MMO is determined successful by a player's view and opinion

/endofdiscussion

Originally posted by Suraknar

Originally posted by Consuetudo

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Quizzical

Yes it can. even Wow has a few thousand people per server. So if an MMO has but one server with a few thousand people it is as Massive as WoW.

It means nothing to me that there are millions of people playing in other servers....All that matters is if the game has a healthy population depending on its design in the server that I play.

The logic of your argument is flawed.

The massiveness of WoW cannot be removed from the total number of players that are playing it . . . there's a substantial difference between the amount of population wielded there in compariosn to another game with a population that is substantially lesser. To equate in a sense of being massive the thing with millions of players to the thing with thousands of players doesn't follow, provided that the one is overwhelmingly more populous than the other. 

The servers, with one game having 1 server with 30,000 people, and the other game having 17 servers each of which has 30,000 people, can in that sense be equated, but when we speak about the massiveness of WoW, we aren't speaking about the massiveness of the server Kul'Tiras, but of the entire game. 

Originally posted by Scott23

I haven't read the replies, but for me population has very little to do with a games appeal.

I have never played WoW - the graphics just didn't appeal to me.  I am attracted to decent graphics, decent story, and decent game mechanics.  The number of players means absolutely nothing to me.

And yet you wouldn't doubt that the game is successful, even if your desire to play it is inferior to your desire not to. 

The success of the game is an objective quality it inherently has by means of its superior population, not a subjective qualification. 

Originally posted by Jonoku

MMO is determined successful by a player's view and opinion

/endofdiscussion

And yet if only 10 MMO players consider game x to be successful by means of their playing it, whereas 10,000,000 others don't by means of their not playing it, it follows that the thing which is considered to be not successful more than it is considered to be successful is not successful. 

Originally posted by Consuetudo

Originally posted by Suraknar

Originally posted by Consuetudo

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Quizzical

Yes it can. even Wow has a few thousand people per server. So if an MMO has but one server with a few thousand people it is as Massive as WoW.

It means nothing to me that there are millions of people playing in other servers....All that matters is if the game has a healthy population depending on its design in the server that I play.

The logic of your argument is flawed.

The massiveness of WoW cannot be removed from the total number of players that are playing it . . . there's a substantial difference between the amount of population wielded there in compariosn to another game with a population that is substantially lesser. To equate in a sense of being massive the thing with millions of players to the thing with thousands of players doesn't follow, provided that the one is overwhelmingly more populous than the other. 

The servers, with one game having 1 server with 30,000 people, and the other game having 17 servers each of which has 30,000 people, can in that sense be equated, but when we speak about the massiveness of WoW, we aren't speaking about the massiveness of the server Kul'Tiras, but of the entire game. 

 

Then that is the Crux of the mistake in logic.

What you are describing is that WoW is a popular game. But what determines if an MMO is massive is its design by definition.

If the game has a persistent world that is shared by thousands of people then it falls, by definition under the qualification of Massive.

In the same logic, a game such as World of Tanks, is not massive, it is an MOG, Multiplayer online Game, it is multiplayer as each batle requires two teams of people to be played, and it can only be played Online. But it is not by definition Massive, it has no persistent world that players share.

Back to WoW, it is an MMOG, Massivelly Multiplayer Online Game, because it has a Persistent World per server shared by Thousands of people per server and it can only be played online.

Same quality applies to all other games which fit the definition. Whether they are popular or not is entirelly another matter, but they are Massive they are MMOO's if their defign and functionality fits the definition.

Again, I repeat, if the decision of a player to play one MMOG versus another is based on the Popularity of a game, then we simply have a case of Speepish mentality, or Mob Mentality, "wherever people go I shall too" without any other consideration.

Unfortunatelly that mentality is quite normal within certain age groups, it is a behavior we all had or will have in one or another point in our Lives.

WoW started with an already big Fan Based, there were about 7 million people that were fans of the Warcraft series when it launched. Many of them got in to WoW, many of them quit it 1-3 months later, but Blizzard used well the numbers in their marketing and advenrtisement in combination to the word of mouth comming from those 7 million fans, who incited some of their friends who may not have even been Warcraft series players to play it...now add the Mob mentality factor in to it and voila, millions of people ended up playing WoW, and Blizz is doing a good job maintaining a high popularity of their game.

