Victor Wachter: The Failed Game

Good article. :')

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.

Good column.  It places the blame for failure exactly where it needs to be placed.  I've never been able to comprehend why so many smart people (developers) continue to do the same, stupid things.

"Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." - Winston Churchill

Very, very good article.

I think you hit the nail on the head perfectly with this statement:
"We made the mistake of introducing a mechanic that changed our game, rather than enhancing what was already special about it..."

That could be said of a number of MMOs. Loyal players of DAoC were turned away when Trials of Atlantis was released, changing the very gameplay that they'd come to love in the first place. Many Anarchy Online players were put off by the release of Shadowlands, as it added content that changed the core of the game itself in aways that many players didn't like. SWG... nothing more needs to be said there about how SOE completely screwed up on that one.

And there are a number of other examples to be sure.

Now, I can understand if it happens to a few MMOs earlier on... DAoC and AO, for example, might have become the unwilling "sacrificial lambs" in order for that lesson to be learned: Don't screw with the game that earned you the following you have in the first place. In other words: Don't fix it if it isn't broken.

FC eventually returned to the PvP core of their MMO (as I understand it) with Lost Eden... but it was too little too late for many who had already moved on; and it seemed to piss off many who remained.

Yet, it seems many developers didn't learn this lesson. They didn't pay enough attention to what their existing players loved about the game in order to decide what the best way would be to expand on it without killing what the players loved in the first place. I sometimes wonder if other developers keep themselves in a bubble and don't bother to ever see what's going on around them among their contemporaries.

Or, maybe it all comes down to the ever-reviled "suits" high in their corporate towers who don't understand gamers, don't understand gamers... and don't want to. They only understand numbers and $$$.

In any case... that's a very key thing that I wish more developers would pick up on. Identify what the strength is of your game... and then improve and build on it. When your players clearly love PvP based more on skill than on gear stats... then you build on that foundation.  You don't say "Okay, they love skill-centric PvP, so let's add a whole bunch of PvE content in for very stat-centric gear"... that's just plain stupid and the inevitable outcry over such a move should be well expected by now.

You had mentioned:

"I'd love to see another stab at an MMOFPS (which SOE has made mentions of, yay!) or even a new sandbox style fantasy game like Ultima Online back in the day."

and I would like to mention that something like that hit the market this year and avoided many of the large AAA release errors. Fallen Earth is an MMORPG with a twitch combat system. If you're a firearm specialist, the game can feel very much like playing an FPS. Character advancement is achieved through a skill point system and the economy is heavily influenced by the players. It's a bit of a sandbox experience because the game is really what you make of it.

I'd say that the only drawback to the title is its setting. That kind of "Mad Max' world is a bit of a niche genre without a lot of public appeal.

What I think was most impressive was that the game was released with so little hype and was stable when it went live. Several developers/publishers violate common professional etiquette by arriving to the market with a bad first impression. They panic and rush a launch to cut their losses when a game is behind schedule for release.

The individuals making these decisions apparently failed economics. They're choosing a minimized short-term loss over a long term game. Even if it takes 2 years of solid subscriptions for a game to pull itself out of the red, those 2 years of debt are far more favorable to the additional years of profit and growth obtained from a solid title.

To make a long story short, I think the easiest road to success for any game is to have a successful launch. Deliver on all your advertised features on day 1. Have the hardware ready to deal with the rush of players and do not shove out huge game changing patches within the first week. The first 30 days of play will make or break the subscription base.

"Lord of the Rings Online launched in April of 2007 and as far as I am concerned, it was the last successful triple-A MMORPG launched (I think Free Realms is a good game too, but it's kind of playing a different ballgame). That means that we're coming up on three years before another MMO succeeds and we're placing a lot of hope in Star Wars: The Old Republic and DC Universe Online to bring us back to a place where we can feel good about a major game release. But I'm also hoping that past failures don't scare developers from innovating. I'd love to see another stab at an MMOFPS (which SOE has made mentions of, yay!) or even a new sandbox style fantasy game like Ultima Online back in the day."

I wouldn't put too much hope in those two titles. SOE has it's reputation which will forever (or at least until they let Smedley go) hamper any MMO they put forward. Add to that CO's launch and it looks to me like the "super hero" novelty has come and gone. If it was to succeed again it'd have to be done by a company that doesn't have the baggage that SOE and Cryptic have now. As for TOR...I really don't see it being the hit you hope it will. I think it'll be alot like Dragon Age: Origins, and there will be thoughts that while it is a good storied game, it's not something I'd want to pay monthly for. I'm loving DA:O right now, but there's no way I'd pay monthly for it, good story and all.

As for the second point (in orange) I don't see how it could scare them from innovating. They haven't been innovating, they've been chasing the dragon of WoW dollars and it is fairly easy to say those companies have already stopped innovating. The big name companies haven't put out MMOFPS' and Sandbox games. Only the small, severely underfunded indy companies have, and many have to resort to launching the game prematurely as you mention. Adventurine did it, Icarus the same and now Star vault is blatantly saying "Hey guys, we need you to buy our game so we can finish it".

They needed a cash infusion to pay salaries that they should have planned for but didn't, so they launched their broken game. One has to ask how they spent the previous five to seven years if a few months would have made such a difference.

such a valid point! good read. 

"These days, companies tend to take a short-sighted view of the MMO subscription lifespan, and if a game isn't a hit right out the door, they are quick to slash the live development team to a skeleton and they begin considering the right time to sunset the service. But the problems that result in an MMO's closure usually have their roots early in the inception of the project."

If this is the case, why are betas treated so casually then? Instead they should be a critical crossroad for the development (i.e. make or break), yet very little is done with them in terms of improving the game mechanics (i.e. just bug fixes).

"In these cases, developers bemoan their release dates and wish for three to six months to really polish it off. To translate, they failed at project planning to identify risks and issues early and spent all of their venture capital before the game was done. They needed a cash infusion to pay salaries that they should have planned for but didn't, so they launched their broken game. One has to ask how they spent the previous five to seven years if a few months would have made such a difference."

What I'd like to know is how is the funding dished out between the publisher and developer? Is it spoon fed, bit by bit, or it is a lump sum payment up front for the entire project? If it's spoon fed, the developer probably just doesn't think about the money because it seems endless, which is a bad thing. If they were paid a lump sum, they'd see their funds dwindling and maybe be more frugal with it. All said and done, no matter which approach is taken, it is pretty much a given that last minute fixes are always needed. If this is the case, the developer should be putting some of their funds aside for this. I mean what's more important to you, being extravagant with your operation costs or creating a successful product or service?

"Those companies that show a commitment to ensuring a consistently smooth experience will sustain their customers and their revenue. Those that never focus past the monthly sales figures will learn what natural selection is all about."

Couldn't agree more. It's one reason why I think community relation positions should be hired when the game is announced and still in it's planning stages. Community Managers have the ability to tune into the desires of the community around the game and determine if the gamer's core expectations are matching the developer's core vision of the game. If it's not and the developers want to stick to their unique approach, serious communications with the community needs to determine if this alternate approach is going to be viable and accepted, or if it's too radical and won't float. Obviously the developer doesn't want to give away their ideas, yet at the same time they need to be sure their ideas will be accepted. If you don't want to announce this publicly then get the Community Manager to select key individuals from the community who seem to be well spoken within it. Let them alpha test your ideas and provide valuable feedback on your development. All said and done, you need your community involvement in one form or another.

MMOs might seem like a good place for money right now but it sure isn't a good place for a quality exprience and a rapidly improving product if Age of Conan is any measure of the industry.

Several Key Areas of Failure are evident in their implementation.

-Overmarketing ( Selling features which don't exist and never will)

-Underdeveloping ( Releasing a product without major components functional and without a plan to rapidly implement those features at a pace more rapid than the majority of your consumers are going to exprience their unfunctionality.

-Failure to innovate ( Break the mold in non-essential areas, and get the tentacles of development into areas where gamers are looking for fresh and new ideas, or areas which can clearly use improvement.

-Failure to Provide the Basic ( Functionality, Lagfree or lowlag, stable performance on box specs, interesting gameplay, functional and fair mechanics in class vs class abilities, functional grouping and clan/guild resources, create the drive for both competition and cooperation, without it you are running a single player MMO, and people don't stick around without compelling reasons to make friends or kill enemies.

Age of Conan failed in so many ways and yet there are those who still consider it a successful failure, or a success, well clearly it is neither, a successful failure would mean that the launch crowd who came and left would at least be interested in a free trial of the game and approve of the improvements, however that is not the case. A success would mean that the game never lost the majority of players who had played in the first place. Neither are true. Today 96% of players who have played AOC have moved on. Populations are imploding on mutiple servers and they are working hard to cut expenses and try to keep the company alive until they release the next expansion, probably missing some functionality, key components and with a lack of innovation just like Age of Conan and Anarchy Online.

Some developers and Funcom is no different, simply don't have the stones or the brains to develop a complete product.

Originally posted by eduty

Deliver on all your advertised features on day 1.

Hehe, this is pretty much it in a nutshell. Be as clear and concise about what you are offering and follow through in delivering what you're communicating. The closer the two match, the happier people will be because they are expecting what you are communicating (marketing).

HEY FOUL!!!!!

PS was the best game i ever played for 60 days roll on PS2 if it can add more to its utility belt and become much more of a MMO it can be EPIC.

Originally posted by GentleNova

Originally posted by eduty

Deliver on all your advertised features on day 1.

Hehe, this is pretty much it in a nutshell. Be as clear and concise about what you are offering and follow through in delivering what you're communicating. The closer the two match, the happier people will be because they are expecting what you are communicating (marketing).

 

Agreed. To ad to that, I put the blame for most MMO failures squarely on the marketing departments shoulders. When a game fails in this market, it's due to many factors, generally stemming from marketing, going all the way back to the games concepting stage.

I'm using Star Trek Online as my current example (and I do believe it will fail due to this) since it has such a clear and defined demographic. Marketing people don't seem to understand who the games are for. They'll pick a demographic like Trekkers soley based on the fact that there's so damn many of them (thereby thinking it'll be a gold mine), then completely ignore that demographics key requirements, instead, selling them a version of something else out there that has already achieved a quantifiable measure of success. Usually something a shareholder (not a member of the target market) can wrap their heads around (in this case, starship combat pew-pew, which is much easier to sell on a spreadsheet, than diplomacy, exploration etc that for probably most Trekkers, is at the heart of the IP).

Of course, this is what I feel is the biggest issue with certain MMO's lack of success today. There is of course, a multitude of other problems (such as the aforemention revamps by SOE etc) that drive customers away.

I want to mention that the measure of success has certainly changed since WoW as well. And what was considered hugely successful pre-WoW, is now considered a complete flop by the big-publishing houses now. This needs to change.  There's so much pressure to make a game that achieves this insane level of success that the publishers aren't allowing their designers to take creative risks anymore. They put all their marbles in the baskets of the beancounters and the marketing departments, who can only predict success based on past data. I recall a dev from WoW stating they purposefully IGNORED the marketing people on various occasions. That gamble has paid off. WoW was in the right place, at the right time, developed by the right people, who had their eyes on the right prize, which was to make a GOOD GAME. It may not be for everyone, but it's a damn solid game.

In a nutshell. MMO's will never achieve "WoW-like success" again ,until some crazy rich bastard who doesn't at all mind losing $70(ish) million dollars decides he (or she) wants to fund something special, and not just commercially successful, despite what the data says all the kids are doing these days.

Great post Bob_Blawblaw. 

I agree except you need to consider the wieght of a given IP in the mix when suits decide to make an MMO on a franchise.  In a big way, that property hinders the conception of the MMO and expectation of returns reguardless of what "crap in box" is delivered.  I think we are starting to get over "WOW envy" now but its still used to sell a concept to board members.  There are just no management of expectations in this arena.  To use your example: Star Trek is a big IP; MMO's can make a lot of money.  Combine the concept and you make an easy sell to Paramount.  Now what is going to make this MMO a break out hit to the MMO player as defined on what was pitched to Paramount?  Do you focus on the Trekker/Trekkie?  No, you focus on the MMO gamer demographics and loose the chance to make a unique Star Trek MMO experiance.

I have said this before: "If your not Star Trek, then why would you play a Star Trek MMO?"

Hey Vic,

Nice read and good thoughts.  I thought you were right on the money with PlanetSide.  Too bad we couldn't have pulled it off.

If you haven't already, you should take a look at Global Agenda.  http://www.globalagendagame.com/ Could be fun, although I still haven't played it yet.

