WAR (Warhammer Online)

Originally posted by ProfRed

Since when does succeed need to pass 3 mill subs?  It only takes a few hundred thousand to succeed. 

not even.

it only takes about 30-50k subs to make a profit.

Ahh nice thats great to hear trunkz... Im sooooo looking forward to WAR. I pray they execute this game well...i am fuckin tired of the MMO's out atm...jesus christ if i have to see another Chuck Norris joke ima  till i die hehe

To reach WoW numbers devs need to learn to play the Blizzard game dev game.  Take an up and coming genre, research the hell out of it, improve on what works and remove what doesn't.  Ie take WoW, the gold standard for mass market appeal, and improve on it.

WoW has been out since '04.  Yes lots of people still play it but a lot of those 11 million subs are new.  Some leave, new people come.  All I really need in a game to dig my teeth into for 2+ years is another WoW that isn't WoW.  Nothing wrong with WoW, but I've played it to death so only expansions drag me back to my stable of 70s.

The problem is damn near every game studio has been releasing games that aren't up there with the established MMOs in terms of polish and function.  So myself and others are stuck cycling through our existing MMOs to keep it fresh.  I myself play CoH, WoW, EQ2, LotRO and whatever new MMO comes out throughout the year for a couple of months each.  I'd love another game at that quality level to sink my teeth into but no dice this or last year.

Originally posted by Solude

To reach WoW numbers devs need to learn to play the Blizzard game dev game.  Take an up and coming genre, research the hell out of it, improve on what works and remove what doesn't.  Ie take WoW, the gold standard for mass market appeal, and improve on it.

WoW has been out since '04.  Yes lots of people still play it but a lot of those 11 million subs are new.  Some leave, new people come.  All I really need in a game to dig my teeth into for 2+ years is another WoW that isn't WoW.  Nothing wrong with WoW, but I've played it to death so only expansions drag me back to my stable of 70s.

The problem is damn near every game studio has been releasing games that aren't up there with the established MMOs in terms of polish and function.  So myself and others are stuck cycling through our existing MMOs to keep it fresh.  I myself play CoH, WoW, EQ2, LotRO and whatever new MMO comes out throughout the year for a couple of months each.  I'd love another game at that quality level to sink my teeth into but no dice this or last year.

If WAR doesn't accomplish this, we may have to wait for whatever Bioware is cooking up. Or just be happy with smaller 150k-300k pop games, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Originally posted by vernd

If WAR doesn't accomplish this, we may have to wait for whatever Bioware is cooking up. Or just be happy with smaller 150k-300k pop games, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

It's not a bad thing at all.  Is Miley Cyrus your favorite singer/artist/musician?  Cause she sure as hell outsells whatever is by millions.  Why?  She appeals to a larger range of audiences. 

Note: This doesn't have anything to do with AoC...it's just a general statement.

I think there's something that needs to be kept in mind.  It used to be that when an MMO launched they didn't immediately have hundreds of thousands ready to jump in on day 1.  Players would come in gradually.  This would offset the players losses from the fact that some people just won't like the game and won't continue to play and people who had the game longer will naturally play it less than people that just got it.  This let the developers have fewer servers at launch.  You didn't go from having 20 full servers on day 1 to 20 servers with a quarter of what they had 2 months earlier usually.

Today, it appears that most customers will be there at launch.  This leads to the problem of needing way more servers at launch than you will in 3 months because of concurrency and a certain percentage of people who won't subscribe.  Now everyone thinks a game is dead and it's a flop.  When in reality it's probably not.

The only thing I can see negating this launch rush is only shipping X boxes per week so that players are forced to come in over time because they can't get the game.  This would have the side effect of creating a bad taste in people's mouths.  It's a no-win scenario.

As some already posted I don't believe anything will attain WOW subs levels for quite some time. But imo quantity of players does not make a game successfull. Every game listed <over there on the left is successfull in its own way.

What was the last game you played that make you go "Thats amazing", I bet it wasnt wow - Its all been seen before.

Originally posted by ProfRed

Originally posted by vernd

If WAR doesn't accomplish this, we may have to wait for whatever Bioware is cooking up. Or just be happy with smaller 150k-300k pop games, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

It's not a bad thing at all.  Is Miley Cyrus your favorite singer/artist/musician?  Cause she sure as hell outsells whatever is by millions.  Why?  She appeals to a larger range of audiences. 

Hey, I'm really into what Earthrise is cooking up. I don't pretend to think it's going to appeal to more than a couple hundred thousand gamers, but to those it does it will be just what we've been wanting. I've never thought being 'niche' is bad; in any hobby or industry you have general products or practitioners, and then you have the specialists who meet a specific demand. It's all good.

keep in mind that before WoW, it was only us old timers that even knew about MMO's, I say its a good thing for the most part.