Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by AmbrosiaAmor

 The last time a South Korean game was embraced for the long term and followed a P2P model was Lineage II here in the States, but that game was released in 2004. 

Lineage II was never embraced for the long term in the US.  Id be shocked if it ever broke the 100k sub mark.

No considering that L II was so diffrrent design wise, grindy and had upopular mouse-click control (WSAD even now still does not work as good as in major western WSAD only titles) was quite popular.

Imho it easily break 100 k mark, If I had to shoot it was at least 200-300 k  US+EU wise.

Heck even L I servers were operating for few years in US afair.

Taking all that in consideration L II was moderately succesful in it's own niche in western markets.

Originally posted by fenistil

Imho it easily break 100 k mark, If I had to shoot it was at least 200-300 k  US+EU wise.

 

Sorry, there is NO WAY it had that many.  Thats what SWG had, thats more than EQ2 had.  And while its not exactly a scientific method, go take a survey ingame of WoW or Rift or GW2 and see how many people played L2 vs. SWG or EQ2.  

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by fenistil

Imho it easily break 100 k mark, If I had to shoot it was at least 200-300 k  US+EU wise.

 

Sorry, there is NO WAY it had that many.  Thats what SWG had, thats more than EQ2 had.  And while its not exactly a scientific method, go take a survey ingame of WoW or Rift or GW2 and see how many people played L2 vs. SWG or EQ2.  

You look for L II playerbase on wrong forums and in wrong games. 

My guess would be that L II western population was on par with EQ2 population.  More or less.

Both populations fallen out of peak quite fast though.

ALOT of L2 playerbase went to either:

- F2P Asian games

- Aion

- currently TERA

Asking Rift playerbase how many of them played L2 is like asking EvE Online population how many of them played DCUO.

Or Swtor one how many of them play TERA.

Go on diffrent forums than mmorpg.com  in example like mmosite or onrpg and you would be surprised that game popularities there are tad diffrent than here.

I was on for a shock few years ago when I realized that as well.

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by fenistil

Imho it easily break 100 k mark, If I had to shoot it was at least 200-300 k  US+EU wise.

 

Sorry, there is NO WAY it had that many.  Thats what SWG had, thats more than EQ2 had.  And while its not exactly a scientific method, go take a survey ingame of WoW or Rift or GW2 and see how many people played L2 vs. SWG or EQ2.  

it reached it max population around 124400 something subscribers around C2 way back, counting USA, and Eu servers, released bye ncsoft themselves, and no i don't care to look for it the info, then it went to the ......

At its golden era outside S Korea (C6, Interlude) Lineage II had 11 servers, 7 in NA and 3 in EU and they got merged down to 1 NA and 1 EU before going F2P.

Originally posted by hopenottaken

At its golden era outside S Korea (C6, Interlude) Lineage II had 11 servers, 7 in NA and 3 in EU and they got merged down to 1 NA and 1 EU before going F2P.

thats not the golden era, it had way less subscribers then around the C2 era, might have had more servers but most off em where lacking in population compared to long ago

Originally posted by Kumapon

Over the past 2 months K-Tera has been in a massive nosedive in subs.

http://gametrics.com/news/News02_View.aspx?seqid=8023

http://www.gametrics.com/news/News02_View.aspx?seqid=7047

April 2012 = 134,717
May 2012 = 92,580 -31.3% decrease

Now that Blade and Soul is in Open Beta the numbers have just fallen off the map.

April = 134,717
May = 92,580
June 1st week = 67,931
June 2nd week = 63,099

http://tera.hangame.com/news/notice.nhn?bbsid=942&docid=4652235

 

Because of the massive losses, BHS has announced that starting on June 28th there will be server merges across the board. All 13 servers will be affected.
*BHS hasn't given exact details at this time, but it looks like it's gonna be big.

BHS has also announced that they will be opening up a Free to Play server starting on July 4th. The lvl cap will be lvl 50 only. BHS has stated that this is only an test, so the server will only be up for 4 weeks, ending on July 26 th. This Free to play server will have different rules and items.
*My guess is they are trying to see if Tera can work as a FTP game.

Lastly the QOA part 2 patch that was suppose to come out at the end of summer will now get pushed ahead and will release on July 4th in K-TERA.
*Actually this is good news if your a Tera fan, but I worry that this is a desperate move to save the game, and the patch might be buggy.

