Originally posted by daarco

Originally posted by Malcanis

Originally posted by Justin9820

4. Large scale combat that no game has ever seen (other than darkfall)... I’ve been in battles with well over 200 people!

 

Just to note that battles with 700 are fairly frequent in EvE, and the record is something like 1400.

 

No auto targeting, realtime and manual aiming : )

But yes, EVE have some massive battlefields as well.

What about Planetside?

Originally posted by Kemahudson

Oh I don't have anything against the practice at all. Hell Ive considered maybe trying to buy Plex card for my own two accounts.

 

My only annoyance was that CCP restricts one thing and supports another that to me didn't didn't seem any different.

Reading your post as to the reasoning behind it clears it up a bit for me though.

CCP has done the only rational thing, to a real world problem.

Most games have a 'War on Gold Sales'. They spend thier resources trying to prevent the gold sellers from peddling thier undesirable wares.... and ultimately fail.

CCP has created a system to legalize, tax, and monitor these sales. This has worked out good for everyone... except the undesirables that were getting rich off the sale of illegal gold.

Nice article. You have made some very good points.

It is always easier to determine why something failed in hindsite. However, even that does not always tell you what could have been done that would make it succeed. I would expect to see a very high rate of failure for games in the next 2 years, because the market is becoming much more competitive. 

Right now it is a consumers market, and the consumer is a very fickle creature. They will flitter off at a moments notice, and companies must provide reasons for them to stay around and spend thier hard earned money. The problem is that game development is a multiyear project, and developers did not forsee this, so the games themselves will not draw in and keep the consumers. This leaves service as the way to keep your customer. Good companies will see this, and react quickly... not so good companies will do business as usual, and not understand when thier customers go elsewhere.

Originally posted by Gyrus

Originally posted by Superman0X
...

The use of stolen credit cards is very common in the online gaming industry. It is way above the standard 1%.

Proof.  Show me a figure.  90% of stats on the internet are made up.

Call your Bank. Ask them. They can give you the best stats. Any stats I can quote could be made up. So I wont try to quote you something you will just not believe to be true.

There is a very simple reason why banks dont care... they get their money back. The MMO has to eat the cost, not the bank.

If you read the thread - I did my research on this.  The merchant has a responsibility to carry out certain checks prior to accepting payment from a credit card.  If they carry out those checks (as specified in their agreement) then they will still get payed.

Not true. Banks reserve the right to chargeback for up to 30 days. Paypal reserves this right for 6 months. If you are a merchant, just check your agreement (it is in the fine print).

As for the MMO causing the chargeback, that isnt true either. Stolen credit cards can be obtained for less than $1, but are only good for ~3-5 days. After that the online company is informed that the card has been reported stolen. Companies that only do monthly charges do not normally catch this until the next re-occuring charge. Dont believe me? Charge a montly fee on a card, then call it in to your bank as stolen. Service will not shut off until the next charge, despite being immediately invalidated.

You are confusing the provided service with chargebacks with bans with stolen cards with billing cycle here.
All separate issues.

Yes. They are separate issues. However, chargebacks for cancelation of services are very rare, whereas chargebacks for fraud are very common.

 

Originally posted by Gyrus

Originally posted by h8erberry

Stolen Credit Cards?

 

This excuse is getting really tired. I am sure a stolen credit card was used once to scam an MMO account but it is not nearly the problem Scott would have us believe. This kind of stuff is just BS excuse that makes us lose focus of the real problem.

Banks track all charge backs. Most business have less than %1 charge backs. If you go over that limit your business and practices will come under scrutiny. If MMOS were such a problem then Credit Card Companies would have already started limiting our ability to use them to pay for these transactions. This is not a problem.

 

As I said earlier - if the Merchant follows the authorisation steps set out by the Credit Card Association then they would not be harmed by chargebacks on 'stolen' and fraudulent CC transactions.

