The topic says it all.. Even if Darkfall Online does not succeed, which I hope it does, even if the game does not come out.. There are other games in the making that will eventually appeal to this group of hardcore gamers such as Mortal and Earthrise.. Here is what I am expecting to happen....

Something happened when World of Warcraft came out.. Every game was the releasing tried to be like it.. (Age of Conan, Warhammer and a lot more games.) Had all the same features as World of Warcraft, I believe this is because everyone has to compete with WoW to succeed.. But that does not look like it is bound to happen..

Before World of Warcraft, we had a great many sandbox games that people played such as Shadowbane, Star Wars Galaxies, Dark Age of Camelot, and they were all really great games, and appealed to the hardcore gamer.. But latley these game have tried to be more like WoW in order to compete with this monster.. But when that happened, all these games lost a lot of their subscribers, when they were hoping to gain more..

I think game companies realize this, and we will see a new generation of sandbox games, even if Darkfall does not succeed, eventually there will be one which we all love.. (Mortal Online, Earthrise, Fallen Earth.) Even Stargate Worlds looks like it might have Sandbox features... 

So what I see happening is this.. Darkfall comes out first, this game will be the World of Warcraft of Sandbox games, it will have a subscription number that is so high, because I believe that the only game that can compete with WoW is a sandbox game, it looks like Darkfall is the first to be released.. It will take huge chunks out of exsiting games like DAOC, SWG, UO, AC, because the players who all played these games, miss the way they use to be.. So they will all go over to Darkfall(which is similar), giving it HIGH numbers.. I even predict that it will take a huge chunk out of World of Warcraft..

Then other games will soon follow like I said before (Earthrise, Mortal Online, Fallen Earth.) These will be the Age of Conan's and the Warhammer's that try to compete with Darkfall Online..

This is just my prediction..

I don't think that this is beyond the realm of possibility.  It would require a lot of factors to be perfectly executed though which is unlikely.  The game would have to be very stable, have a lot of content and the gameplay would have to be very fluid.  It would also require the game buying public to be more interested in ffa pvp and more willing to use their grey matter than a lot of people give them credit for ( I hope they are wrong but I'm probably being over optimistic about this).

One day a game will take a big chunk out of wow, that is certain, will Darkfall be able to this? Probably not but it's not impossible.

---

Originally posted by Blodpls
I don't think that this is beyond the realm of possibility.  It would require a lot of factors to be perfectly executed though which is unlikely.  The game would have to be very stable, have a lot of content and the gameplay would have to be very fluid.  It would also require the game buying public to be more interested in ffa pvp and more willing to use their grey matter than a lot of people give them credit for ( I hope they are wrong but I'm probably being over optimistic about this).
One day a game will take a big chunk out of wow, that is certain, will Darkfall be able to this? Probably not but it's not impossible.

---

I agree. Probably not. But it would be supremely fantastic if it did happen. We can dream, I guess.

I disagree. Of those games you listed, what do they all have in common? They are all being developed by indies.

If Darkfall fails it will fail spectacularly, and it will turn people off the indy scene. Darkfall will BURY its competiton if it fails.

Originally posted by Kien

I disagree. Of those games you listed, what do they all have in common? They are all being developed by indies.

If Darkfall fails it will fail spectacularly, and it will turn people off the indy scene. Darkfall will BURY its competiton if it fails.

Nah, thats not likely at all, people will take every game on it's own merits.  One indy game failing will have no real impact on the others.

Originally posted by Blodpls

Originally posted by Kien

I disagree. Of those games you listed, what do they all have in common? They are all being developed by indies.

If Darkfall fails it will fail spectacularly, and it will turn people off the indy scene. Darkfall will BURY its competiton if it fails.

 

Nah, thats not likely at all, people will take every game on it's own merits.  One indy game failing will have no real impact on the others.

Right i am playing a indy game right now, if DF fails i ll keep sticking with it cause its great too.

Since NGE no major company has gotten any penny of me..and best part as side effect i didn't got used to crap gameplay ..

 The reason why everyone and their uncle tries to be like WoW is because its been proven time and again that sandbox games cannot succeed in ways that WoW did. We have seen it in many games, take for example EVE Online. IMO this is the most advanced sandbox game out there right now, and how many users does it claim to have? 400k? 500k? 1mill? Thats still 10 times as low as WoW. Forget EVE, take SWG or any other fantasy based game that was close to a sandbox and ask yourself how many users did it have at its peak?

