So welcome or welcome back!

So I took a look around and finally found some analagous numbers for Maplestory.

As reported by Jun Sok Huhh in April, based on information from the original report in Korean, the following is some highlights about the game and business.

In Korea

• The game launched in year 2003
• The number of accumulated subscribers(as of Feb. 2006) amounts to 14M.¹
• The number of concurrent users is 200K.
• The total revenue during 3 service years is 200B Won(1,000 Won = 1 USD).²
• The total revenue from licensing during 3 servicing years is 110B Won.³

Number of Subscribers

• China since Dec. 2004, 18M subscribers
• Japan since Nov. 2003, 9M subscribers
• Taiwan since Jul. 2005, 3.5M subscribers⁴
• Thailand since Oct. 2005, 550K subscribers
• Singapore/Malaysia since Oct. 2005, 550K subscribers⁵
• Global(US) since Oct. 2005, 1.5M subscribers

Some World-wide Revenue Numbers

• Monthly world-wide revenue of Feb. 2004 was 2.1B Won (US$2,232,239 today)
• Monthly world-wide revenue of Feb. 2005 was 5.0B Won (US$5,313,407 today)
• Monthly world-wide revenue of Feb. 2006 was 16B Won (US$16,997,601 today)

What is particularly impressive is that the game is free. Free to download. Free to play. Divide 16.9mil by the average monthly fee for a Western MMO of $12.95. The result? Maplestory is making as much per month as a Western MMO would collect from 1.3mil subscribers.

And how many games have broken 1.3mil subscribers? Even the newest member to that club (Second Life) only collects monthly fees from less than 3% of their playerbase (about 25,000 property owners).

Conclusion 

Considering their growth and the number of subscribers in the West, this is not a game people can really ignore just because it lacks a monthly fee and doesn't have the name "Warcraft" in it.

I can appreciate why they say they're delaying it, I just don't know that I buy the reason.

IRVINE, Calif. – Blizzard Entertainment® today announced that the release date for World of Warcraft®: The Burning Crusade™, the highly anticipated expansion for World of Warcraft, will be in January 2007. By adding a few extra weeks to the development cycle beyond its original target date, Blizzard will be able to extend the closed beta test and further refine the new content that will ship with the game.

“We appreciate the enthusiasm surrounding World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and we’re excited about putting the finishing touches on all of the new content,” said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We feel confident that the extra time spent polishing the game will result in the high-quality experience that our players expect and deserve.”

Blizzard began the closed-beta phase of testing on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade earlier this month. The January 2007 release window will allow extra time for current beta testers to participate in the final stages of development and continue providing valuable feedback.

Further information on specific worldwide release dates, pricing, and other details will be announced in the near future.

It's good to hear they want to use that extra time "polishing the game" to get it right. Yet I find it odd they say this now.

This is because "now" is not "today". They decided on this delay at least a few days, if not a few weeks ago. They had to because there's a lot more going on here than releasing some digital data. They have had to already informed their retailers, both online and off, to not expect boxes for their shelves and inventory (and the fact that the expansion was likely a big foot traffic generator). Vivendi probably already alerted stockholders as well. And everyone had to get comfortable with missing Holiday sets in order to make this decision in the first place.

On the one hand, consumer goods and entertainment companies love the holiday gluttony. Regardless of ones religion, buckets of cash are spent in the fourth quarter of the year.

On the other hand, I have long felt that MMORPGs do not need holiday sales to move boxes, and in fact may be hurt by trying. There's simply too much gluttony. Who's got time to deeply invest in a single experience when there's gifts to buy, put together, return, parties to go to and vacation to be had?

This is just a hypothesis of course, but I wonder just how many people who receive an MMORPG for the holidays actually end up playing it. In my opinion, it's a very easy statistic to unearth: the number of box sales versus the number of new account activations, comparing box sales at holidays versus box sales in any other Quarter of the year.

So Blizzard/VUG willingly avoids the holidays. Either they're avoiding the gluttony, have so many pre-orders they don't need retail presence in December, or figure the rise in Gift Card gift-giving for the holidays will translated into January sales of boxes anyway.