It's that exact attitude of your's that gave us Vanguard Gameloading. We shouldn't be ok with games that are just ok but you can find something better.
Imagine if that was a rating on your car, your TV, or anything else for that matter? Why are people ok with just mediocre products?
Eragon is such a travesty from beginning to end that only a hardcore button mash fetishist could honestly enjoy this game. It’s not like the story will grab you, either: you’re dropped into a world filled with evil that has its sights on taking over a once-peaceful land. I think we’ve heard that scenario a few times before. 22%
This should never have been published. It was a waste of resources at this point. It takes up space on a shelf somewhere.
Emergency Rescue Firefighters, from our "friends" at Wizard Works, has a really, really cool box. It shows a brave firefighter ready to tackle a blazing inferno of death. It's multi-layered and embossed with a cutout of the firefighter up front and raging flames in the back, all outlined with shiny, silver foil. Mmm...shiny, silver foil.
The game, for what it's worth, is an isometric view action/strategy. And that means it's like a terrible real-time X-COM with sub-Sims graphics that tries to get you caught up in the heroism and bravery of the firefighter. It fails on every level other than the indisputable fact that it's real-time and has an isometric view. 24%
Again, just another waste. We are inundated with mediocre games. Publishers force developers to release games long before they are ready. We should be telling publishers it's not ok to try and milk money off us for a game that shouldn't be published.
I want the type of quality that went into the early console games back. Final Fantasy (the original NES) was a great game. I still play it. Same with Final Fantasy 4 and 6 (2 and 3 US versions for the SNES). The Legend of Zelda. Super Mario Brothers 3. Super Mario World. Mario Kart. Sonic the Hedgehog. All these games couldn't patch later. They had to be released as a quality game. There was no second chance. I want this quality of game. By being ok with mediocre game releases, you are telling publishers that it's ok for the to release a beta product for you to pay for that they will just fix later. Vanguard is a prime example of this.
What exacly makes you think EA will do that for WAR? I have never seen any advertisement for Ultima Online (After EA took over), Motor City Online, Earth & beyond (2 games which EA killed) or the Sims Online. EA is very generous on its Sport titles or its Battlefield series, but I have NEVER seen an add for one of its online mmo's.
Originally posted by FireDart Your conclusion here is off. First off 3rd quarter earnings are included in the first 9months. So you are missing 4th quarter? Also you are comparing an annual release to a 9mo release. Here are some better links to easier understand info. Vivendi (BLIZZARD PARENT COMPANY) Skip past all the confusing before tax stuff and get to yearly revenues in APPENDIX III and APPENDIX IV. <a href="http://www.vivendi.com/ir/download/pdf/PR070307 R
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)
It's that exact attitude of your's that gave us Vanguard Gameloading. We shouldn't be ok with games that are just ok but you can find something better.
I want the type of quality that went into the early console games back. Final Fantasy (the original NES) was a great game. I still play it. Same with Final Fantasy 4 and 6 (2 and 3 US versions for the SNES). The Legend of Zelda. Super Mario Brothers 3. Super Mario World. Mario Kart. Sonic the Hedgehog. All these games couldn't patch later. They had to be released as a quality game. There was no second chance. I want this quality of game. By being ok with mediocre game releases, you are telling publishers that it's ok for the to release a beta product for you to pay for that they will just fix later. Vanguard is a prime example of this
Actually I'm not for mediocre games, I only play good games.
It's that exact attitude of your's that gave us Vanguard Gameloading. We shouldn't be ok with games that are just ok but you can find something better.
I want the type of quality that went into the early console games back. Final Fantasy (the original NES) was a great game. I still play it. Same with Final Fantasy 4 and 6 (2 and 3 US versions for the SNES). The Legend of Zelda. Super Mario Brothers 3. Super Mario World. Mario Kart. Sonic the Hedgehog. All these games couldn't patch later. They had to be released as a quality game. There was no second chance. I want this quality of game. By being ok with mediocre game releases, you are telling publishers that it's ok for the to release a beta product for you to pay for that they will just fix later. Vanguard is a prime example of this
Actually I'm not for mediocre games, I only play good games. That's not what you are saying by saying 74% is a rating that's acceptable for a game.
What exacly makes you think EA will do that for WAR? I have never seen any advertisement for Ultima Online (After EA took over), Motor City Online, Earth & beyond (2 games which EA killed) or the Sims Online. EA is very generous on its Sport titles or its Battlefield series, but I have NEVER seen an add for one of its online mmo's.
Umm cuz they have seen what it did for World of Warcraft. Why is everyone so quick to say how other developers want to copy WoW's supposed game ideas. But then when it is known that what really made it such a huge success is its advertising, you seem to think they wouldn't want to copy that?
NCsoft did it with Guild Wars. Last time i head they had sold over 3 million copies of the game. Their are ads all over the gaming magazines.
If EA wants WAR to actually challenge WoW then expect to see a ton of advertising.
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)
What exacly makes you think EA will do that for WAR? I have never seen any advertisement for Ultima Online (After EA took over), Motor City Online, Earth & beyond (2 games which EA killed) or the Sims Online. EA is very generous on its Sport titles or its Battlefield series, but I have NEVER seen an add for one of its online mmo's.
WAR isn't even in beta. Why would you expect to see any kind of advertising for it right now? When it comes closer to release, I'd expect to see a lot of advertising for it. Much like you see for The Sims. I saw quite a few ads for E&B. I even got an email from EA Games about getting into it's open beta. The biggest problem for E&B was the MMO market was only a fraction of what it is now. Eve Online is similar to E&B. You can't get out of your ship in Eve....yet. That is coming though. Eve is a much more refined, better developed game than E&B was but E&B was developed during the growth period of the MMO genre. And it lasted for 2 years. It was developed by Westwood Studios. Yes, the same people that created Command and Conquer. That may also have been part of the problem. I'm not sure Westwood was up for the challenge of creating a Sandbox Sci-fi MMO.
It's that exact attitude of your's that gave us Vanguard Gameloading. We shouldn't be ok with games that are just ok but you can find something better.
I want the type of quality that went into the early console games back. Final Fantasy (the original NES) was a great game. I still play it. Same with Final Fantasy 4 and 6 (2 and 3 US versions for the SNES). The Legend of Zelda. Super Mario Brothers 3. Super Mario World. Mario Kart. Sonic the Hedgehog. All these games couldn't patch later. They had to be released as a quality game. There was no second chance. I want this quality of game. By being ok with mediocre game releases, you are telling publishers that it's ok for the to release a beta product for you to pay for that they will just fix later. Vanguard is a prime example of this
Actually I'm not for mediocre games, I only play good games. That's not what you are saying by saying 74% is a rating that's acceptable for a game. Actually thats Exactly what I'm saying. a 7, 4 is considered good in my opinion and those reviewers. I don't have rediculous high standards.
Cabe:
Umm cuz they have seen what it did for World of Warcraft. Why is everyone so quick to say how other developers want to copy WoW's supposed game ideas. But then when it is known that what really made it such a huge success is its advertising, you seem to think they wouldn't want to copy that?
NCsoft did it with Guild Wars. Last time i head they had sold over 3 million copies of the game. Their are ads all over the gaming magazines.
If EA wants WAR to actually challenge WoW then expect to see a ton of advertising. EA also sees that WoW became popular because a big name company created an MMORPG of its own well known gaming franchise,that was of excellent quality with a good marketing strategy. Nobody relates Fantasy Warhammer to EA., and Warhammer is not a video game franchise.
Originally posted by whitedelight
Putting our recent past aside Gameloading, what do you think about AoC's prospects are of hitting 750k+ subs?
Same story as WAR. ofcourse there are a few things diffrent with AoC, but the thing that is holding it back is the same. Not a big name company, and not based on an existing computer game franchise. I'm sure it will do just fine, but no 750k subs or 1 million subs.
Originally posted by Adythiel
Originally posted by Gameloading
What exacly makes you think EA will do that for WAR? I have never seen any advertisement for Ultima Online (After EA took over), Motor City Online, Earth & beyond (2 games which EA killed) or the Sims Online. EA is very generous on its Sport titles or its Battlefield series, but I have NEVER seen an add for one of its online mmo's.
WAR isn't even in beta. Why would you expect to see any kind of advertising for it right now?
*sigh* Read man, read. Please.
When it comes closer to release, I'd expect to see a lot of advertising for it. Much like you see for The Sims. I saw quite a few ads for E&B. I even got an email from EA Games about getting into it's open beta. The biggest problem for E&B was the MMO market was only a fraction of what it is now. Eve Online is similar to E&B. You can't get out of your ship in Eve....yet. That is coming though. Eve is a much more refined, better developed game than E&B was but E&B was developed during the growth period of the MMO genre. And it lasted for 2 years. It was developed by Westwood Studios. Yes, the same people that created Command and Conquer. That may also have been part of the problem. I'm not sure Westwood was up for the challenge of creating a Sandbox Sci-fi MMO.
nah, E&B is well known for its lack of advertising. its even mentioned in the wikipedia page.
It's that exact attitude of your's that gave us Vanguard Gameloading. We shouldn't be ok with games that are just ok but you can find something better.
I want the type of quality that went into the early console games back. Final Fantasy (the original NES) was a great game. I still play it. Same with Final Fantasy 4 and 6 (2 and 3 US versions for the SNES). The Legend of Zelda. Super Mario Brothers 3. Super Mario World. Mario Kart. Sonic the Hedgehog. All these games couldn't patch later. They had to be released as a quality game. There was no second chance. I want this quality of game. By being ok with mediocre game releases, you are telling publishers that it's ok for the to release a beta product for you to pay for that they will just fix later. Vanguard is a prime example of this
Actually I'm not for mediocre games, I only play good games.That's not what you are saying by saying 74% is a rating that's acceptable for a game.Actually thats Exactly what I'm saying. a 7, 4 is considered good in my opinion and those reviewers. I don't have rediculous high standards.