I'm in no way saying that sandbox games suck, i for one love the idea of sandbox where im not really told what to do and have to grind xxx hours to get to xxx level. But remember one thing, sandbox games have always been and will always be games catering to a niche market, never reaching a staggering 10 mill users in this day and age but yes they will cater to a community that makes itself renowned and grows on its own. This community will be the one reason more people come to the game.

Ideally, a sandbox which could very much appeal would be a sandbox without a good vs evil story. Just put x number of races, put in a skill based system where what you learn defines your class and not the character creation screen. Put in half decent PvP mechanics and let players make their own towns and cities and whatnots. Eventually there will come a time where specific player clans or groups will be good or evil. THIS my friends is a true sandbox. The world doesnt need to be defined by developers, let the players choose who wants to be good and who wants to be evil.

Just my 2 cents :)

LoL..

Darkfall will be just as sucessful as Meridian 59.

Then in 10 years, some of the ideas will be stolen by another game, and live on.

So, yea history will repeat itself.

Originally posted by tubelight

 The reason why everyone and their uncle tries to be like WoW is because its been proven time and again that sandbox games cannot succeed in ways that WoW did. We have seen it in many games, take for example EVE Online. IMO this is the most advanced sandbox game out there right now, and how many users does it claim to have? 400k? 500k? 1mill? Thats still 10 times as low as WoW. Forget EVE, take SWG or any other fantasy based game that was close to a sandbox and ask yourself how many users did it have at its peak?

The reason why WoW got all those subs compared to the old-school sandbox games is that all those games aimed to the gamer (or as people call it, hardcore gamer). The kind of people who played games from years back, people used to RTS, RPG, etc. What WoW did was aiming to a broader audience. An example would be EVE. A nice game. Why it doesn't have the amount of subs that WoW has? Apart from being Sci-Fi, which doesn't appeal to everyone, is that it is in fact complex. I know 40-years-old people who never played a game before and play WoW in their free time, but I'm sure that if I put a game like EVE in front of them, they wouldn't know what to do. Nowadays, you see people who have never played a MMO (or even a video-game) running around with their level 70 toon in WoW. Why? Because it's got content, it's polished, it's easy, and it has a little bit of everything. Is WoW a good MMO? No doubt. Is WoW the best MMO? Don't think so. The only reason it has so many people playing is because it's where most people start playing MMOs nowadays. That's also why most WoW-clones failed: why playing a game that looks like WoW but it's less polished when...well, you can just play WoW? Especially if you've been already been playing WoW for a while. Devs should just forget trying to stick a little bit of everything and hope to get the amount of subs Blizz did. What they should be doing is a game that actually feels different and that aims to a specific market, so as to attract the hardcore gamer and, probably, the new gamers when they'll eventually get bored of WoW (which happens for everyone sooner or later, people eventually get bored of the same). Trying to copy the original will only keep devs sinking painfully.

Well, first off I wouldn't really consider Daoc as a sandbox, nor that WAR tried to be like WoW, they tried something a bit different, but still sticking to the DIKU-style.  The reasons WoW is so successfull, is because it's incredibly easy to pick up and play, doesn't really have too much of a learning curve, has low system requirements, it released at a pivitol point in mmorpg history, and it didn't hurt that it had a large built in fanbase with the former Warcraft and Diablo games.  I don't believe sandboxes can achieve that type of success, simply because the average casual WoW gamer is looking to be led by the hand through a story, that they can jump in and complete easily. 

If you put a 12 year old WoW player, or even older 40 somthing that plays WoW but is not really a gamer in a Sandbox, they will complain about being "lost" or not knowing what to do.  They don't want to take the time to build their character and make thier story, they want to do a quest chain, kill some mean old boss, and get that shiny sword to show off to their friends.  Now, not all WoW players are like that, but thats one of the main reasons it's so popular.  Participating in a large, open, breathing world, where you are dropped in the middle of with no push in any direction is a more "hard core" type of game.  You won't get as many non-gamer types playing that type of game, as in WoW. Doesn't mean it can't be successfull, but it's not going to attract anywhere near as many people as WoW.  Sort of like Monopaly was so much more "main stream" then D&D, or how the Wii is such a huge success, or arcade racing/flight/shooter games will outsell simulations.  Doesn't mean that "sandboxes" are any inferior than Diku-style mmorpgs, they're just different, and will attract different type of customers.