-Alex

Originally posted by GentleNova

Originally posted by eduty

Deliver on all your advertised features on day 1.

Hehe, this is pretty much it in a nutshell. Be as clear and concise about what you are offering and follow through in delivering what you're communicating. The closer the two match, the happier people will be because they are expecting what you are communicating (marketing).

 

Add to that "don't pull the wool out over your pre order costomer's eyes"\

That is what Burned Atari (Cryptic is better then that, i place the blame squarly at Atari)

If you offer a TIME LIMITED special subscription stick to your guns don't change it suddenly with "oops we meant quantity limited"

And don't nerf the game to hell on day one with the promise of "oh we were just being cautious, buffs are comming!"

Originally posted by JYCowboy

Great post Bob_Blawblaw. 

I agree except you need to consider the wieght of a given IP in the mix when suits decide to make an MMO on a franchise.  In a big way, that property hinders the conception of the MMO and expectation of returns reguardless of what "crap in box" is delivered.  I think we are starting to get over "WOW envy" now but its still used to sell a concept to board members.  There are just no management of expectations in this arena.  To use your example: Star Trek is a big IP; MMO's can make a lot of money.  Combine the concept and you make an easy sell to Paramount.  Now what is going to make this MMO a break out hit to the MMO player as defined on what was pitched to Paramount?  Do you focus on the Trekker/Trekkie?  No, you focus on the MMO gamer demographics and loose the chance to make a unique Star Trek MMO experiance.

I have said this before: "If your not Star Trek, then why would you play a Star Trek MMO?"

I can't disagree with that at all JY.  Which brings it back to marketing, as they're the ones who generally do the pitching, and use WoWs fantastic financials to entice stakeholders into investing (or licensing etc), while they themselves can't seem to actually comprehend what actually makes a game have longevity, which is I think, the clincher.

Marketing people can sell boxes.  I have no doubt that ST:O will be a short term hit out of the gate. The IP itself is strong enough to accomplish that on it's own. But after the initial sell, then who do you focus on? Like you said, Trekkers? Or MMO players? Either way, it's gonna be a battle. Trekkers will see through anything that messes with their IP, and leave if it's not Star Trek enough, and MMO vets have seen all the standard MMO features every which way you can look at it and are tired of the standard cloned 'Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer, loot etc' (which ST:O appears to have albiet in a modified guise).

What I'm saying again is, blame the blundering idiots pitching these turds at investors using incomplete data, and data they don't understand. 

Wow, awesome, well-developed article and some great responses of a similar caliber! Truly in the top 10 of all time articles I've seen here on MMORPG.com. Kudos to all! Now, for my points...

One thing that wasn't mentioned in the article (and I don't think was mentioned in comments, but if so, props to you!) is the pricing model. I still feel that if millions of people fork out the money for the game, there is room to drop the monthly subscription fee to something more moderate. I'm thinking $10/month is plenty in today's economy to produce a viable MMOG that might introduce some paid content upgrades once a year or so. With the exception of the subscription fees, I think CoX has the best model in this regard, adding some booster packs that aren't too expensive, but are fun and useful, for the most part.

I also agree that TOR could possibly be the next great online game for us RPGers, but like another commenter, I figure it will be very similar to Dragon Age: Origins, which I've already tired of after only 1.5 completions, and I don't think I'll bother with a third run. It IS an amazing game, and I was completely obsessed with it the first time through, so much that I probably have at least another completion's worth of time invested just in figuring out my starting class and race! For those that have played, they know that the particular origin one has plays a big part of the uniqueness of the game. Anyway, as I was saying, TOR WILL probably be an amazing experience, but if it follows a model like DA:O, it's going to be a lot more involved creating new content than a standard MMOG, and it will take longer (what with the voice acting, etc.). This could very well be the distinction that makes TOR stand out above the rest, if the content added is of the same high quality as the original game seems to be. It's also going to cut into profits more, as they will have to pay voice actors more often to contribute their talent to the expansions. However, if it is done well, I could easily see myself playing through every class simply to experience the unique path that each profession takes, and if there's a bit of branching, well then this takes on a level of uniqueness in play experience that NO MMOG has ever achieved. It will be groundbreaking, and if DA:O is any indicating, breathtaking. I, for one, can't wait to see how it turns out!

I'd also like to go back to the point about the oblivious subscriber, who rarely logs in but doesn't close down his or her subscription. To ensure this type of player is prevalent, there needs to be an indication that veteran rewards are part of the game from the outset. Again, price will play a factor, and if a company was innovative enough to work out a better rate on subscriptions, either by lowering the cost across the board, or by monitoring usage, and if it is below some set amount, an automatic deduction in the subscription fee is applied. Doing this demonstrates that the company values its subscribers, and will build loyalty, at least to a continuous subscription fee, right out of the gate.

I am with Mr. Wachter in that I place my hopes almost solely on DC Online and TOR to provide a new, high-end MMOG experience. While I have more faith in TOR than DC Online to accomplish this, I would love it if both were successful, as they'd keep me in MMOG heaven for quite awhile!

Great article and lots of good comments, a good read! Looking forward to TOR as well with great anticipation. I've also invested countless hours into DA:O, so feel it's going to be interesting to see how close the experience in TOR will be to that one. Might turn out for better or worse bringing that into an MMO setting.

I don't have the time to write anything properly, but just wanted to point out to the one who claimed that AO wasn't innovative is imho wrong. AO brought a new setting along with content-on-demand (missions) which was something new back in the day. Although the skill system was (I guess) influenced by UO, the IP distribution where all classes could invest in whatever they wanted and reset their skills every now and then to try out new stuff, was pretty much a new thing afaik.

Otherwise, a lot of good points regarding AoC and I agree with those. :)

Those companies that show a commitment to ensuring a consistently smooth experience will sustain their customers and their revenue. Those that never focus past the monthly sales figures will learn what natural selection is all about.

That pretty much says it all right there. Nice article, Victor.

Great article. But two of the main points that killed Asherons Call 2, were the ENDLESS stream of "issues". Hardly a week went by without them breaking something basic to the game(at one point they managed to break the combat system and the chat system both).  The other being that it was NOT the game the Asherons Call 1 player base was expecting.  If they had simply expanded on what made AC1 great, updated the graphics engine and content, I'm betting it would still be in operation today.

I can't say I'm surprised that you didn't touch on SWG's NGE, but by definition when one loses 2/3's of ones player base in a few weeks, it has to be regarded as failure.  I know I'm still to this day rather annoyed by the subject...

Tabula Rasa is a fine example of what happens when one runs out of investment capital... I suspect NCsoft simply refused to provide further funding(launch or perish).  You are exactly right to place the blame on the shoulders of the upper management. They should have planned for the required development time, and hence the funding. But given the games past history, it wasn't a surprise that they ran out.  Its too bad as I rather enjoyed some aspects of the game. I ran a spy and a sniper to level cap. Some of the base defense dynamics against the Bane got WILD! Those are some of my best memories of the game.

I have to say... This article impressed me. It was mostly correct and had actual thought put into it. Not something I expect at mmoprg.com anymore.

I do have a bone to pick about the article in reference to Tabula Rasa. It didn't fail due to a lack of development or lack of funds. It failed due to poor management. It had a HUGE development purse, but wasted it on scrapping ideas and starting new ones.

I dont think we will ever see another UO or something that can compare. The genre isn't the same anymore.

Though I do have to say, as far as AAA titles, I dont see any MMOFPS soon. But less than AAA and you have Global Agenda headed to market.

I also believe that you hold developers way to accountable for the outcome of an MMO than they should be held. Especially for AAA titles or corporately backed MMOs. The reason is that developers are like artists and usually not part of the brass. They have to paint someone elses picture. Sure, they might have a vision, but that doesnt matter if the money doesnt see the same vision. You have investors to please, producers slotting schedules and marketing taking everything you say in your sleep and putting it on an ad all over the internet.

Blizzard is developing another MMO. And I expect it to be a smash hit without knowing a detail about it.

A very interesting read  - from somebody who's actually seen the sausage being made.

Btw, are all the authors really as diabolical as their portraits make them look?. Taken together, they look like something out of Batmans' rogue gallery..

Some games it seems the plug is often pulled needlessly without giving the game a chance. Tabula Rasa for example had an expansion patch on the way before they pulled it and was regaining popularity slowly, yet it was pulled (ironically at the same time they began preparing for Aion release in the west).

Age of Conan is one that seems similar, its subscribers are slowly regaining and people often wonder if the game will be shelved. COnsider there is an expansion looming and they are making new patches and content, this is unlikly in the near future, however following the direction of games like Tabula Rasa, is this a guarrantee? No, not really. 

Great article.  Much wisdom there, I could tell.

I'd suggest that there is an MMOFPS still out there: World War II Online.   Niche games can survive, but they have to be very careful, and as the article says enhance the play for the audience you have.

I would also add Fallen Earth as another MMOFPS, though it is really a hybrid FPS/RPG style interface.

Originally posted by haratu

Some games it seems the plug is often pulled needlessly without giving the game a chance. Tabula Rasa for example had an expansion patch on the way before they pulled it and was regaining popularity slowly, yet it was pulled (ironically at the same time they began preparing for Aion release in the west).

Age of Conan is one that seems similar, its subscribers are slowly regaining and people often wonder if the game will be shelved. COnsider there is an expansion looming and they are making new patches and content, this is unlikly in the near future, however following the direction of games like Tabula Rasa, is this a guarrantee? No, not really. 

Good points. But keep in mind that Turbine closed Asherons Call 2, not that long after selling us an expansion. So, simply because there is an expansion is no protection against closing.  If the rest of Age of Conan had lived up to the first 20 levels of content, I've no doubt it would be more popular.  But as it was, there was way too much disconnect.  Also keep in mind that all three games that NCSoft has axed have been western.  Since Aion is Asian, I doubt its going to have any problems, even if it doesn't do much better than Linage2 did in the west.

Also thought it was a good read.

I've rooted for so many MMOs that ultimately failed... Ultima Online 2 and Shadowbane to name a few, yet I am still astounded by some of the poor choices that developers and management make.  I never played Asheron's Call (I was playing Ultima Online at the time) but I heard such wonderful things about AC's PvP that I was rather ecstatic to have a second chance with Asheron's Call 2.  Yet when I loaded it up, even I could tell that it was nothing like Asheron's Call.  How is such an obvious blunder made?

Ignoring AC2's other issues (as another poster mentioned), I suspect that it failed at the conceptual stage.  They wanted another WoW-esque hit.  But developers, and investors, and whoever else need to realize something: you aren't going to out-WoW WoW.  It's not going to happen.  Ever.

So stop trying.  Look at EvE Online, which is moderately successful because they offered an MMO experience that wasn't just WoW in a different set of clothes.  It fulfilled a desire for exploration and diplomacy and space fighting, a desire that no one else had managed to successfully tap.  CCP, the makers of Eve, seem to get their business in a way that few others do.  Though Eve isn't my cup of tea, I've seen enough to believe that CCP knows how to patch the game in a way that doesn't alter the fundamental experience, the social empire-building aspects.  Because of this, CCP has earned their fan's loyalty and trust.

Getting back to failed MMOs, I would be keenly interested to read an interview with a developer of a failed MMO, for some insight into how and why the ball was dropped.  Sadly such interviews are often lacking in said insight, usually full of marketing lines, excuses, or an outright demonstration that the developer at no point knew what he was doing.  Though not a MMO, I remember reading an interview with one of the creators of Kane & Lynch (which achieved some fame in the critical realm because of the Gamespot controversy), which was fascinatingly honest.  Any chance anyone could link me to a similiar MMO interview?

In my opinion, what it often comes down to is that developers (and the 'suits') are unwilling and unable to throw away bad work.  As a writer, I've learned that you've got to be willing to chuck something that isn't going to work.  I've spent hours upon hours on a short story, or a chapter in a novel, or an article only to admit that it was bad and throw it away and start fresh.  Unfortunately while writing is basically free, games require lots of capital, and sometimes these developers are left with basically no choice but to hype their game in order to front-load box sales.  Sucks, but I'm not sure that it's reasonable to expect otherwise.

But because I prefer to never end on a sour note, I admit to being somewhat happy that the big publishers are unable or unwilling to take risks.  That makes your more independent titles that much more refreshing, that much more bold.  Anyone hear about Love, for example?  Only a matter of time til one of these smaller titles scores big.

A very good read, as others have said.

