3 ms·
Raph Koster did a presentation at GDC2007 that touched on this: http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdcprime2007.shtml http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdcprime200
by teamonkey 18y ago
Raph Koster did a presentation at GDC2007 that touched on this: http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdcprime2007.shtml http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdcprime2007.shtml
The slides that struck me were this one:
http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdcprime2007/Slide61.JPG http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdcprime2007/Slide61.JPG
followed by this one:
http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdcprime2007/Slide62.JPG http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdcprime2007/Slide62.JPG
Note that even back then Habbo had more active monthly users than WoW.
Of course Habbo and Runescape are free to play (at the basic level at least), but the costs of running them are so much smaller. Last I heard, Blizzard's WoW team numbered close to 1000 full-time staff. Jagex has a very small team that has only very recently started to expand.