In this week's column, Garrett Fuller discusses the life and easy death of MMOs in the current marketplace.

The life cycle of development for an MMO is risky. Game developers, publishers, and investors can look at the rewards all they want with years of revenue and subscriptions stretching out into the future, yet they have to build the game first. MMOs have a strange existence in the world. Developers secretly build them over with years of work. Marketing teams look to push announcements to build hype around the game and develop a following of fans and players to show to investors or publishers. Players get excited with years of announcements and hype surrounding the launch of their favorite IP as an MMO. Then... the cookie crumbles. The MMO is launched to the world with a sink or swim approach. Many MMOs die, but not every MMO gets to really live. Let's try to discover when development is too much and the game does not live up to the hype. Or even worse, when a game has lost its fun and should just go away.

Read Putting an MMO out of its Misery

they could certainly start by putting the NGE out of its misery.

I just bought a brand new 20 gauge shotgun I was going to do some duck hunting with soon. When Spare (no Idea who this is but Garret does) decides to put a round or two into SWG(NGE) I want in on that action. Closure is a good thing, right?

When can we put WoW out of its misery??

Part of the problem with WoW's battleground PVP has been the enormous amount of honor/tokens you have to grind to get anything useful.  It's even worse when your faction never wins.  This leads to people botting their character or getting frustrated and quitting.  Replaying the same content over and over becomes drudgery and then it feels like work.

Once you get to max level, you really don't have all that much you can do solo or as a small group, except grind honor or daily quests.  The inventor of the daily quest should be drawn and quartered.

And that makes 4 very public negative critiques of SWG in one month! Where was all this anti-NGE speak years ago?

While not a bad read, I would have hoped for something with a bit more... bite. This entry is basically a better-worded long forum post of the kind that we have seen a lot in recent months and years. Why not list a few candidates? Why not go out on a limb and say in your opinion, which hopefully is somewhat informed, Game X and Y should die, while Game Z would have deserved to live? Which MMOs were killed by marketing, which by bad design, which were cut short in the last months, released too early, or forced a late change of direction?

Your 2 examples are sound, but there plenty more. There are also several different reasons why MMOs get killed off.

I think this topic has a lot more to offer yet.

Originally posted by Troneas

they could certainly start by putting the NGE out of its misery.

When Star Wars: The Old Republic comes out, it will be the last nail in SWG's coffin. So in about a year or so, the NGE will be out of its misery.

Originally posted by Isturi

When can we put WoW out of its misery??

Not going to happen for a long time. Blizzard is making more money from it than some small nation states have.  Just so long as it keeps raking in millions and millions of dollars, its not going anywhere.  Nor should it. Its a good game up to level cap.

As for the NGE...Please don't get me started on that...

Originally posted by Bob_Blawblaw

And that makes 4 very public negative critiques of SWG in one month! Where was all this anti-NGE speak years ago?

It is now pretty save to critique SWG by a MMO news website since you are not going to offend many fans and SOE is not going to retaliate. 

If on the other hand they were to write a scathing expose on AoC, WAR or a newcomer like Aion, they would offend the fans of those games and the companies publishing them might not be as fortcomming with previews, interviews or other perks.

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by Bob_Blawblaw

And that makes 4 very public negative critiques of SWG in one month! Where was all this anti-NGE speak years ago?

It is now pretty save to critique SWG by a MMO news website since you are not going to offend many fans and SOE is not going to retaliate. 

If on the other hand they were to write a scathing expose on AoC, WAR or a newcomer like Aion, they would offend the fans of those games and the companies publishing them might not be as fortcomming with previews, interviews or other perks.

You said it. I didn't ;-)

Wow I couldn't agree with you more.  No matter how good the story or graphics are the one main question is does it all come together to make the game FUN.  Are the players being entertained at every step of the way in their MMO world so that they never want to leave or do they have to do so many tedious and time consuming tasks that it becomes a choir to play.   Make a truly fun MMO and you will literally have millions of players returning again and again, but make one that looks good or sounds good and has very little fun as a result of its complexity or design then you will see subscribers coming and going never to return.

Originally posted by Baltizaar

Wow I couldn't agree with you more.  No matter how good the story or graphics are the one main question is does it all come together to make the game FUN.  Are the players being entertained at every step of the way in their MMO world so that they never want to leave or do they have to do so many tedious and time consuming tasks that it becomes a choir to play.   Make a truly fun MMO and you will literally have millions of players returning again and again, but make one that looks good or sounds good and has very little fun as a result of its complexity or design then you will see subscribers coming and going never to return.

It's the truth that so many publishers/developers seem to just not get. I was a game developers conference a few months ago, and there was a lecture by some high up marketing/research fellow who literally thought he had the equation for fun! Turned out the guy was giving us the equation for what perceived as the 'metacritic code', which many game execs see as the holy grail.

He was off his rocker btw. These people should stop looking at metacritic numbers and start reading the reviews which give the numbers weight. But yet, PLAY SOME F***ING GAMES! But I digress.

btw, the equation was something along the lines of 'x feature + y feature + z IP X better graphics = fun!'. He never mentioned releasing bug free code or polishing a game. Booo!  Yes, these are the people making your games.

Here's some early shots and an article of Garriot's vision of Tabula Rasa. It was certainly changed!

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/tabula-rasa/512497p4.html

Originally posted by Isturi

When can we put WoW out of its misery??

