I think the FTP model while successful at the moment being the new kid in town, might be profitable in the short term but perhaps in the long term, not so much. Once the Mafia Wars generation dies out a little, and you get less content, less gameplay, less graphics, because let's face it, the game is free, I think you'll find subscriptions coming back into vougue. People will want a better game and will be willing to pay for it. I know I am...

I also agree with another poster that the MMO's have to be geared towards young adults with jobs and disposable income. Those of us that grew up playing MMO's and are always looking for the next great MMO to hold our attention for a while. Something I can play here and there and solo if needed because I have a life. I have no problem paying $15 a month to play a few times a month as long as the graphics and gameplay mechanics are worth it.

I think FFXIV may made an exception to all of this.

But they wisely said.. "Oh well, you uh- are helping us fix the game! Yeah! All of you are diligent.." blah blah.

How about the games that never make it out the door?

Like Hero's Journey.

I wonder how many games that remain profitable are cancelled to move the personel on to a different project in hopes that the new venture would be highly profitable.  After all, a game's IP can be sold to recoup losses, and if it's not showing the promise that the developers feel they could acheive, then why not drop it and move on.

Originally posted by Nephaerius

Originally posted by Elidien

Just curious, what is the second picture from?

 

 AC2

Nah, that can't be AC2, it looks like the chat is working.....

MMos focusing on a specific type of players/gameplay are able to make it. See WW2online for instance, not a blockbuster to say the least  yet still in the place since 2001. Same story with Eve.

Unrealistic licensing agreements inked long before the realities of day-to-day production come into being.

You can't keep a game up-and-running for long if you have to pay $50,000 per month to various parties whose contracts say they must be paid as long as the game is up and running. $50K per month was a pittance when your business plan had you grossing $1,000,000 per month a few months after go-live. When you end up only having 2,000 subscribers at $15/month, suddenly that pittance is a literal game-breaker.

Others in this thread will do a great job explaining why MMO's die (not rocket science you know), all I wanted to weigh in with is that bad MMO's deserve to die, only way we'll every get the message through to the folks that build them on what we really think of their games.

Originally posted by Einherjar_LC

Originally posted by Nephaerius

Originally posted by Elidien

Just curious, what is the second picture from?

 

 AC2

Nah, that can't be AC2, it looks like the chat is working.....

 

best comment eva

I'm waiting for the day that a to be cancelled MMO gets an open source server/mod package released so the customers who remain and are still dedicated to the title can generate their own worlds/quests.  Many times very talented developers/admins/modders can be discovered and tapped by the company for future projects or a rewrite.  As was stated, a MMO that gets canceled prevents anyone out there from taking a nostalgic trip down memory MMO lane.  There is a robust and dedicated Mod community out there who would love to get their hands on AC2 or another in the long lines of forgotten (virtual)friends.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Others in this thread will do a great job explaining why MMO's die (not rocket science you know), all I wanted to weigh in with is that bad MMO's deserve to die, only way we'll every get the message through to the folks that build them on what we really think of their games.

 

Pretty much this... we need to cull the crap.

I'd also like to underline that the current trend to license IPs to make MMOs sort of shows where the industry is at... they are trying to apply the same crappy formula of getting high sales based on a name...

This might work when you make a single player action / adventure / rpg... but MMOs need long term content... equilibrium... it's a microsphere and you just cannot expect that the simple act of letting people access the same gamespace... doing "action / adventure / rpg" stuff...  makes you game a viable MMO. The game needs to be about how players interract.

Games like LotRO, DDO, Matrix Online, Conan, Warhammer, are not necessarilly doomed from the get go... but it's quite indicative of what the creators are thinking. Warhammer was almost a great game... the big name attracted EA to them... they released a game that was half-done. Two years later it's finally an awesome game but the player-base has already moved on. Conan is similar... but too little too late.

Look at Warhammer 40K... Dark Millenium Online. Granted we know very little but, they are just taking the same old formula of an evil faction vs a good faction... something that does not even fit the IP... and slapping on the 40k coat of paint on it... re-using their Darksiders engin.

Cryptic tried that... they actually pretty much admitted openly that they had this engine and they were just gonna pop out titles by slapping on IPs on top of it.

What to make of the MMO / TV show Syfy is working on? I think they are once again focusing on an IP rather than focusing on a working MMO.

Now...