Darkfall lmao is not a HARDCORE game. There are FREE MMO's out now that have better PVP than Darkfall will.

Warhammer sold so many at 1st because of ADVERTISING. Yet the game is still going down hill. Darkfall we read about it? Yep NO WHERE. Everyone I new wanted to play WOW when it 1st came out. Not one person I know wants to play Darkfall. 

Have you not learned anything yet. MMO's tell us this and that will be in the game and you always have a few that believe it 100%. Yet to this day when the MMO's are launched its not even close to what they promised. And just like AOC/WAR we have people that say "OMG THIS IS THE BEST MMO EVER!" Yet numbers talk.

As for "EVERY game (mmo) tried to be like WOW" is so not true. I have yet to feel like I am play WOW when I play AOC lol. Yet you think Darkfall is not like WOW? What part of doing ANY quest is different? What part of PVP is different? Like being able to loot a pvp player is NEW? LOL

Players miss the way is use to be? HAHA man it was not PVP that made the game it was just HARD. And still didnt bring in tons of people. So they changed things, added stuff. It was a grind grind grind back then. And if some game comes out like that it wont have tons of people. Darkfall is just like all the rest. Your going to do quest, PVP to get ITEMS and points and blah blah blah. Darkfall WANTS a what WOW has .. MONEY. And making a game that only will draw a few hundred thousand ... well the game will be just like AOC/WAR/EVE/EQ2 blah blah.. but truth is it wont even get that far. There is just to many people now days that want a game like WOW not a hard PVP game.. You dont have to believe.. just hide and watch

Dont kid yourself. I know a fairly broad selection of mmo players and i can tell you that this will be a niche game (not that thats a bad thing). I would say only 30% of the people i know from PvE centric games like EQ2, Vanguard, LOTRO, WoW who tried more PvP centric games like AoC or WAR actually enjoyed it enough to stay more than a month. Most went back to their PvE games.

New players outnumber the older guys who started with UO, EQ etc by a fair margin i'd say. WoW brought millions of people who had never heard of mmo's into the genre.

Recent MMO players who have been introduced to the genre via WoW, EQ2 etc have only really played gear centric leveling based games. I've discussed DF with people i know and they seem interested until the full looting part. This is a major stumbling block for a lot of players.

DF will only fail if it doesnt launch with most of its promised features or is just unplayable. I doubt the devs expect to be as big as WoW.

 @ Hellscream

Exactly my point. Might surprise you but i play both EVE and WoW. I have 2 EVE accounts and 1 WoW account and when i tried to get 2 of my RL WoW friends to play EVE and get past the trial they quit in 2 days. All these so called F2P WoW clones have the polish of something i could code in BASIC and they cant even be considered competition.

The one other reason why lots of other games fail when compared to WoW(WAR and AOC for example) is because they are new. Players today are very unforgiving towards newer MMO's. WoW has reached its polished state after what 4 years? 5 years? i forget. WAR and AOC havent had that kind of time to polish their game. When WoW launched it was buggy as hell with frequest server crashes and CTD's, but not today because they have had 4-5 DAMN years to work on their game.

Nowadays the attitude is like, "Oh AoC its a nice game but its combat sucks...screw it im uninstalling". Now i'm not a time traveller, but yea who's to say that WAR or AoC cant match or even surpass WoW given another 2-3 years? But sadly they wont because they will soon die out and work on those games will stop. I seriously dislike people who compare every damn game to WoW.

For one, im glad that if Darkfall turns out to be what it says(thats a HUGE IF, higher than Everest atm) then it wont be as crowded as WoW, of course there will be carebears but in thinner herds :D

Indeed, all games start with bugs here and there and some game design flaws that eventually get fixed. But when new players have to choose between WoW or a new buggy game that feels like WoW, they'd rather stay with WoW ofc. Till they get bored and actually try to give other MMOs a chance.

The problem is that, even if MMOs have some features more than others and different theme, they end up being the same grind-and-quest system. Who said that MMOs need to have levels? Or classes? Or stats? Or any other standard that has become usual to see in MMOs? The fact is that MMOs still have a close mind regarding the industry, they keep working on old game designs that has been going around since D&D.

