Originally posted by Rider071

MMO genre is the only one of it's kind I have personally seen in my long life.

It riots daily, fed by trolls or valid greivances.

It loves even harder, spending like drunk sailors.

It will destroy a company's bottom line if made to feel abused, no matter who it is.

It can also make you king of the world in a matter of days.

It's a herd of a billion cats, that if you can capture their energy and attention for any amount of time, you have done very well for yourself. Lightning in a bottle = handle with care.

So no, I don't agree in any way with the OP.

Agreed. Very well said by the way; poetic and very insightful.

Originally posted by GrumpyCharr

Originally posted by lizardbones

 

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Originally posted by GrumpyCharr
No, we are not powerless.  We drive the market.  The problem is lack of vision by studios.  There are three philosophies when it comes to releasing an MMO:

 

1. The Popular Method: Let's look at what's popular and copy it. (SWTOR?) Zzzzzzz

2. The Polling Method:  Let's listen to what are gamers asking for and make it. (RIFT) The problem is, we know what we want we just aren't always good at articulating it. 

3. The Perceptive Method: Let's look at what we know gamers would love and let's make that.  Steve Jobs said that if Henry Ford gave people what they asked for, he would have given them faster horses.  What they WANTED was faster transportation.  A good studio knows what gamers want, even if gamers don't know how to ask for it.

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When it costs a minimum of $10 Million to get a game out the door, Vision = Lost All Your Money.

 

This is why "Big Business" and "Good Games" seldom mix.

 Name one good game brought to stores you by a guy with no money. "Big Business" makes "Good Games" possible. If you make a good game business will back it because good games are profitable.

Free market is a bitch, ain't it?

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Originally posted by zymurgeist

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Originally posted by GrumpyCharr

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Originally posted by lizardbones  

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Originally posted by GrumpyCharr No, we are not powerless.  We drive the market.  The problem is lack of vision by studios.  There are three philosophies when it comes to releasing an MMO:   1. The Popular Method: Let's look at what's popular and copy it. (SWTOR?) Zzzzzzz 2. The Polling Method:  Let's listen to what are gamers asking for and make it. (RIFT) The problem is, we know what we want we just aren't always good at articulating it.  3. The Perceptive Method: Let's look at what we know gamers would love and let's make that.  Steve Jobs said that if Henry Ford gave people what they asked for, he would have given them faster horses.  What they WANTED was faster transportation.  A good studio knows what gamers want, even if gamers don't know how to ask for it.

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When it costs a minimum of $10 Million to get a game out the door, Vision = Lost All Your Money.  

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This is why "Big Business" and "Good Games" seldom mix.

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 Name one good game brought to stores you by a guy with no money. "Big Business" makes "Good Games" possible. If you make a good game business will back it because good games are profitable.

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With the hype-lemmings running towards the flashy ads and trusting rigged ratings just to fall into the sea of disappointment after release again and again,

with the "I'm bored and its just 50 bucks"-people who buy despite knowing it's just some mediocre game,

with the "Good for a month"-crowd who play mmo's like single player games,

it takes so much longer than needed to change the direction...

Some even think they show the devs their dislike when they shelve the game a week after purchase.

They don't see that the first message that reaches the devs&publishers is: "High amount of box sales, well done!"

It doesnt hurt enough that they lose subs a month after release if they made a profit from box sales already.

...or maybe this is completly wrong and the people who dislike the direction mmo's have taken are a very small minority and just don't count.

Originally posted by Cyflym

With the hype-lemmings running towards the flashy ads and trusting rigged ratings just to fall into the sea of disappointment after release again and again,

with the "I'm bored and its just 50 bucks"-people who buy despite knowing it's just some mediocre game,

with the "Good for a month"-crowd who play mmo's like single player games,

it takes so much longer than needed to change the direction...

Some confusion of cause and effect here...op's dealing from the bottom of the same deck.

This thread is an Oxymoron. 

There is no market without the consumer.

We are not forced to buy bad games.

He is trying to say that Rift and WOW deserver a $15.00 subscription fee yet other games do not. 

Theses subscription fans crack me up.  They constantly try a convince themselves that they are getting something extra for their fees.   If anything, he is part of the problem he is complaining about.

It's the whole price taker vs. price seeker arguement.   All we have seen lately is price takers, companies that will gladly put out product for the market price which is nothing but the same old stuff.

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Yet the MMO Consumer's voice is meaningless and powerless.

same as any consumer product in life - Vote w your wallet

WoW sub numbers are down to 10 mil.

I would say consumers ARE driving the market.

Based on the WoW sub numbers, which ARE the mmo market, devlopers have been cranking out what teh consumers want. Fo

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Can we all just finally admit that the MMO Consumers are POWERLESS in the market?

I dont know the proper business term for it, but

just look over the past and present.

Developers get tons of money monthly, and even daily in some cases, from the MMO consumers,

Yet the MMO Consumer's voice is meaningless and powerless.

Developers hype up games, and sell boxes like nothing. no matter how much consumers try to speak out against it, they are silenced. what kind of Consumer Power is that?

With all the money, the Developers cant even add features that the Consumers ask for. Come on...

And why is it the consumers get charged a standard 15$ a month sub fee for all forms of quality?

its like Comcast/Verizon,,, their prices seem to keep going up and up and up, yet the quality stay the same,,,, but nothing the Consumer can do about it, no matter how much they cry about it.

Look at Darkfall for example. Why is this 15$ a month, aka the same Sub fee of MMO like World of Warcraft and Rift, which acutally gets content updates and full of quality.... ridiculous...

 

charging the MMO consumers the same price for less quality... come on... You- the MMO Consumer- are so powerless!!!