I think this is a key passage, because it tells us something about the MMO industry, such as it is:

These days, companies tend to take a short-sighted view of the MMO subscription lifespan, and if a game isn't a hit right out the door, they are quick to slash the live development team to a skeleton and they begin considering the right time to sunset the service.

This is not dissimilar to how TV series that fail to instantly become a "hit" are abandoned at once.  To provide a historical example of how stupid this mentality is, Cheers finished its first season at the bottom of the ratings, yet went on to become a classic series in continuous syndication making money for the studio, creators, writers, actors, composer of the theme song, the works, for decades.  It was allowed to find an audience.  TV series nowadays are not allowed to find an audience over time, they're abandoned if they fail to be an instant success.

Nowadays MMOs are not allowed to find audiences.  EVE has, and is prospering, albeit not with WoW numbers.  But if it were published by SOE, it would have been sunsetted quickly for failure to be a hit.

WoW, the 800 pound gorilla, has altered the landscape in countless ways, to include the standard of whether or not an MMO is considered to be a success, and as a result of the short term mentality (one that plauges American business in general) it stifles games that, if allowed, would find niche markets were they'd make some money for someone.  Perhaps not oceans of benjamins like WoW, but some money and keep some developers employed and some players entertained.

No mention of Earth and Beyond?!? that game was awesome.

It was a sad day when EnB died. Unfortunately, the publisher did not want to support the game any longer as they did not consider it to be a successful title. It does not matter that they reportedly had around 30,000 subscription on close, which is more than enough to keep the servers running, and even make a little extra profit.

Originally posted by Selek

No mention of Earth and Beyond?!? that game was awesome.

Yes, lots of fun. Yet another BAD decision to lay at EA's door.  EA is if anything even worse than SOE. Just about anything they touch is the worse for it.

That was a very good read.

I agree SOE has messed up a bunch but they have a couple of really good games haging in there. 

You had turbine who completely blew it with DND to come back out and with the FTP model to almost save it.  LOTRO is floudering, despite what some of the fan boys say and the possibilies in china.  The game in the states has seen a huge downturn, maybe with this xpack they can save it,  but I really dont thing so, lacking any clear dirrection.

Other gaming companies, funcom with there problems with AOC, NCSOFT what a joke I have seen so many post where folks went to AION then going back to their respected games.  

It is a harsh market, and I think were in for an MMO crash soon, total and across the board. 

Main reaon why,  folks are board.

Yaya, Victor, defend Planetside all you want. It was in the beginning a very good game, but as you say longevity was it's main problem.

But what killed it was the socalled "Balance Pass", which suddenly turned the game into VehicleSide. As a soldier you couldn't set a foot outside a base. It would take you 30 Anti-vehicle rockets and 2 minutes to kill an abandoned tank standing still, not defending itself (I made a test).

Live team is morons, and they didn't understand the intricate balance of the game, instead they fucked it up royally, resulting in my guild and many others to quit in disgust.

After that came the mech warriors and the special underground expansion that divided up the population, effectively killing the game.

If PS had instead implemented Outfit-Owned Bases or some other ways to allow the players to "own" a part of the world, to involve them more, maybe you could have turned it around. Instead you tried to go for the "easy" solution, an expansion and some stupid new units, that just required new meshes and little more.

Planetside had a longevity problem, but you could have solved it with implementations in a different direction. It was not longevity that ultimately killed the game, SOE did that themselves through their incredibly imbecile live team.

Originally posted by Rasputin

Yaya, Victor, defend Planetside all you want. It was in the beginning a very good game, but as you say longevity was it's main problem.

But what killed it was the socalled "Balance Pass", which suddenly turned the game into VehicleSide. As a solder you couldn't set a foot outside a base. It would take you 30 Anti-vehicle rockets and 2 minutes to kill an abandoned tank standing still, not defending itself (I made a test).

Live team is morons, and they didn't understand the intricate balance of the game, instead they fucked it up royally, resulting in my guild and many others to quit in disgust.

After that came the mech warriors and the special underground expansion that divided up the population, effectively killing the game.

If PS had instead implemented Outfit-Owned Bases or some other ways to allow the players to "own" a part of the world, to involve them more, maybe you could have turned it around. Instead you tried to go for the "easy" solution, an expansion and some stupid new units, that just required new meshes and little more.

 

Planetside had a longevity problem, but you could have solved it with implementations in a different direction. It was not longevity that ultimately killed the game, the SOE did that themselves through their incredibly imbecile live team.

RAH RAH RASPUTIN LOVER OF THE RUSSIAN QUEEN!

sorry.. i had to

Originally posted by LordBonezy

MMOs might seem like a good place for money right now but it sure isn't a good place for a quality exprience and a rapidly improving product if Age of Conan is any measure of the industry.

Several Key Areas of Failure are evident in their implementation.

-Overmarketing ( Selling features which don't exist and never will)

-Underdeveloping ( Releasing a product without major components functional and without a plan to rapidly implement those features at a pace more rapid than the majority of your consumers are going to exprience their unfunctionality.

-Failure to innovate ( Break the mold in non-essential areas, and get the tentacles of development into areas where gamers are looking for fresh and new ideas, or areas which can clearly use improvement.

-Failure to Provide the Basic ( Functionality, Lagfree or lowlag, stable performance on box specs, interesting gameplay, functional and fair mechanics in class vs class abilities, functional grouping and clan/guild resources, create the drive for both competition and cooperation, without it you are running a single player MMO, and people don't stick around without compelling reasons to make friends or kill enemies.

Age of Conan failed in so many ways and yet there are those who still consider it a successful failure, or a success, well clearly it is neither, a successful failure would mean that the launch crowd who came and left would at least be interested in a free trial of the game and approve of the improvements, however that is not the case. A success would mean that the game never lost the majority of players who had played in the first place. Neither are true. Today 96% of players who have played AOC have moved on. Populations are imploding on mutiple servers and they are working hard to cut expenses and try to keep the company alive until they release the next expansion, probably missing some functionality, key components and with a lack of innovation just like Age of Conan and Anarchy Online.

Some developers and Funcom is no different, simply don't have the stones or the brains to develop a complete product.

Nice post I've said this quite a few times already, we are at a point where the glut of companies out there does not seem to reflect the talent pool working on mmo's.  I have quite a few hobbies outside of playing mmo's but mmo's are one of the only areas where there are so many companies I won't deal with and for reasons I think are very valid.  If you advertise something deliver it, while the warning on the box that tells us the game may be nothing like what we see on package is good protection for them far too many of them have played fast and lose with this fact.  I as a consumer have no sympathy for your particular excuse of why you have explained features in interviews and then added them to the box only to not have them working when the game released especially when in some cases things don't even get the chance to break the game as they never even show up.

I love the part of the article that points out how these devs take 5-7 years only to release horribly broken games while saying a few months could have helped.  AOC s still plagued with many problems and obviously some from launch so what would make one think that a few more months could make a difference.  Right now Darkfall seems to be ahead of most of the lackluster releases we've seen lately as far as fixing things.

I hope the industry doesn't need to purge itself much further for us to be able to see a better quality product from the mmo genre.

If you want MMOFPS, play Darkfall. Best game I have ever played by a long shot.

Great article.  My favourite parts are:

-"Fact is that in many cases, it's because developers and publishers are screwing up."

-"Some games were released just plain broken as a result of bad development. Vanguard and Tabula Rasa's launches were just befuddled messes."

-"However, in transitioning, both of these games hemorrhaged customers and the population plummeted like dinosaurs after the asteroid struck."

-"We made the mistake of introducing a mechanic that changed our game, rather than enhancing what was already special about it…"
 

I've seen all of these things as well, and they all seemed to really hurt the games in question. 

I'd add that games are really over-hyped.  It's a real downer when you're told that a game is going to have really spectacular features, and then when it goes live, they simply aren't there, or they're there but they don't work.  Sometimes they're never fixed and just axed.  Then players get the company line that says, "well they were there, but we couldn't get them working, and we have the right to change our game as we see fit."  Heh, maybe so, but then customers are going to exercise their right to hit the cancel button, and publishers can watch their investment go down the toilet.  It's a lose/lose situation for sure.

Originally posted by nin2010

If you want MMOFPS, play Darkfall. Best game I have ever played by a long shot.

Well, thanks for the good laugh any way... If I want a good FPS, one of the LAST games I'd play is Darkfall.  Its the poster child for over promise, under deliver thats been discussed.

Originally posted by HalfEmpty

Btw, are all the authors really as diabolical as their portraits make them look?. Taken together, they look like something out of Batmans' rogue gallery..

Wachter is an experienced community manager, so he knows the importance of making people afraid of you in order to maintain their respect and compliance.

After all, would you annoy the guy in that picture? No, because he looks like he'd show up at 3am knocking at your door, wanting a little 'face time'. ;-)

Finally an article written by someone with a gamer iq over 10.

If studios would simply make a game to fill a market/niche instead of trying to be all things to all people, game quality would go up 1000%. You can have a very successful game and make a tidy profit without 10 million subs.

The three factors that have lead us to this impasse are the growing amount of player MMO choice, the increasing influence of corporate policy on MMO companies and the change in the MMO player age demographic.

That’s a pretty big mire to get out of, I see no way out of the swamp soon.

----

"Btw, are all the authors really as diabolical as their portraits make them look?. Taken together, they look like something out of Batmans' rogue gallery.."

You didn't know Mr Wachter is secretly the Penguin? I guess a monocle and top hat can fool anyone.

Victor wachter a failed writer.

Its clearly that he experience only few mmo's that he himself played, he also only mention big ones and typical the ones that are eather succefull or comming soon from a big company.

Yeh some some smaller ones that are already dead MISTER negative.

If you guys keep comming up with same old shit we already knew nothing will chance.

Mister wachter your one of zillion writers that already have talk about before what you in your article again atalk about, try bloody something thats realy helps this industrie instead repeat yourselfs.

You also hope that big IP bring us succesfull IP's man you eather S....... or P......... i dunno but you want only repetiton of mmorpgs other wise why even mention SWTOR?

Ass long you game writers or developers think what mass want becouse it get you$$$$ we will go down hill untill mmorpgs are no more or so bad its not playable anymore by a serieus gamer.

If you also mentioned games like darkfall that realy had the nerf to be totally different then your beloved THEMEPARKS i would give you more credit.

Your article bring nothing new its a path we have discussed so manytimes and always about same shit:(

Dare mention developers that are small and be different instead always make free advertising in your articles for the already big ones that are totally boring and bring nothing new.

Failed topic:(

PS was very fun until the BFR mess. Also the rather radical balance changes killed some playerbase off too.

Also some lack of some serious FPs issues on the client was a problem too.

But in the end it still is one of the best MMO enviroments i've played around in long time.

Originally posted by JYCowboy

Great post Bob_Blawblaw. 

I agree except you need to consider the wieght of a given IP in the mix when suits decide to make an MMO on a franchise.  In a big way, that property hinders the conception of the MMO and expectation of returns reguardless of what "crap in box" is delivered.  I think we are starting to get over "WOW envy" now but its still used to sell a concept to board members.  There are just no management of expectations in this arena.  To use your example: Star Trek is a big IP; MMO's can make a lot of money.  Combine the concept and you make an easy sell to Paramount.  Now what is going to make this MMO a break out hit to the MMO player as defined on what was pitched to Paramount?  Do you focus on the Trekker/Trekkie?  No, you focus on the MMO gamer demographics and loose the chance to make a unique Star Trek MMO experiance.

I have said this before: "If your not Star Trek, then why would you play a Star Trek MMO?"

Yeah, this is a big problem.  Looking at the game at this stage, you see a lot of the tropes of the Mk1 MMO design.  They've been touting forever that the game will be designed "to appeal to all MMO gamers, not just Trekkies", which to me says "We're going to make a bland, generic product instead of one that really represents the IP."  This is phenomenally stupid.  If there is a "niche" for an IP that can generate revenue, it's the Trek folks.

These are the same people that waged a successfully OVERKILL letter-writing campaign in the '60s to keep the show on the air.  They got the first space shuttle named after the goddamn FICTIONAL STARSHIP.  They kept it going so hard another show started up 20 years later, only to spawn 3 more.  This is an IP with staying power, but more than that, with enough warm bodies and devotion that, if you went and made a hard-core all-Trek MMO, you'd have all the subscriptions you'd ever need.  Also, if it really WAS that, it would have to be different.  It would be GOOD.  And on THOSE merits, it might just attract other MMO gamers ANYWAY.