But it does not mean that the game is actually better or more fun than others. It just benefits of all these factors which work to its advantage.

if you want to make the point that the popularity of an MMO contributes to its Success, then yes I would agree with that statement. Or if you make the p[oint that many people unfortunatelly will based their decision to play a given game based on its popularity, then I would agree as well. It is still Sheepish and Mob mentality but it is a fact.

And if that is the case, then this implies that in order to match WoW's Success one has to make an MMO that would be equally Popular.

And personally I do not think that this can be accomplished by making a Game that is Similar to WoW.

I think ArchAge may actually become another Popular MMO like WoW, given the fact that there are many people who will make a decision based on Mob mentality what do you think that they will do when it launches in NA with already millions of Subscribers (in Asia?)..it will not matter to the people here where these other players are...it will give the illusion that it is a very Popular game nevertheless.

I agree with the OP. Population is a very clear indicator of whether an MMO is successful or not.

Even the worst games have core groups that play them. The fact that there are people who, for example, play the Game of Thrones RPG (and claim that it is good) does not change the fact that it is a bad game. The fact that there are people playing Mortal Online does not make Moral Online a good game. And so on and so forth.

However just because a game has 40,000 people playing it does not mean it is a failure. There are niches in the market that only hold interest for a relatively small number of people. Eve Online is a great example of a niche game that has really dominated the segment of the market it chooses to target. It may not have the 12,000,000 subscriptions that World of Warcraft boasts, but I'd argue that it is relatively as successful as World of Warcraft (even if that isn't true overall).

Why is Eve as successful as World of Warcraft?

Eve operates in a niche that is vastly smaller than the area of the market that World of Warcraft operates in. Eve is designed for a particular type of player, where World of Warcraft is a catch-all. Eve boasts 600,000+ active players, and surrounding it - in the same sort of niche - are games like Mortal Online, Darkfall, and that silly mech game that exists somewhere on the Internet, who all suffer significantly smaller populations. World of Warcraft operates with 12,000,000 subscribers against other MMOs that again operate with significantly smaller populations. And let's not forget that Eve is one of the only MMOs to show year-on-year subscription increases since the time of its release; until recently, World of Warcraft managed that boast as well.

So there is a case to be made for context here. Obviously World of Warcraft is significantly more successful overall than Eve Online could ever hope to be, but within its niche Eve is the World of Warcraft game that other developers are trying to beat.

Don't read too much into what I just said; I was merely trying to make a point.

Originally posted by Suraknar

Originally posted by Consuetudo

Originally posted by Suraknar

Originally posted by Consuetudo

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Quizzical

 

 

Then that is the Crux of the mistake in logic.

What you are describing is that WoW is a popular game. But what determines if an MMO is massive is its design by definition.

If the game has a persistent world that is shared by thousands of people then it falls, by definition under the qualification of Massive.

In the same logic, a game such as World of Tanks, is not massive, it is an MOG, Multiplayer online Game, it is multiplayer as each batle requires two teams of people to be played, and it can only be played Online. But it is not by definition Massive, it has no persistent world that players share.

Back to WoW, it is an MMOG, Massivelly Multiplayer Online Game, because it has a Persistent World per server shared by Thousands of people per server and it can only be played online.

Same quality applies to all other games which fit the definition. Whether they are popular or not is entirelly another matter, but they are Massive they are MMOO's if their defign and functionality fits the definition.

Again, I repeat, if the decision of a player to play one MMOG versus another is based on the Popularity of a game, then we simply have a case of Speepish mentality, or Mob Mentality, "wherever people go I shall too" without any other consideration.

Unfortunatelly that mentality is quite normal within certain age groups, it is a behavior we all had or will have in one or another point in our Lives.

WoW started with an already big Fan Based, there were about 7 million people that were fans of the Warcraft series when it launched. Many of them got in to WoW, many of them quit it 1-3 months later, but Blizzard used well the numbers in their marketing and advenrtisement in combination to the word of mouth comming from those 7 million fans, who incited some of their friends who may not have even been Warcraft series players to play it...now add the Mob mentality factor in to it and voila, millions of people ended up playing WoW, and Blizz is doing a good job maintaining a high popularity of their game.

But it does not mean that the game is actually better or more fun than others. It just benefits of all these factors which work to its advantage.

if you want to make the point that the popularity of an MMO contributes to its Success, then yes I would agree with that statement. Or if you make the p[oint that many people unfortunatelly will based their decision to play a given game based on its popularity, then I would agree as well. It is still Sheepish and Mob mentality but it is a fact.