Cabe:
Umm cuz they have seen what it did for World of Warcraft. Why is everyone so quick to say how other developers want to copy WoW's supposed game ideas. But then when it is known that what really made it such a huge success is its advertising, you seem to think they wouldn't want to copy that?
NCsoft did it with Guild Wars. Last time i head they had sold over 3 million copies of the game. Their are ads all over the gaming magazines.
If EA wants WAR to actually challenge WoW then expect to see a ton of advertising. EA also sees that WoW became popular because a big name company created an MMORPG of its own well known gaming franchise,that was of excellent quality with a good marketing strategy. Nobody relates Fantasy Warhammer to EA., and Warhammer is not a video game franchise.
Originally posted by whitedelight
Putting our recent past aside Gameloading, what do you think about AoC's prospects are of hitting 750k+ subs?
Same story as WAR. ofcourse there are a few things diffrent with AoC, but the thing that is holding it back is the same. Not a big name company, and not based on an existing computer game franchise. I'm sure it will do just fine, but no 750k subs or 1 million subs.
Originally posted by Adythiel
Originally posted by Gameloading
What exacly makes you think EA will do that for WAR? I have never seen any advertisement for Ultima Online (After EA took over), Motor City Online, Earth & beyond (2 games which EA killed) or the Sims Online. EA is very generous on its Sport titles or its Battlefield series, but I have NEVER seen an add for one of its online mmo's.
WAR isn't even in beta. Why would you expect to see any kind of advertising for it right now?
*sigh* Read man, read. Please.
When it comes closer to release, I'd expect to see a lot of advertising for it. Much like you see for The Sims. I saw quite a few ads for E&B. I even got an email from EA Games about getting into it's open beta. The biggest problem for E&B was the MMO market was only a fraction of what it is now. Eve Online is similar to E&B. You can't get out of your ship in Eve....yet. That is coming though. Eve is a much more refined, better developed game than E&B was but E&B was developed during the growth period of the MMO genre. And it lasted for 2 years. It was developed by Westwood Studios. Yes, the same people that created Command and Conquer. That may also have been part of the problem. I'm not sure Westwood was up for the challenge of creating a Sandbox Sci-fi MMO.
nah, E&B is well known for its lack of advertising. its even mentioned in the wikipedia page.
alright, off to bed.
OK you keep talking about how Blizzard did so well because of its well known game. You can't count Starcraft or Diablo with this otherwise we could include the Sims and EA sports games in the comparison. So yes Warcraft is a well known gaming franchise. But it is no more well known to Gamers then Warhammer is.
Once again you seem to really dismiss the ability to take known gamers and turn it into a good MMO with a ton of fans. You site SWG and DDO and fixate on their low scores as still being good so they should of succeeded. But They aren't considered good by the majority of Gamers. No one says man I didn't play DDO because I just didn't like the IP. Or wow I have never heard of D&D before. No they don't play it because they thought the game sucked and heard it sucked from everyone beta testing it and also from reviews.
If World of Warcraft had recieved reviews in the 74-76% range we wouldn't even be having this conversation. The game would of peaked in the hundreds of thousands of players. But no it recieved 91% overall on reviews. Everquest would of bombed as well but it recieved around 85% on reviews. Dark Age of camelot hit 250Kish for subscribers on around 85% reviews with no advertising and the game franchise being unknown.
So if WAR gets reviews scores in the upper 80% to 90% range then expect it to sell a ton of boxes and also retain quite a lot of Subscribers.
You keep comparing Games that received poor reviews to WoW which received rave reviews and then you wonder why these new games didn't do well?
Give people a new game with great reviews (around the same that WoW received) and a known IP (doesn't have to be a gaming related IP, any pop culture IP will work, movies, books, etc) and throw in an equivalent advertising budget to what Blizzard spend and I guarentee you will see a game with over 1 million subscribers in the NA/EU market place.
Even though you seem to not see it. There really are that many people wanting to leave World of Warcraft for something new. That is the nature of the beast. Two years after the game is released it will start to lose subscribers in larger numbers. People grow bored with the game. They complete all of the content. They make alts and complete the content again. If you somehow think World of Warcraft is immune to this, then you will not see any reason about the game and are blind.
Yes throughout 2007 I suspect Blizzard to announce continued growth for World of Warcraft. But I also expect those press releases to no longer include the NA subscription numbers. You have to remember that the game came out in the NA market a full 8 months before it came out in China (where they are seeing their biggest increase in subscriptions).
This info came from Wikipedia:
The South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" prominently featured World of Warcraft through machinima animation. Blizzard actively collaborated with the South Park animation team in the making of the episode.[53] The episode drew 3.4 million viewers, making it Comedy Central's best midseason premiere since 2000.[54] The September 22, 2006 episode of Stargate Atlantis, The Return Part 1, featured a scene where Dr. Weir distracts geeky scientist Bill Lee by telling him she too is a fan of World of Warcraft.[55] The October 10, 2006 episode of Help Me Help You, "Fun Run," involves Inger meeting her online husband from the game.[56] On November 20, 2006, Blizzard announced that major national television stations would begin airing the first World of Warcraft TV spot in North America.[57] The commercial is an edit of a scene from the cult comedy film Office Space with footage of the game and a World of Warcraft box overlaid onto the original footage.[58]
That is the type of advertising I am talking about. If another game can do something similar it will sell around the same amount of product as WoW has.
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)
Originally posted by Cabe2323 This info came from Wikipedia:
The South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" prominently featured World of Warcraft through machinima animation. Blizzard actively collaborated with the South Park animation team in the making of the episode.[53] The episode drew 3.4 million viewers, making it Comedy Central's best midseason premiere since 2000.[54] The September 22, 2006 episode of Stargate Atlantis, The Return Part 1, featured a scene where Dr. Weir distracts geeky scientist Bill Lee by telling him she too is a fan of World of Warcraft.[55] The October 10, 2006 episode of Help Me Help You, "Fun Run," involves Inger meeting her online husband from the game.[56] On November 20, 2006, Blizzard announced that major national television stations would begin airing the first World of Warcraft TV spot in North America.[57] The commercial is an edit of a scene from the cult comedy film Office Space with footage of the game and a World of Warcraft box overlaid onto the original footage.[58]
That is the type of advertising I am talking about. If another game can do something similar it will sell around the same amount of product as WoW has.
But that kind of advertising is only possible once the game becomes a pop culture icon in itself. Note these are 2006 ads. Noone would have taken those ads seriously in 2004 before WoW was released.
I think that the distinction between Warcraft and Warhammer is that Warcraft is an established computer game icon, and Blizzard as a developer has a ton of fans -- at least they did in 2004. It was those fans that spurred the initial buying phase, the first rush, if you will, to a large degree. The phenomenal growth after that initial rush came from (1) good reviews, (2) word of mouth/friends. That drove the game off the shelves and made it a pop culture phenomenon such that ads like the above can be made in mainstream media outlets.
Warhammer is a known IP, but isn't really a very strong computer gamer IP. So while you have the nice aspect of having a pre-drawn world, and a pre-drawn group of fans of that world, it isn't the case that all of these fans are also computer gamers, and it's also the case that many computer gamers are not Warhammer fans. And generally speaking Warhammer has many more fans in Europe than it does in North America. So while I think WAR will get a boost from having a known IP, I think it's not going to be nearly the same kind of boost that Blizzard got due not just to the Warcraft games, but also Diablo and Starcraft -- there are many "Blizzard fans" out there who like all of Blizzard's games, and this was a tremendous boost for WoW at the very beginning. I don't think WAR will get nearly that boost.
Also I don't think WAR is being designed to be as mainstream as WoW is. It's mostly a PvP game, and that right off the bat appeals to some gamers, but doesn't appeal to others. As the folks at Mythic have said, they are Led Zeppelin to WoW's Beatles -- they are trying to be a game that appeals to a large enough segment, but not the mega-segment thaht WoW does. They'll therefore be happy with far fewer subscriptions, and do not need to blow the doors off to be a success.
Originally posted by Cabe2323 This info came from Wikipedia:
The South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" prominently featured World of Warcraft through machinima animation. Blizzard actively collaborated with the South Park animation team in the making of the episode.[53] The episode drew 3.4 million viewers, making it Comedy Central's best midseason premiere since 2000.[54] The September 22, 2006 episode of Stargate Atlantis, The Return Part 1, featured a scene where Dr. Weir distracts geeky scientist Bill Lee by telling him she too is a fan of World of Warcraft.[55] The October 10, 2006 episode of Help Me Help You, "Fun Run," involves Inger meeting her online husband from the game.[56] On November 20, 2006, Blizzard announced that major national television stations would begin airing the first World of Warcraft TV spot in North America.[57] The commercial is an edit of a scene from the cult comedy film Office Space with footage of the game and a World of Warcraft box overlaid onto the original footage.[58]
That is the type of advertising I am talking about. If another game can do something similar it will sell around the same amount of product as WoW has.
But that kind of advertising is only possible once the game becomes a pop culture icon in itself. Note these are 2006 ads. Noone would have taken those ads seriously in 2004 before WoW was released.
I think that the distinction between Warcraft and Warhammer is that Warcraft is an established computer game icon, and Blizzard as a developer has a ton of fans -- at least they did in 2004. It was those fans that spurred the initial buying phase, the first rush, if you will, to a large degree. The phenomenal growth after that initial rush came from (1) good reviews, (2) word of mouth/friends. That drove the game off the shelves and made it a pop culture phenomenon such that ads like the above can be made in mainstream media outlets.
