Originally posted by gestalt11   

 well written Sci-fi

Liar!  There's no such thing!!!

Jondifool,

Thanks to the link with the speech from Jeff Strain.  That's one smart dude.

Whether you like Guild Wars or not, he and ArenaNet have their crap together.

Originally posted by aspalmat

Jondifool,

 

Thanks to the link with the speech from Jeff Strain.  That's one smart dude.

 

Whether you like Guild Wars or not, he and ArenaNet have their crap together.

No kidding.  One of the most polished online (non-MMO) games available really. 

The funniest thing is that Blizzard puts all this emphasis now on the WoW arena and all that jazz and a good bit of the playerbase of WoW is now entranced by that, but the fact of the matter is that Guild Wars does arena PvP one thousand times better than WoW will ever do, because of fundamental game design decisions about gear and the like that WoW will never be able to really make.  It's very funny actually.

If developers want their games to be a great hit like WoW a cultural phenomenon as some of you like to call it then they need to do what blizzard did. Not only copy the game's basic formula style and game play but if you want the numbers SPEND the numbers come on spend 350million dollars making the hit game too.

Originally posted by Calintz333

If developers want their games to be a great hit like WoW a cultural phenomenon as some of you like to call it then they need to do what blizzard did. Not only copy the game's basic formula style and game play but if you want the numbers SPEND the numbers come on spend 350million dollars making the hit game too.

No, absolutely not. Blizzard did not spend 350 million dollars making WoW. Most articles I've read put the production costs at 50-75 million tops, I would love for you to link just one source saying anything remotely like 350million. Money does not make a good game. Look how much money was thrown at Vanguard and look at the final product.

Originally posted by Netzoko

Simply put:

All these new developers want a piece of the WoW pie and think they can do so by releasing half-assed garbage.

I think you're directing your ire at the wrong group of players in this game.

The suits who find the money to make the games are answerable to people who want WoWlike ROI, and will be satisfied with little else.  AND want to be able to do it on the cheap..which often means half-assed.

The developers are the poor schmucks who are tasked to find a way to catch WoW-lightning in a bottle and reproduce those massive subscription numbers...and just being successful is not enough, you have to be raking in money like WoW does, and that's just not going to happen by design.

It's all the launch. The launch is key.

The only MMO to launch since and have any modicum of success is LotRO and it had one of the best launches to date.

Unfortunately, one of the factors preventing smooth launches these days is the penchant for developers to over promise and under deliver. Dark and Light and Vanguard are 2 of the biggests offenders of this. They try and include too many features at launch that they are unable to devote any real time to completely fleshing out any one of these features so none of them are whole at launch. This is why we see buggy half done crap all too often.

WoW kept it simple and it's paid off for them.

It is just very expensive, and the players have rejected so many games in the past, AND you have to actually compete with WoW, which has become the MMO monopoly. Think of Microsoft and the OS market. There are many little operating systems, but none can even come close to the marketshare of Windows, no matter how bad MS tries to screw it up.

MMO is a totally different market than anything else. Some things that make MMO's hard, and different from other games:
* Coding is harder
- network code is really difficult, and the entire game including all game logic etc has to be based on that netcode. In my personal experience, the programming of an mmo is roughly 5x as hard as programming a single player game, and maybe 2x or 3x harder than programming a typical arena based multiplayer game.
* Function of the game is different
- Most games are purchased by players. If people like the game, they will tell their friends, and their friends will buy it. Then you make a sequel, and all of those people will buy your game again, even if it's practically the same. MMo's are not games. MMo's are a service. Like any service industry, growth and sustainability are key. You have to have a good reputation with players, and keep that reputation. During development, you have to plan for the life of your game, 1, 2, 5, 10 years ahead of when you release it. Also, you have to think about how you will keep players coming back to your game without getting bored. Traditional games do not have this problem. There is an "end". An mmo, if it were good enough, should never end. And not only do you have to keep the game fun, you have to convince players to continually pay you money for access to it.
* Failure is not an option
- Another thing that makes mmos more difficult, is that part of the VALUE of any mmo is the community. As a developer, you have some control over the community, but in the end it's up to them to be accepting of new players or be more elite. An elite community is going to have a hard time sustaining the game with new players. Also, if a game comes out at launch and doesn't do well, it has no chance of picking up steam later, or being a gem people find in the bargain bin. Word of mouth will kill the game, no one will be in, and any new players will see the empty fields and not stay for long. You have to get a reasonable amount of dedicated players at launch to have any sort of chance.