And if that is the case, then this implies that in order to match WoW's Success one has to make an MMO that would be equally Popular.

And personally I do not think that this can be accomplished by making a Game that is Similar to WoW.

I think ArchAge may actually become another Popular MMO like WoW, given the fact that there are many people who will make a decision based on Mob mentality what do you think that they will do when it launches in NA with already millions of Subscribers (in Asia?)..it will not matter to the people here where these other players are...it will give the illusion that it is a very Popular game nevertheless.

A game inherently unable to be as massive as WoW is part of a different sort. I wouldn't call it massive; it's nonsensical to call it thus when games can exist which are more massive. Again utilizing numbers: if there are 10 people playing an MMORPG and we call it massive because it is an MMORPG, whereas 10,000,000 play another game and we also call it massive, we've destroyed the meaning of the word massive. 

The game isn't massive because it's an MMORPG, but because it has the most players multiplayer that we can conceive of being together presently. While the genre calls itself something, the realities of the games demand a subgenre of "less massive," to which these ones that are inherently incapable of fielding a population as large as games like WoW belong.

And I'll specify here that I'm not advocating what people should do. I'm not saying you should consider an MMO successful because it is the most popular. I'm saying you do do this. 

The only "shoulding" I have advised is upon developers: to design that game which will retrospectively inherently exist with enough potential to become the most populated. 

Because in order for that to be the case, it means that it will actually possess those features which are amazing enough to actually become the most populated, regardless of what those features are. That players actually have flocked to this game actually should mean that it has the best features. 

Originally posted by dotdotdash

I agree with the OP. Population is a very clear indicator of whether an MMO is successful or not.

Even the worst games have core groups that play them. The fact that there are people who, for example, play the Game of Thrones RPG (and claim that it is good) does not change the fact that it is a bad game. The fact that there are people playing Mortal Online does not make Moral Online a good game. And so on and so forth.

However just because a game has 40,000 people playing it does not mean it is a failure. There are niches in the market that only hold interest for a relatively small number of people. Eve Online is a great example of a niche game that has really dominated the segment of the market it chooses to target. It may not have the 12,000,000 subscriptions that World of Warcraft boasts, but I'd argue that it is relatively as successful as World of Warcraft (even if that isn't true overall).

Why is Eve as successful as World of Warcraft?

Eve operates in a niche that is vastly smaller than the area of the market that World of Warcraft operates in. Eve is designed for a particular type of player, where World of Warcraft is a catch-all. Eve boasts 600,000+ active players, and surrounding it - in the same sort of niche - are games like Mortal Online, Darkfall, and that silly mech game that exists somewhere on the Internet, who all suffer significantly smaller populations. World of Warcraft operates with 12,000,000 subscribers against other MMOs that again operate with significantly smaller populations. And let's not forget that Eve is one of the only MMOs to show year-on-year subscription increases since the time of its release; until recently, World of Warcraft managed that boast as well.

So there is a case to be made for context here. Obviously World of Warcraft is significantly more successful overall than Eve Online could ever hope to be, but within its niche Eve is the World of Warcraft game that other developers are trying to beat.

Don't read too much into what I just said; I was merely trying to make a point.

I think your addition of the variable of a niche is significant. Rather than considering something like EVE an MMO, then, it would be more relevant to classify it as a niche as its definition. I'm sure that would have different parameters for what makes it a success. 

The population of Star Wars Galaxies is now zero.

Yet it still is more popular and infuential than many games that are currently running.  Heck, it might be more popular and more important than games with even large populations.

Originally posted by Beatnik59

The population of Star Wars Galaxies is now zero.

Yet it still is more popular than many games that are currently running.  

Originally posted by Consuetudo

Originally posted by Suraknar

Originally posted by Consuetudo

Originally posted by Suraknar

Originally posted by Consuetudo

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Quizzical

 

 

Then that is the Crux of the mistake in logic.

What you are describing is that WoW is a popular game. But what determines if an MMO is massive is its design by definition.

If the game has a persistent world that is shared by thousands of people then it falls, by definition under the qualification of Massive.

In the same logic, a game such as World of Tanks, is not massive, it is an MOG, Multiplayer online Game, it is multiplayer as each batle requires two teams of people to be played, and it can only be played Online. But it is not by definition Massive, it has no persistent world that players share.

Back to WoW, it is an MMOG, Massivelly Multiplayer Online Game, because it has a Persistent World per server shared by Thousands of people per server and it can only be played online.