Blaiming failure of a MMO on development team isn't always right... Most likely you are to blame publisher - they usualy task development team with something like "Make a WoW clone, you have one third of time they had and one quarter money they had. And don't even try to say it's not doable." This is how the game development world works. Only very few studios can afford developing a game on their own funds and the one who has the money dictates conditions.

So... you have a team... you know you'll never be able to fully finish the project with given time span, but well, you have to pay salaries and all so you'll rather get 2-3yrs paid and know you won't finish than otherwise...

Point two... completing a project to 80% takes 20% time... that's an iron rule and simply works... so even you know you miss one year to make a project 100%, you spent two years on it and you are at about (rough shot) 95% of development process... Your producer wanting his money to generate new money says it's enough and you've got lecture book early release.

Ofc, there are still cases the dev teams underestimate the task and get in troubles.

Why the MMO are so mediocre-successfull? I think there might be one completely different reason than those named earlier. Back in starting days of MMO, there wasn't that many people with good enough internet connection. Those who had were usualy students, IT folks and similar. The audience capable of playing the game was totaly different than today. I wouldn't claim it was all people with master degree nor that it would be that different on average player IQ than today, but on social level it definitely was different. The games were made for pple of age 20+ (maybe even a bit more). These days the biggest audience is among teenagers and honestly... who else than teenager can play (for long) with teenager? Damn, I wouldn't be able to play with myself in my teens.

There is no doubt teenagers are much more unstable than an adult person (on psychical level) so it is much more likely they'll be changing their MMO on today-mood basis.

Factor two being the fact the new MMO aren't able to offer a fraction of what old MMO were capable of. Yes, they have ultra super mega giga graphics, super brilliant hi-fi sound, but the most important factor - the fun factor isn't that great... 

In my case... I play MMO to play with group of friends... back in old days I played DAoC... Everyone with a bit of brain was teaming in groups because the game was designed to give you more xp over time than while soloing (ofc, with necromancer exception). In Age of Conan and Warhammer grouping actually slowed down your progress. WTH, MMO not supporting it's players to play together...

Next point is the community... Imho community can make the MMO more than the software itself. Again, back in DAoC days I remember whole realm storming RvR areas on even slight warning enemy realm was doing relic raid... That is _hundreds_ of players in same zone, even in visibility range. Nowadays... "You can't enter the zone, it's full" ... lol, how is that supposed to make community work together? I'd rather not mention server processor capacity these days and old days is on totaly different scale... And they were able to do that on that slow hardware... why can't they do it on modern one?

Old days, there was much less of cross realming than these days - accounts on different realms etc. And again, there was much less teenager headaches among the community.

I am still waiting for a MMO that gives me back the feeling of massive hate against my enemies. Once it happens I'd call it a success because it would mean the game has pulled me in.

My 2 cents... sorry they got a bit oversized :-)

Nice read. I think the mmo's are all so alike, that is why they fail. Why pick up a new game when it is so similar to the one you just left?

Originally posted by Evasia

Victor wachter a failed writer.

Its clearly that he experience only few mmo's that he himself played, he also only mention big ones and typical the ones that are eather succefull or comming soon from a big company.

Yeh some some smaller ones that are already dead MISTER negative.

If you guys keep comming up with same old shit we already knew nothing will chance.

Mister wachter your one of zillion writers that already have talk about before what you in your article again atalk about, try bloody something thats realy helps this industrie instead repeat yourselfs.

You also hope that big IP bring us succesfull IP's man you eather S....... or P......... i dunno but you want only repetiton of mmorpgs other wise why even mention SWTOR?

Ass long you game writers or developers think what mass want becouse it get you$$$$ we will go down hill untill mmorpgs are no more or so bad its not playable anymore by a serieus gamer.

If you also mentioned games like darkfall that realy had the nerf to be totally different then your beloved THEMEPARKS i would give you more credit.

Your article bring nothing new its a path we have discussed so manytimes and always about same shit:(

Dare mention developers that are small and be different instead always make free advertising in your articles for the already big ones that are totally boring and bring nothing new.

Failed topic:(

Oh man! Talk about failed writer ^^ 

Nice article Victor I couldnt agree more with you. 

Quote:

"To this day, I maintain that PlanetSide was one of the best things that SOE ever released. But the market didn't understand it."

Sorry, but isn't that the same arrogant bollocks the politicians tell us. Our politics is good, if one the stupid masses would understand it? I didnt like Planetside, because I dont like PVP, and my guess is most people dont like it enough to center their entire gaming around it.

Companies and dev just DONT LISTEN. Sometimes the explanation just IS simple.

And as a second note, there are just WAAAY too many MMOs out there. At least half them has to close right away. Every dumbass company today thinks they can quickly tinker the next WOW together. I have seen enough MMOs fail due to reason the beta testers had said a damn long time before launch. I was in many betas, often a year before release, and I among many have said the expected issued over and over, and companies JUST DID NOT LISTEN.

Many TOLD Cryptic about the CO issues. Many TOLD about the expected Vanguard issues. The list is long. Tabula Rasa, PotBS, Dark & Light, WAR, AoC, I was in all those betas, I saw enough people saying what would be an issue, but the devs and companies preferred to listen to FANBOIS. They DAMMIT NEVER LISTEN. And I swear, the next time it will be the same again and again and again. Those devs prefer to listen to fanbois because that more comfortable and we who warn and critizise are always branded as trolls and haters, and in the end, we are right. Always. But do they learn. Nope. The story ends always in the damn same way, and god knows I wish just for once I would be wrong and my doomsaying would be a mistake.

Originally posted by Elikal

Quote:

"To this day, I maintain that PlanetSide was one of the best things that SOE ever released. But the market didn't understand it."

 

Sorry, but isn't that the same arrogant bollocks the politicians tell us. Our politics is good, if one the stupid masses would understand it? I didnt like Planetside, because I dont like PVP, and my guess is most people dont like it enough to center their entire gaming around it.

Companies and dev just DONT LISTEN. Sometimes the explanation just IS simple.

And as a second note, there are just WAAAY too many MMOs out there. At least half them has to close right away. Every dumbass company today thinks they can quickly tinker the next WOW together. I have seen enough MMOs fail due to reason the beta testers had said a damn long time before launch. I was in many betas, often a year before release, and I among many have said the expected issued over and over, and companies JUST DID NOT LISTEN.

Many TOLD Cryptic about the CO issues. Many TOLD about the expected Vanguard issues. The list is long. Tabula Rasa, PotBS, Dark & Light, WAR, AoC, I was in all those betas, I saw enough people saying what would be an issue, but the devs and companies preferred to listen to FANBOIS. They DAMMIT NEVER LISTEN. And I swear, the next time it will be the same again and again and again. Those devs prefer to listen to fanbois because that more comfortable and we who warn and critizise are always branded as trolls and haters, and in the end, we are right. Always. But do they learn. Nope. The story ends always in the damn same way, and god knows I wish just for once I would be wrong and my doomsaying would be a mistake.

I wouldn't bring politics into this. The topic is muddy enough as it is. And the example you used actually IS true, democracy only works with a public that is educated and willing enough to defend it's own freedoms. I don't think many can honestly say that is still true for our general public.

This kind of goes back to a difference in how MMOs actually get made, and how we as gamers perceive they do. Developers don't always get the final say in a game. They are usually (especially now that MMOs cost so damn much to make) under a tremendous amount of pressure from outside investors and producers. It is not uncommon that developers say "hey the players are saying this" and then they are told "so what, do it this way". This isn't even getting into the problem with having so many developers, and no one really knows which players to listen to half the time. They just have to make their best educated guess.

With such a saturated market, we as players really do have some strength to pick and choose what we want to play. I think we are already starting to see a shift in the way developers are approaching this genre, after the last few train wrecks. These games aren't made overnight, and neither will the changes we want happen this way. I know it sucks having to wait so long for big changes, but this is one genre where patience really is a virtue.

I'm not really convinced you can ever not blame the developers, except in extreme circumstances.  Yes they have pressure, and yes they may have someone trying to tell them what to do or not to do, but what creative profession doesn't?  While you can argue differences in capital investment, I still believe that if the senior developers, i.e. the ones who interact with the publishers, had enough cojones to back up their way of making the game, then the publishers wouldn't insist on interfering to the point of ruin.  It's part of a senior developer's job to convince the investors of the team's vision of the game. 

Certainly there have definitely been some cases of publisher interference, but on the whole I think that we gamers let developers pass the buck far too easily.  At the end of their day, it's their game and if it fails, then they are the ones who made it that way.  If any blame lies at the feet of the publishers, it is because the developers promised something they couldn't deliver or failed at the planning stage or lacked the spine or charisma to push their vision forward.

Great article. I would say though that we are indeed waiting for another breakthrough "AAA" MMO. I fully expect TOR to be a huge hit. DC Online? eh not so much. I expect STO to be a moderate to huge hit as well, but the truth is, whether those in the industry or we the fans out here reading these threads about the industry just DO NOT KNOW when or where the next "Big Thing" will come from. For all we know some little, barebones company puts out a game and BAM! It becomes a huge hit. One just never knows. If you all remember, there were many thoughts that Blizzard would not put out a successful game because they had only done single player games. Well, I guess those critiques were really wrong there.

Just as a footnote, for that very reason that critiques are concerned that Bioware is great at making single player PC games will hamper their ability to make a good MMO, for me that gives me that gut feeling that TOR will be spectacular

Nevertheless, within the next few years, I'd be very surprised if at least a handful of games reach that so called "AAA" level of success. And don't be surprised by a game or two that come out of nowhere to shake up this industry.

So Mote It Be.

Its just a long bla blah "we are all victims of the system" shit. I can't hear it anymore. SOME people make decisions, and it is not us gamers. I don't care rats ass if developers or managers or goddamn cleaning personell decides, but SOMEONE in those corporations makes decisions, and they are apparently not smarter than those who ran all those bankrupt banks.

I am not even pointing at myself, but in every single beta there were enough clever people who pointed at the issues long before and the companies and whoever responsible WITHIN those companies chose to ignore the warnings. Devs, managers, I don't care, but the truth was THERE.

I for one am getting alittle more worried about where the MMO market is going, as bad as the globle economy is getting I would not be suprised to see the $14.99 sub-game's goto $19.99/mo or higher just to try an make up loss revenue and to prevent mass lay-offs just to keep their company(for some) above water. but as I see it the gaming industry is going to get hard hit in the wallet and many companies are going to start tightening their belts of which projects have more priority and which can be trashed.

Originally posted by Elikal

Its just a long bla blah "we are all victims of the system" shit. I can't hear it anymore. SOME people make decisions, and it is not us gamers. I don't care rats ass if developers or managers or goddamn cleaning personell decides, but SOMEONE in those corporations makes decisions, and they are apparently not smarter than those who ran all those bankrupt banks.

I am not even pointing at myself, but in every single beta there were enough clever people who pointed at the issues long before and the companies and whoever responsible WITHIN those companies chose to ignore the warnings. Devs, managers, I don't care, but the truth was THERE.

Exactly Ellkal, and that is why I am asking these questions. We have a seemly smart and informed community here and their thoughts and ideas should be heard and heard loudly by the powers that be. Eventually someone in the industry will listen and maybe then we can start having quality games that at least make the grinding part fun, exciting and/or at the very least interesting.

Originally posted by Elikal

Its just a long bla blah "we are all victims of the system" shit. I can't hear it anymore. SOME people make decisions, and it is not us gamers. I don't care rats ass if developers or managers or goddamn cleaning personell decides, but SOMEONE in those corporations makes decisions, and they are apparently not smarter than those who ran all those bankrupt banks.

I am not even pointing at myself, but in every single beta there were enough clever people who pointed at the issues long before and the companies and whoever responsible WITHIN those companies chose to ignore the warnings. Devs, managers, I don't care, but the truth was THERE.

As anyone who has worked for any large corporation will tell you corporations waste money because they do not take the time to look into the small everyday operations. Personally I work for a very small company, and yes I still see waste, but my girlfriend has worked for three very large corporations since we've known each other and they all waste amazing amounts of money because they don't take the time to deal with the individuals who run each division, more managers equals more waste, time and again she's seen this. Recently they even told all employees that they would no longer match the 401k, no college reimbursement and freeze all raises but a month later hired a new VP and spent half a mil on party in her honor, in the building she works in. Most corporations are not smart, fast or agile, they are plodding old dinosaurs.