Warhammer is a known IP, but isn't really a very strong computer gamer IP. So while you have the nice aspect of having a pre-drawn world, and a pre-drawn group of fans of that world, it isn't the case that all of these fans are also computer gamers, and it's also the case that many computer gamers are not Warhammer fans. And generally speaking Warhammer has many more fans in Europe than it does in North America. So while I think WAR will get a boost from having a known IP, I think it's not going to be nearly the same kind of boost that Blizzard got due not just to the Warcraft games, but also Diablo and Starcraft -- there are many "Blizzard fans" out there who like all of Blizzard's games, and this was a tremendous boost for WoW at the very beginning. I don't think WAR will get nearly that boost.
Also I don't think WAR is being designed to be as mainstream as WoW is. It's mostly a PvP game, and that right off the bat appeals to some gamers, but doesn't appeal to others. As the folks at Mythic have said, they are Led Zeppelin to WoW's Beatles -- they are trying to be a game that appeals to a large enough segment, but not the mega-segment thaht WoW does. They'll therefore be happy with far fewer subscriptions, and do not need to blow the doors off to be a success. I have seen that quote, but it is a little silly to say they aren't looking for a huge fan base. The beatles have sold over 500million records (some reports are close to 1 billion records) Led Zeppelin while not as mainstream has still sold over 250Million records worldwide. See why that statement by Mythic is actually a little silly. So by using those numbers EA Mythic is looking for anywhere between 2million to 4 million subscribers world wide. Since Led Zeppelin sold between 25% and 50% of the amount of records that the Beatles did.
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)
Honestly I think the tenor of the remark was "we are making a game that will have a strong appeal, but to a smaller group than WoW". I don't think they scoured the music industry to find an exact comparable revenue stream and used that to extrapolate their example such that we can then reverse engineer that ourselves to get an idea of what their own expected subscriber base is -- that's reading eway too much into the comment. It was an off the cuff remark about how they see their game as being very appealing to a certain kind of player, rather than appealing to virtually everyone.
Honestly I think the tenor of the remark was "we are making a game that will have a strong appeal, but to a smaller group than WoW". I don't think they scoured the music industry to find an exact comparable revenue stream and used that to extrapolate their example such that we can then reverse engineer that ourselves to get an idea of what their own expected subscriber base is -- that's reading eway too much into the comment. It was an off the cuff remark about how they see their game as being very appealing to a certain kind of player, rather than appealing to virtually everyone.
I wasnt saying that is what Mythic did. What I was saying is that the comment was Silly. Comparing WoW being The Beatles and WAR being Led Zeppelin is virtually the same thing. When you get that good at your respective market they are both hugely successful.
I was commenting on how it was pretty silly to use 2 bands out of maybe a dozen in all of music that have achieved that level of succes. Not many bands have reached the 250million+ records sold category.
So they would of been better suited to compare WoW being the Beatles to say WAR being like Nirvana. See Nirvana is hugely succesful, but not when compared to The beatles. I think Nirvana has sold around 50million records. So 10 to 20 times less then the Beatles have.
Plus Nirvana is that kind of musical genre that was hugely popular but only with some people. It was very distinct in who it was popular with and it had people that hated their type of music. Which is what I personally see happening with WAR. WAR will be hugely successful in the MMO genre. But there is a segment of the genre that won't touch the game cuz they hate all types of PVP. Just the word PVP will make them not play the game.
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)
Originally posted by Cabe2323 This info came from Wikipedia:
The South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" prominently featured World of Warcraft through machinima animation. Blizzard actively collaborated with the South Park animation team in the making of the episode.[53] The episode drew 3.4 million viewers, making it Comedy Central's best midseason premiere since 2000.[54] The September 22, 2006 episode of Stargate Atlantis, The Return Part 1, featured a scene where Dr. Weir distracts geeky scientist Bill Lee by telling him she too is a fan of World of Warcraft.[55] The October 10, 2006 episode of Help Me Help You, "Fun Run," involves Inger meeting her online husband from the game.[56] On November 20, 2006, Blizzard announced that major national television stations would begin airing the first World of Warcraft TV spot in North America.[57] The commercial is an edit of a scene from the cult comedy film Office Space with footage of the game and a World of Warcraft box overlaid onto the original footage.[58]
That is the type of advertising I am talking about. If another game can do something similar it will sell around the same amount of product as WoW has.
But that kind of advertising is only possible once the game becomes a pop culture icon in itself. Note these are 2006 ads. Noone would have taken those ads seriously in 2004 before WoW was released.
I think that the distinction between Warcraft and Warhammer is that Warcraft is an established computer game icon, and Blizzard as a developer has a ton of fans -- at least they did in 2004. It was those fans that spurred the initial buying phase, the first rush, if you will, to a large degree. The phenomenal growth after that initial rush came from (1) good reviews, (2) word of mouth/friends. That drove the game off the shelves and made it a pop culture phenomenon such that ads like the above can be made in mainstream media outlets.
Warhammer is a known IP, but isn't really a very strong computer gamer IP. So while you have the nice aspect of having a pre-drawn world, and a pre-drawn group of fans of that world, it isn't the case that all of these fans are also computer gamers, and it's also the case that many computer gamers are not Warhammer fans. And generally speaking Warhammer has many more fans in Europe than it does in North America. So while I think WAR will get a boost from having a known IP, I think it's not going to be nearly the same kind of boost that Blizzard got due not just to the Warcraft games, but also Diablo and Starcraft -- there are many "Blizzard fans" out there who like all of Blizzard's games, and this was a tremendous boost for WoW at the very beginning. I don't think WAR will get nearly that boost.
Also I don't think WAR is being designed to be as mainstream as WoW is. It's mostly a PvP game, and that right off the bat appeals to some gamers, but doesn't appeal to others. As the folks at Mythic have said, they are Led Zeppelin to WoW's Beatles -- they are trying to be a game that appeals to a large enough segment, but not the mega-segment thaht WoW does. They'll therefore be happy with far fewer subscriptions, and do not need to blow the doors off to be a success. I don't know about that i think you would be surprised about the near pop culture status that Warhammer is. Prime example of this is warcraft is based off Warhamemr with obvious similarities and only since WoW has it started truely become alot more unique but still has alot of key componets already in its storyline. Also Starcraft is extremely similar to Warhammer 40k.
I know for a fact a good lot of WoW players know/play Warhammer and would definitly be willing to try the game out at least to see whats up with it or permanetly because until then only WoW came remotely close to the feeling of Warhammer.
OK you keep talking about how Blizzard did so well because of its well known game. You can't count Starcraft or Diablo with this otherwise we could include the Sims and EA sports games in the comparison. So yes Warcraft is a well known gaming franchise. But it is no more well known to Gamers then Warhammer is.
See, that is the whole problem here. your whole problem is a wishfull thought, not the actual reality. if Gamers really knew Warhammer that well, then there would be more fantasy Warhammer games. but there aren't, strange eh? Let me assure you that Warcraft is MUCH more well known among pc gamers then Warhammer will ever be. why do you you think so many people yell "OMG WoW clone!" when they see WAR, when everyone who knows WAR knows that its just the traditional style of WARHAMMER.
Once again you seem to really dismiss the ability to take known gamers and turn it into a good MMO with a ton of fans. You site SWG and DDO and fixate on their low scores as still being good so they should of succeeded. But They aren't considered good by the majority of Gamers. No one says man I didn't play DDO because I just didn't like the IP. Or wow I have never heard of D&D before. No they don't play it because they thought the game sucked and heard it sucked from everyone beta testing it and also from reviews.
Again, you clearly overestimate the potential playerbase. Let me assure you that the majority of amount of gamers consider a 7,6 good. no question about it. if gamers thought 7,6 was bad, then reviewers wouldn't put that number in the "Good" area. People didn't say "oh wow, I didn't like DD IP". they simply didn't care about it. Dungeons & Dragons doesn't attract people. Its a tabletop game, not a video game. those are two diffrent kind of things, just like a racing game doesn't automaticly attract people intrested in real life racing either. video gamers don't recognise "D&DO", and I don't see why WAR will be any diffrent.
If World of Warcraft had recieved reviews in the 74-76% range we wouldn't even be having this conversation. The game would of peaked in the hundreds of thousands of players. But no it recieved 91% overall on reviews. Everquest would of bombed as well but it recieved around 85% on reviews. Dark Age of camelot hit 250Kish for subscribers on around 85% reviews with no advertising and the game franchise being unknown.
So if WAR gets reviews scores in the upper 80% to 90% range then expect it to sell a ton of boxes and also retain quite a lot of Subscribers.
You keep comparing Games that received poor reviews to WoW which received rave reviews and then you wonder why these new games didn't do well?
Give people a new game with great reviews (around the same that WoW received) and a known IP (doesn't have to be a gaming related IP, any pop culture IP will work, movies, books, etc) and throw in an equivalent advertising budget to what Blizzard spend and I guarentee you will see a game with over 1 million subscribers in the NA/EU market place.
Again, Why? WARHAMMER fantasy is not a well known franchise among pc gamers. nothing indicates that WAR will have all those millions of subscribers some like to argue. and, I clearly remember it was YOU that said that Quality had nothing to do with wether a game becomes popular or not. Besides look at Final Fantasy XI. a franchise with its root deep inside the gaming genre, One of the first mmorpg's released on 3 diffrent platforms, only capped at 500k subscribers, and thats Japan, NA and EU combined, so the actual numbers of players in the west is even less then that. FFXI received rating of 8,2 for PC, and 8, 5 for the PS2. and FFXI remained advertised, when a full pack was announced (games + expansion packs) there were banners around gamespot and gamefaqs everywhere.
