Profile: Khaunshar
Send PM  Forum Posts  Forum Topics 

Recent Forum Posts [more...]

• • AoC released too early. A theory why.

  • Originally posted by Indo
    

    Almost all games are released too early. What's the one that kept getting pushed back and pushed back? Oh yeah, WoW. Was it perfect at release? Hell no! But there's something to be said for releasing a near-finished product vs. rushing something to market. Will devs ever learn? Maybe some day. IMO, the MMO community is growing less friendly towards those that release games too early. But yeah, define "too early". That is the key.

     

    The problem is, if we as a playerbase grow too unfriendly towards unreleased games, are we going to get more finished games...... or are we just going to get a handful of games made by huge publishers going for mainstream appeal, and thats it?

     

    I am not convinced that, even if we could, would somehow congregate and decide that nobody buys buggy games anymore from now on... that would change much, and especially whether it would not hurt us in the long run.

    See, as much as I like a finished, bugless game, I also do enjoy playing a different game every couple of years, and having a choice. Right now already, that choice is severely limited by 3 years of failing MMOs. I think it would just mean we would not see a lot of MMOs anymore, since frankly, they are far too expensive for most companies or publishers to begin with, and its not so easy getting across the message that we didnt buy their product because of bugs.

    I mean, we all thought Vanguard would be the martyr game to once and for all stop the endless buggy releases... yet nobody seems to learn from it, or rather, the lesson learned apparently is "people dont like group-centric noninstanced MMOs" or something.

    I think the more MMOs flop or underperform, the narrower the focus of future MMOs becomes, and I believe ultimatively that means far fewer new attempts, fresh ideas, and much more "business as usual".

  • Posted: 7/02/08 10:34 PM
    Age of Conan
• • AoC released too early. A theory why.

  • Erm, no.

     

    Venture Capitalists are the lifeblood of repetition :p Or rather, on repeating what works till it doesnt work anymore, at which point they try to figure out what might work next.

    Right now, WoW "works", and I bet you its the standard other companies have to claim they want to live up to, in order to get enough money.

    Incidentially, my father is one of these evil "investors" who invest, among other things, into video games. He does quite often ask me about an inside view into the games I play , since we dont live in the same country anymore, and he cannot really check it out by himself.

    There is no secret great source of information about a game, you have to realize that. Forums are far far from reality, and that filtered down to said investors by now. Companies and Designers sweet-talk because they bascially have to, and there are no secret business spies telling inside statistics of games etc.

     

    A venture capitalist, for sake of simplicity lets pretend its one person doing these decisions, has roughly similar sources to what an experienced, and interested MMO-Veteran has, if said veteran takes the time to read up on company press releases and stuff.

    Thats it. Now, with that information it becomes quite hard to figure out the risk involved, and MMOs are long-trm investments at any rate. 5-year investments are unpopular to begin with, and anything beyond that is a hard sell even at low risk, because the business cycle runs so fast, and by the time a game releases that you invested in today, you ve probably had at least 2 technological revolutions, another console generation, a market crisis and another crashing bubble of some sort.

    Unfortunately for all of us, and as has been stated above with great wisdom about the movie industry, people with money arent just paychecks on legs. Often, they have their own ideas, and meddle in the stuff they finance.... and unfortunately, most often with disastrous results.

    Again, I see that in my father quite a lot, he genuinely believes he actually has an understanding of something, even if its creative, artistic work, that he invested in, and that he read up on. I keep trying to tell him that the guys making, for example, Spore know infinitely more about game design, about games in general, about entertainment , what works, waht doesnt, the tech than he does.

    He still tries to meddle, under the illusion something better may come out of it.

    And thus we end up with rushed games, with NGE-like changes, with studio-cut inferior movies (does anyone know a movie that was heavily studio-influenced/cut that is BETTER than the directors cut? Or at least a good movie to begin with? I sure dont), and a general pointing of fingers at each other by investors, developers, publishers, designers, players and their respective dogs as to who is at fault for screwing up yet another game.

     

    THAT is, by the way, why Blizzard gets away with secrecy, with year-long delays, with pretty much anything. They produce one platinum-seller after the other, which is about the most convincing argument you can make these days. And from what I have witnessed, they really, REALLY dont let you meddle in stuff outside of TBC. The latter one only due to initially underperforming sales.

  • Posted: 7/02/08 9:10 PM
    Age of Conan
• • Lord of The Rings Online - Active Subscriptions (Paying): ~ 162,500 *updated 6/10/08*

  • Actually we have to realize that LTA-Holders are figured into these numbers, even if they do not play anymore, or just log on every 3 months to play for 2 days through the new content.

    I would say for all intents and purposes these players dont really count as active subs, since they neither pay, nor are available to play with, nor take part in anything in the game world, be it economy, competition or PvP. They basically do not exist at all, until they buy ( or dont, as in my circle of friends none of the LTAs consider buying MoM) an expansion.

     

    I suppose 150k by December means a little less now, seeing how apparently Subscriber Numbers are steadily dropping, but not too fast. Maybe 130 to 135k?

    That would be my guess based on what little information is available, and the general direction the game seems to be going (casual pve niche)

     

  • Posted: 7/02/08 8:56 PM
    Lord of the Rings Online