Same quality applies to all other games which fit the definition. Whether they are popular or not is entirelly another matter, but they are Massive they are MMOO's if their defign and functionality fits the definition.

Again, I repeat, if the decision of a player to play one MMOG versus another is based on the Popularity of a game, then we simply have a case of Speepish mentality, or Mob Mentality, "wherever people go I shall too" without any other consideration.

Unfortunatelly that mentality is quite normal within certain age groups, it is a behavior we all had or will have in one or another point in our Lives.

WoW started with an already big Fan Based, there were about 7 million people that were fans of the Warcraft series when it launched. Many of them got in to WoW, many of them quit it 1-3 months later, but Blizzard used well the numbers in their marketing and advenrtisement in combination to the word of mouth comming from those 7 million fans, who incited some of their friends who may not have even been Warcraft series players to play it...now add the Mob mentality factor in to it and voila, millions of people ended up playing WoW, and Blizz is doing a good job maintaining a high popularity of their game.

But it does not mean that the game is actually better or more fun than others. It just benefits of all these factors which work to its advantage.

if you want to make the point that the popularity of an MMO contributes to its Success, then yes I would agree with that statement. Or if you make the p[oint that many people unfortunatelly will based their decision to play a given game based on its popularity, then I would agree as well. It is still Sheepish and Mob mentality but it is a fact.

And if that is the case, then this implies that in order to match WoW's Success one has to make an MMO that would be equally Popular.

And personally I do not think that this can be accomplished by making a Game that is Similar to WoW.

I think ArchAge may actually become another Popular MMO like WoW, given the fact that there are many people who will make a decision based on Mob mentality what do you think that they will do when it launches in NA with already millions of Subscribers (in Asia?)..it will not matter to the people here where these other players are...it will give the illusion that it is a very Popular game nevertheless.

A game inherently unable to be as massive as WoW is part of a different sort. I wouldn't call it massive; it's nonsensical to call it thus when games can exist which are more massive. Again utilizing numbers: if there are 10 people playing an MMORPG and we call it massive because it is an MMORPG, whereas 10,000,000 play another game and we also call it massive, we've destroyed the meaning of the word massive. 

The game isn't massive because it's an MMORPG, but because it has the most players multiplayer that we can conceive of being together presently. While the genre calls itself something, the realities of the games demand a subgenre of "less massive," to which these ones that are inherently incapable of fielding a population as large as games like WoW belong.

And I'll specify here that I'm not advocating what people should do. I'm not saying you should consider an MMO successful because it is the most popular. I'm saying you do do this. 

The only "shoulding" I have advised is upon developers: to design that game which will retrospectively inherently exist with enough potential to become the most populated. 

Because in order for that to be the case, it means that it will actually possess those features which are amazing enough to actually become the most populated, regardless of what those features are. That players actually have flocked to this game actually should mean that it has the best features. 

 

Well maybe "Massive" is the term used by a new generation of players to describe popular.

But in either case what you are describing is popularity not the fact that a given game is an MMO.

You advocate on how people should Call it, but how something is called is based on an established Defition. And the standing Definition right now of an MMO is what I have described.

Are you suggesting that what defines an MMO should be changed? Wouldn;t that pose a problem? I mean if we should call an MMO a game that has Millions of players, then how should we call a Game that launches and has no players yet before they actually buy try and decide to stay?

Shoudl companies just say, "Oh we are launching this game, we will see in a month if it is an MMO or not depending on sales"...

That is what is nonsensical. And the world does nto work like that.

"A rose is still a Rose by any other name"...an MMO is still an MMO no matter how many people play it.

the first Law of Thought, the Law of Identity clearly states, that someothing is what it is. A is A. An MMO is an MMO, whether it makes money or not, whether it has one server or 100 servers or whether it has 100 players or 10 million players it is still an MMO if it fits the definition.

As I expressed, if you are making the point that the success of an MMo is based on its popularity then I agree.

The next question becomes, how do you make an MMO that will be popular. You said by incorporating the features that are amasing enough to players which will then make that game Popular.

Fine that is your take to answer this questions. I think it goes a bit father than that. Implementation and Resulting gameplay of the features is what determines the Fun factor.

But even then, when you have people making a choice, by your points as well, of a game based on the Popularity of a game, no matter what features your games has, no matter how well implemented they are, people will skip your game and still go play WoW...why? Because Millions of people play it already!!