What is happening is that the MMO companies are banning the goldfarmer and the goldfarmer is then asking for a chargeback on the (valid) CC on the grounds that the merchant is not providing the service which was payed for.  Under those circumstances a chargeback IS JUSTIFIED because the MMO company has done the wrong thing.

Try restricting the chat function and player to player trade function while leaving the account active.  That way a charge back is NOT JUSTIFIED and the goldfarmer will have to pay the sub fee which will eat into his / her / their profit.

The use of stolen credit cards is very common in the online gaming industry. It is way above the standard 1%.

There is a very simple reason why banks dont care... they get their money back. The MMO has to eat the cost, not the bank.

As for the MMO causing the chargeback, that isnt true either. Stolen credit cards can be obtained for less than $1, but are only good for ~3-5 days. After that the online company is informed that the card has been reported stolen. Companies that only do monthly charges do not normally catch this until the next re-occuring charge. Dont believe me? Charge a montly fee on a card, then call it in to your bank as stolen. Service will not shut off until the next charge, despite being immediately invalidated.

Originally posted by Tetters

The only time RMT could be damaging to a pay-to-play MMO is when you can't reach a destination without paying to get there. If in LOTRO I couldn't access a town without having to buy a pass or such, I would have a huge issue with that. If it became restrictive that would be bad, but the choice to buy a pet or not, or worst case, equipment or not, to me just isn't important.

Isnt this EXACTLY how expansions work? They add new content area's... and to get there you have to pay.

The reality is that people have been paying for content since day 1... and then paying a monthly fee use that content (service charge). This is what P2P is all about, charging upfront for the content.

What we are seeing here, is the ability to unbundle the packages, and sell them as separate parts (singles vs albums). The album is a better 'deal' but only if you like all the songs. If only like 1-2 of them, then the singles are better.

Originally posted by Illyssia

Originally posted by Briansho

What's the big deal? They already allow the following for a fee.

PvE->PvP server transfers
Faction changes
Race changes
Gender changes
Name changes

Good point as Blizzard charge for just about any game perk they can now. The cash shop selling tier armour and weapons, instant level 80 character option or in-game gold might be next on the game improvement agenda. After all why let the eBayers, levelling services or gold famers make money off the game when Blizzard could do it instead. This might sound far fetched right now, but Blizzard Activision are clearly maximising profits, this explains the crazy situation with the next Starcraft and Diablo games and why they are so delayed, they don't want to hurt their current cash cow.  

You are partially correct. Diablo and Starcraft have been delayed because of Battle.Net

Battle Net is essential to their plans going forward. It will provide centralized billing that can be used for the RMT that is included in all of their games going forward. Blizzard has made no real secret that they were planning to expand their offerings to include RMT.

Originally posted by LordBonezy

Originally posted by Superman0X

Originally posted by LordBonezy

 Lord Bonezy asks, why not shut the live game down, for the 3-4 months between now and the launch of the expansion, and re-focus the team, the mission, compile some to do lists for the new product and do some fucking voice overs for the original and sell the whole damn thing as a new game in March? Doing so would cut alot of the daily bad press of the original failure from damaging what might be a fairly good rep with the new product.

Ofcourse the expansion won't be the 2nd coming but it might just be a fairly decent product that makes it on its own without the hype/spin machine or without the titanic anchordrag that is AOC at this point.

Discuss....

 

This question comes from a clear lack of understanding of how things work. There is a development department, and an operations department.

If the game were shut down, you would lay off operations... shut down servers, etc. This would have a large cost (shutting down has a cost as well) and then there would be a startup cost when you started again in a few months. This would cost you a LOT more than simply maintaining operations for this time. This would also have no effect on development, because they are a separate department...

As for the numbers, well, I dont think you are understanding those either. Sure they had to close a bunch of servers, and layoff a bunch of people... but that was to reduce the cost so that they would keep making a profit... So, in reality they have already done what was needed to keep things running, and making more cuts (not in line with the customer base) would just undermine thier ability to make money. Also, most of the layoffs were developers. This is normally done when a game goes live, as they dont need a large developement team anymore.