 

You ask for MMO that arent so WoW Like, yet what they keep giving you? lol You voice is powerless and meaningless!!!

Just accept this reality!! nothing you do/say will change the mindset of Developers that only see things their way and no other way. Developer's Ego has more power than you... You money doesnt say a damn thing, because look at the current genre!!!

 

lol Powerless!!!

Your power is in buying or not buying. I see people on here all the time complaining they bought X or Y game and got ripped off because it's terrible. If folks do their homework they'd probably have this feeling less. I'm not sure how many companies there are that make their products based on the ravings from internet forums. I'm sure they can get some good feedback from them but they'd have to carefully pick and choose since there's so much garbage on here. 

What you guys don't realize is that MMOs are not created for the hardcores and elitists and experts. MMOs nowadays are created for mainstreamers. Therefore hardcore users don't have any control as they are minorities and MMOs are not targeted towards them. On the other side mainstream users have the power to change things (we have seen that many times) as they are the majority and the target audience. Sorry if it came out too harsh but lets admit it, the visitors of this website are not mainstream MMO users and thus you don't really have any control over the shape MMO industry.

Darkfalls sub is not $15 a month anymore and when it was it was well worth it.. its 100x better than wow.. I cant believe you put wow down as being a quality MMORPG... probalyl the worse thing to happen to the MMO industry..

It was a fluke yet all the companeis keep trying to copy its success.. and you know what people keep buying them but soon realise they are a pale copy of somthing they dont really want.. companeis spout on about things being different and next gen but at the end of the day they are usually wow clones..

Games like darkfall, Mortal online and a few others are an exception but found it hard to get funding because they where not wow clones..

Consumers can make a difference.. stop buying themepark clones.. sinple. IF no one is buying their games the companies will soon realise they have done somthing wrong..

you have all the power in the world, just dont pay for the game and dont pay your sub fee.  if you hate something and still continue to pay for it then you might want to check yourself into a mental hospital to get evaluated.  certainly losing your sub fee probably wont make them go oh crap, maybe we need to change xyz so mmoexpose will come back to our game but at least you are not paying for a game you hate.  now as far as you not having the power to get the devs to change their game.  you dont have that with any business or product.  you think if i called frisbee company up and told them i dont like round circles so change the shape of their frisbee they are gonna listen, no.  you have the option of buying what a company sells, you dont have to, but if you buy the product use it for what it is good at, dont try to change it to something its not meant to be. 

quite frankly most mmo gamers are not worth listening to.  they say they want something different from wow, yet every game that comes out that is different from wow, they want all of wows systems in the game, like dungeon finder, arenas and all that crap.  hey if you want wow, just go play wow.  play the game for what it is and report bugs, if you dont like the game for what it is and what it does, just dont play it.

I do not think that "Buyer Power" in this market is too low.

The stronger the competition, the more "Buyer Power" we have. In fact, with more and more products / games in the market, our "Buyer Power" is constantly increasing.

The fact that games are going F2P or are even shut down proves that we are not powerless. Pressure on the prices charged by the sellers is a consequence of "Buyer Power".

On the other hand, the "Buyer Power" is not really high either. There is large number of buyers, there are no large buyers, practically nobody is buying very large quantities.

You may want to google "Porter's Five Analysis" which addresses this issue among other things.

I think that you should probably ask EA, Bioware, and Funcom how "powerless" the MMO consumer really is...they may have a different answer ;).

If you want a market where the buyer is REALLY powerless...then look at the market for something like critical heart medication.  Buyers in this market either buy the product, or they die.  This means that drug companies can charge an exorbitant price for it and people will keep buying it.  In business terms, we would say the price elasticity of demand is low.  This means that changes in the price of a product would not drastically effect demand for said product.

In games...I think the price elasticity of demand is pretty darn high.  If it wasn't, then F2P wouldn't be such a big deal.

Originally posted by Creslin321

I think that you should probably ask EA, Bioware, and Funcom how "powerless" the MMO consumer really is...they may have a different answer ;).

If you want a market where the buyer is REALLY powerless...then look at the market for something like critical heart medication.  Buyers in this market either buy the product, or they die.  This means that drug companies can charge an exorbitant price for it and people will keep buying it.  In business terms, we would say the price elasticity of demand is low.  This means that changes in the price of a product would not drastically effect demand for said product.

In games...I think the price elasticity of demand is pretty darn high.  If it wasn't, then F2P wouldn't be such a big deal.

as I understand demand for gaming across the board is declining.

Intrestingly during one of the most important news times of a generation all the major news outlet were losing viewers while indy news was increasing viewers.

Industry does control the supply a lot more than people think, sometimes in stupid ways and sometimes directly on purpose

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Industry does control the supply a lot more than people think, sometimes in stupid ways and sometimes directly on purpose

On the other hand, the goal of most of the customers is to addict themselves as thoroughly as possible, play the game until there's no more entertainment to be wrung from it, without spending any more money on it.  How industries do you know that have that expectation?

It's also a one-tailed market (quality can be/frequently is less than expected, but never greater).  Not traditional, in several different ways.

http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/centers/mks/articles/whatyoudont.pdf

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

Industry does control the supply a lot more than people think, sometimes in stupid ways and sometimes directly on purpose

On the other hand, the goal of most of the customers is to addict themselves as thoroughly as possible, play the game until there's no more entertainment to be wrung from it, without spending any more money on it.  How industries do you know that have that expectation?

It's also a one-tailed market (quality can be/frequently is less than expected, but never greater).  Not traditional, in several different ways.

http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/centers/mks/articles/whatyoudont.pdf

nice.

In the case of Darkfall number 4 on that first sentence is very true (sometimes paying attention to loyal customers can be counter productive).