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Role Playing (Games)

Chinese MMOG Boasts 9 Million Players 41

Posted by Zonk from the enjoy-this-statistic-with-some-nacl dept.
Next Generation is reporting that Chinese Massive title Yulgang has hit 9 Million subscribers, just two months after the game's launch. Joystiq has commentary, and clarifications: " First, Yulgang does not require a registration or a subscription fee - and as many of you have pointed out in regards to Guild War's recent milestone, without subscription fees that number can seem quite inflated from the actual number of players. In fact, the maximum number of people playing Yulgang at any one time has been only 215,000. Which is still a high number, but less than one-thirtieth of its registered database."
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Chinese MMOG Boasts 9 Million Players More

Chinese MMOG Boasts 9 Million Players

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  • Like Project Entropia (Score:3, Informative)

    by Echnin ( 607099 ) <p3s46f102 @ s n e a kemail.com> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @05:35PM (#13680460) Homepage
    "Rather than paying for time spent on the game itself as most other MMORPG
    business models apply, Yulgang sells valued-added virtual merchandise and
    services from its online game shop. This revenue model allows users to enjoy a
    high degree of game playing flexibility. This distinctive model pioneered by
    China.com, while having proven successful in Korea, is a breakthrough in
    China."

    Taken from http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT= 104&STORY=/www/story/08-13-2005/0004087731&EDATE= [prnewswire.com]

    Meh. That sounds like Project Entropia. Anyway, it might be fun. Wonder if it's open to international players.
    • Sounds like what they have in MapleStory.
      It's your standard run-of-the-mill Korean mmorpg (tho 2d and cute) but it's completely free to download, join and play. They survive by using a "cash shop". You can pay real money to have various items like pretty clothes or plastic surgery coupons, the ability to make it snow, the ability to open a shop and most importantly an item that gives you twice the EXP gained from monsters.

      This new game seems to employ the same system.
    • A while back I read China would limit online access by making time limits for online characters in games. For games with no registration details wouldnt this make it much more likely that chinese citizens are just using multiple accounts? It would also partially explain why only 1/40th of the accounts are online at once.
  • Wait, they have an MMO that doesn't require a subscription fee? And it's really an MMO, not just a CORPG like Guild Wars?
    Where can I buy it?
    • And it's really an MMO, not just a CORPG like Guild Wars?

      So you actually *LIKE* the traditional MMOG features of kill stealing, camping, camp stealing, repeated dying from being trained, days waiting for your mob to spawn, mind-numbing xp grind, near-zero loot drop rates, etc etc? Oh, and paying a subscription to enjoy your suffering.

      Guild Wars is not for you then.
      • I play Guild Wars, but I think WoW would be cool if I could afford it. The things you mentioned do suck, but I think the idea of one persistent world (well, one per server I suppose) would be cool... As you were doing a mission, you could run into a friend in the middle of nowhere. You could also play the game with lots of people instead of up to 7 other people.

      • i take it you haven't played much world of warcraft. the game largely eliminates these annoyances.
        • No, it doesn't.

          I've played it.

          You spend months grinding to 60 - getting ganked every half hour to hour if you are on a PVP server - then you spend hundred upon hundreds of hours grinding MC over and over again for your equipment - with *minimum* six hour sittings, which is simply not healthy - , then you grind battlegrounds for hundreds of more hours until you get the top tier equipment from that. None of this is fun.

          The quests are simple go-fetch or go-kill faire and are no better than grinding; they are n
    • Actually Mankind (that French Space MMOG) had a similar idea that you could play for free but you couldn't purchase certain units or build past a certain point if you didn't pay a subscription.

      FTA it appears that the company makes it's money of selling items to players so hence players how want to get ahead of others can buy items and such rather than slogging like the rest of them. Hence the rest of the players can play for free but I'd wadger that the paying players will always have some sort of advantage
  • Okay think about it, China has what 1.3 Billion people? And over 9 million people are playing this game. For that country that's only 0.007% of the population that is playing.