Even though you seem to not see it. There really are that many people wanting to leave World of Warcraft for something new. That is the nature of the beast. Two years after the game is released it will start to lose subscribers in larger numbers. People grow bored with the game. They complete all of the content. They make alts and complete the content again. If you somehow think World of Warcraft is immune to this, then you will not see any reason about the game and are blind.
What are you talking about? The game already is released for 2 years and it didn't start to lose subscribers in large numbers at all. in fact, they gained large numbers of players.
Yes throughout 2007 I suspect Blizzard to announce continued growth for World of Warcraft. But I also expect those press releases to no longer include the NA subscription numbers. You have to remember that the game came out in the NA market a full 8 months before it came out in China (where they are seeing their biggest increase in subscriptions).
Again, another rediculous statement. the game was released in NA and Europe around the same time, And Europe gained 500k subscribers in the last year. there is nothing that even HINTS that the growth is stopping, or even slowing down.
This info came from Wikipedia:
The South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" prominently featured World of Warcraft through machinima animation. Blizzard actively collaborated with the South Park animation team in the making of the episode.[53] The episode drew 3.4 million viewers, making it Comedy Central's best midseason premiere since 2000.[54] The September 22, 2006 episode of Stargate Atlantis, The Return Part 1, featured a scene where Dr. Weir distracts geeky scientist Bill Lee by telling him she too is a fan of World of Warcraft.[55] The October 10, 2006 episode of Help Me Help You, "Fun Run," involves Inger meeting her online husband from the game.[56] On November 20, 2006, Blizzard announced that major national television stations would begin airing the first World of Warcraft TV spot in North America.[57] The commercial is an edit of a scene from the cult comedy film Office Space with footage of the game and a World of Warcraft box overlaid onto the original footage.[58]
That is the type of advertising I am talking about. If another game can do something similar it will sell around the same amount of product as WoW has.
again, you feel a need to yell how little I understand about bussiness, yet here you go posting another poor example. World of Warcraft already had millions of subscribers BEFORE those things happened.
Honnestly, I'm done with this debate, You will see in 1 year, maybe longer, that I was right. WAR won't reach 1 million subscribers. And when that happens, people will jump to the next mmorpg, probably startrek, and start telling other people Star trek will be the next 1 million subscriber game.
Originally posted by Cabe2323 This info came from Wikipedia:
The South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" prominently featured World of Warcraft through machinima animation. Blizzard actively collaborated with the South Park animation team in the making of the episode.[53] The episode drew 3.4 million viewers, making it Comedy Central's best midseason premiere since 2000.[54] The September 22, 2006 episode of Stargate Atlantis, The Return Part 1, featured a scene where Dr. Weir distracts geeky scientist Bill Lee by telling him she too is a fan of World of Warcraft.[55] The October 10, 2006 episode of Help Me Help You, "Fun Run," involves Inger meeting her online husband from the game.[56] On November 20, 2006, Blizzard announced that major national television stations would begin airing the first World of Warcraft TV spot in North America.[57] The commercial is an edit of a scene from the cult comedy film Office Space with footage of the game and a World of Warcraft box overlaid onto the original footage.[58]
That is the type of advertising I am talking about. If another game can do something similar it will sell around the same amount of product as WoW has.
But that kind of advertising is only possible once the game becomes a pop culture icon in itself. Note these are 2006 ads. Noone would have taken those ads seriously in 2004 before WoW was released.
I think that the distinction between Warcraft and Warhammer is that Warcraft is an established computer game icon, and Blizzard as a developer has a ton of fans -- at least they did in 2004. It was those fans that spurred the initial buying phase, the first rush, if you will, to a large degree. The phenomenal growth after that initial rush came from (1) good reviews, (2) word of mouth/friends. That drove the game off the shelves and made it a pop culture phenomenon such that ads like the above can be made in mainstream media outlets.
Warhammer is a known IP, but isn't really a very strong computer gamer IP. So while you have the nice aspect of having a pre-drawn world, and a pre-drawn group of fans of that world, it isn't the case that all of these fans are also computer gamers, and it's also the case that many computer gamers are not Warhammer fans. And generally speaking Warhammer has many more fans in Europe than it does in North America. So while I think WAR will get a boost from having a known IP, I think it's not going to be nearly the same kind of boost that Blizzard got due not just to the Warcraft games, but also Diablo and Starcraft -- there are many "Blizzard fans" out there who like all of Blizzard's games, and this was a tremendous boost for WoW at the very beginning. I don't think WAR will get nearly that boost.
Also I don't think WAR is being designed to be as mainstream as WoW is. It's mostly a PvP game, and that right off the bat appeals to some gamers, but doesn't appeal to others. As the folks at Mythic have said, they are Led Zeppelin to WoW's Beatles -- they are trying to be a game that appeals to a large enough segment, but not the mega-segment thaht WoW does. They'll therefore be happy with far fewer subscriptions, and do not need to blow the doors off to be a success.
To get that type of advertising doesn't take being a pop culture icon. It takes cash. Blizzard paid those companies to talk about WoW in their televison shows. And the ads with office space are obviously bought by Blizzard to advertise their product. Any company can do that if they have the pockets deep enough to.
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)
OK you keep talking about how Blizzard did so well because of its well known game. You can't count Starcraft or Diablo with this otherwise we could include the Sims and EA sports games in the comparison. So yes Warcraft is a well known gaming franchise. But it is no more well known to Gamers then Warhammer is.
See, that is the whole problem here. your whole problem is a wishfull thought, not the actual reality. if Gamers really knew Warhammer that well, then there would be more fantasy Warhammer games. but there aren't, strange eh? Let me assure you that Warcraft is MUCH more well known among pc gamers then Warhammer will ever be. why do you you think so many people yell "OMG WoW clone!" when they see WAR, when everyone who knows WAR knows that its just the traditional style of WARHAMMER.
Once again you seem to really dismiss the ability to take known gamers and turn it into a good MMO with a ton of fans. You site SWG and DDO and fixate on their low scores as still being good so they should of succeeded. But They aren't considered good by the majority of Gamers. No one says man I didn't play DDO because I just didn't like the IP. Or wow I have never heard of D&D before. No they don't play it because they thought the game sucked and heard it sucked from everyone beta testing it and also from reviews.
Again, you clearly overestimate the potential playerbase. Let me assure you that the majority of amount of gamers consider a 7,6 good. no question about it. if gamers thought 7,6 was bad, then reviewers wouldn't put that number in the "Good" area. People didn't say "oh wow, I didn't like DD IP". they simply didn't care about it. Dungeons & Dragons doesn't attract people. Its a tabletop game, not a video game. those are two diffrent kind of things, just like a racing game doesn't automaticly attract people intrested in real life racing either. video gamers don't recognise "D&DO", and I don't see why WAR will be any diffrent.
If World of Warcraft had recieved reviews in the 74-76% range we wouldn't even be having this conversation. The game would of peaked in the hundreds of thousands of players. But no it recieved 91% overall on reviews. Everquest would of bombed as well but it recieved around 85% on reviews. Dark Age of camelot hit 250Kish for subscribers on around 85% reviews with no advertising and the game franchise being unknown.
So if WAR gets reviews scores in the upper 80% to 90% range then expect it to sell a ton of boxes and also retain quite a lot of Subscribers.
You keep comparing Games that received poor reviews to WoW which received rave reviews and then you wonder why these new games didn't do well?
Give people a new game with great reviews (around the same that WoW received) and a known IP (doesn't have to be a gaming related IP, any pop culture IP will work, movies, books, etc) and throw in an equivalent advertising budget to what Blizzard spend and I guarentee you will see a game with over 1 million subscribers in the NA/EU market place.
Again, Why? WARHAMMER fantasy is not a well known franchise among pc gamers. nothing indicates that WAR will have all those millions of subscribers some like to argue. and, I clearly remember it was YOU that said that Quality had nothing to do with wether a game becomes popular or not. Besides look at Final Fantasy XI. a franchise with its root deep inside the gaming genre, One of the first mmorpg's released on 3 diffrent platforms, only capped at 500k subscribers, and thats Japan, NA and EU combined, so the actual numbers of players in the west is even less then that. FFXI received rating of 8,2 for PC, and 8, 5 for the PS2. and FFXI remained advertised, when a full pack was announced (games + expansion packs) there were banners around gamespot and gamefaqs everywhere.
Even though you seem to not see it. There really are that many people wanting to leave World of Warcraft for something new. That is the nature of the beast. Two years after the game is released it will start to lose subscribers in larger numbers. People grow bored with the game. They complete all of the content. They make alts and complete the content again. If you somehow think World of Warcraft is immune to this, then you will not see any reason about the game and are blind.
What are you talking about? The game already is released for 2 years and it didn't start to lose subscribers in large numbers at all. in fact, they gained large numbers of players.
Yes throughout 2007 I suspect Blizzard to announce continued growth for World of Warcraft. But I also expect those press releases to no longer include the NA subscription numbers. You have to remember that the game came out in the NA market a full 8 months before it came out in China (where they are seeing their biggest increase in subscriptions).
Again, another rediculous statement. the game was released in NA and Europe around the same time, And Europe gained 500k subscribers in the last year. there is nothing that even HINTS that the growth is stopping, or even slowing down.
