Here is blog post made by Mark Jacobs of Mythic.

Although I am not voting for everyone to play WAR. And it succes should come from quality , not compassion. But the message is clear and very real. In last 4 years all what we seen was landslide
of horrible failures of AAA MMOs.

2008 , AOC allready failed. What will happen if WAR fails ?

How hard blow will it be for game industry and what will be the consequences for us gamers ?

Read on...

What does WAR’s success or failure mean for the MMORPG market?
Posted on September 3, 2008 by Mark Jacobs

So, in an interview with MTV, I said that it was important for the MMORPG market for WAR to succeed. Of course, this point has been taken a bit out of context by a few people (no shock there) who seem to think I’m a bit full of myself or a way too proud of WAR. Actually, neither is true. My point regarding WAR’s importance to the MMORPG market is based on a number of things:

1) Since WoW’s launch, no new Western, subscription-based MMORPG has sustained a population of 500K subscribers. While their exact numbers aren’t known, both LoTRO and AoC have failed to hit that mark. And as anyone who knows anything about MMORPGs could tell you, the one thing you don’t keep secret if you are doing well is your monthly subscription numbers.

2) Since WoW’s initial launch the market has seen a number of high priced properties crater spectacularly as well a number of MMORPG studios shut their doors. While back in the day, 100K monthly subs would have been seen as quite a success, if you are spending 50M or more on a game all in, 100K doesn’t quite cut it. Even 250K subs (30M gross + box sales for let’s say 10M in profit pre-tax), doesn’t look great to investors when you are spending 50M or more on a game and have continued high expenditures for updates, xpacks, etc. and lots of new competitors coming online.

3) With the increased competition of free-to-do-almost-nothing-fun games and other models, there’s a lot of chatter in the investment community about whether high-end, subscription-based MMORPGs are a good investment. As I said during a panel at GDC, there was a lot of very dumb money in this space (Hey, let’s give 25M to guys who know nothing about MMORPGs and sometimes nothing about online games other than they played them. What could possibly go wrong with that?) and that I thought the money would start to leave this space once some of the games I expected to tank did just that. The money guys run very, very hot and cold and right now, they are getting on their winter coats.

4) AoC’s apparent rapid loss of subscribers is encouraging talk that today’s players won’t stick with new MMORPGs very long any more. Now, I think this is total b.s. as I think today’s players will happily stick with great games (WoW) but won’t stick with mediocre or poor games. Thanks to WoW though, the bar has been raised so that games that might have been considered good/great 5 years ago are not considered that way by the players any more. This is no different than in Hollywood when a breakthrough movie raises the bar for the competition (think about the race for the best special effects in Sci-fi films).

5) Mythic is being backed on WAR by EA’s money and distribution system on one hand and by a fantastic license on the other hand. This leads to increased expectations and demands from the players.

6) This is the 3rd MMORPG that Mythic has worked on. While we have lost some experienced people from our DAoC days, we are still one of, if not the, most experienced MMORPG teams, especially in dog years.

7) Since 1997, you can count on two hands the number of MMORPGs that have held on to more than 200K monthly paying subs for any substantial period of time. OTOH, you would need all the fingers and toes of a baseball team to keep track of the MMORPGS that have failed to maintain that number and/or even launch. C’mon kids, you can try this experiment at home, no plastic bag required! Count all the MMORPGS since 1997 that have had great numbers and then think of all the abysmal failures. Not only have we had lots of failures to launch, we’ve had failures that set a new bar for failures.

So, knowing all this, why do I think that WAR is so important to the MMORPG market? Well :

1) If WAR fails, we won’t have the excuse (as some devs have had) of not having the money or the license.

2) If WAR fails, investors will rapidly look to other business models for MMORPGs especially ones that require less of an investment and development cycle to bring to market. We may be coming very close to the tipping point where investors have seen far too many games fail on release and even more of them fail to even launch for them to be comfortable investing large sums in this market. They will prefer to invest in safer things, like large-scale, cold fusion reactors.

3) If WAR fails, players will see yet again another MMORPG fail to live up to its promise. Given the high expectations and tremendous pre-sales we are getting, the fall will be that much harder to take. One of the problems of having high expectations for a game is that if you fail, the fall will be much longer and will hurt that much more when you hit pavement.

4) If WAR fails, publishers will be even less inclined to take on Blizzard whether it’s WoW or their next MMO. This will drive more developers out of the market and fewer AAA, subscription-base MMORPGs will start. Just look at how few MMORPGs are in development at studios (as opposed to getting outside financing) today. Does anyone really think that if WAR is a failure that this will increase the number of MMORPGs in development? If you think so and you happen to have a few spare million, I’d love to sell you some oceanfront property I own in Idaho.