I like Tera but things are not looking good right now...:(

Will Tera make it into 2013 ? Will it be FTP by then ?

 

Another massively multiplayer online VIDEO GAME nose dives, following SW:ToR, Rift, and so forth.  These are not in depth mmorpgs that folks ten years from now will be talking about with nostalgia.  This isn't Ultima, or Dark Age of Camelot.  Sorry to remind you, but this is therefore, to be expected.

Quality game = quality community = loyal fanbase.

Same 5 race class cut and paste = community of children and robots = gone when next copy paste 5 race and class title releases.

Originally posted by Sorrowho

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by fenistil

Imho it easily break 100 k mark, If I had to shoot it was at least 200-300 k  US+EU wise.

 

Sorry, there is NO WAY it had that many.  Thats what SWG had, thats more than EQ2 had.  And while its not exactly a scientific method, go take a survey ingame of WoW or Rift or GW2 and see how many people played L2 vs. SWG or EQ2.  

it reached it max population around 124400 something subscribers around C2 way back, counting USA, and Eu servers, released bye ncsoft themselves, and no i don't care to look for it the info, then it went to the ......

Yup, that makes sense to me, 125k US and EU combined.  

Originally posted by Kumapon

Over the past 2 months K-Tera has been in a massive nosedive in subs.

http://gametrics.com/news/News02_View.aspx?seqid=8023

http://www.gametrics.com/news/News02_View.aspx?seqid=7047

April 2012 = 134,717
May 2012 = 92,580 -31.3% decrease

Now that Blade and Soul is in Open Beta the numbers have just fallen off the map.

April = 134,717
May = 92,580
June 1st week = 67,931
June 2nd week = 63,099

http://tera.hangame.com/news/notice.nhn?bbsid=942&docid=4652235

 

Because of the massive losses, BHS has announced that starting on June 28th there will be server merges across the board. All 13 servers will be affected.
*BHS hasn't given exact details at this time, but it looks like it's gonna be big.

BHS has also announced that they will be opening up a Free to Play server starting on July 4th. The lvl cap will be lvl 50 only. BHS has stated that this is only an test, so the server will only be up for 4 weeks, ending on July 26 th. This Free to play server will have different rules and items.
*My guess is they are trying to see if Tera can work as a FTP game.

Lastly the QOA part 2 patch that was suppose to come out at the end of summer will now get pushed ahead and will release on July 4th in K-TERA.
*Actually this is good news if your a Tera fan, but I worry that this is a desperate move to save the game, and the patch might be buggy.

I like Tera but things are not looking good right now...:(

Will Tera make it into 2013 ? Will it be FTP by then ?

 

wonder why the suprise  it coming sooner or later all kor game in NA alwais is a fail and  dont last long it alwais going to happen alwais.

Originally posted by Terronte

Not sure how a PvP-favored game will do as F2P in a western market, if it comes to that.

Even if Leage of Legends is not a mmo, it still shows that a PvP favored game can do well as F2P in western market.

As indicated before, this will effect the EU/NA version as well. If Blue Hole Studio get less money they also have less money to make new content.

Originally posted by dadante666

....

 

wonder why the suprise  it coming sooner or later all kor game in NA alwais is a fail and  dont last long it alwais going to happen alwais.

That's quite the selective memory. It's like every mmorpg produced in the west is a stellar success and the korean ones aren't? The latest game to nose dive in subscriptions was SW:TOR, and that had a huge backing, both financial and from a major developer. If you take a look a bit at the past, you'll see similar disheartening results from other western mmorpgs as well.

On the other hand, lets name one western mmorpg that does well in Korea, or asia in general.

Not sure how this was a surprise.

Slap a little carpal tunnel combat onto an otherwise redundant and vanilla MMO, and you think its going to make it a hit?

Didn't even have to play it. Saw a couple of hours on twitch.tv and wrote it off.

Originally posted by Xasapis

Originally posted by dadante666

....

 

wonder why the suprise  it coming sooner or later all kor game in NA alwais is a fail and  dont last long it alwais going to happen alwais.

That's quite the selective memory. It's like every mmorpg produced in the west is a stellar success and the korean ones aren't? The latest game to nose dive in subscriptions was SW:TOR, and that had a huge backing, both financial and from a major developer. If you take a look a bit at the past, you'll see similar disheartening results from other western mmorpgs as well.

On the other hand, lets name one western mmorpg that does well in Korea, or asia in general.