See it has really come down to a battle of Advenrtising and Marketing...no one can beat WoW's marketing and Advertising Budged of possible Billions of Dollars...because it has made Billions already over the years.

What companies should do in my opinion is change direction, come up with different designes, Sandbox games...WoW can never be one, it was not designed to be one. They cannot just create an expansion and change it the risk to lose all of their Customers is there plus it requires much much investement to remake everything.

They can of course come up with Project Titan should they see that Sanbox games are what is the next big thing and oit could be a Sanbox as well. They have the money to do that.

But still, making something different than WoW is in my opinion the way to go from now on, if companies want to have a bigger piece of the Pie.

Originally posted by Beatnik59

The population of Star Wars Galaxies is now zero.

Yet it still is more popular and infuential than many games that are currently running.  Heck, it might be more popular and more important than games with even large populations.

Star Wars Galaxies is a hard nut to crack, grankly.

Its popularity wasn't too grand, and its average sub number was well under 100,000 players for most of its life span. We can infer the ambitions of the game from the actions of those building and developing it: SWG was supposed to be a mass market title, even before they "repitched" it at World of Warcraft. When it released, SOE assumed that what SWG was offering was what gamers as a whole wanted from an MMO. When World of Warcraft released - and quickly demonstrated that the designers and developers at SOE were wrong - they "rebuilt" it in an attempt to make up lost ground.

Again, you can place the game in the appropriate context for judging it a success or failure by looking at the actions of those designing and building it: SWG was clearly intended to be a mass market title, and that is clear not only from what the developers said about the game before its release but also based on what they did after its release when it failed to see off competition from World of Warcraft. The franchise itself infers mass market ambitions.

So ask yourself the question: Was SWG successful as a mass market MMORPG?

The answer is quite simple: No, it was not.

SWG became a "niche" game AFTER it failed to become a mass market game. It was broadly a science fiction sandbox game, pitched at a similar audience to Eve Online's player base. It came no where near Eve's sub numbers, and no where near Eve's ongoing success.

So again... ask yourself a question: Was SWG successful as a niche game?

The answer again is quite simple: No, it was not.

SWG was, regardless of how you look at it, a failure. It may well have contributed some novel additions to the genre, but that does not make the title itself successful. SWTOR has contributed to the genre; no one thinks it is a success.

Double post due to forum bugs......... ;D

Originally posted by dotdotdash

Originally posted by Beatnik59

The population of Star Wars Galaxies is now zero.

Yet it still is more popular and infuential than many games that are currently running.  Heck, it might be more popular and more important than games with even large populations.

Star Wars Galaxies is a hard nut to crack, grankly.

Its popularity wasn't too grand, and its average sub number was well under 100,000 players for most of its life span. We can infer the ambitions of the game from the actions of those building and developing it: SWG was supposed to be a mass market title, even before they "repitched" it at World of Warcraft. When it released, SOE assumed that what SWG was offering was what gamers as a whole wanted from an MMO. When World of Warcraft released - and quickly demonstrated that the designers and developers at SOE were wrong - they "rebuilt" it in an attempt to make up lost ground.

Again, you can place the game in the appropriate context for judging it a success or failure by looking at the actions of those designing and building it: SWG was clearly intended to be a mass market title, and that is clear not only from what the developers said about the game before its release but also based on what they did after its release when it failed to see off competition from World of Warcraft. The franchise itself infers mass market ambitions.

So ask yourself the question: Was SWG successful as a mass market MMORPG?

The answer is quite simple: No, it was not.

SWG became a "niche" game AFTER it failed to become a mass market game. It was broadly a science fiction sandbox game, pitched at a similar audience to Eve Online's player base. It came no where near Eve's sub numbers, and no where near Eve's ongoing success.

So again... ask yourself a question: Was SWG successful as a niche game?

The answer again is quite simple: No, it was not.

SWG was, regardless of how you look at it, a failure. It may well have contributed some novel additions to the genre, but that does not make the title itself successful. SWTOR has contributed to the genre; no one thinks it is a success.

If it was such a failure, how come so many people--on these boards and the blogosphere--still talk about it?

Because its power is in excess of its popularity.  Its success is not tied to its population.

Look at Lineage II.  Very popular game, perhaps the largest MMO before WoW.  Yet the impact of the game was weak.  The game isn't really talked about, pondered, or revered.  If it would close tomorrow, nobody would ever know how popular it was, and nobody would ever care.

