Interesting link brought to my attention, here:
MMOGData.com
In which we learn of a new attempt to pick up the baton dropped by the long absent SirBruce, over at the somewhat dusty
MMOGChart.com, a widely perused reference for those of us who, like me, have a rather embarrassing Numbers Fetish when it comes to all things MMO. SirBruce himself was last seen in Shanghai, boarding a twin-prop cargo plane full of chicken crates, being piloted to two sinister-looking Chinamen, heading for the Nepalese Himalayas, and is even now, destroying the evil Thugee Cult, and liberating the Shankara Stones. Probably.
Actually, I can't back that up, but no-one seems to know what's happened to the veteran Graphmaster, including our new chap, above, so Vortal has decided to get on with the numbers anyway, starting with the SirBruce stuff, and, presumably, continuing with what sources at his disposal. He seems to be no stranger to the industry however, and previous credits include work on a variety of MMOs, including LotR, and DDO.
Of course this kind of exercise is basically about finding out things that various companies don't make publicly available, so the usefulness of the resource will depend on the width and accuracy of a large network of insiders, which is why most of us punters only get to make very half-arsed guesses. Still, in the absence of any numbers at all, even a slightly informed guess is useful, and up until they stopped, I'd always found the SirBruce graphs fascinating.
I'll save specific punditry and analysis for another time, but it's nice to have some numbers at my disposal again, and the whole endeavour definitely deserves a sidebar link!