OTOH, if WAR succeeds:

1) Investors will flock back into the market. Investors don’t mind taking chances if there is a decent chance of success and if WAR can break the 1M barrier in terms of monthly subs, investors will get excited about making lots money in this space.

2) The whole “Only Blizzard can do it” mentality will go away. The deeply ironic thing about this is that after DAoC was a success publishers/investors said over and over again, “If Mythic can do it, anybody can!” Nothing but love right back at ya baby!

3) The subscription model will be validated (again) to be alive and well in North America and Europe. This model has been pronounced dead more times than Kenny has been killed in South Park (well, maybe not but I love to get a South Park reference in there, I loved that show).

4) Publishers will be willing to take more chances in this space again.

Now, the same would have held true for AoC or any other MMORPG that has come out in the last 3 years. Unfortunately, only LoTRO can be considered any sort of success and even then it didn’t come close to WoW’s numbers (despite a license which in the past has been referred to as a license to print money). I’ve been making online games forever and I want this space to be hugely successful and continue to expand. However, if we developers can’t create games that people not only want to play at launch but play and pay for at least six months, then we are failing at our jobs and we deserve whatever happens to us as do our games.

Ego talking? Nope, just cold hard facts.

Mark
 

Dude thats easy,

It means the end of the traditional, big name,  grind based monthly subscription based MMORPG.

No one is going to invest in making these things anymore. It's as simple as that.

Aside from whats in the cooker now and maybe a few more "daring" ventures...you are looking at the end of this type of game and an evolution to the casual, free to play as is already happening.

Originally posted by Torak

Dude thats easy,

It means the end of the traditional, big name,  grind based monthly subscription based MMORPG.

No one is going to invest in making these things anymore. It's as simple as that.

Aside from whats in the cooker now and maybe a few more "daring" ventures...you are looking at the end of this type of game and an evolution to the casual, free to play as is already happening.

 

Hmmm

Good point there mate

After i read this i am holding my fingers crosset even tighter as i did before for WAR, if it fails it would mean the end of quality mmos and even more trash will be thrown at us, i just hope that WAR will be a big hit and everyone will want a piece of the cake and try something new.

The only other game that has the chance to change the mmos scene is GW2, fingers crosset there to.

Hmmm good post there by Mark.

I plan to play WAR, but more importantly I think the industry as a whole needs a good shot in the arm.  Too many spectacular failures are scaring away the money and the innovation and are hurting MMOs as a whole. 

If it fails it also means that many people will think the PvP centric model in subsciption based MMOs is not as viable and use that as an excuse to further design games around PvE with PvP as an afterthought following WoW's lead. 

If it succeeds many more people may find this model viable and start designing more PvP oriented games with less PvE and more PvP alternative levelling/content as its core.  I for one would like to see a game that continues patching and adds additional PvP content patches to allow continued progression and interest, like territorial control and large scale battle environments.

The problem with these big companies are... they dont listen to the players, you can tell none of these jerk offs even attempt to find out what the players want in a game. They stilll think in console terms, where you only have ot please few hundread people... once...  They odnt seem to realize that they need to please a couple hundred thousand people... constantly.

They keep releasing these so called MMOs as if they are monthly game releases, create it, package it, ship it out and start on teh next project. The fact that tehy finish each project with one foot in and the other foot in their next assignment shows. Products rare always rushed, and the dev teams are always cut down to the core just after launch, lettting players know they have no inteniton of maintaining the game just milking the name.

I miss the days when gamers made games, now it just seems like a bunch of computer saavy programmers make games and they make it for the money, not because they enjoy it. Because if they enjoyed games that means they play games, that measn they interact with the general commninty in the games the play, that means they know for a fact, that half the shit they plan on doing will fail on launch because the fanbase following your game has been chanting it on a community forum somewhere.

If warhammer fails, it probably means the end of MMOs ofr north american devolopers.. and good riddance, bash asian MMOs all you want, at least they are doing a good enough job making marginally orginal storylines. I think the announcement of that fucking buffy the vampire game was the last straw breaking, these vampiric name sucking route publishers are going with is down right sicking.

I guess gne are the days of getting a bunch of writers in one room and creating a new fucking concept.

This is not me bashing vampire games, i would welcome a vampire game, but why buffy, who limit yourselves to such a bullshit story line, wheny ou can start form scratch and do whatever the hell you want. Call it creatures of the night or some shit and have all the nightmare ghouls in there. Everytime these companies opt to follow an existing lore they willingly handcuff themselves with their hands behind their back Because all lore no matter how well written, falls prewritten rules, you dont have the freedom you would have, the freedom you NEED to make real MMos off of them.