Eve, Darkfall or Rifts IMO are more on the right track. They have a concept for a world and how things work... and they craft a world around that... same goes for 38 Studios and their MMO project...

SWTOR on the other hand... we'll have to see. They already showed they can take an IP and make a great "action / adventure / rpg" around it... or even make up an IP... now they want to make an MMO out of this... the question will be can they really create a microcosm or is this just gonna be some sort of game space sharing server... Since it's Bioware, I have to give them the benifit of the doubt... but otherwise all the signs would point to a failure.

I may be wrong but:

Natural Selection: Reproduction, the choice of who to mate with

Survival of the Fitest: .. well, that's probably what you ment

Nexon games are just bad. Centered around the cash shop, these games disturbingly reward payers with 2x or 3x development rate and the like.

LoTRO and DDO cannot be completed Free-to-Play unless you put in hundreds of hours every half a dozen levels to unlock the next quest pack. LoTRO does show some signs of improving though, but by this time the gameplay is already stale.

Guild Wars makes enough money by selling the game and expansions. The item-shop that's here right now is just cosmetic and is just to glean players of money before Guild Wars 2 is released.

I believe that Myst Online and Ryzom are open source MMOs.

Why do MMOs die? Well, in the case of Hellgate: London, APB and Tabula Rasa, they spent too much on development. APB and Hellgate London had the added bonus of getting their business models completely wrong as well (confusing for players and then giving away too much for free).

Originally posted by BioNut

MMOs die because their consumer demand wanes to a point where it is no longer profitable for a company to keep the servers open. Remember that companies are not charities and they could give a rats ass if you enjoy, love, cherish or despise their game. All they want is $$$ so they can feed their families and live the lives they want to live.

 

That you ask this question blows my mind.

 

It blows MY mind that you say they don't care if you "enjoy, love, cherish, or despise their game. All they want is money..." in the SAME paragraph.

People who enjoy, love, and/or cherish something....have no problem PAYING for it. So I would say they care VERY MUCH if you have good feelings about their game. Most of the time....I think the problem is not that they don't CARE, it's that they don't know how to make people feel those things about their games.  Some developers have better insight into the psyche of the gamer than others, I'm afraid. And when I say "gamer" I mean whatever their target market of gamers IS, which varies from game to game.

I don't think you will ever in all your life hear a developer or game publisher SAY, "We don't care if anyone enjoys or loves our game." Nope. That's not gonna happen.

Originally posted by Arxon

 

First off..  I'm not a fan of Free 2 Play games.  It just seems like there is less man-power behind them.  GM responses take forever, innovation seems to go out the window, and updates are virtually non-existent.  It feels like the game is dying and then they are offering things for cash purchase.  Why would I spend cash on a game that feels like it's dying?

MMOs die.  Why?  Because they jump on the Bandwagon.  When just ONE of them becomes successful with an idea then they all make attempts to implement that idea into their MMO.  UO (Ultima Online) was the best MMO that I have ever played.  It captured my attention for years.  What happened to it?  EverQuest came out with a much simpler game to play that offered gameplay in 3D, with less pvp, and a leveling system.  Here, I would like to make 2 points; 1:  Anything new is going to draw attention; 2:  The easier a game is to play the more people are going to enjoy playing it.  Look at WoW (World of Warcraft) for example.  There has never been an easier MMO to play.  That is what draws people to it.  Once EQ had released, and had become relatively successful, UO had felt the need to imitate EQ's success.  In doing so they ultimately ruined their own masterpiece by making things easier, releasing shitty 3D options (if you're going to do something,do it right!), and end the end of my time anyway; implementing resistances and super powered weaponry thereby removing skill out of the equation and turning the game into an item-based game.  

Unfortunately, there is the select few of us that enjoy competition.  We enjoy difficulty and challenge.  We don't want things handed to us and we thrive on actual skill and reflex.  This is where the problems arise.  We find it difficult to believe that there are not more out there like us and the MMO market continues to feed the majority what they thrive on.  Thus making each MMO feel very similar if not exactly the same as the last.  Sounds kind of boring, doesn't it??

 

 i cant disagree more about the f2p. Lotro was doing well before it went to f2p now there is even more updates and content planed or at least told to the community then before. who knows if the f2p concept will stick around but it definitly is not hurting.

Originally posted by achmed20

what bugs me most is that those games just to end up on a backup drive in some1 safe and damned to never been seen aggain.

why cant they just open Source them? I Allways liked Tabula rasa, even if it had its flaws. im quite sure the OpenSource community would had made something great out of it.