Gaming corporations are as well. I think it's safe to say that most of us are looking for something new in this genre but we aren't seeing it from the large corporations. The biggest launch of this year, with the possible exception of Aion, could be FE. Yeah CO is chugging along but the free Halloween weekend just reaffirmed, for me anyway, that it wasn't a game I'd be interested in long term. FE went a slightly different direction and although no one is expecting the numbers of an Aion the community seems pretty stable and growing. It's still too early to tell but will Funcom be able to do something similar with The Secret World because it is different, let's hope. But games like STO, which I am still holding a bit of hope out for, goes and alienates what should be their core players by simply ignoring several main components of the IP, is that smart, is that even sane?

On a personal note, I played Planetside when it launched, the biggest problem I had with this game was a simple one that I believe still exists, if the bullets, beams, etc. do no hit the aiming reticule why have one at all? I'm not talking about a shotgun here, or the sniper rifle for that matter, but when you hit 5 feet to the left with a rifle blast of where you are aiming the game becomes pretty pointless. Let's hope this gets fixed in PS2 and I'll be back.

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

"Lord of the Rings Online launched in April of 2007 and as far as I am concerned, it was the last successful triple-A MMORPG launched (I think Free Realms is a good game too, but it's kind of playing a different ballgame). That means that we're coming up on three years before another MMO succeeds and we're placing a lot of hope in Star Wars: The Old Republic and DC Universe Online to bring us back to a place where we can feel good about a major game release. But I'm also hoping that past failures don't scare developers from innovating. I'd love to see another stab at an MMOFPS (which SOE has made mentions of, yay!) or even a new sandbox style fantasy game like Ultima Online back in the day."

 

I wouldn't put too much hope in those two titles. SOE has it's reputation which will forever (or at least until they let Smedley go) hamper any MMO they put forward. Add to that CO's launch and it looks to me like the "super hero" novelty has come and gone. If it was to succeed again it'd have to be done by a company that doesn't have the baggage that SOE and Cryptic have now. As for TOR...I really don't see it being the hit you hope it will. I think it'll be alot like Dragon Age: Origins, and there will be thoughts that while it is a good storied game, it's not something I'd want to pay monthly for. I'm loving DA:O right now, but there's no way I'd pay monthly for it, good story and all.

 

As for the second point (in orange) I don't see how it could scare them from innovating. They haven't been innovating, they've been chasing the dragon of WoW dollars and it is fairly easy to say those companies have already stopped innovating. The big name companies haven't put out MMOFPS' and Sandbox games. Only the small, severely underfunded indy companies have, and many have to resort to launching the game prematurely as you mention. Adventurine did it, Icarus the same and now Star vault is blatantly saying "Hey guys, we need you to buy our game so we can finish it".

the funniest thing i keep seeing is how people keep under estimating Bioware.  And what is even funnier is before WoW came out people said the same things about Blizzard.  Bioware is a tried and true company, if anyone can knock blizzard off their high horse it would be them.   And if they can't do it, then honestly i don't think anyone else can.  It may only sale a million off the start but in time it will gain ground i'm sure.

But i'm willing to bet that when TOR comes out it will be the greatest SW game ever and they will add in content every month or more-so.  Because if anyone payed much attention to the development they would know TOR is designed on the same engine as Hero's Journey.  Which enables them to make changes on the fly and add in content on the fly.

Originally posted by Xenrathe

Also thought it was a good read.

I've rooted for so many MMOs that ultimately failed... Ultima Online 2 and Shadowbane to name a few, yet I am still astounded by some of the poor choices that developers and management make.  I never played Asheron's Call (I was playing Ultima Online at the time) but I heard such wonderful things about AC's PvP that I was rather ecstatic to have a second chance with Asheron's Call 2.  Yet when I loaded it up, even I could tell that it was nothing like Asheron's Call.  How is such an obvious blunder made?

Ignoring AC2's other issues (as another poster mentioned), I suspect that it failed at the conceptual stage.  They wanted another WoW-esque hit.  But developers, and investors, and whoever else need to realize something: you aren't going to out-WoW WoW.  It's not going to happen.  Ever.

So stop trying.  Look at EvE Online, which is moderately successful because they offered an MMO experience that wasn't just WoW in a different set of clothes.  It fulfilled a desire for exploration and diplomacy and space fighting, a desire that no one else had managed to successfully tap.  CCP, the makers of Eve, seem to get their business in a way that few others do.  Though Eve isn't my cup of tea, I've seen enough to believe that CCP knows how to patch the game in a way that doesn't alter the fundamental experience, the social empire-building aspects.  Because of this, CCP has earned their fan's loyalty and trust.

 

Getting back to failed MMOs, I would be keenly interested to read an interview with a developer of a failed MMO, for some insight into how and why the ball was dropped.  Sadly such interviews are often lacking in said insight, usually full of marketing lines, excuses, or an outright demonstration that the developer at no point knew what he was doing.  Though not a MMO, I remember reading an interview with one of the creators of Kane & Lynch (which achieved some fame in the critical realm because of the Gamespot controversy), which was fascinatingly honest.  Any chance anyone could link me to a similiar MMO interview?

In my opinion, what it often comes down to is that developers (and the 'suits') are unwilling and unable to throw away bad work.  As a writer, I've learned that you've got to be willing to chuck something that isn't going to work.  I've spent hours upon hours on a short story, or a chapter in a novel, or an article only to admit that it was bad and throw it away and start fresh.  Unfortunately while writing is basically free, games require lots of capital, and sometimes these developers are left with basically no choice but to hype their game in order to front-load box sales.  Sucks, but I'm not sure that it's reasonable to expect otherwise.

But because I prefer to never end on a sour note, I admit to being somewhat happy that the big publishers are unable or unwilling to take risks.  That makes your more independent titles that much more refreshing, that much more bold.  Anyone hear about Love, for example?  Only a matter of time til one of these smaller titles scores big.

Red by me:

I don't know if you're speaking in generalizations or if you actually think AC2 came out after WoW.  For what it's worth, AC2 was out roughly 2 years before WoW.  WoW actually has more in common with AC2 than any other game I've seen/played.

AC2's failures were epic. 

First, as has already been noted, AC2 was NOTHING like it's predecessor.  The only common item between the two besides the name, was the lore.  That's it.  AC1 and AC2 were at polar opposites as far as game play.  Second was the plethora of brokenness.  Chat, skills/combat, crafting....pretty much everything at one point or another.  Third, and I think this is one that gets glanced over often, is the system requirements for AC2 at the time of release were mammoth and precluded many interested in the game.

AC2 was a game that was conceived by bean counters.  It was the game MS thought they could make to be as generic as possible so as to appeal to as many as possible, and they ended up not appealing to many at all.

I will say I am surprised it lasted as long as it did.

More OT:

Awesome article.  One of the better reads I've had in my years lurking the MMORPG site.

I also want to throw my endorsement hat into the ring for Fallen Earth.  The post apocolyptic MMO/FPS/RPG.  Excellent game from an indy developer.  It's a breath of fresh air in a sea of WoW wanna-be's.  It's not the perfect polished game, but lots of fun if you take the time to learn it.

Originally posted by erictlewis

That was a very good read.

I agree SOE has messed up a bunch but they have a couple of really good games haging in there. 

You had turbine who completely blew it with DND to come back out and with the FTP model to almost save it.  LOTRO is floudering, despite what some of the fan boys say and the possibilies in china.  The game in the states has seen a huge downturn, maybe with this xpack they can save it,  but I really dont thing so, lacking any clear dirrection.

Other gaming companies, funcom with there problems with AOC, NCSOFT what a joke I have seen so many post where folks went to AION then going back to their respected games.  

It is a harsh market, and I think were in for an MMO crash soon, total and across the board. 

Main reaon why,  folks are board.

 

Red by me.

RE: Turbine

An announcement from the devs at roughly the beginning of the summer indicated subs were increasing, even in the western markets.  This was made right before they released in Asia where they sold 2.5 million copies.

Add to that they are releasing a new x-pack in roughly a week and it doesn't sound like a company in trouble, or "floudering"(sic) to me.

Doesn't sound much like a company in a downturn either.

It doesn't help that there are great single player games out there that gives players an epic experience minus the awful communities and gold farmers...

I personally think that the reasons we're seeing so many lackluster releases are twofold.

1. As touched on in the article, too many companies are pushing out their games too early too get a revenue stream coming in. Perfect examples recently are AoC and WAR. It's all been about getting a chunk of the WoW pie too.

Both those games were developed by companies that should have known better than to do what they did, but both did it anyway. Or more correctly, they were forced to push out their games incomplete because "big brother money man" was breathing down their necks because "big brother" was looking over at WoW and salivating at the prospect of getting some of that dough encrusted filling.

MBJ got his truckload of cash (his words at the time) from EA, and Mythic lost it's say as to when the game was released. Oh he'll deny it till he's blue in the face, but those of us that were following the game's development saw the cuts in planned content begin and the feeling of rush rush set in. Funcom signed a publishing deal with SCi/Eidos and SCi/Eidos and major Funcom shareholders started getting anxious about not seeing revenues and we know how that went.

Unfortunately we still see it happening even after those huge mistakes. Take a look at what's going on with Cryptic/Atari and STO.

2. For some reason a bunch of the mmo developers didn't look at what Blizzard did with WoW properly. Blizzard didn't worry about being overly innovative. They didn't worry about getting the pats on the back from other devs at conventions, pseudo gaming experts and journalists, and us talking heads on forums, over their rad design concepts either. They simply took a bunch of things that people obviously liked in other games, put them together in one, and did most of those things better than they'd been done before. They evolved the genre just a little bit. They didn't try and mutate it in one go.

Again we can look at AoC and WAR for good examples. It was evident from the popularity of PvP in WoW that PvP was becoming a more popular activity in mmos. So what do these companies do? Instead of just tweeking the PvP in their games to improve on what WoW was doing, they go whole hog way too far in that direction and promote their games as PvP games. They failed to see that although PvP was becoming a more popular activity for mmo players to participate in, it wasn't something that most mmo players wanted to do most of the time. Sure they both offered PvE too, but it was done in a half-hearted manner.

Then we have games like Darkfall, where apparently the company bought into the rhetoric of the wannabe gaming intelligentsia at various sites (including this one at times), and on the various forums/blogs on a lot of those sites (including this one at times), about having the games hearken back to the early days. The problem is that all these flapping lips seem to forget, or conveniently fail to mention, that there was a good reason why most of those elements fell to the wayside eventually. Most people didn't like them back then, and just because these people remember those things fondly isn't going to make enough others like them now.

I think that we are going to again see some big numbers for some upcoming games, but it'll be the games that make darn sure they have a full game experience at release that's relatively bug free, and offer the players what they are showing they like in what they're playing already. As opposed to thinking they know better what players will like.

Originally posted by Hagonbok

 

Then we have games like Darkfall, where apparently the company bought into the rhetoric of the wannabe gaming intelligentsia at various sites (including this one at times), and on the various forums/blogs on a lot of those sites (including this one at times), about having the games hearken back to the early days. The problem is that all these flapping lips seem to forget, or conveniently fail to mention, that there was a good reason why most of those elements fell to the wayside eventually. Most people didn't like them back then, and just because these people remember those things fondly isn't going to make enough others like them now.

I think that we are going to again see some big numbers for some upcoming games, but it'll be the games that make darn sure they have a full game experience at release that's relatively bug free, and offer the players what they are showing they like in what they're playing already. As opposed to thinking they know better what players will like.

Absolutely agree. 

One of the interesting things about veterans (and I'm talking RL military veterans) is that over beers at the VFW hall they seem to remember the good times and not the bad.  Which is understandable.  They don't talk about how half their platoon was cut in half but they'll talk about the celebration of the victory and forget the cost of it.

So it is with PvP nostalgia for old time MMO players.

SOE in particular is unwilling to examine why WoW was such a success, because SOE doesn't do polish and relatively bug free gameplay.  They're not publishing games and making some money at it, they're trying to make money by publishing games.

Is 300k subs per month a failure. Probably in Blizzards eyes although I highly doubt their claim about 10 mill subs as do you all. A game fails if it is not a well developed game. By that I mean coding, polish, art, sound, animation and heart that devs have to put into a game. And for many (including myself) a game fails when you can see through the marketing bullshit preceeding a game. Aion in my eyes will fail eventually even though I have not played it. AoC failed. WAR failed etc etc. As for planetside I did not have a chance to play it partly due to the fact that I did try out a FPS style MMO (Tabula Rasa) which also failed and left me numb to that genre.