Originally posted by Beatnik59

Originally posted by dotdotdash

Originally posted by Beatnik59

The population of Star Wars Galaxies is now zero.

Yet it still is more popular and infuential than many games that are currently running.  Heck, it might be more popular and more important than games with even large populations.

Star Wars Galaxies is a hard nut to crack, grankly.

Its popularity wasn't too grand, and its average sub number was well under 100,000 players for most of its life span. We can infer the ambitions of the game from the actions of those building and developing it: SWG was supposed to be a mass market title, even before they "repitched" it at World of Warcraft. When it released, SOE assumed that what SWG was offering was what gamers as a whole wanted from an MMO. When World of Warcraft released - and quickly demonstrated that the designers and developers at SOE were wrong - they "rebuilt" it in an attempt to make up lost ground.

Again, you can place the game in the appropriate context for judging it a success or failure by looking at the actions of those designing and building it: SWG was clearly intended to be a mass market title, and that is clear not only from what the developers said about the game before its release but also based on what they did after its release when it failed to see off competition from World of Warcraft. The franchise itself infers mass market ambitions.

So ask yourself the question: Was SWG successful as a mass market MMORPG?

The answer is quite simple: No, it was not.

SWG became a "niche" game AFTER it failed to become a mass market game. It was broadly a science fiction sandbox game, pitched at a similar audience to Eve Online's player base. It came no where near Eve's sub numbers, and no where near Eve's ongoing success.

So again... ask yourself a question: Was SWG successful as a niche game?

The answer again is quite simple: No, it was not.

SWG was, regardless of how you look at it, a failure. It may well have contributed some novel additions to the genre, but that does not make the title itself successful. SWTOR has contributed to the genre; no one thinks it is a success.

If it was such a failure, how come so many people--on these boards and the blogosphere--still talk about it?

Because its power is in excess of its popularity.  Its success is not tied to its population.

Look at Lineage II.  Very popular game, perhaps the largest MMO before WoW.  Yet the impact of the game was weak.  The game isn't really talked about, pondered, or revered.  If it would close tomorrow, nobody would ever know how popular it was, and nobody would ever care.

I obviously can't speak to the reasons why the "blogosphere" still discusses SWG, but the blogosphere discusses lots and lots of things. Those things are not successful by merit of those discussions; I'm sure there's plenty of negative discussions taking place about SWG on the blogosphere, as much as there may be positive discussions. Using the blogosphere as a "primary source" to demonstrate a point really isn't a good idea; for every positive opinion you can find, I'm sure I can find a negative opinion. Tis a futile endeavour.

As to why people would discuss an MMO notorious for its many and varied mistakes (and, as I stated, contributions)... on an MMO forum? SWG is perhaps one of the most notorious MMOs that has ever been released, a true pariah in the same terms as SWTOR (which is widely discussed), AoC (which is discussed infrequently), and WAR (which is also discussed frequently).

As for Lineage 2: Again, it is frequently discussed on these boards, and in this blogosphere you speak of. I have many Asian friends who talk about it often, and use it as a reference point for the progress (or lack thereof) that has been made in the genre as a whole. In Asia - specifically countries like South Korea - it is oft discussed, widely lauded and frequently mentioned in the same terms that we mention World of Warcraft in here.

TERA was a hugely hyped game in Asia based solely off its loose connection to the Lineage franchise. ArcheAge is also enjoying huge amounts of hype thanks to its connection to Lineage. And the next Lineage game - Lineage Eternal - is also hotly anticipated. If it closed tomorrow, I assure you there would be a dramatic display on sites like MMORPG.com, Massively, IGN, Kotaku, etc. Western audiences may not appreciate the title as much as our Asian cousins have (and do), but we would certainly take note of the closure if it were to happen.

If one examines MMO success from an investor standpoint total player base is not really all that important. What really matters is price to earnings ratios and the return of investment.

Example:

Game A makes $100 million in sales but cost $100 million to produce. Financially this game was a wash.

Game B makes $20 million in sales but cost $10 million to produce. Financially this was a real success as the investor doubled his money.

Cances are game A is well known and game B is hardly a blip on the radar. The MMO dark age is bit of a myth because people are ignoring the under rated games that actually are successful.

Originally posted by Suraknar

Originally posted by Consuetudo

Originally posted by Suraknar

Originally posted by Consuetudo

Originally posted by Suraknar

Originally posted by Consuetudo

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Quizzical

 

 

 

 

As I expressed, if you are making the point that the success of an MMo is based on its popularity then I agree.

