Coincidental Timing?

[ Hey, welcome to Mysterious Ramblings, a periodic column I'll post when I'm feeling all creative deep down inside, where it's warm and squishy. ]

This time around: The timing of certain things in the MMOG industry.

I'll give you a guess about what happens this week: It has to do with Wookies looking at their watches, their credit card balance, measuring how much fun they're really not having, and jumping ship.

That's right kids, the 3 month trial for Star Wars: Galaxies is up this week for the people who first bought the game when it came out. If you remember, when SWG hit the stands, nearly 100k people picked it up.

What percentage of people do you think are satisfied with the game? Remember, this is the same game that had to shut their forums from non-players because too many people were dropping in and derailing meaningful discussions with yet another rant about how the game sucks. Since then, so many rants have popped up, it's hard to keep track any more.

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say only 40% of the people that bought the game are dissatisfied. Let's cut that down further and say that half of those people have already dropped out of the game. Slicing that even further, let's say only about 75% of the remainder are still willing to play a MMOG.

That's 7500 players looking for a new game this week. If they all re-subscribed to games they already own, that's a piece of $75,000.00 (assuming 10.00 subscription fees) for a couple of lucky companies this month. If, instead, they went out and bought a new game, that's a piece of $375,000.00 (assuming 50.00 box price).

So, if you were a game company looking for a good moment to release your game, when would you do it? I would do it near the beginning of the holiday season. If you do it at the right moment, you can catch people just as they start approaching the stores for Hanukkah and Christmas gifts at the same time. I would put that near the beginning of November, normally.

So, here we are, at the end of October, and SWG may or may not be spilling a lot of dissident players into the marketplace. I would say that this is a momentous occasion, indeed. It's not like you couldn't see this coming, and plan accordingly, right?

Look at what happened this week: Dark Age of Camelot comes out with a massive upgrade to their game, advertising completely changed dynamics, a customize-able interface, and a new 3D engine upgrade. Sounds really attractive to former players, doesn't it?

Final Fantasy XI was released just yesterday. This game has been on the radar of current MMOG players for a while, as it crosses the genre of console players and PC players everywhere, and Square Enix has never failed to provide at least a unique game environment.

Asheron's Call pushed potentially the largest update in its 4 year history to its servers this week. People have been so energized by the new content, the fan sites have yet to fill their quest spoiler databases with everything that's available.

AC2, likewise, pushed a good sized patch this week, filled with regular updates and fixes. Interestingly, along with the AC1 update, it added "fun holiday" content in this patch.

Since its inception, SWG has gathered enough subscriptions to rival AC1 (the #2 subscription MMOG out there). Will it survive the week with so many people now being asked to pay for their online time, or will they all succumb to the tasty temptations being added by so many of the other major players out there?