I believe you are referring to this announcement: As of 03/15/2004, EQ had 7 expansions plus the base game, for a combined total of 8 purchasable "copies" (as they use the term in that announcement). 2.5 million copies absolutely does not mean that they were sold to 2.5 million different people or that 2.5 million different accounts were ever created. 2,500,000 / 8 = 312,500 So, if every player had continued to play and purchased one copy of each expansion, the most players that EQ could have ever had would be 312,500 (at the time of that announcement). In reality, EQ does not maintain the same players: some come and some go, and not everybody bought all of the expansions and some expansions were bundled. I'm sure that the peak number of "active" players at any one time was close to the 400k that was reported in some of the adds. I'm also confident that the current numbers are probably 1/10th of that at best.
I remember a guild group going crazy talking about this new Neverwinter Nights game that was about to come out. We were killing kobolds in velks at the time. NWN released June 18, 2002
It's a lot more convoluted. A player that started playing EQ in 1999 and was still playing in 2004 would have purchased 8 copies (original + 7 expansions). A player that started in 2002 could have purchased the New Dawn bundle and then would have to buy 4 expansions to get to 2004. In my case the New Dawn bundle was a freebie on a PC magazine. A player that started in 2004 could have purchased EverQuest Platinum which would give them everything after buying just the 1 copy. So it's more than 312,500 but less than 2,500,000. Another interesting snippet 420k was close to peak subscriptions so if they were seeing 250k new subs a year then that is a hell of churn rate
I think Ultima Online original used an isometric view (pseudo 3d ?) and later came out with a 3d client. Neverwinter nights was 3d from what i can remember. p.s. this is scraping the barrel that is my memory