The next question becomes, how do you make an MMO that will be popular. You said by incorporating the features that are amasing enough to players which will then make that game Popular.

Fine that is your take to answer this questions. I think it goes a bit father than that. Implementation and Resulting gameplay of the features is what determines the Fun factor.

But even then, when you have people making a choice, by your points as well, of a game based on the Popularity of a game, no matter what features your games has, no matter how well implemented they are, people will skip your game and still go play WoW...why? Because Millions of people play it already!!

See it has really come down to a battle of Advenrtising and Marketing...no one can beat WoW's marketing and Advertising Budged of possible Billions of Dollars...because it has made Billions already over the years.

What companies should do in my opinion is change direction, come up with different designes, Sandbox games...WoW can never be one, it was not designed to be one. They cannot just create an expansion and change it the risk to lose all of their Customers is there plus it requires much much investement to remake everything.

They can of course come up with Project Titan should they see that Sanbox games are what is the next big thing and oit could be a Sanbox as well. They have the money to do that.

But still, making something different than WoW is in my opinion the way to go from now on, if companies want to have a bigger piece of the Pie.

Yes I'm advocating we need new labels for these games. A game that cannot at the start of it field the same population as bigger games can't  logically be called a massively MORPG. 

I haven't really articulated specific things that need to be done to make another good MMORPG, just that, naturally, it has to retrospectively inherently exist with enough potential to actually become the most popular game. Logically, the method to go about doing this is to initially attract a large player base and generate enough positive publicity, including from that initial player base, as well as attractive and cost-efficient enough opportunities, that will not only continue to attract more players, but which will sustain them over a long period of time. The game that is able to do this and which does become most popular was always going to have been the most popular from the very ideas and features present in it. 

Originally posted by Novusod

If one examines MMO success from an investor standpoint total player base is not really all that important. What really matters is price to earnings ratios and the return of investment.

Example:

Game A makes $100 million in sales but cost $100 million to produce. Financially this game was a wash.

Game B makes $20 million in sales but cost $10 million to produce. Financially this was a real success as the investor doubled his money.

Cances are game A is well known and game B is hardly a blip on the radar. The MMO dark age is bit of a myth because people are ignoring the under rated games that actually are successful.

And yet most people aren't investors, so this success is something subjective. If there is a small game that is a financial success, yet most players aren't playing it, it means that most people don't consider that game to be a success. If something is considered to be a success with a force inferior to the amount of people who don't consider it to be a success, then it isn't a success. 

What determines if it is successful is its population: if most people are actually playing it, then it is actually what is succeeding. 

Originally posted by Beatnik59

Look at Lineage II.  Very popular game, perhaps the largest MMO before WoW.  Yet the impact of the game was weak.  The game isn't really talked about, pondered, or revered.  If it would close tomorrow, nobody would ever know how popular it was, and nobody would ever care.

Because we live in the West, of course.

Lineage was a threat to the Forum Supremacy of EQ-I, for a time.  So EQ players devoted a great deal of their time convincing the rest of the games that "overseas subs don't matter"...because, at the time, Lineage's player base absolutely crushed EQ's...or didn't (reliability of reporting was always suspect)...  Still, eastern subs can't count; our fanboys will cry.

Blizzard, of course, telling us that overseas subs do matter, just  a few years later...popular opinion changes, but we've already declared Lineage DOA.  That's okay Blizzard, gamers say, as long as some "korean grinder" isn't kicking your ass, we'll let you use eastern subs to pad your numbers.

Just one of the best demonstrators of just how inherently ridiculous sub-based arguments are, at their core.  We can't even decide what subs "count", but we're eager to declare a winner and then argue about it endlessly.

This just in: Water makes the ocean wet.

All joking aside... population is, of course, an important factor in a MMO's success. The more people playing, the more money the developer is making (for certain with P2P or potentially with F2P), the healthier the game is, the more work can be done to expand and improve it, etc

The thing is, the point at which it can be considered successful isn't as lofty as the OP makes it seem.

Objectively speaking, a MMORPG whose playerbase generates enough revenue to keep the game healthy, running and stable over time is a successful MMORPG. Beyond that it's just varying degrees of success (barely successful, very successful, overwhelmingly successful, etc).

Using WoW as a measure of success compared to MMOs with lower subs is like using McDonald's as a measure of success compared to a smaller, local burger chain. Each is successful, just at different levels. If it's profitable, it's successful. Plain and simple. No mental gymnastics required.