 

They are not in the process of launching a new product. They are in the process of expanding AOC, finishing as fast as possible the secret world so that they actually get the product out before the company goes under, or they have to layoff more staff, and they aren't doing layoffs because they don't need the people, they are doing "restructuring" because they need to free up the capital in order to stay afloat. They can't raise capital with the sub numbers they have in AOC and they sure as hell aren't doing it by offering free trials, or with the stock price where it is at today.

The cost of shutting down and restarting the game would deplete the company, and would effectively kill this game. They would be better off just firing everyone and doing a hard shutdown. However, the more reasonalbe option is to keep it on life support with minimal staff, and bring in the money that it is making... which is what they will do.

Originally posted by bobm111

yeah, that is exactly my point however wow has been a p2p game and now they are wripping people off with the new rmt stuff .

good sense well time will tell as this new trend might slapp them right in the face..

 

bobm111

WoW went F2P several years ago....

It is funny to see people not even knowing what has happened in the past few years.

Originally posted by LordBonezy

 Lord Bonezy asks, why not shut the live game down, for the 3-4 months between now and the launch of the expansion, and re-focus the team, the mission, compile some to do lists for the new product and do some fucking voice overs for the original and sell the whole damn thing as a new game in March? Doing so would cut alot of the daily bad press of the original failure from damaging what might be a fairly good rep with the new product.

Ofcourse the expansion won't be the 2nd coming but it might just be a fairly decent product that makes it on its own without the hype/spin machine or without the titanic anchordrag that is AOC at this point.

Discuss....

This question comes from a clear lack of understanding of how things work. There is a development department, and an operations department.

If the game were shut down, you would lay off operations... shut down servers, etc. This would have a large cost (shutting down has a cost as well) and then there would be a startup cost when you started again in a few months. This would cost you a LOT more than simply maintaining operations for this time. This would also have no effect on development, because they are a separate department...

As for the numbers, well, I dont think you are understanding those either. Sure they had to close a bunch of servers, and layoff a bunch of people... but that was to reduce the cost so that they would keep making a profit... So, in reality they have already done what was needed to keep things running, and making more cuts (not in line with the customer base) would just undermine thier ability to make money. Also, most of the layoffs were developers. This is normally done when a game goes live, as they dont need a large developement team anymore.

Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by Scot

As I have heard elsewhwere the like of Perfect World was once a decent cash shop game, now it is cash cow for its owners. So enjoy your F2P game while you can, sooner or later the owners will care a little to much for the £$.

Funny... every time those who don't like cash shops explain how that will happen - albeit gradually - and that players will find themselves having to spend more and more to "keep up", they're told they don't know what they're talking about. And yet, there's a perfect example (no pun intended).

The concept of "F2P" is a sham... you don't pay to buy the game and there's no set monthly fee, but the developers fully intend that their average target player is going to spend *far* more than a box purchase and sub fee in the long run. And they fully intend to make sure it happens.

I realize there are people who don't mind paying for the cash shops... and that's fine, but it's also not a strong "rebuttal". There's been people for *years* now who've spent thousands of dollars eBaying items, gold and characters in MMOs where it wasn't allowed... so it's not a surprise. The companies have simply found a way to tap into that "secondary market" and keep more for themselves... erego "F2P" MMOs with Item Malls.

 

I am just curious, how does this vary from P2P?

In P2P they put in artificial constructs to get more money out of the player. This is why it is P2P... They charge you up front, and then find ways to keep charging you (expansions, etc). The less they can give you, and the more that they can sell you, the more they make...

So, how are the two different (P2P is Pay up front, F2P is Pay as you go)? In both you end up paying (that was the plan).

