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what is it? i mean in the sense that it has a strong showing on the books every quarter, not some "oh we're spending 3600/mo in upkeep and we're making 4100/mo" type deal. something that represents at least 15%(or more) of the parent company's earnings every quarter.
is it Lineage?
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Impossible to say really...Could be Lineage, Could be Runescape...
WoW?
Otherwise maybe Runescape?
UO is still running and still profitable.
Even recently had an expansion I believe.
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Lineage older than EQ? I'm surprised. I always figured LIN as an eastern EQ clone.
Meridian 59
http://www.meridian59.com/
then Ultima Online
http://uo.com/
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But I doubt meridian is actually profitable at this point, they are running purely open source through donations.
Meridian 59 has had several lengthy shutdowns (longer than 6 months), but I guess that wasn't really specified in the OP's question.
I would say that it disqualifies it from being "the longest running".
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
An acerbic sense of humor is NOT allowed here.
shipped in between UO and EQ.
FYI, unless UO makes 15% or more of EA's profits i don't think it really qualifies. ganted EA has like 100 IP's.
M59 definitely doesn't count. been shut down several times, gone open source too.
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It is Lineage, started in 1998 and still has millions of players in Korea
Lineage came out in 98 EQ came out in 99.
Edit. those are US release dates.
First is Lineage second is Runescape.
Both still make a ton of money.
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The problem with those of you who said it is Lineage is, Lineage is NO LONGER running (closed 2011), regardless of how much profits it made.
If it is no longer running, it cannot, at this stage, be claimed to be the "longest running profitable MMO" - since UO has already outlived it in length (because it is still going) and strong sign that WoW will probably also do that.
So at the moment, it is UO - until WoW stacked on enough years to oust UO and everyone else too.
Lineage is still running in Korea.
NCSoft closed the US servers since it wasn't profitable there, but it's still running on Korea, and actually if you check their Q4 report, it's reponsible for 24% of their sales for Q4 2012 (second only to GW2's 45%, and higher than AION, Lineage 2 and blade and soul combined), and the sales numbers are almost twice as much compared to both Q3 2012 and Q4 2011.... so it's not only still profitable after all this time, it's actually growing.
What can men do against such reckless hate?
Yet they shut down their NA servers? Sorry but Lineage can't be counted if they had to cut it back due to lack of players. If you want to see a game with little overhead still turning over a good profit look at Everquest. 100k players still 14 years later.