I'd say 2004 was the last good year for MMOG's. That year had City of Heroes, WoW, and EQ2. All of which are still doing well.

2009 looks promising for all of the niche titles coming out.

worst year for mmos = whatever year it was when sony put CU on SWG.

Originally posted by Torak

Every year someone post something like this...

The irony is every year they have been correct lol.

As far as new releases are concerned anyway. There have been several very good expansions released.

So if your not one of the "grass is always greener on the other side" crowd endlessly chasing the next big thing, you probably don't have much to complain about as most MMOs got pretty decent updates / improvements this year. WoW, LotR, CoX, EQ2, DDO, EVE, Lineage 2...all got some very nice additions this year. Even Vanguard is playable and decent now.

So yeah, if you are one of the people that hasn't learned not to buy into the hype of a new release, then yeah it was probably a pretty bad year for you.

 

Yup every year. Now for my annual end of year blurb.  2009 will be a great year for mmorpg gamers!  Look at the cool games coming out!  Hope everyone finds a game that is perfect for them....
 

This year is actually far better than the last 3 years.

2005 was perhaps the worst year for MMOs.  D&L scandal, Horizons scandal, Mourning scandal, NGE scandal.  It would have to be one crappy year to top 2005 in my opinion.

I think 2008 is one of the better years.  Nothing super wonderful like it was in 2003, but not so bad.  Major upgrades to nearly every AAA game, new launches from major studios (Warhammer Online and Conan), only one major cancellation (Tabula Rasa) and no major scandals.  Nothing earth-shattering good, but nothing really all that bad either.

2008 was the most boring year of my MMO existence.  I almost completely stop playing them. 

 It was indeed pretty terrible. At least last year had Vanguard. But if this year has Darkfall, it will instantly become the best year since 2004. 

It's not over yet =)

But there have been worse years as others have pointed out.

Well the release of WoW really marked a big change, it changed mmo's from a niche market to a more wide, casual market. In proper western fashion, companies saw how big of a cash cow blizzard had made, so wanted in on it..however, none of them have succeeded in grabbing enough players away from WoW, so its stagnation fallowed by failure on the companies part.

Not there is anything wrong with WoW, but other companies saw those huge profits and tried to copy it..so rather than have a niche game for everyone, we have been getting floods of clones, with gimmicks here and there. None of which were good enough to dethrone WoW, and many that are closing a mear year after release, or even less at times.

Lineage 2 is a testament to this..its a very anti casual game, they have made some improvements to make it a bit less alienating, and have had some large falls in population due to other reasons (bots, farmers, etc), but its still going even now because its a niche game, and if you want that sort of open pvp system, theres no where else for people to go, so it always has atleast a decent sized fallowing. If your going for mass market, your going to have to beat WoW, and no one has been able to come even close todoing that, and the niche games are dissappearing because its better to strive for the potential of WoW level money than go niche.

On an upside though, F2P mmo's have came an extremely long way, some even meet the same level of quality that the older generation mmo's had, albeit with much better graphics. Possibly another side effect of the mad dash to steal Blizzards thunder. If your not a fan of WoW, not many other places to go, making f2p mmos start to thrive.

I mean, think about it, how long has..ugh..maple story been going on? These newer mmo's are having serious issues keeping enough profits to stay afloat, sometimes less than a year after launch. Maybe im wrong, but i do know im playing f2p games with quality that rivals older generation mmo's now, and those big blockbuster companies trying to steal WoW players are failing all over the place.

Hell maple story got a damn expansion, while full fledged and fully developed games are tripping right out of the gate, if that doesn't atleast give you serious pause, your in denial.

The issue is that the dash to steal some of WoW's market share is a doomed exercise.  At this point, noone can create a WoW-like game that out-WoW's WoW itself.  WoW now has 4+ years of content and polish and a huge playerbase, and really a newcomer game of the same type really cannot compete with that at all.  That's what we've found with all of the DikuMUD type games that have been released since 2004.  Some have been better than others, some have had more issues than others, but what they all have in common is that they vastly underperformed expectations and failed utterly at becoming any kind of credible competition for Warcraft.  Instead, WoW continues to grow its sub base.

The answer is for developers and publishers to focus on developing games that are truly different from the DikuMUD design -- something different and new.  Darkfall is an example of that, but should not be taken as a great example because its FFA+loot ruleset will limit its appeal right off the bat.  But it should be possible to make other games that are different from the DikuMUD design without the hardcore PvP aspect to them, which will potentially do well and attract good, sustainable playerbases.  But the key factor is that developers and publishers have to stop aiming for 1m+ subs for their games -- that's not going to happen.  Only WoW has done that outside of Asia, and WoW is the outlier, not what is normally possible for a subscription-based MMO.  

So overall more realism is needed in the market.  Make innovative games and people will play them.  Make expensive, glitzy DikuMUD games to siphon WoW's market, and some people will play them, but probably not more people than would play the nichey ones, and in some cases less -- and in any case, you spent more money making the game, so you're in a bad situation in terms of the economics.  The key, then, is being more realistic about what's achievable, stop spending 120m to make the game, and come up with innovative designs that will attract and retain 200k subs.