This info came from Wikipedia:
The South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" prominently featured World of Warcraft through machinima animation. Blizzard actively collaborated with the South Park animation team in the making of the episode.[53] The episode drew 3.4 million viewers, making it Comedy Central's best midseason premiere since 2000.[54] The September 22, 2006 episode of Stargate Atlantis, The Return Part 1, featured a scene where Dr. Weir distracts geeky scientist Bill Lee by telling him she too is a fan of World of Warcraft.[55] The October 10, 2006 episode of Help Me Help You, "Fun Run," involves Inger meeting her online husband from the game.[56] On November 20, 2006, Blizzard announced that major national television stations would begin airing the first World of Warcraft TV spot in North America.[57] The commercial is an edit of a scene from the cult comedy film Office Space with footage of the game and a World of Warcraft box overlaid onto the original footage.[58]
That is the type of advertising I am talking about. If another game can do something similar it will sell around the same amount of product as WoW has.
again, you feel a need to yell how little I understand about bussiness, yet here you go posting another poor example. World of Warcraft already had millions of subscribers BEFORE those things happened.
Honnestly, I'm done with this debate, You will see in 1 year, maybe longer, that I was right. WAR won't reach 1 million subscribers. And when that happens, people will jump to the next mmorpg, probably startrek, and start telling other people Star trek will be the next 1 million subscriber game.
Everything you say is your personal opinion. Heck even the subscription numbers is just opinion. For all you know the market could be double the size you seem to think it is and millions of people have already quit WoW and millions of different people replaced them. See the thing is you aren't willing to entertain the idea that a game after WoW could duplicate it's success. And that is just being plain blind. Why wouldn't a game after WoW be successful? You seem to think that all 8.5 million people currently playing World of Warcraft live in happy little bubbles and aren't going to be interested in any other games. You seem to think that people like mediocre games and if they were going to leave WoW they would have already for one of the new games already out.
What I am saying is hey a game like WAR or LOTRO or AoC or any other number of MMO games coming out could be huge hits. A game after WoW could get 1million plus subscriptions. I am saying that the reason no game has been succesful since WoW so far is none of them have been critically acclaimed. There lets say it that way. Yes in your eyes a 76% is a good game, but it is not an award winning game. So if a new game comes out and is editor choice award winning for many different sites and has tons of positive reviews and is based on a known entity (for some reason you think PC gamers will only follow whats popular in PC gaming) That entity can be any type of pop culture icon, and lastly the game is extremely advertised it will do well.
You seem to be stuck on WoW being mainstream and the genre not. Sorry but WoW can't be mainstream and the genre not be. That is impossible. That is like saying Cats are furry, and here is a furry cat, but its not really a cat anymore because its the furriest cat of all. It is a rediculous statement to make. World of Warcraft is an MMORPG game and it is Mainstream there for the MMORGP genre is mainstream. Yes all MMO games are not going to be as succesful, but the genre is mainstream and has a ton of potential customers for any game to pick from.
In our debate here WAR is just Game "X" to speak about. I could of easily had this same conversation and used Lord of The Rings Online (which btw I personally think will be a larger success, last number I saw was 600K pre orders so far in the US alone).
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)
To get that type of advertising doesn't take being a pop culture icon. It takes cash. Blizzard paid those companies to talk about WoW in their televison shows. And the ads with office space are obviously bought by Blizzard to advertise their product. Any company can do that if they have the pockets deep enough to.
Eh, no. A TV show won't make an episode about something that isn't a known quantity. Noone would have made a South Park episode about WoW before it became a national pop culture icon. Same for the other spots. Sure, you can do a lot of OTHER kinds of ads, like in gaming magazines and the like, but in mainstream media like that, WoW would not have been put in the script if people didn't know what WoW was, and if the reference wasn't going to have any meaning to the viewer.
To get that type of advertising doesn't take being a pop culture icon. It takes cash. Blizzard paid those companies to talk about WoW in their televison shows. And the ads with office space are obviously bought by Blizzard to advertise their product. Any company can do that if they have the pockets deep enough to.
Eh, no. A TV show won't make an episode about something that isn't a known quantity. Noone would have made a South Park episode about WoW before it became a national pop culture icon. Same for the other spots. Sure, you can do a lot of OTHER kinds of ads, like in gaming magazines and the like, but in mainstream media like that, WoW would not have been put in the script if people didn't know what WoW was, and if the reference wasn't going to have any meaning to the viewer.
What a big Lie. A couple of years ago when the Godaddy commercial first aired at the Super Bowl no one had any idea who Godaddy was. No one had heard of them before that, yet they gambled on the 2.4 million dollars it cost for 30 seconds worth of advertisement during the Super Bowl. Fox didn't say We don't know who you are so F off we aren't taking your money. Yeah right. They said sure we will take your 2.4 million dollars no problem. The same thing goes for these network television shows. The product pays to be placed in their show. It doesn't matter if the product is known already or not. All that matters is how much money the company is willing to pay for the advertising. That is how television works. If you think these shows have some type of artistic values that they will hold to, you are surely mistaken. Shows like these are run by suits in the network offices. And they only care about one artistic value and its how green the money is!
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)
To get that type of advertising doesn't take being a pop culture icon. It takes cash. Blizzard paid those companies to talk about WoW in their televison shows. And the ads with office space are obviously bought by Blizzard to advertise their product. Any company can do that if they have the pockets deep enough to.
Eh, no. A TV show won't make an episode about something that isn't a known quantity. Noone would have made a South Park episode about WoW before it became a national pop culture icon. Same for the other spots. Sure, you can do a lot of OTHER kinds of ads, like in gaming magazines and the like, but in mainstream media like that, WoW would not have been put in the script if people didn't know what WoW was, and if the reference wasn't going to have any meaning to the viewer.
What a big Lie. A couple of years ago when the Godaddy commercial first aired at the Super Bowl no one had any idea who Godaddy was. No one had heard of them before that, yet they gambled on the 2.4 million dollars it cost for 30 seconds worth of advertisement during the Super Bowl. Fox didn't say We don't know who you are so F off we aren't taking your money. Yeah right. They said sure we will take your 2.4 million dollars no problem. The same thing goes for these network television shows. The product pays to be placed in their show. It doesn't matter if the product is known already or not. All that matters is how much money the company is willing to pay for the advertising. That is how television works. If you think these shows have some type of artistic values that they will hold to, you are surely mistaken. Shows like these are run by suits in the network offices. And they only care about one artistic value and its how green the money is!
Listen, Cabe.
Don't make a post about TV spots in scripts for TV shows and then switch the subject to ads. Sure, anyone can run an Ad if they are willing to pay the money to do so. Getting into South Park's script (and the other scripts you mentioned) requires recognition before hand. Do you think South Park would do a show about Godaddy?
Don't change the subject mid-argument to weasel away from your earlier examples, because I will call you on it every time.
To get that type of advertising doesn't take being a pop culture icon. It takes cash. Blizzard paid those companies to talk about WoW in their televison shows. And the ads with office space are obviously bought by Blizzard to advertise their product. Any company can do that if they have the pockets deep enough to.
Eh, no. A TV show won't make an episode about something that isn't a known quantity. Noone would have made a South Park episode about WoW before it became a national pop culture icon. Same for the other spots. Sure, you can do a lot of OTHER kinds of ads, like in gaming magazines and the like, but in mainstream media like that, WoW would not have been put in the script if people didn't know what WoW was, and if the reference wasn't going to have any meaning to the viewer.
What a big Lie. A couple of years ago when the Godaddy commercial first aired at the Super Bowl no one had any idea who Godaddy was. No one had heard of them before that, yet they gambled on the 2.4 million dollars it cost for 30 seconds worth of advertisement during the Super Bowl. Fox didn't say We don't know who you are so F off we aren't taking your money. Yeah right. They said sure we will take your 2.4 million dollars no problem. The same thing goes for these network television shows. The product pays to be placed in their show. It doesn't matter if the product is known already or not. All that matters is how much money the company is willing to pay for the advertising. That is how television works. If you think these shows have some type of artistic values that they will hold to, you are surely mistaken. Shows like these are run by suits in the network offices. And they only care about one artistic value and its how green the money is!
Listen, Cabe.
Don't make a post about TV spots in scripts for TV shows and then switch the subject to ads. Sure, anyone can run an Ad if they are willing to pay the money to do so. Getting into South Park's script (and the other scripts you mentioned) requires recognition before hand. Do you think South Park would do a show about Godaddy?
Don't change the subject mid-argument to weasel away from your earlier examples, because I will call you on it every time.
That isn't changin the subject. They are all ads. Do you really think that Southpark said hey we want to do an episode on WoW and we want to do it all in your game and show lots of Blizzard emblems all over the show and two of your founders and they did it all for free? Yeah it prolly cost them less because they were known already and may parker and stone are fans of the game (I have no idea) but to think that this wasn't another example of advertising, not sure what to say if that is what you truely believe.
SOE could of done the same thing with their MMOs if they actually spent that kind of money on advertising.
Yeah maybe it cost Blizzard only hundreds of thousands of dollars for the South Park episode since they were a known product. And Maybe it would of cost say SOE and EQ2 5 million dollars to get the same thing. ( made up numbers used to convey a point) The thing is that everything can be bought. So it is just a matter of negotiating over the price it would take to get TV placement of your product during the shows.
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)
Comments
Imagine if that was a rating on your car, your TV, or anything else for that matter? Why are people ok with just mediocre products?