I agree with the developer, successful MMORPGs are good for the industry.  I think the industry is still primitive enough that any solid title that releases well is important to the industry.  You can't really expect much radical innovation when even fairly straight forward designs routinely fail.

I also agree with fuzzylojik's comment that it's important to assure those people planning on building MMORPGs in the future that a PvP/RvR model is viable and popular.

I don't know DeserttFoxx, I think listening to the players is overrated.  Some of that is important sure, when it comes to things like usability of the UI, input on what gameplay is/isn't fun, ect.  I would argue that player input is important in beta but not really before.  A game is simlar to a movie in that the director has to have a vision of what story he wants to tell and how to go about it.  Over reliance on random internet people too much strikes me as a game that's already in trouble, but eh, who knows.

I doubt the programmers making video games are only in it for the money.  Making games is way harder than the type of crappy business app programming I do and it doesn't pay any better than working for the man.

I think the premium titles are a good think for the industry and don't look forward to an industry so small that no one warrants putting in the time to make a polished title.  Look at WoW for example; it's not the most creative but for the time it was made it was the most polished and professional game out there.  WoW may appeal to the masses, but they do it with quality work.  I look forward to an industry with multiple developers capable of such quality work as they begin to diversify their games to appeal to different areas. The more the merrier.

Honestly, I'm amazed so many investors are still around feeding this blackhole of a market.

I believe one of the reasons for such failure MMOs that Mark stated are forced choices consumers must make to fit their budgets.  It cost about $15 per a MMO subscription.  People are not willing to pay more than $30 a month on average for 2 MMO subscriptions.  Therefore the consumer is extremely picky as to which 2 MMO games they wish to play for the next 2 years.

If your MMO does not blow our minds away, we will stick to the old game we are playing.  If your MMO is broken, we won't play it for more than a few months.  This is not like a console game, where you spend $50 one time, and if the game sucks you trade it in to get $20 in return, or give it to someone.  This is something that cost over $125 a year to play.  It had better be damn good.

Sucks for investors since they have to spend $50 million to make a super game that is practically 5 games smashed together, only to have the game not look as good or play as smooth as a console game, because there is so much content smashed into this one package.

The MMO market was sweet when there were very few choices.  Any game that released during that time was destined to make money.  Since the launch of WoW that changed.  Too many choices and too many failures due to it.

Originally posted by DeserttFoxx

I miss the days when gamers made games, now it just seems like a bunch of computer saavy programmers make games and they make it for the money, not because they enjoy it. Because if they enjoyed games that means they play games, that measn they interact with the general commninty in the games the play, that means they know for a fact, that half the shit they plan on doing will fail on launch because the fanbase following your game has been chanting it on a community forum somewhere.

One thing I have noticed in the gaming market is that the people who make games no longer can play them.  In the movie business, you can make a bunch of movies and still spend time watching movies too.  In the game business, there is no time to truly enjoy a library of games.  A game developer has enough time to play one game for a couple of hours each day.  when crunch time comes and everyone on the team is working a 55 hours per week, there is not time to enjoy games.

The artist in this field have it the worst.  They must constantly be creating and researching new software and techniques to stay sharp in this ridiculously competetive market.  Therefore the free time to make games is spent learning, modeling, or animating.  It take time to create these things.  More time than it does to sketch and draw a comic.

I am not sure big investors are what the mmo industry needs now. Big money goes the successful way and hardly will invest things into unknown maybe innovative designs.

If a game is good and hits the players market it will succed in its own terms as EVE showed and does not need to be a Million Dollar Blockbuster MMO.

Will be really interesting to see how EA/Mythic judged their playerbase and if they can manage to deliver it.

Remember together they have 2 MMO's (UO, DAoC) which might be more successful with their retro servers than their current ones, so they know well enopugh how to mess up.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that business is cyclical. Right now you are seeing the market veering off to explore new and hopefully for them, more profittable ventures. If that means we see a cycle of more casual games with alternate business models for a bit, so be it. 

Eventually someone will come forward and say "hey, remember EQ and UO, why don't we try something like that?" Technology will progress and features we believe today are not possible will be.

MMO's are very ambitious projects and maybe the technology isn't where it needs to be at to deliver the kind of game everyone expects.

Time will tell but this isn't the "end" of the MMORPG if WAR fails. Things will change as they already are and the industry will move along. The genre has entrenched itself in the industry and isn't going away. Let the companies explore some new ideas and methods. Who knows, maybe the next blockbuster MMO is on the way. If anything,it gives western devs a little breathing room so they can learn how to make a working game and reevaluate how they do business.

All those games failed because they were crap.  LoTRO succeeded because it was a polished game with a good IP.  But it's success was tempered by the fact that it had very limited content, and was a one-dimensional rehash of what has been done in every MMO to date.