 I could have sworn World of Warcraft was huge in Asia. Is it not? believe it or not WoW is a western MMORPG. I am not a big fan of it but you cannot argue with the crazy subscriptions and money that game has made.

Originally posted by Yamota

Just comes to show that a game cannot thrive on innovative combat alone.

My exact same thoughts.

And my very personal thought: When mmo developers do the exact same game over and over and only change 1 or 2 things to claim its the new breed (in this case good action combat and outstanding graphics) its not enough to justify a subscription.

cant wait for F2P in North America to log back in

Originally posted by rojo6934

Originally posted by Yamota

Just comes to show that a game cannot thrive on innovative combat alone.

My exact same thoughts.

And my very personal thought: When mmo developers do the exact same game over and over and only change 1 or 2 things to claim its the new breed (in this case good action combat and outstanding graphics) its not enough to justify a subscription.

cant wait for F2P in North America to log back in

I have no problems either paying for a monthly subscription as well. Hell when it comes to RPGs and MMORPGs I would say 9 out of 10 times I try to get the Collector’s Edition (whichever is the higher priced one if there are different versions) just because. So money definitely isn’t an issue for me. And yeah most F2P games do use the P2W method or start off with vanity items but usually end up branching over to the P2W method.

There is one major problem though.

The majority of folks out there, in today’s market, wouldn’t agree with us. Or if they did pay for a monthly subscription it would be for a couple of months at best. Why? Because of the reasons I gave above as well as my post on the typical basic “Ingredients” I’ve posted a couple of times already. While we may break down the $15.00 a month as “Hey I spend more money at the movies” or “Hey it’s only a couple of quarters a day.” Guess what? That just won’t fly with the majority of the folks out there.

It just isn’t worth it to them for the long term and some just don’t even bother with it.

It would be like me saying to the entire BG community to sign up to SWTOR because $15.00 a month is pittance. The problem is like I said before, with the extreme saturation we have in the current market, just having one major new addition or “relatively” new addition to the MMO table just isn’t enough to separate yourself from the pack when the rest of the game is a near exact copy of previous games. This is something that has affected the majority of these theme park based MMORPGs post 2005; whether Western or Eastern developers.


One comment that really stood out was when you said that “there are plenty of monthly subscription games that are still very strong.” How so?


The P2P model comes in 2 brackets:

A. $4.00 - $10.99

This price bracket is practically dead. There are about 50 games that are, or used to be in this bracket range, but the last game to release using this price model was late 2010. I think Wakfu is the only game post 2011 that has a $6.00 monthly subscription fee, but that is optional I think.

B. $12.95 - $14.99

There are 30 games listed under this price range. However, 6 have shut down. So that brings the total down to 24. About half a dozen games before 2005 are still going strong such as EVE, FFXI, WOW to mention a few. Let us look at the games released from 2005 till now that still use the P2P business model.


A Tale in the Desert 2006

Warhammer Online 2008

DarkFall 2009

FFXIV 2010

Rift 2011

Xyson 2011

TERA 2011


I did not place Vanguard because it was stated they are going F2P this summer. DarkFall is going to cut its initial client cost as well as reduce its monthly subscription from $14.99 to an undetermined amount. Warhammer Online had at release (combined NA and EU servers) a total of a little over 80 servers. There are now 1 NA server and 1 EU server. I am not sure how this constitutes as "Going Strong Still" at all. Transitioning from a P2P model to F2P does cost money and I am not sure if E.A. wants to “waste" money in doing that, at least not yet. DarkFall also only has 1 NA and 1 EU server.


If you look at the last 3 years, there are only 5 games that still use the P2P model. With over 600 MMORPGs out there, that constitutes less than 1%... of the total market. There were many more games that used to use the P2P model, I think over 60 games (not all at the same time of course) which now have been cut by two-thirds.


The only game going strong using the P2P model that was released 2005 till present is RIFT. That’s it. There are over a dozen P2P games but the rest were released prior to 2005 and have been able to create a legacy behind them as well as several expansions (something that you rarely see happen to games post 2005). EVE Online is probably one of two games I can think of that was able to not only able to maintain a stable community, but they were able to grow as well throughout the years. There are reasons behind this which I won’t go into again.


