Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Forget About Who Might be the WoW Killer. Who is Actually Going to Retain A Million+?
mutantmagnet
Member Posts: 274
Many mmos have existed but the only ones to actually break a million active subscribers were Runescape, the Lineage series, and now WoW.
So after countless games some of which backed by great name brands, like Matrix, or incorporating some very novel concepts that most other mmos didn't adopt, like Planetside only a handful of games were actually compelling enough to go platinum.
Frankly I don't see any game coming out that melds together a level of content out the box with low system requirements and good marketing. Some have strength in two areas but not in all three.
It's also hard to judge these things because what encourages active subscribers is the game playing environment so we can't tell how games actually play until we buy them; we can only guess at this point.
So far my bets are on nobody right now.
I had such beliefs on Spellborn but I'm leery of the fact their npc rep system will be implemented in full after the game is released.
Unless they advertise heavily the fact that the game is going to go through an upheaval once it is implemented they are going to create a lot of disillusionment with their subscribers. Many might remain pissed off that with one update the game fundamentally changed so much you have to be very careful about forming parties and guilds with players from another politcal party(High House).
All they have to do is market themselves correctly before launch and my worries will lesson about that potential disaster because they appear to have the total package.
Warhammer should be able to do it because there are so few games built with pvp and only pvp in mind but if the system specs to play it are too high they simply can't get that any people who will be fustrated by the client side lag ruining their game play. THis will be further compounded by Conan which will work on a console so people who are interested in pvping but not upgrading their computer would prbably prefer to buy a 360 since it is cheaper and gives them access to a few more games they can't get on a pc.
Star Trek I haven't kept track of at all. THe one time I glanced at an article relating to it I saw the words 'players can fill out a starship doing ALL the various tasks a crew is expected' and for that alone it has potential.
So far all I see is potential but nothing yet that makes me think yeah this will work out for sure.
Comments
I think Warhammer and StarTrek Online are the only MMORPG's within the next few years that will see the 1million + mark.
With a outside shot for Age of Conan, LOTR, and they new Marvel MMORPG.
------------------------------
You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
Serisously, the main thing that always stops me from trying out a new game, I play WoW almost exclusively, is the system requirements. I don't have the fanciest hardware, and WoW just looks so good, without lagging up all the time. I have recently tried, EQ2 and LOTRO, and within 20 minutes I was uninstalling them because everything just ran so choppy. If you are going to go to another world, you have to enjoy being there, enjoying al the sights and sounds, with as much immersion as possible. EQ2 made the mistake of going for too much eye candy, as are a lot of MMOs these days. Just like the Wii is beating the PS3 it is not all about the technology, it is about the gameplay, and that is where WoW wins.
Gazzaden
True that.
WAR could provide the relief the WoW subscribers yearn to have. If it lives up to expectations (and that is always a big IF), it will do very well.
Conan may or may not hit million. The only thing I think that will blunt its glory is that it is launching close to WAR. I fear those that love AoC may also love WAR.
LOTR is solid, but just not unique enough to enthrall all.
Trek and Stargate Worlds may pique interests. Trek has potential given fanbase.
Well I think. Star trek could make it to the 1 million mark only if they make it right. Now WAR for sure, it will no matter what. Age of Conan will be close but like mutantmagnet, I think it will be more of a 360 game.
Warhammer has a fairly large following, if they do the game right they may break 1 million
Star Trek Online could, but did SWG? Hard to argue popularity between the two, and STO has the advantage of being released after WoW, the game that brought millions of new MMO gamers. Many of whom, they hope, that now love MMO's, love Star Trek, so it's a maybe....
LOTR is a maybe but probably not, Age of Conan is going to be more of a niche game, hopefully a good one, but not vastly popular. Stargate has about as much chance as Star Trek... probably less atually, not as well known sci-fi IP as Star Trek or Star Wars
Spellborn looks interesting, but SO hard to do a new fantasy IP MMO after the success of WoW. Only reason Warhammer has a chance is like Warcraft, very well known IP. Bring a brand new IP, a fantasy one, to MMO market is a toughy.
Thats True and the only reason why WoW did well, coz of warcraft. Thats why Warhammer will do the same. Spellborn is new and it will be hard for it to reach the 1 million. These days not a lot of people will try something really new and pay monthly for it, unless it reaches 1 million+.