Why would millions of players leave a perfectly good, rapidly expanding MMO like WoW, just to start over and do exactly the same thing with a game like LoTRO?  There's no reason.

What the market is crying out for is a well made game that breaks the mold.

Another thing the industry needs is a little less competition.  It probably wouldn't hurt if two big studios combined their efforts and investment dollars to work on one big title, instead of two mediocre ones.

There seems to be this rush to turn every friggin book and movie IP into an MMO, RIGHT NOW.

That has to stop, because the developers are shooting themselves in the foot by watering down their development resources, and watering down the player base.

WAR won't fail, but it will be no larger than LOTRO.    

Too much money can be made in the MMO business for investors to stop.   Blizzard's annual income from WoW is larger than some countries GNP.      Few other industries offer this much opportunity to investors. 

Listening to the players is usually the problem.   Like any successful organization the developers need a mission statement that they follow.     The successful games create a successful business model and stick with it.   Listening to the whiners on a game forum will lead to disaster in a game.  

The gamers with money don't have time to play more than one MMO and in many cases not even enough time to play one.    LOTRO, WoW, Eve, Guild Wars all success stories because they allow gamers who have money to work and play their games.       You have to provide something for the casual gamers who only have 10-20 hours a week to waste in a game, otherwise the game will always be a niche product.

WAR will not be a large success because its primary focus in PVP based upon loot and level.   The casual gamer won't be able to compete with the no-lifers, so they will quit.   WAR will fail to overtake any of the current major MMOs.    

There will be a long sequence of nerfs, buffs, whining, and crying.    Avoid WAR.

Seems like I read somewhere in the WAR forums that one of the Devs said something like WAR needs 200K subs or so to break even.

MMORPGs require bigger and bigger subscription numbers, because their budgets are so big these days.

If you could figure out how to make an MMORPG for 10 Mil, instead of 90 Mil, you wouldn't need so many subscriptions to be successful.

I can't believe this guy.

If WAR fails it means you didn't deliver. Period. Not everybody likes an MMO that's an hybrid between WOW, DaOC and TF2. Not everybody likes Walt Disney light and particle effects. Not everybody likes another Theme Park MMO. Reality check for you Mark Jacobs.

Originally posted by tfox2k1

WAR won't fail, but it will be no larger than LOTRO.    

Too much money can be made in the MMO business for investors to stop.   Blizzard's annual income from WoW is larger than some countries GNP.      Few other industries offer this much opportunity to investors. 

Listening to the players is usually the problem.   Like any successful organization the developers need a mission statement that they follow.     The successful games create a successful business model and stick with it.   Listening to the whiners on a game forum will lead to disaster in a game.  

The gamers with money don't have time to play more than one MMO and in many cases not even enough time to play one.    LOTRO, WoW, Eve, Guild Wars all success stories because they allow gamers who have money to work and play their games.       You have to provide something for the casual gamers who only have 10-20 hours a week to waste in a game, otherwise the game will always be a niche product.

WAR will not be a large success because its primary focus in PVP based upon loot and level.   The casual gamer won't be able to compete with the no-lifers, so they will quit.   WAR will fail to overtake any of the current major MMOs.    

 There will be a long sequence of nerfs, buffs, whining, and crying.    Avoid WAR.

I agree with you that listening to whiners will be the downfall of your MMO, but not listening at all is not the answer either.  Listen, critically evaluate, test, then implement should be the standard response to feedback.

I don't believe that a PvP based MMO with proper PvP content updates and is not totally item centric won't be successful.  It has happened before with DAOC so it will happen again.

WAR is the most casual friendly game I've played so far.  Combine that with diminishing returns in RRs, there shouldn't be a problem for casuals.  It's actually bad if you're hardcore because you'll outlevel everyone and have no one to fight and do scenarios with.

Long sequence of nerfs, buffs whining and crying? Sounds like another game called WoW.

From playing the beta and then preview weekend, I think WAR has a good chance of success, probably outdoing LOTR.  Whether they can accomplish this is based on their continued addition/balancing of PvP content and not giving in to whiners on forums and breaking/nerfing/overbalancing the PvP scale.

Having played Warhammer beta I'm sure it is going to be a success.  It's like WoW, but it has different classes/races and is overall even easier to play so there should be no problem appealing to the masses of people out there.  It has good raiding from the start of the game.  I mean good raiding in that normally you would be forced to join a guild to raid or something like that, but in Warhammer you just have to contribute to the public quests and you will get a roll on the loot and a selection from a few different items based on you public quest reputation in the area.  This game will also be a lot more PvP centric then Warcraft from the start.  I think if you like PvE you might stick with WoW as Warhammer will have a lot more open PvP then Warcraft has ever had.  Both games will dominate the market for a long time to come.