So I do agree with you in that I would rather have a P2P MMORPG, but how? How is that even possible in today’s extremely saturated market when these developers refuse to take any risk at all and continue to churn out “near” copies of their ancestors with maybe adding one new or “relatively” new feature? How can they justify that and tack on the $15.00 price tag without most of us having that been-there-done-that feeling like that article I linked up there in my previous post from MMOSite? While the P2P business model doesn’t need 12 million or 6 million or even 3 million subscribers to make a profit, they do need a considerable amount of folks to stay for the long haul, not have a mass exodus in less than 3 months.


I see many folks (especially in other forums like MMORPG.com) that still believe that the P2P model is going strong. And every time I ask them… give me proof… show me evidence that this is true. I take not 3, but 30 steps back and look at the entire MMORPG landscape and I just don’t see that with everything I have said in these recent posts, as well as my some of lengthy posts in the past dealing with this topic.


Note: It doesn’t mean that we cannot enjoy these games, of course we can. I am not expecting these games to last like the games from the Golden Era. But at the same time, I get frustrated when these games continually have a mass exodus in less than 3 months and sometimes within a month. I’m usually lenient when it comes to MMORPGs, but not when it comes to the MMO part. When 90% of the time it feels like a single player game because everyone else has left (regardless of the reasons or pitiful excuses), that is usually when I get frustrated and just pack up and go. This is something that has plagued most P2P games post 2005.

I don't like Tera but I thought it could hold their subs with the combat... I mean at least they have that different from others mmorpg

Originally posted by AmbrosiaAmor

The only game going strong using the P2P model that was released 2005 till present is RIFT. 

Rift isnt exactly going strong, its gone from 58 NA servers down to essentially 8 in less than 18 months.  18 months out, LOTRO was doing better than Rift and probably had more subs

But its not the model thats the issue, its the game quality.   LOTRO was the last game that was about the journey and not the destination.  Probably not coincidentally, it was the last game that saw an increase in subs over the first year or two.  Every other AAA game that tried to charge a sub was a mess, with the exception of Rift which has different reasons for being a failure.  

Too many games try to copy a formula (WoW) without understanding what made WoW big in the first place.  HINT: it wasnt raiding, or dungeon repetition, or 'welfare epics.'   It was a game oozing with soul and character, with a memorable world with memorable inhabitants, much like EQ before it.  Even with WoWs fast leveling speed compared to EQ, it still took the average person a couple months to get their first lvl 60.  WoW hit a good balance with leveling speed where you still had a journey and got attached to your character without being a heavy grind.  Rift (and SWTOR) managed to make the journey takes less time, yet seem much grindier.  

Its not the model, its the game quality.  From what Ive played with BETA GW2 gets some of it right, the game world certainly has far more soul than Telara or SWTOR, Im guessing the leveling will be too fast, but maybe they will find ways to extend the journey past the level cap, thats what a couple of the gw1 expansions did.

Rift has 16 servers in NA and 16 in EU i guess it's quite good

http://www.riftstatus.com/

It's interesting cause the game came out around the same time as Tera last year.

Tera failed because it launched incompleted not once (in Korea) but TWICE (in the West too).

Originally posted by teakbois

Too many games try to copy a formula (WoW) without understanding what made WoW big in the first place.  HINT: it wasnt raiding, or dungeon repetition, or 'welfare epics.'   It was a game oozing with soul and character, with a memorable world with memorable inhabitants, much like EQ before it.  Even with WoWs fast leveling speed compared to EQ, it still took the average person a couple months to get their first lvl 60.  WoW hit a good balance with leveling speed where you still had a journey and got attached to your character without being a heavy grind.  Rift (and SWTOR) managed to make the journey takes less time, yet seem much grindier.  

Let's be real. There are common sense reasons why WoW thrived so much. The first reason is the IP. Warcraft was quite popular around this time, especially after Warcraft 3. The second reason is the way they designed the game. They took good ideas from their predessors and built upon it. On top of that, the game wasn't heavy on system requirements. The third reason, is good timing. People were looking for something new. 

Thus the game pretty much grew from there. Most games will be memorable especially if you play it long enough. I remember stuff from games before WoW such as Ultima Online or Ragnarok Online. What's occuring now is people in general seem to be tired of the same ol' stuff just rehashed with a different skin. 

Also rift is doing fine. They keep a constant stream of content along with patches, so quite a lot of people stuck around. Hell, even I resub every now and then when I hear something new coming out. Tera ran into issues due to lack of content in some areas and incomplete features.