Here are some examples:
http://pcgamer.com/archives/2007/01/eragon.html
Eragon is such a travesty from beginning to end that only a hardcore button mash fetishist could honestly enjoy this game. It’s not like the story will grab you, either: you’re dropped into a world filled with evil that has its sights on taking over a once-peaceful land. I think we’ve heard that scenario a few times before. 22%
This should never have been published. It was a waste of resources at this point. It takes up space on a shelf somewhere.
http://pcgamer.com/archives/2005/07/emergency_rescu.html
Emergency Rescue Firefighters, from our "friends" at Wizard Works, has a really, really cool box. It shows a brave firefighter ready to tackle a blazing inferno of death. It's multi-layered and embossed with a cutout of the firefighter up front and raging flames in the back, all outlined with shiny, silver foil. Mmm...shiny, silver foil.
The game, for what it's worth, is an isometric view action/strategy. And that means it's like a terrible real-time X-COM with sub-Sims graphics that tries to get you caught up in the heroism and bravery of the firefighter. It fails on every level other than the indisputable fact that it's real-time and has an isometric view. 24%
Again, just another waste. We are inundated with mediocre games. Publishers force developers to release games long before they are ready. We should be telling publishers it's not ok to try and milk money off us for a game that shouldn't be published.
I want the type of quality that went into the early console games back. Final Fantasy (the original NES) was a great game. I still play it. Same with Final Fantasy 4 and 6 (2 and 3 US versions for the SNES). The Legend of Zelda. Super Mario Brothers 3. Super Mario World. Mario Kart. Sonic the Hedgehog. All these games couldn't patch later. They had to be released as a quality game. There was no second chance. I want this quality of game. By being ok with mediocre game releases, you are telling publishers that it's ok for the to release a beta product for you to pay for that they will just fix later. Vanguard is a prime example of this.
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)
Umm cuz they have seen what it did for World of Warcraft. Why is everyone so quick to say how other developers want to copy WoW's supposed game ideas. But then when it is known that what really made it such a huge success is its advertising, you seem to think they wouldn't want to copy that?
NCsoft did it with Guild Wars. Last time i head they had sold over 3 million copies of the game. Their are ads all over the gaming magazines.
If EA wants WAR to actually challenge WoW then expect to see a ton of advertising.
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)
I have to get about 4 hours of sleep now before work.
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)
Cabe:
Umm cuz they have seen what it did for World of Warcraft. Why is everyone so quick to say how other developers want to copy WoW's supposed game ideas. But then when it is known that what really made it such a huge success is its advertising, you seem to think they wouldn't want to copy that?
NCsoft did it with Guild Wars. Last time i head they had sold over 3 million copies of the game. Their are ads all over the gaming magazines.
If EA wants WAR to actually challenge WoW then expect to see a ton of advertising.
EA also sees that WoW became popular because a big name company created an MMORPG of its own well known gaming franchise,that was of excellent quality with a good marketing strategy. Nobody relates Fantasy Warhammer to EA., and Warhammer is not a video game franchise.
Same story as WAR. ofcourse there are a few things diffrent with AoC, but the thing that is holding it back is the same. Not a big name company, and not based on an existing computer game franchise. I'm sure it will do just fine, but no 750k subs or 1 million subs.
WAR isn't even in beta. Why would you expect to see any kind of advertising for it right now?
*sigh* Read man, read. Please.
When it comes closer to release, I'd expect to see a lot of advertising for it. Much like you see for The Sims. I saw quite a few ads for E&B. I even got an email from EA Games about getting into it's open beta. The biggest problem for E&B was the MMO market was only a fraction of what it is now. Eve Online is similar to E&B. You can't get out of your ship in Eve....yet. That is coming though. Eve is a much more refined, better developed game than E&B was but E&B was developed during the growth period of the MMO genre. And it lasted for 2 years. It was developed by Westwood Studios. Yes, the same people that created Command and Conquer. That may also have been part of the problem. I'm not sure Westwood was up for the challenge of creating a Sandbox Sci-fi MMO.
nah, E&B is well known for its lack of advertising. its even mentioned in the wikipedia page.
alright, off to bed.
Cabe:
Umm cuz they have seen what it did for World of Warcraft. Why is everyone so quick to say how other developers want to copy WoW's supposed game ideas. But then when it is known that what really made it such a huge success is its advertising, you seem to think they wouldn't want to copy that?
NCsoft did it with Guild Wars. Last time i head they had sold over 3 million copies of the game. Their are ads all over the gaming magazines.
If EA wants WAR to actually challenge WoW then expect to see a ton of advertising.
EA also sees that WoW became popular because a big name company created an MMORPG of its own well known gaming franchise,that was of excellent quality with a good marketing strategy. Nobody relates Fantasy Warhammer to EA., and Warhammer is not a video game franchise.
Same story as WAR. ofcourse there are a few things diffrent with AoC, but the thing that is holding it back is the same. Not a big name company, and not based on an existing computer game franchise. I'm sure it will do just fine, but no 750k subs or 1 million subs.
WAR isn't even in beta. Why would you expect to see any kind of advertising for it right now?
*sigh* Read man, read. Please.
When it comes closer to release, I'd expect to see a lot of advertising for it. Much like you see for The Sims. I saw quite a few ads for E&B. I even got an email from EA Games about getting into it's open beta. The biggest problem for E&B was the MMO market was only a fraction of what it is now. Eve Online is similar to E&B. You can't get out of your ship in Eve....yet. That is coming though. Eve is a much more refined, better developed game than E&B was but E&B was developed during the growth period of the MMO genre. And it lasted for 2 years. It was developed by Westwood Studios. Yes, the same people that created Command and Conquer. That may also have been part of the problem. I'm not sure Westwood was up for the challenge of creating a Sandbox Sci-fi MMO.
nah, E&B is well known for its lack of advertising. its even mentioned in the wikipedia page.
alright, off to bed.
OK you keep talking about how Blizzard did so well because of its well known game. You can't count Starcraft or Diablo with this otherwise we could include the Sims and EA sports games in the comparison. So yes Warcraft is a well known gaming franchise. But it is no more well known to Gamers then Warhammer is.
Once again you seem to really dismiss the ability to take known gamers and turn it into a good MMO with a ton of fans. You site SWG and DDO and fixate on their low scores as still being good so they should of succeeded. But They aren't considered good by the majority of Gamers. No one says man I didn't play DDO because I just didn't like the IP. Or wow I have never heard of D&D before. No they don't play it because they thought the game sucked and heard it sucked from everyone beta testing it and also from reviews.
If World of Warcraft had recieved reviews in the 74-76% range we wouldn't even be having this conversation. The game would of peaked in the hundreds of thousands of players. But no it recieved 91% overall on reviews. Everquest would of bombed as well but it recieved around 85% on reviews. Dark Age of camelot hit 250Kish for subscribers on around 85% reviews with no advertising and the game franchise being unknown.
So if WAR gets reviews scores in the upper 80% to 90% range then expect it to sell a ton of boxes and also retain quite a lot of Subscribers.
You keep comparing Games that received poor reviews to WoW which received rave reviews and then you wonder why these new games didn't do well?
Give people a new game with great reviews (around the same that WoW received) and a known IP (doesn't have to be a gaming related IP, any pop culture IP will work, movies, books, etc) and throw in an equivalent advertising budget to what Blizzard spend and I guarentee you will see a game with over 1 million subscribers in the NA/EU market place.
Even though you seem to not see it. There really are that many people wanting to leave World of Warcraft for something new. That is the nature of the beast. Two years after the game is released it will start to lose subscribers in larger numbers. People grow bored with the game. They complete all of the content. They make alts and complete the content again. If you somehow think World of Warcraft is immune to this, then you will not see any reason about the game and are blind.
Yes throughout 2007 I suspect Blizzard to announce continued growth for World of Warcraft. But I also expect those press releases to no longer include the NA subscription numbers. You have to remember that the game came out in the NA market a full 8 months before it came out in China (where they are seeing their biggest increase in subscriptions).
This info came from Wikipedia:
The South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" prominently featured World of Warcraft through machinima animation. Blizzard actively collaborated with the South Park animation team in the making of the episode.[53] The episode drew 3.4 million viewers, making it Comedy Central's best midseason premiere since 2000.[54]The September 22, 2006 episode of Stargate Atlantis, The Return Part 1, featured a scene where Dr. Weir distracts geeky scientist Bill Lee by telling him she too is a fan of World of Warcraft.[55]
The October 10, 2006 episode of Help Me Help You, "Fun Run," involves Inger meeting her online husband from the game.[56]
On November 20, 2006, Blizzard announced that major national television stations would begin airing the first World of Warcraft TV spot in North America.[57] The commercial is an edit of a scene from the cult comedy film Office Space with footage of the game and a World of Warcraft box overlaid onto the original footage.[58]
That is the type of advertising I am talking about. If another game can do something similar it will sell around the same amount of product as WoW has.
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)
I think that the distinction between Warcraft and Warhammer is that Warcraft is an established computer game icon, and Blizzard as a developer has a ton of fans -- at least they did in 2004. It was those fans that spurred the initial buying phase, the first rush, if you will, to a large degree. The phenomenal growth after that initial rush came from (1) good reviews, (2) word of mouth/friends. That drove the game off the shelves and made it a pop culture phenomenon such that ads like the above can be made in mainstream media outlets.
Warhammer is a known IP, but isn't really a very strong computer gamer IP. So while you have the nice aspect of having a pre-drawn world, and a pre-drawn group of fans of that world, it isn't the case that all of these fans are also computer gamers, and it's also the case that many computer gamers are not Warhammer fans. And generally speaking Warhammer has many more fans in Europe than it does in North America. So while I think WAR will get a boost from having a known IP, I think it's not going to be nearly the same kind of boost that Blizzard got due not just to the Warcraft games, but also Diablo and Starcraft -- there are many "Blizzard fans" out there who like all of Blizzard's games, and this was a tremendous boost for WoW at the very beginning. I don't think WAR will get nearly that boost.