It would be awesome if they could do this but unfortunately there is company code in the game and they simply can't afford to give away their code (a bit of it moves from project to project).

Profits, actual or projected. The problem in understanding that is understanding whatever random equation the creators came up with. 

Originally posted by obeloviper95

Originally posted by Arxon

 

First off..  I'm not a fan of Free 2 Play games.  It just seems like there is less man-power behind them.  GM responses take forever, innovation seems to go out the window, and updates are virtually non-existent.  It feels like the game is dying and then they are offering things for cash purchase.  Why would I spend cash on a game that feels like it's dying?

MMOs die.  Why?  Because they jump on the Bandwagon.  When just ONE of them becomes successful with an idea then they all make attempts to implement that idea into their MMO.  UO (Ultima Online) was the best MMO that I have ever played.  It captured my attention for years.  What happened to it?  EverQuest came out with a much simpler game to play that offered gameplay in 3D, with less pvp, and a leveling system.  Here, I would like to make 2 points; 1:  Anything new is going to draw attention; 2:  The easier a game is to play the more people are going to enjoy playing it.  Look at WoW (World of Warcraft) for example.  There has never been an easier MMO to play.  That is what draws people to it.  Once EQ had released, and had become relatively successful, UO had felt the need to imitate EQ's success.  In doing so they ultimately ruined their own masterpiece by making things easier, releasing shitty 3D options (if you're going to do something,do it right!), and end the end of my time anyway; implementing resistances and super powered weaponry thereby removing skill out of the equation and turning the game into an item-based game.  

Unfortunately, there is the select few of us that enjoy competition.  We enjoy difficulty and challenge.  We don't want things handed to us and we thrive on actual skill and reflex.  This is where the problems arise.  We find it difficult to believe that there are not more out there like us and the MMO market continues to feed the majority what they thrive on.  Thus making each MMO feel very similar if not exactly the same as the last.  Sounds kind of boring, doesn't it??

 

 i cant disagree more about the f2p. Lotro was doing well before it went to f2p now there is even more updates and content planed or at least told to the community then before. who knows if the f2p concept will stick around but it definitly is not hurting.

 

Lotro's population was going down, all guilds recruiting like maniacs becouse, bar the few top guilds, most guilds were struggling to get enough ppl to run 12-man raids, and ALL the end-game was reduced to 1 instance (doable in 20 minutes) and 1 raid (with only 3 bosses), and the latest expansion was completed by tons of players in the very first weekend, with the tiniest expension map that many of us have ever seen.

We ll see if that changes with the new F2P thing. At least now they have a nice influx of new (free) players. If they Turbine goes back to the standards they set in SoA the game has a bright future now. If they keep delivering as poorly as they did with SoM, all these new players wont last long and wont spend much money.

Useless article and this is not true at all to me =)

It's Just an opinion.

I have yet to see a mmo die from anything, Uo is still around and it is the first mmo, so?

HO, you mean tabula rasa, it didn't die, it was shut down because of the dog and cat relationship between R.G and NCsoft.

And ye i'm one of those that are on the side of NC in this affair.

Even thought i hate NC as a mmo company, i think they stink really, especially because they somehow braught "The Grind" in mmos. And i kind of like R.G, he kind of look very human to me with a lot of interesting visions and a lot of failed intensions.

Yet i blame R.G in this affair. First L2 was a fiasco in western country, and his job was to take care of that. He make Uo, and wasn't even able to point out to NC that the fiasco came from the grind, item based system, and security (bots) problem, yet as the main Uo designer he was one of most aware of this kind of stuff in all th mmo world, and i'm sure Nc would have gave him all the power needed to change this in the western version of the game, but he fucking did nothing at all, he was just turning his fingers all the time, big fucking fail all over the place here. And even if NC didn't want to give him any power to do anything, he should have tald them, "if you want me to be your western puppet, go tu fuck off, im' not here to be your punching ball, or you do something to fix your crap, or i leave".

Second Tabula rasa is a bad game from its core, a mmofps with no pvp LOL. It would be the same as a mmofps without character advancement, that kind of non sense, and Nc did pointed this to R.G, but he was just so stubborn he refused to implement any pvp in Tabula rasa. How could this kind of game interest anyone? It's like trying to sell salty candies to kids, fail.