Mega Moolah once again the king of the Microgaming progressive slots

It didn't take long, but despite paying out three massive progressive jackpot payouts in May 2020, which saw its reserves dwindle down to just around the 2 million mark at the end of May, the popularity of the Mega Moolah progressive jackpot network is such that enough funds have been added to the progressive jackpot prize to once again have it as the current highest jackpot on the Microgaming network.

That is no mean feat considering it was up against the new Wheel of Wishes slot, which has the benefit of an initial seeding amount of £2 million (double what the Mega Moolah slot is seeded at) and which has been slowly building its top Wowpot Jackpot prize up, without any winner being landed, since February 2020.

A-may-zing May for Mega Moolah players

May 2020 truly was a remarkable month for Mega Moolah games. Not only was the new Absolootly Mad slot released early on in the month, but we also saw the first ever winner landed on the Atlantean Treasures slot, which had been released back in February 2020.

Yet, 2020 all started somewhat quietly, with a winner of the Mega Moolah jackpot landing a prize of just under NZ$5 million on the 30^th December 2019, we then did not see a jackpot winner throughout January, February or March in 2020. Over that time, the jackpot grew from just over 2.5 million, to an incredible 16.4 million.

Then on 5^th April, we had a CA$16.5 million prize winner emerge from Canada, that reset the prize pool back to just under £7.5 million. That pool continued to grow until May 8^th, when another player landed a NZ$13.6 million prize. Then just a couple of weeks later, a second player landed a win in May with a win of just under CA$10 million on the 24^th May and then, incredibly, three days later a third winner landed on May 27th with a smaller CA$4.4 million prize.

The three winners in a month was only the second time that this has happened in the slot's long history and the total amount paid out during the month of around 28 million, easily surpasses the largest ever amount paid out across a group of currencies in any given month.

After the 27^th May win, the progressive jackpot fund had shrunk down to around 2.1 million and at this point, Mega Moolah lagged behind the Wheel of Wishes slot in terms of the size of the jackpot prize available.

However, barely two weeks later, and despite the fact that the Wheel of Wishes slot has grown in size over the same period, such is the drawing power of the Mega Moolah slot that it has now eclipsed the prize available on Wheel of Wishes, making it once again the highest progressive jackpot prize currently available on the Microgaming Progressive Jackpot network.

Why does Mega Moolah grow so quickly?

One question that many progressive slot fans may ask is why does the Mega Moolah jackpot grow so much more quickly than the Wowpot Jackpot? It is a good question and one that does require a little analysis.

On the face of it, the Wowpot Jackpot has a big advantage over the Mega Moolah progressive as it's seed amount is twice as large. However, as we have seen over the years, it is only when the Mega Moolah progressive jackpot is won in British Pounds, the base currency, that the entire Mega Moolah jackpot fund is emptied. Therefore, it is only when British Pound wins land that the seed amount is relevant.

When Mega Moolah is won using another currency, such as U.S., New Zealand or Canadian Dollars, or the Euro, once this amount is paid out of the base funds (which are calculated in British Pounds) there are often a significant amount of funds left in the prize pool. As such, the seed amount is not needed (or if it is, only a small percentage of it may be needed to make the prize back up to 1 million).

Therefore, we can state that the seed amounts don't really influence how the jackpot for each slot goes. But what does matter a great deal, is how many spins are played on the games linked to each of the progressive jackpot slots and it is here that Mega Moolah seems to hold all the aces for the time being.

Firstly, at the moment, there is just one slot you can play that offers you a chance at the Wowpot Jackpot and that is the Wheel of Wishes slot. Furthermore, if you play the standard game, not every spin can trigger the jackpot prize. You can play in Power Mode, where every spin could give you a shot at the Jackpot Bonus game, but to do this costs 10x the standard bet amount. There are many players who are happy to play for 0.10 per spin, but not 1.00 per spin as it quickly becomes very expensive.

Things may improve for the Wowpot Jackpot wen two more slots, Sisters of Oz and Fortunium Gold are released later this year with both offering a shot at the same jackpot prize and it will be interesting to see whether these games offer a similar set up to Wheel of Wishes, or take a different tack to try and appeal to more players.

In contrast, every spin on Mega Moolah (or Mega Vault Millionaire) at 0.25 per spin or more could be a winner. That is 4x cheaper than what you can play on Wowpot to guarantee a shot at the jackpot prize wheel on every spin. On other Mega Moolah games, you can play for less, but like Wheel of Wishes, you may not trigger the jackpot on every spin.

However, these other games Atlantean Treasures and Absolootly Mad, have a different appeal. They are completely different to both Mega Moolah and Mega Vault Millionaire (which are both 25-pay line, 5x3 reel slots with a Free Spins bonus round).

Atlantean Treasures uses the 10 pay lines, win both ways across the reel approach, which is hugely popular at the moment, while Absolootly Mad uses 243 Ways to Win across the reels and Rolling Reels and Multiplier Trail, another massively popular form of slot game at present.

So with Mega Moolah, you have a long established slot, which has paid out a massive number of jackpot winners over the years, that has three almost brand new versions to play, plus three older versions AND the original game, all of which seem to offer better value for money than Wheel of Wishes and which, as a result, sees more spins played on it, which also means that the jackpot prize increases much more quickly.

Since Wheel of Wishes was first released, initially on a limited release at casinos and then general release, it has taken around six months to go from an initial Wowpot prize of 2 million, up to the current amount of 4.125 million. Mega Moolah has gone from 2.1 million to 4.2 million in the space of about two weeks.

If we extrapolate that out over six months to match the same period of time as the Wowpot Jackpot has had to grow, if Mega Moolah started at 2 million at the same time as the Wowpot Jackpot and we watched both grow over 26 weeks (six months). The Wowpot Jackpot would increase by 2.1 million, but over the same period, the Mega Moolah jackpot would increase by around 27.3 million!

However, that doesn't take into account the fact that as the Mega Moolah jackpot grows, more people play more spins on the slot, so when the jackpot climbs high, say above 10 million, it actually grows at a much faster rate (adding around 200,000 to 300,000 in a single day to the total is not uncommon at these times).

Of course Wheel of Wishes still need to establish itself and I have no doubt that over the coming years, especially when more games are available to select from, it too will become a fantastic slot for Microgaming and its jackpot growth rate will likely increase.

However, as this article shows, it still has some way to go to match the success and appeal of the incredible Mega Moolah series of games.