Warcraft is free.
Warhammer has other games for free and game boards.
Startrek now thats something else, we wont know if it will turn out like SWG.
Lotro can do well but I'm not giving my hopes for it.
I can easily see LOTRO at one point breaking the million. Whether they create enough content fast enough to keep them is another story. Warhammer online I think so as well. Both of these games have a prebuilt core of fans that will play the game and now that WoW has made MMO's more of a main stream PC gaming activity, both of these games have a lot of potential customers.
I think the biggest thing that doomed SWG when it first came out is the Star War Fans weren't all MMO fans. MMOs were still seen in a fairly bad light as a hobby. An extremely niche section of an already niche hobby (pc gaming). Now MMOs are actually fairly mainstream (wow being on South Park and the News etc). This will help every MMO after World of Warcraft.
Of any of the other games coming out soon. Nah I don't think any of them have the ability to break 1 million subscribers. It takes a lot of polish in the game (which any studio is capable of it they work at it), but mostly it takes having a huge name behind your product and a huge advertising budget. This will keep most of the smaller companies from having that type of success. But they also won't need that type of success to have a profit. Turbine has been showing a profit from AC for the last 3 or more years and its running on about 10K-30K subscribers.
The next big game that might have a good shot of being huge (other then WAR and LOTRO) is probably the BioWare MMO. Since BioWare has a ton of rep similar to Blizzard (as far as putting out a quality product and making sure a product is done when they release it) they will have a good shot at having a huge success.
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
Lord of the Rings Online is not a good enough game to get that many subcribers, period. The only game I see being able to gain a signicant number of players is WAR. The game's bound to draw in a significant fan base, particularly since Mythic's merge with EA.
No one will reach WoW's numbers, but then again WoW can't retain them either. Once more and more players start to realize their effort has gone to waste on WoW and as newer titles come out, you'll see that flashy "7 million" figure drop substantially.
I think that WoW doesn't have 8 million concurrent subscribers. I believe that the concurrent number is significantly less. They may have sold around 8 million retail copies.
I also believe that if STO is done right, it will surpass WoW. I did hear a rumor that STO will implement 2D navigation of starships, which imo, is quite lame. That alone may detract from STO's poplularity.
Ahh I guess it gonna be like puzzle pirates :P but in space haha?
I’d put my money on lotr online or Star trek online as they are the only 2 extremely big franchises besides age of conan I can think of.
Star trek online since there are a lot of star trek “geeks” out there who have been drooling over this for a couple of years now and it has a very large fan base to draw from, it all depends on how the beta and launch goes.
Warhammer I don’t really think I need to say anything as to why I think so.
On a related note, I expect to start seeing world of warcraft subscriptions drop pretty soon as people start getting bored with its shiny baubles (the exact words I got when I canceled my wow account btw) and realize that there isn’t that much to do in there besides grind dungeons over and over again.
In addition with gamers starting to see how much of an effort went to waste with the burning crusade expansion and the amount of bugs and imbalances that brought into the game.
I thought this arguement would come up primarily because of RUnescape and I agree that is a credible point but that doesn't absolve the fact there are many games that started at as free or later on became free and they simply don't have the number of active accounts Runescape has.
As for your second point I completely disagree. It doesn't matter how they pay for a game as long as they are paying for it.
I practically stopped right there. Star wars fans doesn't neccessarily == star trek fans. In fact while there are some who like both there are definitely a large number who hate one over the other and have big ego stroking contests on which franchise is better.
No other game had 1M+ subs befor WoW, US/Eu dont have player base to have more than one MMO with 1M+ players.
Befor WoW no one toght about this numbers.
See SWG and EQ2 so many publicity on theatres, voice overs with known actors like Christopher Lee(Lord of the Rings,Saroman) doing the voice of Freeport Overlord. And wath did they get? 300k players.
Is true that WoW broght more players to mmo´s but your first MMO is alweys the best, and many WoW players wen gave up on WoW they stop plaing MMO´s, they are not MMO´s fans.
I dont see any game doing more than 500k, Lotro and War can get there(500k) but not more than that.
I practically stopped right there. Star wars fans doesn't neccessarily == star trek fans. In fact while there are some who like both there are definitely a large number who hate one over the other and have big ego stroking contests on which franchise is better.
