Pages

Friday, February 28, 2014

God Bless The Min/Maxers

Last night I finished rearranging my planetary interaction colonies to make them more efficient.  Making nanite repair paste is complicated and I'm not using a guide.  That means figuring things out on my own.  The process isn't too bad, except operating in low sec I got stopped transferring products to my factory planet by some PvP activity.  Having a Slasher warp in 30 km off the customs office isn't the greatest feeling in the world when you're only armed with a festival launcher.  I did manage to stay cloaked and warped off, although he did get within 8 km.  Maybe I should have fit at least one of my low slots with a nano.  My align time wouldn't have changed but the extra sub-light speed would help.  Especially after I had 2 pods warp 10 km off the CO the next time I tried to approach.  That was a sign; time to go to bed.

Is all the effort worth it?  I'm not going to make nearly the 830 million ISK per month Proto wrote about last week in his column on Crossing Zebras.  Not even half that amount manufacturing nanite repair paste.  I figure I can make 5000 units of paste per week.  Anyone who's interested can look up the price.  And that's gross, not net.  On the bright side, all the smart people have already figured that out and are going for the maximum profit.  In other words, I don't have to compete with them.  I plan on making a good profit, yes, but I also get the satisfaction of making something in low sec requiring a lot of travel between planets.  Supplying the market with a niche product mainly used and touted by PvPers means I have a much smaller population of players as potential buyers than a manufacturer of Damage Control IIs.

A niche market catering to PvPers that doesn't pull in maximum profit.  Sound familiar?  EVE Online is a pretty niche game catering to PvPers (and the sandbox crowd) that doesn't maximize profits.  Think about that fact.  Could CCP make more money if Hilmar moved the company out of Iceland to avoid all of the currency restrictions the government imposed after the banking collapse?  And while 500,000 subscriptions was what EverQuest drew at its peak (which is when EVE launched), I actually read some fool on the forums call EVE a failure because the game only has 500,000 subscriptions after 10 years.  I call him a fool, because outside of World of Warcraft and Lineage, what games 10 years and older have a 500,000 subscription base?  And I'm not sure of Lineage's number.

The min/maxers in the world took a look at WoW and figured they needed to do what Blizzard did because of the numbers.  CCP, on the other hand, so far has largely resisted the call to do what the rest of the market thinks is correct.  Perhaps because of embracing their niche status, those techno-Vikings sitting in the middle of the North Atlantic also have another distinction.  Ten years of year-over-year growth, with an announcement of an eleventh year of growth probably coming soon.  Perhaps filling a niche in an industry isn't so bad after all.

10 comments:

  1. What's foolish is believing those numbers (like 500k) are even vaguely real.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Conspiracy Theorist #9337February 28, 2014 at 4:24 PM

      What's your alternative theory? There are actually only 12 EVE players, all these EVE blogs and forums are maintained by CCP employees, and the entire operation is just a front for drug money laundering?

      Delete
    2. Yes. That is exactly what's happening.

      Delete
    3. We are the Borg. You shall be assimilated!

      Delete
    4. The number is real. The question is what does the number represent. "Subscription" refers to a single paying account. Hovewer with the prevalence of alts in EVE, almost all of which are on separate accounts, how many of these "Subscriptions" are actual players?

      If we assume that on average an EVE player owns two characters(one main, one alt), that cuts the amount of actual players by half. From 500k to 250k.

      And I fear that the actual statistics would be even scarier. How many alts do you have? How many alts does NoizyGamer have?

      Delete
    5. the statistic I've seen published is 2.8 accounts per players (I am assuming on tranquility). However, it isn't clear to me if the 500K number is tranquility alone, or includes Serenity as well (ie the China server)

      LR

      Delete
    6. @Anonymous - Welcome to the world of trying to figure out the actual number of players in any MMORPG, including World of Warcraft.

      @Louis - The 500K number includes the TienCity accounts on Serenity.

      Delete
    7. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
  2. There was evidence posted on this blog that this 500k number (subscriptions - not players) is quite real. Care to provide any proof to refute the number?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lineage 2 had 2.5 mil ish subs at its peak. Mostly Korean

    ReplyDelete