To me, MMO's are most similar to clubs. So imagine you have a city, with a giant club that everyone goes to. For 5 years, people have tried opening other clubs nearby. For the first few weeks people check out the new clubs, but then go back to the main show. The music at these other clubs is maybe the same, maybe better. But who wants to go to a club with 3 people in it? Sure, you'll get a few places here or there that offer something really different from the main club, but the people who go there are weird looking. They all wear funny hats, which scares you off. Maybe the funny hats are a good thing, but you are afraid of them just the same.

MMo's have lost so much money. I think if you add up, in general, money made and money lost by mmo's; they are collectively very far in the red - except WoW might tip the scale.

With games that are designed to last a "lifetime", how can any new game succeed?

I think publishers though have the wrong idea. Rather than trying to make a new club that looks like the popular one, which won't do much to ciphon patrons away, they should look instead at the alternative clubs and see if they can't find ways to bring out more alternative people. Maybe bring in people who don't go to clubs any more, because they are tired of the way things are. Oh, also tell the patrons to stop wearing funny hats. At least when new people are around :)

Do what Nintendo did. Whether you like them or not, they managed to come out in the latest round doing extremely well. Instead of being very far behind in the console race, they are very close to everyone else. Did they do this by out sonying sony, or out msofting msoft? No, they did it by being a better Nintendo.

These companies need to stop trying to be a better WoW, and start thinking about being a better alternative.

Originally posted by Torak

 

The first generation games enjoyed a great amount of success as pioneers in the genre (EQ, AC, UO to name a few). They had so-so graphics and very complex and deep gameplay.

Of the many, many things UO was, a success was never one of them.

---

Originally posted by saluk
It is just very expensive, and the players have rejected so many games in the past, AND you have to actually compete with WoW, which has become the MMO monopoly. Think of Microsoft and the OS market. There are many little operating systems, but none can even come close to the marketshare of Windows, no matter how bad MS tries to screw it up.

MMO is a totally different market than anything else. Some things that make MMO's hard, and different from other games:
* Coding is harder
- network code is really difficult, and the entire game including all game logic etc has to be based on that netcode. In my personal experience, the programming of an mmo is roughly 5x as hard as programming a single player game, and maybe 2x or 3x harder than programming a typical arena based multiplayer game.
* Function of the game is different
- Most games are purchased by players. If people like the game, they will tell their friends, and their friends will buy it. Then you make a sequel, and all of those people will buy your game again, even if it's practically the same. MMo's are not games. MMo's are a service. Like any service industry, growth and sustainability are key. You have to have a good reputation with players, and keep that reputation. During development, you have to plan for the life of your game, 1, 2, 5, 10 years ahead of when you release it. Also, you have to think about how you will keep players coming back to your game without getting bored. Traditional games do not have this problem. There is an "end". An mmo, if it were good enough, should never end. And not only do you have to keep the game fun, you have to convince players to continually pay you money for access to it.
* Failure is not an option
- Another thing that makes mmos more difficult, is that part of the VALUE of any mmo is the community. As a developer, you have some control over the community, but in the end it's up to them to be accepting of new players or be more elite. An elite community is going to have a hard time sustaining the game with new players. Also, if a game comes out at launch and doesn't do well, it has no chance of picking up steam later, or being a gem people find in the bargain bin. Word of mouth will kill the game, no one will be in, and any new players will see the empty fields and not stay for long. You have to get a reasonable amount of dedicated players at launch to have any sort of chance.

To me, MMO's are most similar to clubs. So imagine you have a city, with a giant club that everyone goes to. For 5 years, people have tried opening other clubs nearby. For the first few weeks people check out the new clubs, but then go back to the main show. The music at these other clubs is maybe the same, maybe better. But who wants to go to a club with 3 people in it? Sure, you'll get a few places here or there that offer something really different from the main club, but the people who go there are weird looking. They all wear funny hats, which scares you off. Maybe the funny hats are a good thing, but you are afraid of them just the same.

MMo's have lost so much money. I think if you add up, in general, money made and money lost by mmo's; they are collectively very far in the red - except WoW might tip the scale.

With games that are designed to last a "lifetime", how can any new game succeed?

I think publishers though have the wrong idea. Rather than trying to make a new club that looks like the popular one, which won't do much to ciphon patrons away, they should look instead at the alternative clubs and see if they can't find ways to bring out more alternative people. Maybe bring in people who don't go to clubs any more, because they are tired of the way things are. Oh, also tell the patrons to stop wearing funny hats. At least when new people are around :)

Do what Nintendo did. Whether you like them or not, they managed to come out in the latest round doing extremely well. Instead of being very far behind in the console race, they are very close to everyone else. Did they do this by out sonying sony, or out msofting msoft? No, they did it by being a better Nintendo.

These companies need to stop trying to be a better WoW, and start thinking about being a better alternative.

---

Ur "Club" and "Nintendo" analogies are spot on.