My bad Return of the jedi was running on my TV while i was writing so i wrote "wars" instead of trek, sorry.my bets for platinum:
WAR and STO
war seems like it has the ability to EVENTUALLY hit the mark but, it may be too mature of a game to get the youngins who are some of the masses that WoW is able to reach. seems like some parents may shy away from gettin this game for their kids which (unfortunately) will impact the sub amounts
STO well dang, star trek fans are numerous and devout to say the least. Even if this game slags in developement, there could be an insane amount of first time subs due to the star trek fan base.
Im not sure if lotro will hit that mark, even though Im loving it right now. Im sure it will get close for sure due to the title in general. there are haters who say the game will bomb because THEY dont like it... but thats in many ways very silly. the name alone will open the market up to knew mmo'rs
yeah, runescape, lineage, and WoW hve reached 1mil+ subscribers and are getting more and more.
i need help!!! how can i make "enter spaces"? like to make paragraphs and all that?
You are forgetting about Asia. They have a much bigger player base than US/Eu and have supported all the large MMORPGs. Runescape and Linage I & II both flooped in US/Eu, but had well over 1 mill players. Lineage II currently has about 1.2 mil and it has been dropping for over a year. It peaked just below 2 mil.
Anyway, I agree that no new game is going to break the 1 mil mark, but not for any of the reasons given so far. The problem with all the upcoming games is that they don't apeal to Asians and won't be marketed to Asians. WoW only reaches those crazy 8 mil numbers because of Asia and it's hard push to market in Asia and with low system requirements.
STO might do 500k if it doesn't make the same mistakes as SWG. Galaxies could have been huge, even with only a US/Eu base, but it was soooo badly implemented that all those people that bought it (it sold crazy large box numbers) never converted into subscribers.
WAR should hit 500k and it might even come close to 1 mil. It has what most of the disillusioned WoW players say they want: more attention to PvP by the developers. No other game has ever been so focused on PvP. Plus it has an IP and developer following among gamers, one that rivals the warcraft legacy. I know I'm going to be playing it just because of DaoC.
Still neither will attract Asians and that's going to limit their player base.
if you took all these 10+ year olds and these people that didn't even know what a MMO was until WoW the population wouldn't be any bigger then the common couple hundred thousand. If your looking for an answer then it is simply this, find a casual MMO that is submersive and new and these casuals that have gotten what they want out of WoW and there you have the next Million+ subscribers again
Age of conan will IF:
it catches on with the single player RPG crowd
it catches on with the mate crowd (older)
it catches onto the mainstream console gaming crowd
or
if it catches on with the action gaming crowd
if 2 or more of these happen then AoC will easily reach 1 million
WAR will really only drawn on people who already play WoW, its pretty much the same game just oriented towars PVP a lot more. And i know people will say that all the warhammer fans will flock to it, but unless they ALL come, thats not an overly huge number. So it would have to spread by word of mouth more.
You are forgetting about Asia. They have a much bigger player base than US/Eu and have supported all the large MMORPGs. Runescape and Linage I & II both flooped in US/Eu, but had well over 1 mill players. Lineage II currently has about 1.2 mil and it has been dropping for over a year. It peaked just below 2 mil.
Anyway, I agree that no new game is going to break the 1 mil mark, but not for any of the reasons given so far. The problem with all the upcoming games is that they don't apeal to Asians and won't be marketed to Asians. WoW only reaches those crazy 8 mil numbers because of Asia and it's hard push to market in Asia and with low system requirements.
STO might do 500k if it doesn't make the same mistakes as SWG. Galaxies could have been huge, even with only a US/Eu base, but it was soooo badly implemented that all those people that bought it (it sold crazy large box numbers) never converted into subscribers.
WAR should hit 500k and it might even come close to 1 mil. It has what most of the disillusioned WoW players say they want: more attention to PvP by the developers. No other game has ever been so focused on PvP. Plus it has an IP and developer following among gamers, one that rivals the warcraft legacy. I know I'm going to be playing it just because of DaoC.
Still neither will attract Asians and that's going to limit their player base.
actually nearly all runescape players are in the US/EU
its the second biggest MMO (behind WoW of course) in the US/EU