For example... FFXI needed 200k active subscribers in order for the game to "break even" and begin becoming profitable. They reached that point in a couple years after the game launched. Not only did they meet their "break even" number, they more than doubled it with the game going on to support ~500,000 active players for several years after that. It became the most profitable game in SE's history.

By the OP's definition.. XI still could not be a success because it didn't achieve Blizzard's level of population with WoW. That is simply and demonstrably false.

The OP's view would only hold true to someone who chooses a MMO to play based on how popular it is. Others have stated it, and I agree, that this kind of mentality is best described as a bandwagon, sheep or lemming mentality. I never choose a game based on its population. I choose it based on whether or not it looks fun to me.

Originally posted by Consuetudo

This isn't about what some individual does, or what some individual wants, or about how things should be, but how things actually are. The MMO that is successful is the one with the highest population, and which continues to generate more players. The MMO that should be successful, or which you view to be the most successful, isn't the same as the MMO that is successful. 

Everyone speaks about WoW, because everyone knows that WoW is successful. The factor which causes WoW to be successful is the factor of its having the most population. If WoW didn't have the most population, then, proportional to the percentage of the MMO community that would be absent from WoW, the amount of attention it would receive on forums and your own thoughts would decrease the same amount, and the amount of attention you would give to other MMOs would fill up the gap. 

When WoW loses more players, and another MMO gains more players than WoW, then no longer will we count WoW to be successful, but that game. 

If Age of Conan, not altogether gripping as it is, had the most players, then regardless of whatever factors disatisfy some of us, we would neither doubt that it is successful, nor count WoW as being successful any longer. WoW was successful, yet now Age of Conan is successful. 

The success is an objective quality inherently present about the game, and not a subjective description being supplied by you. 

You stated in the first paragraph of your OP that the first factor a player thinks about when choosing a game is population.You may have intended this thread to be about the success of a game.However you suggested that population is the first factor when an individual chooses a game.I doubt that's true for a majority of players and it's definately not true for me.There were a number of reasons I started playing WoW population wasn't one of them.If they brought back SWG and it had only 10k players I'd subcribe and play.If darkfall had 20 million players I wouldn't play if they payed me.

Originally posted by Drakha

Originally posted by Consuetudo

This isn't about what some individual does, or what some individual wants, or about how things should be, but how things actually are. The MMO that is successful is the one with the highest population, and which continues to generate more players. The MMO that should be successful, or which you view to be the most successful, isn't the same as the MMO that is successful. 

Everyone speaks about WoW, because everyone knows that WoW is successful. The factor which causes WoW to be successful is the factor of its having the most population. If WoW didn't have the most population, then, proportional to the percentage of the MMO community that would be absent from WoW, the amount of attention it would receive on forums and your own thoughts would decrease the same amount, and the amount of attention you would give to other MMOs would fill up the gap. 

When WoW loses more players, and another MMO gains more players than WoW, then no longer will we count WoW to be successful, but that game. 

If Age of Conan, not altogether gripping as it is, had the most players, then regardless of whatever factors disatisfy some of us, we would neither doubt that it is successful, nor count WoW as being successful any longer. WoW was successful, yet now Age of Conan is successful. 

The success is an objective quality inherently present about the game, and not a subjective description being supplied by you. 

You stated in the first paragraph of your OP that the first factor a player thinks about when choosing a game is population.You may have intended this thread to be about the success of a game.However you suggested that population is the first factor when an individual chooses a game.I doubt that's true for a majority of players and it's definately not true for me.There were a number of reasons I started playing WoW population wasn't one of them.If they brought back SWG and it had only 10k players I'd subcribe and play.If darkfall had 20 million players I wouldn't play if they payed me.

I'd disagree with you. If that isn't the first factor you consider then it means you're already aware of what the most successful game is and are already in the afterwords process of considering other factors. If you were new to the genre naturally you would want to experience it in its best and where most of the people are flocking to -- we can easily see this happening with people complaining that WoW invites to itself increasingly younger and newer crowds, which people the game is catering to. 

You would play SWG because it plausibly exists with an inherent capability to become the most populated MMO> 

You wouldn't play Darkfall because it lacks this plausibility. You know about Darkfall, as do many others, and they felt it; sensed it. It was doomed to be a failure since the start. You presently consider it a failure because it's not the most popular. 

SWG is failing right now; perhaps it was succeeding before.