Are you stoned? You surely sound like it. Oh wait - I know... you failed at trolling. I get it.

Why else would someone suggest that a game with over 10 million CURRENT subscriptions should be put out of its "misery". Where, until recently, an estimated 3% of a countries ECONOMY is based off of selling items in the game world.

Seriously though, you're right. The misery of a game that makes about $150,000,000 A MONTH, is in horrible misery. Damn, just close the servers and delete the databases.. it's a horrible travestiy...

 I hope nge dies...if the combat update goes away i might go back to it...

Originally posted by Bob_Blawblaw

Originally posted by Baltizaar

Wow I couldn't agree with you more.  No matter how good the story or graphics are the one main question is does it all come together to make the game FUN.  Are the players being entertained at every step of the way in their MMO world so that they never want to leave or do they have to do so many tedious and time consuming tasks that it becomes a choir to play.   Make a truly fun MMO and you will literally have millions of players returning again and again, but make one that looks good or sounds good and has very little fun as a result of its complexity or design then you will see subscribers coming and going never to return.

 

It's the truth that so many publishers/developers seem to just not get. I was a game developers conference a few months ago, and there was a lecture by some high up marketing/research fellow who literally thought he had the equation for fun! Turned out the guy was giving us the equation for what perceived as the 'metacritic code', which many game execs see as the holy grail.

He was off his rocker btw. These people should stop looking at metacritic numbers and start reading the reviews which give the numbers weight. But yet, PLAY SOME F***ING GAMES! But I digress.

btw, the equation was something along the lines of 'x feature + y feature + z IP X better graphics = fun!'. He never mentioned releasing bug free code or polishing a game. Booo!  Yes, these are the people making your games.

Ahh yes.  Fun.

The danger here is that you can take the whole concept too far.  MMOs are interesting things and often what makes an MMO fun is a combination of elements including elements that are not fun by themselves.

As an example of the concept I like to use Silent Hunter III.  It's not an MMO but it does demonstrate the point.
Travel in SH III involves physically sailing from port to your patrol grid and back again.  Even with time compression this can take ages (hours).  Boring stuff.  Only it isn't.  Because there is tension.  Every time you see a ship, or get a sonar contact, or see an air craft there are choices to be made and the very real possibility that a wrong choice could spell "GAME OVER". 
They could have designed the game to 'warp' you to your patrol zone and back again.  But if they had done that the game would have lost something that gave the player a sense of attachment to his boat and his crew.  So a boring element becomes 'fun' or at least contributes to it in a meaningful way.

Back to MMOs (one that should probably be on the list already and one that is sure to join if it is ever released)
PotBS and The Agency.
Pre release for PotBS I saw a video interview with one of the FLS devs (can't find the link now).
For that entire interview he rabbited on about "FUN!"
"We ditched this because it wasn't fun...", "...couldn't find a way to make it fun..." etc etc.
Right then I knew the game was in trouble.
Yes, they stripped out stuff that wasn't fun, and in doing so somewhere along the way they stripped out the game's soul.
What was left was a shell of an MMO that people just don't want to play.

The Agency is the same.  Again I saw a video interview and saw the same idotic focus on "Fun, fun, FUN!"
Yes, this approach might work for a console game, but MMOs are a whole different style of game.
Sometimes it's the 'non-fun' elements that allow the fun elements to even work.

So the pursuit of fun can be a double edged sword.

I think investors should also acknowledge the time it takes to make a good MMO, rather than rushing a product out when "deadlines are coming up" just to see if they can get a return on their investment. They should see by now that a polished game has a greater chance of success than an unpolished game. As BloodNinja has said, "You can't rush good pizza" (if pizza was an MMO?) I don't know I felt like referring to BloodNinja since I been rereading his stuff lately. lol.

As much of you said was true, I didnt really read anything on putting MMO's that are still wanting to be played, out of their misery. I have seen a few MMOs out there that were doing well, then they shut down unexpectedly. One example of which was Holic Online. This was a promising game to many, untill NetGame America decided to pull out which resulted in the closing of not only Holic, but two others as well.

Then we have to ask the gamers, is it worth keeping the game running with such a small populous, in hopes that it will grow and for the few devout followers who are enjoying it to keep gaming? Or should we just shutdown?

I dont think that I will ever understand the MMO buissness world, even with very descriptive discussions like this one. I'm not even sure if I want to understand. I'll just sit back -with controller in hand- and see how they handle it.

Sometimes, less-than-stellar games try to stay alive by reworking their content or their payment scheme.

I think TR and DDO are some pretty interesting examples of this.

TR was a fairly decent game that was simply NOT WORTH a $15/month subscription fee.

Ditto for DDO.

DDO is now converting to a F2P/MT-based payment scheme, something I wish TR had somehow been able to do. TR's devs tried and to some extent succeeded in making the game much better by the end than it was at its beginning, but it was the subscription payment scheme, imo, that really killed TR. It was always going to be a second-tier game charging premium-tier subscription fees. That's a prescription for MMO suicide.

Of the two games, TR was the better game, but DDO had the better idea how to stay alive. If BOTH games had somehow switched to a F2P/MT basis, I think TR had a really decent chance to not only survive but grow, improve, and eventually gain some serious popularity.

DDO, not so much, but we'll see. At least Turbine was willing to "think outside the box", payment scheme-wise.