The website MeinMMO has been around since the end of 2013. Our author Schuhmann looks back at the highlights and low points of the last 5 years and analyzes, based on Google Trends, how the interest in the site fluctuates with the MMOs and MMO shooters that have been released. When were there the major hype moments and when were the long lulls?
Where do the numbers come from? The numbers are from Google. The “Google Trends” function shows the development of search interest over time. There is a lot involved: Google thinks in terms of themes and subject complexes.
Our head Dawid Hallmann started working on MeinMMO around September 2013 – but it really got underway in Spring 2014 when the MMORPGs WildStar and The Elder Scrolls Online were released. At that time, we were a small site that had hardly any relevance in the eyes of the all-powerful search engine.
That’s why we limited the search to the last 5 years.
In the beginning was Destiny
This is interesting: One can clearly trace from the graph that Google produces how the interest in our site and the games we cover has developed over the years.
It is precisely traceable which games are linked to our site and which games our readers are interested in.
The benchmark for interest is the maximum interest in our site. The 100% was reached in September 2017 – at the release of Destiny 2.
Early on, more games were included
It stands out: Our site existed before Destiny was released in September 2014. But our early successes with MMORPGs like The Elder Scrolls Online, WildStar, or ArcheAge are hardly visible in the graph. The level was probably too low.
Over the years, our site “MeinMMO” has been strongly associated with Destiny and Destiny 2 by readers. This is also confirmed by Google Trends.
However, this expanded over time. At the latest by 2016, when Destiny fell into a longer content drought, other games became increasingly important for the authors and readers of MeinMMO.
Other important online games that are associated with MeinMMO are, according to Google:
- The Division
- Fortnite
- Pokémon GO
- Anthem
- World of Warcraft
- The Elder Scrolls Online
- Monster Hunter World
- Overwatch
How important was Destiny for MeinMMO? Google Trends says: Very important. There are regular spikes in September of each year, which have grown larger over the years. Both Destiny “The Taken King” and “Destiny 2” are clearly visible in the graph. Even Rise of Iron in 2016 gave a boost.
The strong Septembers are complemented by the respective new titles of the FIFA series, which traditionally release in the fall of each year and perform strongly on our site.
Over the years, the graph reveals that more and more games became decisive for the development of MeinMMO, while at the beginning Destiny dominated.
Thus, The Division 1 intercepted the Destiny dip in early 2016: Interest remained high from the end of March to the end of April 2016. Here, a pattern emerges that MeinMMO often gains interest a few weeks after the release of a game, when the “launch coverage” is over and other media move on to the next game.
The big lulls in online gaming
Where are the low points? The absolute low point of every year is reached between the years – in the last week of December and the first week of January, players strangely have different interests than searching for entertainment and information on an MMO site.
Persistent droughts are noticeable in the summer of each year, as there are hardly any releases. However, the level here has clearly increased over the years.
The big hype moments of recent years
What about hype? Summer is not always a void. The summer of 2016 with Pokémon GO was remarkably strong.
In 2018, you can see the Fortnite hype in action. The months from April to June 2018 were marked by the online shooter on MeinMMO. In May 2018, even an out-of-the-ordinary peak was reached.
Unusually strong was also the Spring release window of 2019.
Strong spring 2019 with Anthem and The Division 2
How has it developed recently? The fall and winter of 2018 were quite packed with titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Fallout 76. There were even spikes upward in December.
The year 2019 already saw an extraordinarily strong interest in MeinMMO in February and March with Anthem and The Division 2. In the previous years, that time was significantly quieter.
However, there are currently no major topics in summer 2019. The mood is relatively calm with the winding down of The Division 2 and Anthem at the end of April.
This year’s summer trend “autobattlers like Teamfight Tactics or Dota Underlords” is (almost) a pure PC trend and does not interest console players, who are present on our platform.
We expect the next major movements around September, when Borderlands 3 and Destiny 2 Shadowkeep are released close together.
How is it going overall for MeinMMO? When we step away from Google Trends and look at our own numbers, we see that the number of “direct users” of MeinMMO has continued to rise over the years.
To account for this diverse interest in our site, we plan to relaunch our homepage with new features in July 2019, through which users can find what they are interested in on MeinMMO even faster.
At the moment a beta test for Discord users is already running. We will soon present the relaunch in detail on MeinMMO.
