Square officially confirms the new record: FFXI has surpassed EverQuest with 500.000 paying subscribers. And it’s not only this. They also have 1.200.000 active characters, something to consider since every character in the game brings to square one more dollar each month.
The records aren’t over, they also claim for 140.000 concurrent logins at the same time, breaking another EQ’s record.
There’s a lot more in the report, for example what Lum has pointed in his blog:
* 42% of their customer base hasn’t made it beyond level 10.
* 34% of all characters are level 1 mules.
Well, don’t tell anyone but I’m still subscribed from the beginning and I just discovered that my toon is still at level 10 …
Anyway, this is also related with all the other things I wrote these days. Why FFXI is having a so big success? Part of it because it’s playable for everyone. Once again the performance of the client. It’s surely one of those game where the tech isn’t pushed so high, still the artistic mood is inspired and unique.
The fact that the PSX2 shares the exact same game of the PC version adds to this. Access offered to a broad playerbase and not just a few rich geeks with the latest hardware.
I’m happy to see a company revealing informations that are usually kept reserved. It has been really interesting to read and it’s a demonstration about how many of the design choices were absolutely good. Like having multi-hardware, multi-language worlds.
Now lets see how the market changes when World of Warcraft starts its challange.