The Simple Lifeforms blog went through a recent DFC Intelligence report on the most commercially successful MMORPGs and pulled out some fascinating points. World of Warcraft took home the most revenue for a single game in 2008 with an estimated $500M+ and all MMORPGs combined (worldwide) earned an estimated $1,875M.
The top 10 earners list for 2008 included only one game that commenceed in the 1990s and that MMORPG was Lineage I. The majority of the top 10 list also featured MMORPGs of the fantasy genre, which most likely won't come as a surprise.
Simple Lifeforms classified four primary ways that make MMORPGs money: retail, subscription, virtual goods sales (aka RMT), and hybrid models. While the retail/subscription model is generally considered the tried and true way to run your MMORPG business by most of the big publishers, you might find it fascinating that only half of the top 10 list is comprised of these types of MMORPGs.
An unfortunate drawback of the DFC Intelligence report is that the revenue figures for the nine titles other than WoW have very large spreads. We see they made more than $150M and less than $500M but aren't given anything more specific than that.
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