Lord of the Rings Online: Future Competition for WoW?
With usage statistics showing World of Warcraft so far
above any potential competition, you've got to whether any game could challenge the top spot. The last major MMO
release, Dungeons & Dragons Online, saw a slight drop in my guild's raid attendance for a week or so, but then
everyone lost interest, and was playing again. (More recently the single-player game Oblivion seems to have
caused a heavier attendance drop across the realms - though that may eventually play itself out as well.) While a
true test of Warcraft's dominance of the market is bound to come eventually, questions remain - when and from
where? Well, the developers of Lord of the Rings Online are aiming high -
with a target of a million subscribers.
Though this is still significantly less than WoW's six
million subscribers, it's a big jump over the next nearest competition (Final Fantasy XI, with an estimated 650,000
active subscribers). With continued technical problems plaguing Azeroth, how many people are simply waiting for
the next big MMO to hit? And is Lord of the Rings Online going to be the one, or yet another passing fad?Filed under: Analysis / Opinion