Also I don't think WAR is being designed to be as mainstream as WoW is. It's mostly a PvP game, and that right off the bat appeals to some gamers, but doesn't appeal to others. As the folks at Mythic have said, they are Led Zeppelin to WoW's Beatles -- they are trying to be a game that appeals to a large enough segment, but not the mega-segment thaht WoW does. They'll therefore be happy with far fewer subscriptions, and do not need to blow the doors off to be a success.
I think that the distinction between Warcraft and Warhammer is that Warcraft is an established computer game icon, and Blizzard as a developer has a ton of fans -- at least they did in 2004. It was those fans that spurred the initial buying phase, the first rush, if you will, to a large degree. The phenomenal growth after that initial rush came from (1) good reviews, (2) word of mouth/friends. That drove the game off the shelves and made it a pop culture phenomenon such that ads like the above can be made in mainstream media outlets.
Warhammer is a known IP, but isn't really a very strong computer gamer IP. So while you have the nice aspect of having a pre-drawn world, and a pre-drawn group of fans of that world, it isn't the case that all of these fans are also computer gamers, and it's also the case that many computer gamers are not Warhammer fans. And generally speaking Warhammer has many more fans in Europe than it does in North America. So while I think WAR will get a boost from having a known IP, I think it's not going to be nearly the same kind of boost that Blizzard got due not just to the Warcraft games, but also Diablo and Starcraft -- there are many "Blizzard fans" out there who like all of Blizzard's games, and this was a tremendous boost for WoW at the very beginning. I don't think WAR will get nearly that boost.
Also I don't think WAR is being designed to be as mainstream as WoW is. It's mostly a PvP game, and that right off the bat appeals to some gamers, but doesn't appeal to others. As the folks at Mythic have said, they are Led Zeppelin to WoW's Beatles -- they are trying to be a game that appeals to a large enough segment, but not the mega-segment thaht WoW does. They'll therefore be happy with far fewer subscriptions, and do not need to blow the doors off to be a success. I have seen that quote, but it is a little silly to say they aren't looking for a huge fan base. The beatles have sold over 500million records (some reports are close to 1 billion records) Led Zeppelin while not as mainstream has still sold over 250Million records worldwide.
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)
I wasnt saying that is what Mythic did.
I was commenting on how it was pretty silly to use 2 bands out of maybe a dozen in all of music that have achieved that level of succes. Not many bands have reached the 250million+ records sold category.
So they would of been better suited to compare WoW being the Beatles to say WAR being like Nirvana. See Nirvana is hugely succesful, but not when compared to The beatles. I think Nirvana has sold around 50million records. So 10 to 20 times less then the Beatles have.
Plus Nirvana is that kind of musical genre that was hugely popular but only with some people. It was very distinct in who it was popular with and it had people that hated their type of music. Which is what I personally see happening with WAR. WAR will be hugely successful in the MMO genre. But there is a segment of the genre that won't touch the game cuz they hate all types of PVP. Just the word PVP will make them not play the game.
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)
I think that the distinction between Warcraft and Warhammer is that Warcraft is an established computer game icon, and Blizzard as a developer has a ton of fans -- at least they did in 2004. It was those fans that spurred the initial buying phase, the first rush, if you will, to a large degree. The phenomenal growth after that initial rush came from (1) good reviews, (2) word of mouth/friends. That drove the game off the shelves and made it a pop culture phenomenon such that ads like the above can be made in mainstream media outlets.
Warhammer is a known IP, but isn't really a very strong computer gamer IP. So while you have the nice aspect of having a pre-drawn world, and a pre-drawn group of fans of that world, it isn't the case that all of these fans are also computer gamers, and it's also the case that many computer gamers are not Warhammer fans. And generally speaking Warhammer has many more fans in Europe than it does in North America. So while I think WAR will get a boost from having a known IP, I think it's not going to be nearly the same kind of boost that Blizzard got due not just to the Warcraft games, but also Diablo and Starcraft -- there are many "Blizzard fans" out there who like all of Blizzard's games, and this was a tremendous boost for WoW at the very beginning. I don't think WAR will get nearly that boost.
Also I don't think WAR is being designed to be as mainstream as WoW is. It's mostly a PvP game, and that right off the bat appeals to some gamers, but doesn't appeal to others. As the folks at Mythic have said, they are Led Zeppelin to WoW's Beatles -- they are trying to be a game that appeals to a large enough segment, but not the mega-segment thaht WoW does. They'll therefore be happy with far fewer subscriptions, and do not need to blow the doors off to be a success. I don't know about that i think you would be surprised about the near pop culture status that Warhammer is. Prime example of this is warcraft is based off Warhamemr with obvious similarities and only since WoW has it started truely become alot more unique but still has alot of key componets already in its storyline. Also Starcraft is extremely similar to Warhammer 40k.
I know for a fact a good lot of WoW players know/play Warhammer and would definitly be willing to try the game out at least to see whats up with it or permanetly because until then only WoW came remotely close to the feeling of Warhammer.
OK you keep talking about how Blizzard did so well because of its well known game. You can't count Starcraft or Diablo with this otherwise we could include the Sims and EA sports games in the comparison. So yes Warcraft is a well known gaming franchise. But it is no more well known to Gamers then Warhammer is.
See, that is the whole problem here. your whole problem is a wishfull thought, not the actual reality. if Gamers really knew Warhammer that well, then there would be more fantasy Warhammer games. but there aren't, strange eh? Let me assure you that Warcraft is MUCH more well known among pc gamers then Warhammer will ever be. why do you you think so many people yell "OMG WoW clone!" when they see WAR, when everyone who knows WAR knows that its just the traditional style of WARHAMMER.Once again you seem to really dismiss the ability to take known gamers and turn it into a good MMO with a ton of fans. You site SWG and DDO and fixate on their low scores as still being good so they should of succeeded. But They aren't considered good by the majority of Gamers. No one says man I didn't play DDO because I just didn't like the IP. Or wow I have never heard of D&D before. No they don't play it because they thought the game sucked and heard it sucked from everyone beta testing it and also from reviews.
Again, you clearly overestimate the potential playerbase. Let me assure you that the majority of amount of gamers consider a 7,6 good. no question about it. if gamers thought 7,6 was bad, then reviewers wouldn't put that number in the "Good" area. People didn't say "oh wow, I didn't like DD IP". they simply didn't care about it. Dungeons & Dragons doesn't attract people. Its a tabletop game, not a video game. those are two diffrent kind of things, just like a racing game doesn't automaticly attract people intrested in real life racing either. video gamers don't recognise "D&DO", and I don't see why WAR will be any diffrent.
If World of Warcraft had recieved reviews in the 74-76% range we wouldn't even be having this conversation. The game would of peaked in the hundreds of thousands of players. But no it recieved 91% overall on reviews. Everquest would of bombed as well but it recieved around 85% on reviews. Dark Age of camelot hit 250Kish for subscribers on around 85% reviews with no advertising and the game franchise being unknown.
So if WAR gets reviews scores in the upper 80% to 90% range then expect it to sell a ton of boxes and also retain quite a lot of Subscribers.
You keep comparing Games that received poor reviews to WoW which received rave reviews and then you wonder why these new games didn't do well?
Give people a new game with great reviews (around the same that WoW received) and a known IP (doesn't have to be a gaming related IP, any pop culture IP will work, movies, books, etc) and throw in an equivalent advertising budget to what Blizzard spend and I guarentee you will see a game with over 1 million subscribers in the NA/EU market place.
Again, Why? WARHAMMER fantasy is not a well known franchise among pc gamers. nothing indicates that WAR will have all those millions of subscribers some like to argue. and, I clearly remember it was YOU that said that Quality had nothing to do with wether a game becomes popular or not. Besides look at Final Fantasy XI. a franchise with its root deep inside the gaming genre, One of the first mmorpg's released on 3 diffrent platforms, only capped at 500k subscribers, and thats Japan, NA and EU combined, so the actual numbers of players in the west is even less then that. FFXI received rating of 8,2 for PC, and 8, 5 for the PS2. and FFXI remained advertised, when a full pack was announced (games + expansion packs) there were banners around gamespot and gamefaqs everywhere.
Even though you seem to not see it. There really are that many people wanting to leave World of Warcraft for something new. That is the nature of the beast. Two years after the game is released it will start to lose subscribers in larger numbers. People grow bored with the game. They complete all of the content. They make alts and complete the content again. If you somehow think World of Warcraft is immune to this, then you will not see any reason about the game and are blind.
What are you talking about? The game already is released for 2 years and it didn't start to lose subscribers in large numbers at all. in fact, they gained large numbers of players.
Yes throughout 2007 I suspect Blizzard to announce continued growth for World of Warcraft. But I also expect those press releases to no longer include the NA subscription numbers. You have to remember that the game came out in the NA market a full 8 months before it came out in China (where they are seeing their biggest increase in subscriptions).
Again, another rediculous statement. the game was released in NA and Europe around the same time, And Europe gained 500k subscribers in the last year. there is nothing that even HINTS that the growth is stopping, or even slowing down.
This info came from Wikipedia:
The South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" prominently featured World of Warcraft through machinima animation. Blizzard actively collaborated with the South Park animation team in the making of the episode.[53] The episode drew 3.4 million viewers, making it Comedy Central's best midseason premiere since 2000.[54]The September 22, 2006 episode of Stargate Atlantis, The Return Part 1, featured a scene where Dr. Weir distracts geeky scientist Bill Lee by telling him she too is a fan of World of Warcraft.[55]
The October 10, 2006 episode of Help Me Help You, "Fun Run," involves Inger meeting her online husband from the game.[56]
On November 20, 2006, Blizzard announced that major national television stations would begin airing the first World of Warcraft TV spot in North America.[57] The commercial is an edit of a scene from the cult comedy film Office Space with footage of the game and a World of Warcraft box overlaid onto the original footage.[58]
That is the type of advertising I am talking about. If another game can do something similar it will sell around the same amount of product as WoW has.
again, you feel a need to yell how little I understand about bussiness, yet here you go posting another poor example. World of Warcraft already had millions of subscribers BEFORE those things happened.