There is so much failure in this particular game industry apart from 3 MMO games that are thriving (this can be argued against). The good thing is that I'm glad to be back to normal PC gaming because I cannot see MMO devs recovering from lack of innovation anytime soon. And yes there is a huge lack of it. Once you see that you can accept the facts and hope for a brighter future. In the mean time keep your money to yourselves ;)

One of the best article written on this website.   Im very happy with how MMORPG:COM is now starting to talk as true gamers - instead of talking through the developers.  

Why have all these MMO failed?   And I personally would add WAR and AOC to this list since going down from 800K + subs to under 100K like is pretty obvious now - is a major failure in anyones book.

But whay the failed is because they were NOT created from a gamers perspective - they were created to make money - only money and NOTHING but money.  These compnaies jumped on the bandwagon to make a game for millions - meaning easy money...

And... when they found out that MMO gamers are not all stupid enough to fall for 1 year subs without playing.... These games did the next best thing... They lied and PRed ppl to PRE-ORDER their games.  Making sure that even with a total garbage of a game - they would still make some money.

THats why games like Tabula Rasa - AC2 - Vanguard and more games failed.  THey launched a game in the SAME state as WAR and AOC did ... but they did not fool ppl into preorder - thus having zero money to actually fix the buggy crap they were offering.

And this is now where we ... The gamers need to put our foot down.  Pre- orders are NOT good for gamers.  They are a PR trick to get money for something that isn't half developed.  Games like Alganon are now going one step further ... acutally chancelling launch dates after ppl have pre-ordered.  Next step is that ppl will be able to pre-order - even before the development of the game starts.

The true issue with all these MMOs... is that they were trying to do something better than the big one (WOW). But they just failed to grasp the key elements that make WOW so hugely populare.  It has nothing to do with graphics.. it has nothing to do with interface ... it has nothing to do with content.   It has to do with the basics of good gameplay (it is a game after all) and last but not least... QUALITY CONTROL.   Thats where all these games fail miserably.  They let out content (even now after whole year of the game beeing live like WAR and AOC) that is absolutly LITTERED with bugs on top of bugs that make the games totally unplayable days - even weeks after patch.   This is where all MMOS are falling behind of Blizzard's Monster.... And it seems that it will not change any time soon.
 

i still miss Tabula Rasa, it was still widely popular on the european servers and almost all the kinks had been worked out .... it was a far better experiance than AoC or WAR was... WAR mythic can't even spell "new content" let alone design it ;)

ahh well.... c'est la vie.

I just want to say i loved Tabula Rasa i was so pissed it closed down. I honestly believe it could have killed the WoW giant with a sniper shot from 500 yards (my highest level was a sniper :D )  if NC soft had just done their jobs,them or whoever was in charge of getting the game out there and makeing it known. I saw one piece on G4 during its early development and then after that....nothing not another word about it till shortly before it came out. For me being a huge Sci-Fi game fan it was the best game id ever played....and it was getting better even when they were getting ready to shut it down....ok i took a real detour there and totally forgot what i was going to say lol. oh yeah it is really hard to compete with the big games that have been around a long time but they really should keep trying anyway dont rush keep working till you get it right people. If the game is really great when your done with it the time and expense will definately be worth it.   I hope that makes sense im not good at conveying what i mean.

And one more thing about why I think alot of these games failed.  They lack humor.  One of the greatest part about WOW is the humor that Blizzard puts into it.  I still remember the day when I started WOW and met the boming dwarf NPCs in Dun Morogh.  I mean -  I still stop by them to giggle.

WAR has abit of that... on the Destruction side.  The Order is just one big boredom when it comes to humor.   Humor in AOC... Doubt that ppl from Norway have humor after playing it...  Other than two puppy and cat jokes... Bunch of nothing.

Originally posted by lordessedess

I just want to say i loved Tabula Rasa i was so pissed it closed down. I honestly believe it could have killed the WoW giant with a sniper shot from 500 yards (my highest level was a sniper :D )  if NC soft had just done their jobs,them or whoever was in charge of getting the game out there and makeing it known. I saw one piece on G4 during its early development and then after that....nothing not another word about it till shortly before it came out. For me being a huge Sci-Fi game fan it was the best game id ever played....and it was getting better even when they were getting ready to shut it down....ok i took a real detour there and totally forgot what i was going to say lol. oh yeah it is really hard to compete with the big games that have been around a long time but they really should keep trying anyway dont rush keep working till you get it right people. If the game is really great when your done with it the time and expense will definately be worth it.   I hope that makes sense im not good at conveying what i mean.

I also enjoyed Tabula Rasa. For all its faults, it was still entertaining. I ran a spy and a sniper up to cap.  But once there, there wasn't much at all to actually do.  If you've noticed, the three games that NCsoft has axed have all been western.  Aion is simply a further demonstration that NCsoft is clueless when it comes to the western markets.  They expect the same grind/gankfest template to work everywhere. Their suits seem incapable of grasping the reality that western gaming culture is rather different from eastern.  Aion will no doubt follow the Linage2 path. Lots of initial box sales, and then a slow steady decline in subs.

Originally posted by Frobner

And one more thing about why I think alot of these games failed.  They lack humor.  One of the greatest part about WOW is the humor that Blizzard puts into it.  I still remember the day when I started WOW and met the boming dwarf NPCs in Dun Morogh.  I mean -  I still stop by them to giggle.

WAR has abit of that... on the Destruction side.  The Order is just one big boredom when it comes to humor.   Humor in AOC... Doubt that ppl from Norway have humor after playing it...  Other than two puppy and cat jokes... Bunch of nothing.

One of WoW's most attractive features is the many playful takes on pop culture.  Two words: "Harris Pilton", the blood elf female with an attitude.  The Kessel Run.  The entire /silly thing where the human talks about these gnomes and a lost piece of jewelry.  The Star Trek references. The game is chock full of pop culture asides that make you smile.  "This is only building that fit Brog!  Goblins make buildings too small!"

SWG didn't do this as much, but my guildies did.  There is so much you can do with pop culture references in an IP like Star Wars, things that are trite and silly but just crack you up, like running into a bunch of Nightsisters and saying, in spatial, "I've got a bad feeling about this".

Originally posted by UnSub

Originally posted by HalfEmpty

Btw, are all the authors really as diabolical as their portraits make them look?. Taken together, they look like something out of Batmans' rogue gallery..

Wachter is an experienced community manager, so he knows the importance of making people afraid of you in order to maintain their respect and compliance.

After all, would you annoy the guy in that picture? No, because he looks like he'd show up at 3am knocking at your door, wanting a little 'face time'. ;-)

LOL! I would not in any state of mind think of offending him :)

Excellent article that hits on many valid points. We have all seen the effects of changing the games core play (UO when they split it into Trammel and Felucia... Pretty much killed it for myself, my guildmates, and many many others. Then again with the AoS expansion.) and it is NEVER pretty. WoW had the right idea when they designed it. Dumb down the game to the point even an 80 year old woman could jump on and play with no issues. I do not agree that when Blizzard releases their next MMO that it will hit the same status of WoW. They just released the right kind of game for the masses at a time when there were very few developers in the MMO scene. As for SOE their reputation will haunt them forever. The only thing they have done right is to change Infantry Online back to a free game. I am afraid that even getting rid of the upper management will not be enough to save them. 

Originally posted by illanadan

Originally posted by UnSub

Originally posted by HalfEmpty

Btw, are all the authors really as diabolical as their portraits make them look?. Taken together, they look like something out of Batmans' rogue gallery..

Wachter is an experienced community manager, so he knows the importance of making people afraid of you in order to maintain their respect and compliance.

After all, would you annoy the guy in that picture? No, because he looks like he'd show up at 3am knocking at your door, wanting a little 'face time'. ;-)

LOL! I would not in any state of mind think of offending him :)

Excellent article that hits on many valid points. We have all seen the effects of changing the games core play (UO when they split it into Trammel and Felucia... Pretty much killed it for myself, my guildmates, and many many others. Then again with the AoS expansion.) and it is NEVER pretty. WoW had the right idea when they designed it. Dumb down the game to the point even an 80 year old woman could jump on and play with no issues. I do not agree that when Blizzard releases their next MMO that it will hit the same status of WoW. They just released the right kind of game for the masses at a time when there were very few developers in the MMO scene. As for SOE their reputation will haunt them forever. The only thing they have done right is to change Infantry Online back to a free game. I am afraid that even getting rid of the upper management will not be enough to save them. 

Thats my take as well. Even axing Smed at this point would not redeem SOE.  They have made WAY too many BAD decisions over years and years for any hope of redemption.

I'm a 6 years veteran of Planetside and I have to comment abotu a few things:

Planetside was the best game I've ever played, to this day, I've found no fix to replace it. What made planetside ... planetside was actually two parts: Planetside the game and Planetside the community. I've noticed throughout these years of play that the players that stayed and played were those that were involved in excellent outfits and worked as part of the community to promote gameplay. The game *was* repetitive only if you succumbed to the formula the mass of the players (To wit, The Zerg) would rinse and repeat over and over.

This is interesting because of two things:

Planetside was as sandbox-ish as you can get in it's own highly specialized way. You really could do anything you liked - go anywhere you want, attack any continent you want (drain a base, drive it to neutral, hack away), but it required you to actually be part of a large team to accomplish this. These spec-ops tactics required time, effort, patience and sometimes failed completely ... but they were the soul and true core of the game for me. The average Zerger could not (or would not bother) handle this freedom. Which says something about MMO players, my 2nd point:

Players don't want freedom ... sorry. We say we want a sandbox (I want one, me and my outfit enjoyed it very much in 6 years of play), but in fact very few really want it. This drives games such as Wow (which IMHO is a fancy IRC chat room) and its clones to give you three modes of play: The wow-way, the solo-wow-way and the guild-wow-way. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what each means.

As long as players just want a theme park, that's what we'll get. As theme parks go there's no better than Wow. Sorry everybody! Blizzard just know their business and are damned good at it. I guess that leaves everybody else with niche attempts of various degrees of success and failures. I'm happy that a few other companies are now trying to produce an MMOFPS (CCP with their neato EVE hybrid, a rumored Planetside 2/Next) and I'm looking forward to another PS like experience.

TBH, I'd pay a monthly subscription to just get a revamped Planetside - one with no cheating, better netcode and fixed bugs.

As a person who is at the point of abandoning MMOs altogether, let me add my two cents.

MMOs are about communities. You need groups of like-minded people playing something cooperatively. Otherwise, why the hell am I playing $15 month if I'm not getting something social out of it?

To get that, you either need a massive community, from which specific types of players can band together and play together, or you need a specifically-targeted game where the whole community is generally of like mind.

Gaming companies need to put up a lot of money and flesh out the idea of social market segmentation.

Right now, all games are developed trying to appeal to all people, but at their core they are all the same PvP-oriented game with variations of graphics, lore, genre and mechanics. Lets face it, a community is rarely much better than it's worst sub-group of players, and PvP games will always have at their core a bunch of seriously anti-social/sociopathic gankers.

There are reasons why games like WoW, LotRO and DDO have emerged as successes (to varying degrees, of course). Why is it that all these PvP games (I guess with the exception of EVE) just come and go, yet even though there have only been a small number of PvE-focused games released, they have stayed around?

PvP games obviously have their appeal and their market. However, there is a huge market for well-executed PvE that currently exists, and I would say an even larger one that is untapped if you can totally isolate a community from PvPers and gankers.

Every time i hear the worlds "World of Warcraft" it makes me want to hurl.The OP compared it as big to everything else. Hey i played WoW off and on for a year or two. It's an ok game, an average MMO by most any standard. What sells WoW is popularity, ease of play, access. When you ask what did WoW do better then anything that came before it the answer was *MARKETING* plus a huge groupie fanbase.

That doesn't change the fact that by all comparison its just an average game. It's not the best at PVE or PVP  as many games dominate it in every genre. Warhammer Online didnt fail because of WoW. It failed because its fanbase were people like myself who seen the greatest PVP game of all time DAOC made into a crappy WoW clone. Had Warhammer been DAOC 2.0 it would of been the be of all PVP games now.

Though WoW is still very popular its so mainstream that people have either played it or quit playing it. It's not a must have for Christmas game anymore. Games fail because they are too affraid to take a chance at success. In doing that they fall back on WoW marketing strategy and go down the drain because NOBODY who plays MMO's wants another World of Warcraft. People want new experiences. They want community of the past and the thrill of playing a NEW experience.

