter World took first place in this month’s top grossing Premium PC rankings, knocking PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds down to second.

Fall Movie League – Of Cabbages and Kingsman

Week four of the fall Fantasy Movie League gave us a few options when it came to filling out eight screens.

The three obvious anchors were It, which was entering its third week, Kingsman: Golden Circle, a sequel to the 2014 Kingsman: The Secret Service, and the third entry for big screen LEGO releases, LEGO Ninjago.  The pricing was:

 Kingsman: Golden Circle $511
 LEGO Ninjago Movie      $389
 It                      $352
 American Assassin       $68
 Friend Request          $66
 Mother!                 $34
 Home Again              $32
 Brad's Status           $22
 Hitman's Bodyguard      $19
 Wind River              $15
 Leap!                   $13
 Annabelle Creation      $12
 Spider-Man              $11
 Battle of the Sexes     $8
 Dunkirk                 $7

At the start of the week the studio estimates had It in at a solid, predictable $30 million.  That would have been my guess if asked.  Kingsman was being pushed as high as $45 million in predictions, while LEGO Ninjago was being considered for about $35 million.

With that sort of pricing spread and predictions, LEGO Ninjago seemed like the obvious anchor to me.  No only was it sizing up as a better price/performer than the alternatives, but it seemed solid to me as it was the only kids movie to hit the screen.  Of course, as somebody who loves LEGO, I might have been emotionally invested, but how could a LEGO movie miss?

The to fill in I went with two screens each of American Assassin, Home Again, and Battle of the Sexes.  While the latter was only on 20 screens I figured it still might beat its price competitor, Dunkirk, and maybe even squeeze out a best price/performance if LEGO Ninjago didn’t grab that.

My Fall Week Four Picks

Even when the Thursday night totals came in, reinforcing Kingsman and It in their respective estimates, I did not swap.  LEGO Ninjago did not have a preview night, which could have been a danger sign had the studio not glibly declared it a school night.  I bought that even as I was tinkering with a line up that had one screen of Kingsman and seven of American Assassin.  I have witness is Slack that I was contemplating such a line up.

That was the point in time when I could have been at least tied for first place for the week.

Instead I stuck with LEGO Ninjago and was let down.  As you can see from the image above it barely crossed the $20 million mark, far from the early week estimate.  I blame the lack of a Batman appearance, the hallmark of successful LEGO big screen ventures so far.

In the meta league a lot of people went with LEGO as well.  We’re all down at the bottom while those who bet on Kingsman are at the top, with the top two tied using the Kingsman line up I was considering.  Damn!

1. Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $82,812,329
2. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $82,812,329
3. Kraut Screens (T) – 80,896,439
4. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $80,388,701
5. Ocho’s Octoplex (L) – $73,146,908
6. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $67,722,939
7. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $65,969,112
8. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $65,969,112
9. I HAS MOVIES (T) – $65,969,112
10. Wilhelm’s Films from New Eden – $64,872,588
11. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $61,124,362
12. The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $60,610,822
13. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $58,501,206
14. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $48,421,081

Meta League legend:

• TAGN Movie Obsession – players from it marked with a (T)
• MCats Multiplex – players from it marked with an (M)
• Liore’s Summer League – players from it marked with an (L)

[We had one new addition to the TAGN league, Darren, and I dropped Bel from the Liore league as he stopped picking.]

Basically, if the score was over $67 million, that person went with Kingsman, and if it was under, they went with LEGO Ninjago.  Also Dunkirk beat Battle of the Sexes.  At least I got a bit of a boost from Home Again, the price/performance winner.

And yet there was a surprise twist.  The perfect pick of the week included neither Kingsman nor LEGO Ninjago.  It was the anchor of the perfect pick again, with a heavy helping of Home Again, a selection good for close to $98 million.

Fall Week Four Perfect Pick

Damn meddling clowns!