What devs need to do is to branch out, try new things instead of just copy-pasting stuff from existing games. They might not get the amount of subs that WoW has, but then again I think it's going to take a while for a MMO to become this succesful. You can make more than enough money by aiming to a specific market instead of sticking to the usual model of MMO and trying to get in a bit of everything. Actually we've seen as of lately that the latter ends up working even worse.

Hopefully, the new year will bring alot of new and fresh mmos (DF,Mortal Online, Earthrise, etc)

Originally posted by tubelight

 @ Hellscream

 

Exactly my point. Might surprise you but i play both EVE and WoW. I have 2 EVE accounts and 1 WoW account and when i tried to get 2 of my RL WoW friends to play EVE and get past the trial they quit in 2 days. All these so called F2P WoW clones have the polish of something i could code in BASIC and they cant even be considered competition.

 

The one other reason why lots of other games fail when compared to WoW(WAR and AOC for example) is because they are new. Players today are very unforgiving towards newer MMO's. WoW has reached its polished state after what 4 years? 5 years? i forget. WAR and AOC havent had that kind of time to polish their game. When WoW launched it was buggy as hell with frequest server crashes and CTD's, but not today because they have had 4-5 DAMN years to work on their game.

 

Nowadays the attitude is like, "Oh AoC its a nice game but its combat sucks...screw it im uninstalling". Now i'm not a time traveller, but yea who's to say that WAR or AoC cant match or even surpass WoW given another 2-3 years? But sadly they wont because they will soon die out and work on those games will stop. I seriously dislike people who compare every damn game to WoW.

 

For one, im glad that if Darkfall turns out to be what it says(thats a HUGE IF, higher than Everest atm) then it wont be as crowded as WoW, of course there will be carebears but in thinner herds :D

 

I agree with you wholeheartedly that customers are much harder on MMO launches now then they were in the past. What I completely disagree with you on though, is the statement that WoW took 4 years to polish to it's current state. In fact it was not even 4 months. They did have server overloads at launch, a problem they quickly rectified. What they did not have, for the most part, were bugs in gameplay, and gaps in design philosophy, that plaugued similar games at the time like EQ2.

Note, this is aside from the sandbox conversation and I am sorry for that. But WoW was quite polished at launch. They have added much more to the game in the last four years for certain, but the core game is the same now as it was at launch.

As for Darkfall? It will never challenge WoW, but if it is a good game, people will play it.

 @dalevi

You misinterpret me. I am in no way saying that it took WoW 4 years to fix bugs. I'm talking about the actual polishing of the game. Like making quests easier, or balancing classes, balancing PvP. Each patch that came in after the launch for the next 4 years added to the quality of the game and made it into what it today is. Thats all :)

I completely agree that Blizzard is one of the better MMO Developers out there. Their game might not be the best one in terms of quality but the support and development they do on it is no doubt top notch.

Originally posted by Eyrothath

The topic says it all.. Even if Darkfall Online does not succeed, which I hope it does, even if the game does not come out.. There are other games in the making that will eventually appeal to this group of hardcore gamers such as Mortal and Earthrise.. Here is what I am expecting to happen....

Something happened when World of Warcraft came out.. Every game was the releasing tried to be like it.. (Age of Conan, Warhammer and a lot more games.) Had all the same features as World of Warcraft, I believe this is because everyone has to compete with WoW to succeed.. But that does not look like it is bound to happen..

Before World of Warcraft, we had a great many sandbox games that people played such as Shadowbane, Star Wars Galaxies, Dark Age of Camelot, and they were all really great games, and appealed to the hardcore gamer.. But latley these game have tried to be more like WoW in order to compete with this monster.. But when that happened, all these games lost a lot of their subscribers, when they were hoping to gain more..

I think game companies realize this, and we will see a new generation of sandbox games, even if Darkfall does not succeed, eventually there will be one which we all love.. (Mortal Online, Earthrise, Fallen Earth.) Even Stargate Worlds looks like it might have Sandbox features... 

So what I see happening is this.. Darkfall comes out first, this game will be the World of Warcraft of Sandbox games, it will have a subscription number that is so high, because I believe that the only game that can compete with WoW is a sandbox game, it looks like Darkfall is the first to be released.. It will take huge chunks out of exsiting games like DAOC, SWG, UO, AC, because the players who all played these games, miss the way they use to be.. So they will all go over to Darkfall(which is similar), giving it HIGH numbers.. I even predict that it will take a huge chunk out of World of Warcraft..