Originally posted by supbro

Here is the IGN article link

A really great quote here;

 

"Although exact figures weren't available, NCsoft executives estimate that Aion has surpassed 700,000 in sales in the U.S. and Europe, and will touch the 1 million mark by the end of the year.

The company started with 12 servers each in the U.S. and Europe at the start of Aion's commercial service last month, but was operating 14 servers in the U.S. and 16 servers in Europe a week later. This indicates that the game was getting as much as 150,000 concurrent users in those markets."

 

Great to see a Korean game like Aion achieving all this worldwide success.

 

 

It should not be a surprise to anyone that this game was successful...

However, the numbers given, put it close to WAR and AOC... not WoW. It will be interesting to see a strong battle for the #2 spot, but this is not any real threat to the #1 game. This game is already starting to feel the post launch bleed off, with a large amount of people not choosing to stay for a second month, and this will continue for 2 more months before they stabilize.

The key to this competition will be the 3M and 6M CCU numbers, as they will show how muchy lasting power this game has.

Originally posted by metalliham

I'd like to point out that DDO recently went F2P and their actual PAID subscriptions went up over 40%.

Paid subs mean you have an edge over the free players.

As many MMO vets know, these advantages may very well be worth a paid sub, especially in games featuring PvP.

F2P increased thier paid subscriptions by 40%... it also gave them microtransaction based income, that is also significant (no good numbers yet to give the exact ratio of Monthly Fee vs Microtransaction). It would not be unreasonable to assume that this change may have doubled thier revenue...

It is hard to believe that they would consider something like this not successful.

There seems to be some confusion in terms here.

F2P means Free to Play. This means you do not have to pay upfront, you can get the client, and play the game for free... and that is it. EVE is a good example of F2P... as you can download the game, and get a free account anytime you want, for $0.

P2P means Pay to Play. This means you have to pay upfront to get the client and acess to the game.. and that is it. GuildWars is a good example of P2P, as you have to pay upfront for the client/account.

The only difference between F2P and P2P is WHEN you pay (both are business models, where people pay). P2P has the charge up front, where F2P has it on the backend. The whole discussion of monthly fees, microtransactions, etc has nothing to do with P2P/F2P.

The big advantage of F2P is that it gets a lot of people in game, because of the low entry fee. This is good for games that are based on player content (PvP, RvR, etc). It is BAD for games that are based on static content (PvE, Questing, etc).

The big advantage of P2P is that it weeds out those not invested in the game, and as such removed much of the 'problem' accounts. This lower player count is good for static content (PveE, Questing, etc) but bad for player content (PvP, RvR, etc).

If each game were monitized based on its strengths, rather than because of some preplanned strategy, then both the customers, and the producers would be much happier.

I think that at this time it is clear that going forward, any game that limits itself to either F2P or P2P will be the loser. The games that will do best will be the games that offer multiple options for revenue....

There will be more, and more games trying various Hybrid business models, in an effor to find what best works. One of the best examples of how well this can work is DDO.

Sadly, developing a game, and producing a game are totally separate skill sets, so you will see a lot of companies trying to drive a square peg into a round hole... because they dont actually understand why things work.

I guess the question is, who are #2-5 on the MMO list.... and what are THEIR numbers. Everyon quotes WoW... but I dont see much discussion about anyone else.

The OP is funny....

They complain that they were treated like a kid.... when they chose the kiddy ride, rather than the adult ride.

When you create your character, you have the option to bypass the tutorial. This also allows you to bypass the training area. This allows you to avoid the kiddy treatment.

So, it looks like the OP got what they asked for.

There is RMT for Fallen Earth... but the game just isnt big enough to merit actual manpower to spam for sales. Getting goldspammers is actually one of the measuing points of a MMO, it means that other people think your game is popular enough to invest thier time into....

This thread is funny.

In the immortal words of Henry Ford:

"Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black"

Historically speaking, sucess comes from giving the customer what he needs, not what he wants. If you meet thier needs, no matter if you do it how they want it done, you succeed.