Originally posted by rufusangus

On an upside though, F2P mmo's have came an extremely long way, some even meet the same level of quality that the older generation mmo's had, albeit with much better graphics. Possibly another side effect of the mad dash to steal Blizzards thunder. If your not a fan of WoW, not many other places to go, making f2p mmos start to thrive.

Although your whole post was good, this section really stands out.  It's so true.  For me World of Warcraft + F2P's = win!

I'm going to pitch a radical prediction here.  The race for all games other than World of Warcraft are F2P's that are so different and exciting from World of Warcraft on the onset that they're shooting for getting people to throw in the extra cash for non-essential accessories like outfits, different mounts, etc. so that the game would still be fair and free on the onset but individuality/customization would come at a cost.  The micro-pays will thrive from the quick-hits, people who just started to play them.  Navy Field got me good.  It's free to play but oh how nice to throw in $6.50 for extra goods.  I'm considering dropping a little coin on World of Kung Fu too, partially to say "thank you" for the free game.  Same for RF Online and Shot Online.   I'll look at my F2P's once a month and say, "who should I send my financial thank-you to this month?"  I don't know if F2P's can survive long term on charity...but they've gotten this far.

Originally posted by Novaseeker

So overall more realism is needed in the market.  Make innovative games and people will play them.  Make expensive, glitzy DikuMUD games to siphon WoW's market, and some people will play them, but probably not more people than would play the nichey ones, and in some cases less -- and in any case, you spent more money making the game, so you're in a bad situation in terms of the economics.  The key, then, is being more realistic about what's achievable, stop spending 120m to make the game, and come up with innovative designs that will attract and retain 200k subs.

A lot of brilliant statements on this thread.  I just wish / hope these voices are heard by the game creators.

08 was far from the best year, but as others have said, there have been worse.

The year with DnL, Mourning, and the year vith Vanguard stand out.

there were sooo many absolutely horrible games that came out. This year was much better.

I think everyone is just waiting for the mythical david to slay bliz....I mean Goliath.

mmorpgs died after 2003 because that was the last year of exciting innovation.

EVE
SWG
PS

By 2004 all of them sucked.

2008 was a decent year, not the best but not worst.

Originally posted by Jefferson81

What do you think?

I feel this year has been a AWESOME year for MMOG's, but a TERRIBLE year for MMORPG's

So for me it's not been a great year as I look more for a MMORPG then just a MMOG, but it seems this genre is turning more and more into MMOG instead of MMORPG, I mean we even have APB in the development list, yet the game anounced not to have RPG in it go figure........

 This wasn't a bad year. I mean yeah some MMOs seemed to be dissapointments. But other MMOs showed improvements. Like Eve, WoW, LotR, EQ2, and who can't forget Vanguard. A year ago Vanguard was the worst MMO ever apparently, but they've made a great come back. The game hasn't went under and if you ask me, has shown a rising player base from this year. 

As far as Age of Conan and Warhammer go. Like someone else stated these games aren't going under the rug. They've got huge amounts of content and development time invested into them. The developers won't just get rid of them. They'll still make money off of them, and in turn improve the game to bring back the players. If Vanguard can do it, I think Mythic and Funcom can straighten their masterpieces out.

In addition we still have another month of this year. With releases of Chronicles of Spellborn and Darkfall on the horizon. You can still point out positives. The potential of these two MMOs is spectacular. Yeah, tcos is a sleeper, but it's gotta unique gameplay to it. Darkfall has been on the chopping block for ages and who knows we may finally get it.

Also, with the release of the Expansions to some of the few games I mentioned earlier, it just shows the continued support of those games. Eve will become a even bigger player once they release the walking in stations content. LotR's massive saga is just beginning to unfold, in fact the areas that people are really interested in haven't even been touched yet. Everyone know's they want to witness the events of the novel unfold in some of Fantasy's most historical battles. While WoW is still kicking ass as far as subscriptions. I doubt we'll see a decline in that. And Blizzard will probably attempt to release another expansion to keep on par with Turbine now. 

The only real upset I can see this year is the announcement of Tabula Rasa closing. I thought the game was actually not that halfbad. I don't believe NCSoft should just give up on the game either. They still have a community that loves the game, and I don't think they should just give their home up.

Although in conclusion, I'd give this year a positive impact on the MMO industry. It shows developers not to release unfinished content. Which we show delayed a couple of other games, and the content cuts in two games impacted it's player base dramatically. But give them time and Age of Conan and WAR will improve.

The horizon is wide open now, I think 2009 will show at least a hundred MMOs to come out. Yeah, a hundred. Probably more actually. A lot of developers are beginning to realize where the next generation of gaming is going. That happens to be the MMO area.

2009 will show APB, Champions, Earthrise, Fallen Earth, Huxley, Star Trek Online, and many other MMOs that are in hibernation. Ready to claim the game of the year next year. =P