Then other games will soon follow like I said before (Earthrise, Mortal Online, Fallen Earth.) These will be the Age of Conan's and the Warhammer's that try to compete with Darkfall Online..

This is just my prediction..

I think Darkfall will succeed,but I dont think it will ever have a huge playerebase, reason: DF is a ffa pvp game and I think 80-90% of mmo gamers dont play pvp.

Originally posted by tubelight

 The reason why everyone and their uncle tries to be like WoW is because its been proven time and again that sandbox games cannot succeed in ways that WoW did. We have seen it in many games, take for example EVE Online. IMO this is the most advanced sandbox game out there right now, and how many users does it claim to have? 400k? 500k? 1mill? Thats still 10 times as low as WoW. Forget EVE, take SWG or any other fantasy based game that was close to a sandbox and ask yourself how many users did it have at its peak?

 

I'm in no way saying that sandbox games suck, i for one love the idea of sandbox where im not really told what to do and have to grind xxx hours to get to xxx level. But remember one thing, sandbox games have always been and will always be games catering to a niche market, never reaching a staggering 10 mill users in this day and age but yes they will cater to a community that makes itself renowned and grows on its own. This community will be the one reason more people come to the game.

 

Ideally, a sandbox which could very much appeal would be a sandbox without a good vs evil story. Just put x number of races, put in a skill based system where what you learn defines your class and not the character creation screen. Put in half decent PvP mechanics and let players make their own towns and cities and whatnots. Eventually there will come a time where specific player clans or groups will be good or evil. THIS my friends is a true sandbox. The world doesnt need to be defined by developers, let the players choose who wants to be good and who wants to be evil.

 

Just my 2 cents :)

I agree. I think eve online is 10x better then the crap that wow is... but I also know hardcore sandbox pvp games are niche. Wow succeeded because it catered to the lowest common denominator.... which is carebears with no skill who cry and whine to change things to make it easier for them to get there uber epic gear and have little to none player skill and want everything giving to them on a silver platter as they are led by the hand from quest to quest

Originally posted by Vidir

 

I think Darkfall will succeed,but I dont think it will ever have a huge playerebase, reason: DF is a ffa pvp game and I think 80-90% of mmo gamers dont play pvp.

I DONT KNOW if df will succeed and I also can't say anything definitive about the playerbase other than it is much bigger than the estimate you gave. Sure 80-90% of the people don't pvp in the current mmos, b/c the current mmo's have sh!t pvp and are focused primarily on pve. We don't know how many people DF has the potential to market.

There was a void left in mmos after AC darktide, and DF is trying to make a game that appeals to pre-trammel UO players and AC darktide players in a NEW generation of gamers. A lot of people like pvp though, that's for sure, otherwise fps' wouldn't be popular :P. The question is, will DF be good enough to net those people? There have been games that tried, (planetside, neocron) and failed, will DF's immersion allow it to net this untapped market? Time will tell.

Oh and keep in mind that DF will be the only 3d fantasy sandbox game on the market when it comes out, and it, if it lives up to its promises, will have one of the robust pve systems in mmo's.

Originally posted by rageagainst

Originally posted by Vidir

 

I think Darkfall will succeed,but I dont think it will ever have a huge playerebase, reason: DF is a ffa pvp game and I think 80-90% of mmo gamers dont play pvp.

 

I DONT KNOW if df will succeed and I also can't say anything definitive about the playerbase other than it is much bigger than the estimate you gave. Sure 80-90% of the people don't pvp in the current mmos, b/c the current mmo's have sh!t pvp and are focused primarily on pve. We don't know how many people DF has the potential to market.

There was a void left in mmos after AC darktide, and DF is trying to make a game that appeals to pre-trammel UO players and AC darktide players in a NEW generation of gamers. A lot of people like pvp though, that's for sure, otherwise fps' wouldn't be popular :P. The question is, will DF be good enough to net those people? There have been games that tried, (planetside, neocron) and failed, will DF's immersion allow it to net this untapped market? Time will tell.

Oh and keep in mind that DF will be the only 3d fantasy sandbox game on the market when it comes out, and it, if it lives up to its promises, will have one of the robust pve systems in mmo's.

Well AC playerbase was about 150000 players as best and it had 8 servers only one was pvp, Darktide.