The MMO feel is dead and gone now. Its the same o same o. I lust for a game that actually excites me to play once again. I've played them all as have many so we have many resident experts who know what they want vs what they don't want. Attention Developers! The future in MMO's are niche markets not grand scale like WoW.  Give us something new , fresh and alive or FAIL

"EVE Online launched to mediocre subscription numbers and lingered at sub-100K subscription levels for two years, to later become one of the top MMO populations out there."

Yeah, by selling multiple accounts to overcome their perverse game design lol. I'd wager that 1/3 the players (us "noobs" although I almost racked up a year's sub time) only had 1 account. All the "pros" had multiple accounts to mine/market/mission grind with - and I'm not talking the alternate slots, I mean paid accounts.

Originally posted by YonmaN

I'm a 6 years veteran of Planetside and I have to comment abotu a few things:

Planetside was the best game I've ever played, to this day, I've found no fix to replace it. What made planetside ... planetside was actually two parts: Planetside the game and Planetside the community. I've noticed throughout these years of play that the players that stayed and played were those that were involved in excellent outfits and worked as part of the community to promote gameplay. The game *was* repetitive only if you succumbed to the formula the mass of the players (To wit, The Zerg) would rinse and repeat over and over.

This is interesting because of two things:

Planetside was as sandbox-ish as you can get in it's own highly specialized way. You really could do anything you liked - go anywhere you want, attack any continent you want (drain a base, drive it to neutral, hack away), but it required you to actually be part of a large team to accomplish this. These spec-ops tactics required time, effort, patience and sometimes failed completely ... but they were the soul and true core of the game for me. The average Zerger could not (or would not bother) handle this freedom. Which says something about MMO players, my 2nd point:

Players don't want freedom ... sorry. We say we want a sandbox (I want one, me and my outfit enjoyed it very much in 6 years of play), but in fact very few really want it. This drives games such as Wow (which IMHO is a fancy IRC chat room) and its clones to give you three modes of play: The wow-way, the solo-wow-way and the guild-wow-way. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what each means.

As long as players just want a theme park, that's what we'll get. As theme parks go there's no better than Wow. Sorry everybody! Blizzard just know their business and are damned good at it. I guess that leaves everybody else with niche attempts of various degrees of success and failures. I'm happy that a few other companies are now trying to produce an MMOFPS (CCP with their neato EVE hybrid, a rumored Planetside 2/Next) and I'm looking forward to another PS like experience.

TBH, I'd pay a monthly subscription to just get a revamped Planetside - one with no cheating, better netcode and fixed bugs.

Very true. I maintain that the only guaranteed way to make a successful (edit: non-theme park) game is to make the tools simple and easy to understand, the purpose clear and direct, and have the obstacles in the way add the complexity that makes players think about what they need to do and combine forces to do it. Theme parks satisfy all of these rules save complexity - they iron that out into a flat road so they don't obstruct anyone's path to the rewards.

Planetside had an excellent foundation going, but was just in the wrong hands to continue growing into the game that defined the FPS market, and did so as an MMO. This speaks to what is wrong with a big company buying a smaller company for its product and trying to manage it for success. It's the small company that understands why people will buy its product in the first place - big-company resources may help it launch the product, but big-company management isn't going to change it for the better.

Originally posted by PhelimReagh

 

MMOs are about communities. You need groups of like-minded people playing something cooperatively. Otherwise, why the hell am I playing $15 month if I'm not getting something social out of it?

 

To get that, you either need a massive community, from which specific types of players can band together and play together, or you need a specifically-targeted game where the whole community is generally of like mind.

 

Right now, all games are developed trying to appeal to all people, but at their core they are all the same PvP-oriented game with variations of graphics, lore, genre and mechanics. Lets face it, a community is rarely much better than it's worst sub-group of players, and PvP games will always have at their core a bunch of seriously anti-social/sociopathic gankers.

 

There are reasons why games like WoW, LotRO and DDO have emerged as successes (to varying degrees, of course). Why is it that all these PvP games (I guess with the exception of EVE) just come and go, yet even though there have only been a small number of PvE-focused games released, they have stayed around?

 

PvP games obviously have their appeal and their market. However, there is a huge market for well-executed PvE that currently exists, and I would say an even larger one that is untapped if you can totally isolate a community from PvPers and gankers.

While some of the core Ideas you have I agree with, such as MMORPG's should aim for Social opportunities and the social aspect playing a bigger role in their gameplay, I do not agree with the conclusions.

In my view, there is a conflict which resides somewhere in the middle between Game design and Marketing.

From one hand Designers make Themepark games, which and by their nature cannot appeal to all, and will only appeal to some.

And on the other hand Marketing is successfully inviting all to play them.

The result is that within the first 3 to 6 months there is a dramatic drop of subscriptions as all kinds of people realise that this is not a game that appeals to them in practice no matter how great the marketing made it sound in the beggining.

Of course, there is exceptions to this like there are exceptions to everything in life, and in this case the exception is Blizzard's WoW, it was just fortunate that its following made the leap to the MMORPG genre and through it a snow ball effect of popularity happened which reached the existing MMORPG playerbase as well. Yet lets not forget that WoW introduced a bigger number of new players to the genre than there was player of the genre at the time as well. And all these new players will not move to a clone of WoW.

So in my opinion trying to make a clone of it, can only be futile...loss of time and loss of investment.

I think the Devs should go back and rethink the approach from the beginning. What is that which popularised the genre in the first place?

A Themepark Game or a Virtual World?

it was a nice article, alil mainstream tho if ya get what i mean.

guess this guy hasn't heard of darkfall

Originally posted by vistakah

Every time i hear the worlds "World of Warcraft" it makes me want to hurl.The OP compared it as big to everything else. Hey i played WoW off and on for a year or two. It's an ok game, an average MMO by most any standard. What sells WoW is popularity, ease of play, access. When you ask what did WoW do better then anything that came before it the answer was *MARKETING* plus a huge groupie fanbase.

That doesn't change the fact that by all comparison its just an average game. It's not the best at PVE or PVP  as many games dominate it in every genre. Warhammer Online didnt fail because of WoW. It failed because its fanbase were people like myself who seen the greatest PVP game of all time DAOC made into a crappy WoW clone. Had Warhammer been DAOC 2.0 it would of been the be of all PVP games now.

Though WoW is still very popular its so mainstream that people have either played it or quit playing it. It's not a must have for Christmas game anymore. Games fail because they are too affraid to take a chance at success. In doing that they fall back on WoW marketing strategy and go down the drain because NOBODY who plays MMO's wants another World of Warcraft. People want new experiences. They want community of the past and the thrill of playing a NEW experience.

The MMO feel is dead and gone now. Its the same o same o. I lust for a game that actually excites me to play once again. I've played them all as have many so we have many resident experts who know what they want vs what they don't want. Attention Developers! The future in MMO's are niche markets not grand scale like WoW.  Give us something new , fresh and alive or FAIL

Investor; "Let me get this straight, you want tens of millions of *our* money, so you can make a game that is "new, fresh and alive"?? Investor has to sit down they are laughing so hard... Next prospect... Intones the mystic phrase; "Its just like World of Warcraft!"... Investors eyes go wide, and they start throwing truck loads of money at prospect... And players wonder why there are so many "WoW clones"?...

What ever players claim they want, the reality is rather different. WoW wouldn't have more than 11 million subscriptions more than 5 YEARS after launch if it wasn't doing quite a few things right. Its VERY likely that when the next expansion (Cataclysm) launches it will break sales records yet again.  Sure its an "average" game.. Thats making more money that many small nation states...

That "new, fresh and alive" game that you seek would cost millions and millions of *other peoples* money.  Taking a new approach is much more prone to risk than keeping to a standard well known template. Do I like that? Not in the least! But I understand the reality that exists. Thats why I support indie game companies when I think they have potential.  But lets not ignore reality while we are at it.

"Wachter": Failed title

<3  PS was such an impressive game.  Pretty spot on about it I think!!

But before WoW I remember there being failed MMOs, (probably just as many?), I don't think it has anything to do with WoWs success...  Although maybe it has added some dummy devs who think they can take a bite out of WoW.

Originally posted by Suraknar

While some of the core Ideas you have I agree with, such as MMORPG's should aim for Social opportunities and the social aspect playing a bigger role in their gameplay, I do not agree with the conclusions.

In my view, there is a conflict which resides somewhere in the middle between Game design and Marketing.

From one hand Designers make Themepark games, which and by their nature cannot appeal to all, and will only appeal to some.

And on the other hand Marketing is successfully inviting all to play them.

The result is that within the first 3 to 6 months there is a dramatic drop of subscriptions as all kinds of people realise that this is not a game that appeals to them in practice no matter how great the marketing made it sound in the beggining.

Of course, there is exceptions to this like there are exceptions to everything in life, and in this case the exception is Blizzard's WoW, it was just fortunate that its following made the leap to the MMORPG genre and through it a snow ball effect of popularity happened which reached the existing MMORPG playerbase as well. Yet lets not forget that WoW introduced a bigger number of new players to the genre than there was player of the genre at the time as well. And all these new players will not move to a clone of WoW.

So in my opinion trying to make a clone of it, can only be futile...loss of time and loss of investment.

I think the Devs should go back and rethink the approach from the beginning. What is that which popularised the genre in the first place?

A Themepark Game or a Virtual World?

There is no reason to see WoW as the enemy.  They are, almost single-handedly, bringing in millions upon millions of people into the MMO genre. Many of whom would probably be happy to leave and try something else if there was something out there worth trying.

WoW is the gateway drug which all game developers should be thrilled exists.

So while you don't have to make a "WoW clone" to succeed, you do need to figure out what need of the customer WoW is filling, and keep that in mind when you design any new game.

And you can't look back to try to recreate the Ultima Online days. The market is way too different. Developers should try to figure out what people who aren't playing MMOs like, what rewards they want for investing their time in something like an MMO, and figure out how to create an experience that meets their needs.

Growing the customer base betters the chances for niche games.

You also need to be realistic about what prevents people from joining MMOs to begin with, what is essentially holding back the growth of the genre. I firmly believe the limiter is PvP.

PvP is, at it's most basic, one paying customer having a huge amount of fun at the expense of another paying customer. In any PvP game there are always going to be a small number of twitchy players who will make huge time investments to learn every in, out, glitch, build, etc. to become dominant PvPers. That's great for them and kudos for the effort. But you need to realize that for everyone else who plays casually, the result is decreased enjoyment.

So I feel that while PvP-focused games have their niche, there is a fatal flaw in their design from a customer-experience point of view. Most regular folks have neither the time nor the inclination to invest all the time and effort that it takes to become a dominant PvPer. As such, any PvP game is going to have limited appeal as players learn that they really just can't compete and move on.

Originally posted by PhelimReagh

Originally posted by Suraknar

While some of the core Ideas you have I agree with, such as MMORPG's should aim for Social opportunities and the social aspect playing a bigger role in their gameplay, I do not agree with the conclusions.

In my view, there is a conflict which resides somewhere in the middle between Game design and Marketing.

From one hand Designers make Themepark games, which and by their nature cannot appeal to all, and will only appeal to some.

And on the other hand Marketing is successfully inviting all to play them.

The result is that within the first 3 to 6 months there is a dramatic drop of subscriptions as all kinds of people realise that this is not a game that appeals to them in practice no matter how great the marketing made it sound in the beggining.

Of course, there is exceptions to this like there are exceptions to everything in life, and in this case the exception is Blizzard's WoW, it was just fortunate that its following made the leap to the MMORPG genre and through it a snow ball effect of popularity happened which reached the existing MMORPG playerbase as well. Yet lets not forget that WoW introduced a bigger number of new players to the genre than there was player of the genre at the time as well. And all these new players will not move to a clone of WoW.

So in my opinion trying to make a clone of it, can only be futile...loss of time and loss of investment.

I think the Devs should go back and rethink the approach from the beginning. What is that which popularised the genre in the first place?

A Themepark Game or a Virtual World?

 

There is no reason to see WoW as the enemy.  They are, almost single-handedly, bringing in millions upon millions of people into the MMO genre. Many of whom would probably be happy to leave and try something else if there was something out there worth trying.

 

WoW is the gateway drug which all game developers should be thrilled exists.

 

So while you don't have to make a "WoW clone" to succeed, you do need to figure out what need of the customer WoW is filling, and keep that in mind when you design any new game.

 

And you can't look back to try to recreate the Ultima Online days. The market is way too different. Developers should try to figure out what people who aren't playing MMOs like, what rewards they want for investing their time in something like an MMO, and figure out how to create an experience that meets their needs.

 

Growing the customer base betters the chances for niche games.

