MMO Game Companies Cutting Back

With the recent annoucement of CCP reducing their staff by 20%, a question comes to mind. Is the MMO gaming Industry now seeing the wrath of the economy having issues or is the MMO gaming industry starting to see the issues of a flooded market?

Now when I start thinking about this question I know a lot of people are going to jump right onto the Economy side of the question which I could understand since a lot of companies are taking the hit from this. Now I want to look at the other side of this question, is the MMO gaming industry starting to see the issues of a flooded market? I feel both are hitting them. If you take a look at any MMO site and look at the game list, Notice how many games popped up during 2006 and 2007. I feel this was the time that MMO's started seeing an increase to player base. And at this time A lot of games were trying to mirror the biggest game out there and that was World of Warcraft.

Once Burning Crusade was released a lot of companies thought they could produce the same results as Blizzard did. And we seen that they were not. And at the same time World of Warcraft just kept growing. WOW has maintained growing up until Cataclysm and that I believe was the breaking point for Blizzard.

Now look at the other titles. Everquest II did ok for several years and was able to produce alot of content for the last 8 years. However they had been losing alot of player base in the last few years along with SWG and Everquest. SOE as a company was hurting to the point of letting 205 jobs off back in April and cancelling a MMO in production (The Agency).

Warhammer online is another example of a MMO that had big hype and failed due to not performing to their customers standards. Dont get me wrong it was a fun game but a lot of player base felt it lacked. Warhammer online with EA cut 60 - 130 jobs company wide.

Lets look at so many games going F2P to just try keeping the title alive and noticing that they may actually make more money this route. I guess why not go F2P instead of P2P. Well I feel a lot of your player base in the NA markets have not accepted F2P games. I know they are growing everyday but if you look at the number of people that are dedicated to 1 game, its normally P2P. And I think that is b/c they have a fear of micro transactions or they dont feel they are playing the whole game or if they pay $15 a month then it kind of forces them to play.

So is the MMO gaming Industry now seeing the wrath of the economy having issues or is the MMO gaming industry starting to see the issues of a flooded market? I feel both are hitting them but it depends on the company. World of Warcraft I feel some is due to both. But i think alittle more on the economy side and boredom. Now looking at the other big titles like EQ 2, LOTRO and FFXI I feel the MMO flooding hits them a little harder then the ecomony side of the questions. 2 out of the 3 went F2P just to try saving the title. I also feel that a lot of the games that flooded the market were not fully ready to hit the market which gave a lot of titles that should have been big titles just become a thing of the past.
Please comment below and let me know what you think of this and let me know if you agree with me or not. Take it easy Gamers.

Original article here.
 

I sit here and remember the good old days when I would be excited to come home and log into my second life lol. I have played just about everyone MMO that has come out in a box and most of the ones that you can download. Now I find myself looking at the Game List everyday and say WOW what happen?

I remember when I first started playing FFXI and loved it. It had so many different classes and had dual classes. I just got burnt out on trying to lvl with groups all the time.

Then I played SWG. Man that was a game that really pushed the crafting area of a MMO. I loved it. You could solo anything and found myself exploring peoples homes for vendors or just on how they decorated their home. I have to say what really made SWG a great game was the community. The people you played with was awesome. Well we all know what happen to that game :(

I started to play WOW and got about 2 months in after release and didnt really care for it, so I moved onto EQ2 and enjoyed that. It didnt have anything real special but it had a decent community and the crafting wasnt bad. I ended up going back to WOW because my buddies were playing. Well I lvled to 60 on multiple characters and raided with the horde and ally. But got bored again so left and was in search for a new MMO.

I should have seen it coming at that time that they started to die but I dont think I wanted to believe it. This is when I started to bounce all over the place to fill that hole. And yet again found myself going back to WOW because my buddies were playing. BC was released and it was nice for a new look of areas. So I played for awhile and thought I was good to go but got bored after raiding just about everything and seen that all the raiding content was being pugged.

So I past by several new games because I thought WOTLK was going to get me out of the bored em that I was having once again. So Finally Lich King released and I started to play and was excited once again but found that Blizzard started to make things easier then it already was. I just feel taht Blizzard is so afraid to loose people so they just keep making the game easier. Which I can understand when you own 50% of the market. I mean they are the Walmart of the MMO's.

So I ask myself the question, are MMO's dying?

I think they are. I think my fellow gamers are wanting that new revolutionary game b/c people will go out and buy them but they always are released way to early and the companies want to hurry and make that quick buck and try to beat Blizzard. That strategy worked when it was only EQ, UO and a few titles were on the market but I dont feel it can work these days. The gamers is what makes or breaks games and we tell them over and over again that they are rushing these games. I really hope some of the new game companies listen to their communities for once. I mean just look at Sony(lol I know everyone talks about Sony) they never listen to their community and they have lost alot of their clients due to poor strategy towards up coming titles.

For my closing, I hope that someone will think outside the box and when they do, they take their time and atleast release a decent game and not an alpha level product. Also look at bringing back some of the old school stuff like player housing and player cities out on maps like SWG, great crafting and some good gameplay. Even if its like WOW just add to their ideas b/c what I see is that Blizzard is content with what they have and its a great idea but I would like someone to take it to the next level. Please comment b/c I feel there is more people that have the same thoughts on this.

Thank you for listening :)