That left the standings for the Meta League as follows:

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $354,348,845
2. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $344,853,444
3. Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $333,425,631
4. Ocho’s Octoplex (L) – $325,759,23
5. Wilhelm’s Films from New Eden – $323,286,545
6. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $321,586,050
7. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $314,900,377
8. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $310,149,811
9. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $304,352,727
10. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $263,203,132
11. I HAS MOVIES (T) – $258,240,572
12. The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $232,327,410
13. Kraut Screens (T) – $230,870,243
14. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $67,722,939

Reminder: The bottom of that list is (mostly) people who started a week or two… or three… late.

And so we head into week five where a number of new titles are joining the fray.  The FML pricing for week five looks like this:

Kingsmen: Golden Circle $256 
American Made           $225
It                      $214
LEGO Ninjago Movie      $168
Flatliners              $143
Battle of the Sexes     $72
A Question of Faith     $42
American Assassin       $40
Home Again              $28
Mother!                 $21
Stronger                $20
Hitman's Bodyguard      $12
Friend Request          $11
Wind River              $10
Spider-Man              $9

Somehow Kingsman in its second week is supposed to be a better performer than American Made, a Tom Cruise movie with him in a totally Tom Cruise role.  What has this country come to when a Tom Cruise movie, with Tom Cruise in a role he was born to play, Tom Cruise, cannot top the charts on its opening weekend? (And stop bringing up The Mummy.)

Ah well.

In addition we have Flatliners, A Question of Faith, and Stronger making their debuts on the list while Battle of the Sexes is now out in general release.

I have to think Tom Cruise is the pick for anchor this week.  It has decent reviews, it will be on many screens, and it is freakin’ Tom Cruise.  It has got to do better than the initial $16 million projection.  I guess you know where I stand right now.  We’ll see if I change when updated estimates, social media penetration numbers, and Thursday night preview results come in.

Meanwhile Back in the Garrison

Despite being critical of the so-called “game play” of garrison missions and Blizzard having nerfed garrison gold farming back to the stone age with the 7.0 patch back in early August, I still hit garrisons with Vikund and several alts every day.

Why am I doing this?

Well, there is still that garrison shipyard achievement I want, “Master of the Seas,” so I will have the title “Captain.”

The current score is 19 out of 25 required

The naval bonus missions are the rare ones, so I check in daily to see if one has popped up, then run some missions anyway (including the one for 400 oil) because I might as well get the “Fleet Commander” achievement while I am there.

But mainly I have been going back for garrison resources.

After the 7.0 patch, Blizzard took away gold as a reward for many things… though you can still get occasional ilevel 655 or 670 items from missions that are worth… but boosted the garrison resource output.  I imagine that this is to help alts and others showing up in the post-Draenor era build their garrisons.

So all those follows with the extreme scavenger trait that I optimized for in order to boost gold returns on mission, they now return piles of garrison resources instead.

That is a pile of resources for three resource missions

The salvage yard now hands out garrison resources with each box or bag you open as well.

I am taking all of those garrison resources to the vendor at the trading post, which I have built on several of my alt garrisons as well, and but supplies for my tail who then turns them into hexweave bags.

Making bags

I save some of them for the auction house when the price is good, but my main goal is to outfit all of my characters, inventory and bank, with 30 slot bags.  I figured that I might as well put all of those alts hanging about in their garrisons waiting for their turn in the Broken Isles to use.

It is funny, at times, to see the array of bags that my characters have.  There are plenty of 16 slot mageweave bags, along with a fair number of the old school, no-bind, 16 slot traveler’s backpack.  I remember when getting one of those as a drop was a big deal.

There are bags that were quest rewards and bag that were drops from old raids that I ran back and did once I was high enough level to solo them.

I even have the Haris Pilton “Gigantique” from back in the Burning Crusade era.  A 22 slot bag for 1,200 gold, a time when both 22 slots and 1,200 gold seemed like a lot.  I did not, however, bother to buy the so-called “Portable Hole” bag from Haris Pilton, a Wrath of the Lich King era addition to her stock.  It wasn’t because it was too expensive, though you can get a 30-slot hexweave bag for less these days, but because nearly seven years back it simply annoyed me that Blizzard decided to use that name for what is otherwise a rather modest sized bag.

I’ve looked in a portable hole before, it holds more than 24 slots worth of stuff.