 

You also need to be realistic about what prevents people from joining MMOs to begin with, what is essentially holding back the growth of the genre. I firmly believe the limiter is PvP.

 

PvP is, at it's most basic, one paying customer having a huge amount of fun at the expense of another paying customer. In any PvP game there are always going to be a small number of twitchy players who will make huge time investments to learn every in, out, glitch, build, etc. to become dominant PvPers. That's great for them and kudos for the effort. But you need to realize that for everyone else who plays casually, the result is decreased enjoyment.

 

So I feel that while PvP-focused games have their niche, there is a fatal flaw in their design from a customer-experience point of view. Most regular folks have neither the time nor the inclination to invest all the time and effort that it takes to become a dominant PvPer. As such, any PvP game is going to have limited appeal as players learn that they really just can't compete and move on.

Well stated. You make an excellent point in regards to PvP.  I've been playing MMO's since UO. Its been my observation that PvP tends(as a rule, not an absolute) to attract the more personally competitive types of gamers. I know I went through that phase for a while at the start. But always being *ON* and having to look over ones shoulder gets VERY tiring after awhile. Especially in games with mid to harsh PvP death penalties.  After awhile it becomes more of a chore, than entertainment, so I move on to other games that have PvE servers.  Not everyone is going to be King of the Hill in PvP. Lord knows I'm not very good at MMO PvP.

PvP also tends to make Dev's lazy. Look at any number of Asian grind/gankfests as an example.  If their players are providing much of the games content, they don't have to spend time/money in creating it.  Which is also why so many Asian games seldom go over that well in the west.  Corps like NCsoft can't seem to comprehend that the grind/gankfest template that works so well in Asia, doesn't work nearly that well in the west. 

Great read :)

Yup was one of those long standing PS players, but had to stop after the merger that moved the servers just a little too far from NZ, could handle when they where west coast based, as my ping was under 200.

Would love to see them release a more up to date version, as it's one of my longest standing subs I've ever had, plus I think it's one of the few MMO's where I belonged to a good stong clan (WCG).

"Dungeons & Dragons Online recently revamped its business model to one based on a combination of traditional subscriptions or a free-to-play option with microtransactions to generate revenue."

Ofc a member of the bought mmorpg.com crew defend the F2P crap game genre.

Sure i thought D&D was a good game at launch, but in a longer term didn't live up to my standard in games. Now that they've become free2play i wish I've never put my eyes on it from start.  I'm just glad they're not supporting goldseller, powerlvler and boters like most of the f2p crap games do in one way or another.

Originally posted by SioBabble

Originally posted by Hagonbok

 

 

Then we have games like Darkfall, where apparently the company bought into the rhetoric of the wannabe gaming intelligentsia at various sites (including this one at times), and on the various forums/blogs on a lot of those sites (including this one at times), about having the games hearken back to the early days. The problem is that all these flapping lips seem to forget, or conveniently fail to mention, that there was a good reason why most of those elements fell to the wayside eventually. Most people didn't like them back then, and just because these people remember those things fondly isn't going to make enough others like them now.

 

I think that we are going to again see some big numbers for some upcoming games, but it'll be the games that make darn sure they have a full game experience at release that's relatively bug free, and offer the players what they are showing they like in what they're playing already. As opposed to thinking they know better what players will like.

 

Absolutely agree. 

One of the interesting things about veterans (and I'm talking RL military veterans) is that over beers at the VFW hall they seem to remember the good times and not the bad.  Which is understandable.  They don't talk about how half their platoon was cut in half but they'll talk about the celebration of the victory and forget the cost of it.

So it is with PvP nostalgia for old time MMO players.

SOE in particular is unwilling to examine why WoW was such a success, because SOE doesn't do polish and relatively bug free gameplay.  They're not publishing games and making some money at it, they're trying to make money by publishing games.

Oh fucking HELL!

Just because WoW had success, and that maybe the WoW-subgenre people MIGHT not like fantasy simulations, that is, HARD and challenging games that don't give instant rewards, doesn't mean that they can't have success, i BET there's millions of people that are waiting for a NEW GOOD UO GAME(ofc im one of those).... the WoW community doesn't make for the whole of the MMO community, it's IMO only the slice of casual gamers, who like non-challenging games.

The only "good reason" why those elements(of UO) were put aside is that the new MMO's are addressed to kids! SWG was a UO type of game, and everyone loved it, and until SWG, the MMO community was composed of mature players. Now i can bet my own neck the majority of MMO players are 14 year olds.

The part in orange text is stating that the genre of MMO is doomed to see only childish clones forever and that we must even be happy about it. They're saying that MMO's can only have ONE single type of gameplay because there's no room for anything else. He's also stating in that part that big sales equals to quality. He's saying that companies should give players what they like and not tell them what they like, but this person NOW is assuming what people like, because even though 11 million persons are playing WoW, it doesn't necessarily mean that they CAN'T enjoy a UO game, it's THIS person that's FORCING this conclusion, assuming what the players like based only on what HE chooses to see. And lastly He's ignoring both the "potential" gamers(those who aren't playing anything atm) AND the minority players like me who want UO type of online simulations, telling me to keep away from MMO's.

well fuck me, honestly that person should be hanged.

Me, I just subscribe to whatever games I happen to be playing a lot of at the time and cancel the subscriptions when I get bored.  Perfect idea for a MMO, in my opinion, is a GTA or Mafia style game.  I know APB is coming out in March, but I do not really see that being overly successful(good idea, but who is going to want to play as a cop).  Another idea would be a well made spy MMO, which I do hope Sony pulls off with The Agency(I have not figured out if this is even going to be a MMO), though I doubt they will.   Once you abandon the light and start taking a walk on the dark side, there are plenty of good options.

 Gylfi, you forget the 30 year olds that still live in their mother's basements who don't bother to work or have a life outside the internet and gaming.  Can't forget them.

Very well written and interesting article :-)

I wonder if the mmos genre would be healthier if world of warcraft didnt exist

There is a severe lack of innovation since wow and most companies are looking at wow and thinks "oh, that game is selling alot, we should make something similiar" instead of making something new.

Wow is to big for the good of the mmo genre future

Is there any game that could compete with wow? i doubt SW:TOR will, but it might kill some smaller ones like Darkfall, AoC and maybe Lotro

DaoC2 might do it if they ever make a sequal

 I'm not sure what would beat WoW, i'm not into chiromancy but a realistic multi-faceted sci-fi simulation would have an enormous success.

A sci-fi version of UO, realistic and simulative in all its content, which ironically is what UO2 looked like back then in the infamous video.

A complete simulation, a neuromancer online... and not just an online game with neuromancer themes and gimmicks, but exactly what a society of the neuromancer would be if it were REAL.

It's really gratifying to me that you still have a soft spot, as do I, for PlanetSide....I couldn't agree more that it was and is unique and among the very finest MMO experiences ever concieved...

The first time you popped over a ridgeline on your ATV or Thresher or Mosquito and were confronted with HUNDREDS of people stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction from horizon to horizon, all merrily murdering each other as infantry, armor, infiltrator, and air power...Your life as a gamer was irrevocably changed.

The old game misses you, Spork...I wish you were still a part of it. You GOT it......

Originally posted by Wraithone

Originally posted by PhelimReagh

Originally posted by Suraknar

While some of the core Ideas you have I agree with, such as MMORPG's should aim for Social opportunities and the social aspect playing a bigger role in their gameplay, I do not agree with the conclusions.

In my view, there is a conflict which resides somewhere in the middle between Game design and Marketing.

From one hand Designers make Themepark games, which and by their nature cannot appeal to all, and will only appeal to some.

And on the other hand Marketing is successfully inviting all to play them.

The result is that within the first 3 to 6 months there is a dramatic drop of subscriptions as all kinds of people realise that this is not a game that appeals to them in practice no matter how great the marketing made it sound in the beggining.

Of course, there is exceptions to this like there are exceptions to everything in life, and in this case the exception is Blizzard's WoW, it was just fortunate that its following made the leap to the MMORPG genre and through it a snow ball effect of popularity happened which reached the existing MMORPG playerbase as well. Yet lets not forget that WoW introduced a bigger number of new players to the genre than there was player of the genre at the time as well. And all these new players will not move to a clone of WoW.

So in my opinion trying to make a clone of it, can only be futile...loss of time and loss of investment.

I think the Devs should go back and rethink the approach from the beginning. What is that which popularised the genre in the first place?

A Themepark Game or a Virtual World?

 

There is no reason to see WoW as the enemy.  They are, almost single-handedly, bringing in millions upon millions of people into the MMO genre. Many of whom would probably be happy to leave and try something else if there was something out there worth trying.

 

WoW is the gateway drug which all game developers should be thrilled exists.

 

So while you don't have to make a "WoW clone" to succeed, you do need to figure out what need of the customer WoW is filling, and keep that in mind when you design any new game.

 

And you can't look back to try to recreate the Ultima Online days. The market is way too different. Developers should try to figure out what people who aren't playing MMOs like, what rewards they want for investing their time in something like an MMO, and figure out how to create an experience that meets their needs.

 

Growing the customer base betters the chances for niche games.

 

You also need to be realistic about what prevents people from joining MMOs to begin with, what is essentially holding back the growth of the genre. I firmly believe the limiter is PvP.

 

PvP is, at it's most basic, one paying customer having a huge amount of fun at the expense of another paying customer. In any PvP game there are always going to be a small number of twitchy players who will make huge time investments to learn every in, out, glitch, build, etc. to become dominant PvPers. That's great for them and kudos for the effort. But you need to realize that for everyone else who plays casually, the result is decreased enjoyment.

 

So I feel that while PvP-focused games have their niche, there is a fatal flaw in their design from a customer-experience point of view. Most regular folks have neither the time nor the inclination to invest all the time and effort that it takes to become a dominant PvPer. As such, any PvP game is going to have limited appeal as players learn that they really just can't compete and move on.

 

Well stated. You make an excellent point in regards to PvP.  I've been playing MMO's since UO. Its been my observation that PvP tends(as a rule, not an absolute) to attract the more personally competitive types of gamers. I know I went through that phase for a while at the start. But always being *ON* and having to look over ones shoulder gets VERY tiring after awhile. Especially in games with mid to harsh PvP death penalties.  After awhile it becomes more of a chore, than entertainment, so I move on to other games that have PvE servers.  Not everyone is going to be King of the Hill in PvP. Lord knows I'm not very good at MMO PvP.

PvP also tends to make Dev's lazy. Look at any number of Asian grind/gankfests as an example.  If their players are providing much of the games content, they don't have to spend time/money in creating it.  Which is also why so many Asian games seldom go over that well in the west.  Corps like NCsoft can't seem to comprehend that the grind/gankfest template that works so well in Asia, doesn't work nearly that well in the west. 

I do not see WoW as the enemy, I see WoW as the BEST ever Themepark game, when it launched it put on the floor all of the Themepark Competition, i was playing Lineage II at the time I saw people by the thousands jumping Ship!

I left Lineage II but not for WoW, I went to SWG (returning to it), and would have still be playing it if it were not for NGE..at that point we all decided (My guildies etc), to give WoW a try.

Compared to a Sandbox, or Virtual World if you prefer game such as UO WoW is a shallow one, however, it is the best Themepark game there is, I really see no reason why play another themepark when one has a Character of two in WoW already.

The irony here is that, what I liked the most in WoW was its PvP, I really like howthey implemented it and it been very fun to fight in battlegrounds, most of our guild reached ranks of Marshal and above, with the old Honor System, before Burning Crusade, however, that system was a killer, I am glad they did change it and we continued to PvP still.

In all honnesty, I do not agree with the comments made towards PvP in MMORPG's...I would not be able to play an MMORPG that does not feature PvP in some type of Form or Shape.

I really see no reason to pay a subscription in order to play an offline game Online and interact with NPC's amongst other PC's instead of Interacting and adventuring with other PCs.

Some will say the inverse, and call Planetside an online counterstrike. I guess the answer here lies in between, because whether an MMORPG is Sandbox, Themepark or RvR it has to cater to a broad spectrum of activities. Human beings are not robots while we can focus and repeat one single thing over and over when we set an achievement goal, we cannot repeat that process too many times in a row, we need to be able to do something different and come back to the original activity.

If it were not for PvP and RP-PvP servers in WOW I would have dropped the game in a week...while I did experience its PVE once at least one very Raid and Dungeon (as well as doing some attunements) all this was done in times of pause from PvP.

So again WOW is not the enemy, but, anyone trying to make a clone of it and follow on its paradigm will lose anyways.