GigaOM have tried to pull together a list of the Top 10 MMOs (massively multiplayer online worlds).
What amazed me about the list is that I haven’t tried any of the MMOs listed. There used to be a time when it was rare that there was a service or a site on the web that I hadn’t tried before. Even if I met a new company at work, it was more than likely that I knew at least one person working there. But, now the web is just getting far too big for it to be a little club now.
Admittedly, there are certain services that I try to avoid as I don’t want to get hooked as I don’t have a lot of spare time to play with. For instance, I only joined Facebook this week. In some ways I wish I’d avoided starting a blog, as I’m now well and truly hooked!
Here’s the full list – how many have you tried? How many hours do you spend a week using MMOs?
- World of Warcraft, released 2004 – 8.5 million subscribers.
- Habbo Hotel, released 2000 – 7.5 million active users.
- RuneScape, released 2001 – 5 million active users.
- Club Penguin, released 2006 – 4 million active users.
- Webkinz, released 2005 – 3.8 million active users.
- Gaia Online, released 2003 – 2 million active users.
- Guild Wars, released 2005 – 2 million active users.
- Puzzle Pirates, released 2003 – 1.5 million active users.
- Lineage I/II, released 1998 – 1 million subscribers.
- Second Life, released 2003 – 500,000 active users.
Never even heard of half of these. Hard to believe that there are so few users on Second Life too, because they talk about it so much.
I thought there were more people playing Second Life. I guess I was wrong. I never played any of these, although my son used to play RuneScape until he got bored with it.
I think there are certain sites that have a personal relationship with the Second Life guys, so it gets a disproportionate amount of coverage.
I am more surprised that Everquest isn’t mentioned here. I’ve played both Everquest I and Everqeust II. I met some really great people playing MMO.