  • How many computers in china? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dtfarmer ( 548183 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @05:54PM (#13680591) Homepage
    You know your MMOG is successful when you have more players subscribing than computers in the country....

    I, kid.. actually they had 36 million in 2002 [earth-policy.org] and that should have doubled by now according to estimates in that link. Of course the US had 190 million computers back then so it is still a high percentage of subscriptions compared to number of computers in the country....
  • "Next Generation is reporting that Chinese Massive title Yulgang has hit 9 Million subscribers"

    but

    "First, Yulgang does not require a registration or a subscription fee"

    so you dont need to register or subscribe to play the game? or am I just reading this wrong...
    • Probably just reading it wrong. I would assume they mean "does not require a registration or subscription fee" which is equivalent to "does not require a registration fee or subscription fee". Welcome to the wonderful world of English.

      FWIW, MapleStory has the same model. Registration is free, playing is free, client is free. They are in an extended beta phase at the moment though. No cash shop yet. Find info about it on Google.
    • It's better still - what happens is that the government installs it for you, when you connect to the Internet!

      Their hacker department installs it on randomly selected PCs, and then you're required by law to play the game for 10-15 hours every week.

      If you don't play enough, you get to play at making cheap consumer goods for the capitalist running dogs in the West.

      The game solves many issues - people have something to do with their time, the game is controlled by the state with many exciting messages about fo

  • This is not the first free asian MMORPG (Score:5, Informative)

    by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @06:10PM (#13680681)
    The site [mgame.com] has the exact same layout as the countless of other (mostly Korean) free MMORPG's/multiplayer games, and from the article, also seems to be using the same kind of business model :
    These games can be played for free, and people can buy items/clothes/weapons for real money : The strange thing I always found is that most of the Korean crowd -really- digs to buy virtual clothes for their characters (some clothes don't even do anything : They just look fancy).
    One of these games I really liked for awhile (which is now out of service) was ASDF Hoverboard [asdfgame.com]
    Back on topic, this game looks very nice ; And I hope they'll make an English version soon.

    There was a very extensive list of those free (translated) Korean MMORPG's on Fileplanet, but with their new overhaul of the site it's impossible for me to find atm.

    • While I don't like the idea of paying real money for in-game advantages, and in fact I could rant for hours about how it's wrong for a game to explicitly catter to the pay-to-cheat crowd... what's wrong with caring about what your character looks like?

      I'm not Korean, but in WoW I wished my tailor character could dye clothes so they match. Just because I'm a munchkin doesn't mean I want to look like a clown. (And if I did, I'd want a _proper_ clown costume, with red nose, floppy shoes and all, not just a col
      • You could stop playing WoW and play some decent games over at NCsoft. You could even play City of Heroes, and custom design your own Spider Man and be involved with a lawsuit at Marvel. It's a win win situation!
        • Well, I still have my CoH account. Well, more like "again" than "still". I had went back in I4 to see what the new clothes are all about, and then after I5 to see the new powers. And yes, kudos to them for the character customization. Even more kudos for not being centered around PvP, while I'm at it.

          Whether it's a more decent game than WoW, though... well, I suppose that's a matter of personal preferences. Personally... well, let's just say I see some reasons why far more people play WoW than CoH. Even wit
  • Hmm, if anyone can have as many free registrations as they want, then they can allow only one character per account, and let all the alts drive their numbers up more. I haven't investigated this game to see if that is actually happening, but it does seem to be a possibility.
  • That's nothing...I have 43,353,213 subscribers to mine.
    Of course, I haven't seen a single cent because I don't require registration, sign-ups, or charge a fee.
    Additionally, it doesn't need any hardware or infrastructure because I still have to write the game. So, yah, I'd say I'm doing pretty well in the MMORPG market.

  • Ruined (Score:1)

    by frode ( 82655 )

    I loved the game at first but after the American Farmers got involved the economy was ruined!

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