Honnestly, I'm done with this debate, You will see in 1 year, maybe longer, that I was right. WAR won't reach 1 million subscribers. And when that happens, people will jump to the next mmorpg, probably startrek, and start telling other people Star trek will be the next 1 million subscriber game.
I think that the distinction between Warcraft and Warhammer is that Warcraft is an established computer game icon, and Blizzard as a developer has a ton of fans -- at least they did in 2004. It was those fans that spurred the initial buying phase, the first rush, if you will, to a large degree. The phenomenal growth after that initial rush came from (1) good reviews, (2) word of mouth/friends. That drove the game off the shelves and made it a pop culture phenomenon such that ads like the above can be made in mainstream media outlets.
Warhammer is a known IP, but isn't really a very strong computer gamer IP. So while you have the nice aspect of having a pre-drawn world, and a pre-drawn group of fans of that world, it isn't the case that all of these fans are also computer gamers, and it's also the case that many computer gamers are not Warhammer fans. And generally speaking Warhammer has many more fans in Europe than it does in North America. So while I think WAR will get a boost from having a known IP, I think it's not going to be nearly the same kind of boost that Blizzard got due not just to the Warcraft games, but also Diablo and Starcraft -- there are many "Blizzard fans" out there who like all of Blizzard's games, and this was a tremendous boost for WoW at the very beginning. I don't think WAR will get nearly that boost.
Also I don't think WAR is being designed to be as mainstream as WoW is. It's mostly a PvP game, and that right off the bat appeals to some gamers, but doesn't appeal to others. As the folks at Mythic have said, they are Led Zeppelin to WoW's Beatles -- they are trying to be a game that appeals to a large enough segment, but not the mega-segment thaht WoW does. They'll therefore be happy with far fewer subscriptions, and do not need to blow the doors off to be a success.
To get that type of advertising doesn't take being a pop culture icon. It takes cash. Blizzard paid those companies to talk about WoW in their televison shows. And the ads with office space are obviously bought by Blizzard to advertise their product. Any company can do that if they have the pockets deep enough to.
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)
OK you keep talking about how Blizzard did so well because of its well known game. You can't count Starcraft or Diablo with this otherwise we could include the Sims and EA sports games in the comparison. So yes Warcraft is a well known gaming franchise. But it is no more well known to Gamers then Warhammer is.
See, that is the whole problem here. your whole problem is a wishfull thought, not the actual reality. if Gamers really knew Warhammer that well, then there would be more fantasy Warhammer games. but there aren't, strange eh? Let me assure you that Warcraft is MUCH more well known among pc gamers then Warhammer will ever be. why do you you think so many people yell "OMG WoW clone!" when they see WAR, when everyone who knows WAR knows that its just the traditional style of WARHAMMER.Once again you seem to really dismiss the ability to take known gamers and turn it into a good MMO with a ton of fans. You site SWG and DDO and fixate on their low scores as still being good so they should of succeeded. But They aren't considered good by the majority of Gamers. No one says man I didn't play DDO because I just didn't like the IP. Or wow I have never heard of D&D before. No they don't play it because they thought the game sucked and heard it sucked from everyone beta testing it and also from reviews.
Again, you clearly overestimate the potential playerbase. Let me assure you that the majority of amount of gamers consider a 7,6 good. no question about it. if gamers thought 7,6 was bad, then reviewers wouldn't put that number in the "Good" area. People didn't say "oh wow, I didn't like DD IP". they simply didn't care about it. Dungeons & Dragons doesn't attract people. Its a tabletop game, not a video game. those are two diffrent kind of things, just like a racing game doesn't automaticly attract people intrested in real life racing either. video gamers don't recognise "D&DO", and I don't see why WAR will be any diffrent.
If World of Warcraft had recieved reviews in the 74-76% range we wouldn't even be having this conversation. The game would of peaked in the hundreds of thousands of players. But no it recieved 91% overall on reviews. Everquest would of bombed as well but it recieved around 85% on reviews. Dark Age of camelot hit 250Kish for subscribers on around 85% reviews with no advertising and the game franchise being unknown.
So if WAR gets reviews scores in the upper 80% to 90% range then expect it to sell a ton of boxes and also retain quite a lot of Subscribers.
You keep comparing Games that received poor reviews to WoW which received rave reviews and then you wonder why these new games didn't do well?
Give people a new game with great reviews (around the same that WoW received) and a known IP (doesn't have to be a gaming related IP, any pop culture IP will work, movies, books, etc) and throw in an equivalent advertising budget to what Blizzard spend and I guarentee you will see a game with over 1 million subscribers in the NA/EU market place.
Again, Why? WARHAMMER fantasy is not a well known franchise among pc gamers. nothing indicates that WAR will have all those millions of subscribers some like to argue. and, I clearly remember it was YOU that said that Quality had nothing to do with wether a game becomes popular or not. Besides look at Final Fantasy XI. a franchise with its root deep inside the gaming genre, One of the first mmorpg's released on 3 diffrent platforms, only capped at 500k subscribers, and thats Japan, NA and EU combined, so the actual numbers of players in the west is even less then that. FFXI received rating of 8,2 for PC, and 8, 5 for the PS2. and FFXI remained advertised, when a full pack was announced (games + expansion packs) there were banners around gamespot and gamefaqs everywhere.
Even though you seem to not see it. There really are that many people wanting to leave World of Warcraft for something new. That is the nature of the beast. Two years after the game is released it will start to lose subscribers in larger numbers. People grow bored with the game. They complete all of the content. They make alts and complete the content again. If you somehow think World of Warcraft is immune to this, then you will not see any reason about the game and are blind.
What are you talking about? The game already is released for 2 years and it didn't start to lose subscribers in large numbers at all. in fact, they gained large numbers of players.
Yes throughout 2007 I suspect Blizzard to announce continued growth for World of Warcraft. But I also expect those press releases to no longer include the NA subscription numbers. You have to remember that the game came out in the NA market a full 8 months before it came out in China (where they are seeing their biggest increase in subscriptions).
Again, another rediculous statement. the game was released in NA and Europe around the same time, And Europe gained 500k subscribers in the last year. there is nothing that even HINTS that the growth is stopping, or even slowing down.
This info came from Wikipedia:
The South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" prominently featured World of Warcraft through machinima animation. Blizzard actively collaborated with the South Park animation team in the making of the episode.[53] The episode drew 3.4 million viewers, making it Comedy Central's best midseason premiere since 2000.[54]The September 22, 2006 episode of Stargate Atlantis, The Return Part 1, featured a scene where Dr. Weir distracts geeky scientist Bill Lee by telling him she too is a fan of World of Warcraft.[55]
The October 10, 2006 episode of Help Me Help You, "Fun Run," involves Inger meeting her online husband from the game.[56]
On November 20, 2006, Blizzard announced that major national television stations would begin airing the first World of Warcraft TV spot in North America.[57] The commercial is an edit of a scene from the cult comedy film Office Space with footage of the game and a World of Warcraft box overlaid onto the original footage.[58]
That is the type of advertising I am talking about. If another game can do something similar it will sell around the same amount of product as WoW has.
again, you feel a need to yell how little I understand about bussiness, yet here you go posting another poor example. World of Warcraft already had millions of subscribers BEFORE those things happened.
Honnestly, I'm done with this debate, You will see in 1 year, maybe longer, that I was right. WAR won't reach 1 million subscribers. And when that happens, people will jump to the next mmorpg, probably startrek, and start telling other people Star trek will be the next 1 million subscriber game.
Everything you say is your personal opinion. Heck even the subscription numbers is just opinion. For all you know the market could be double the size you seem to think it is and millions of people have already quit WoW and millions of different people replaced them. See the thing is you aren't willing to entertain the idea that a game after WoW could duplicate it's success. And that is just being plain blind. Why wouldn't a game after WoW be successful? You seem to think that all 8.5 million people currently playing World of Warcraft live in happy little bubbles and aren't going to be interested in any other games. You seem to think that people like mediocre games and if they were going to leave WoW they would have already for one of the new games already out.
What I am saying is hey a game like WAR or LOTRO or AoC or any other number of MMO games coming out could be huge hits. A game after WoW could get 1million plus subscriptions. I am saying that the reason no game has been succesful since WoW so far is none of them have been critically acclaimed. There lets say it that way. Yes in your eyes a 76% is a good game, but it is not an award winning game. So if a new game comes out and is editor choice award winning for many different sites and has tons of positive reviews and is based on a known entity (for some reason you think PC gamers will only follow whats popular in PC gaming) That entity can be any type of pop culture icon, and lastly the game is extremely advertised it will do well.
You seem to be stuck on WoW being mainstream and the genre not. Sorry but WoW can't be mainstream and the genre not be. That is impossible. That is like saying Cats are furry, and here is a furry cat, but its not really a cat anymore because its the furriest cat of all. It is a rediculous statement to make. World of Warcraft is an MMORPG game and it is Mainstream there for the MMORGP genre is mainstream. Yes all MMO games are not going to be as succesful, but the genre is mainstream and has a ton of potential customers for any game to pick from.
In our debate here WAR is just Game "X" to speak about. I could of easily had this same conversation and used Lord of The Rings Online (which btw I personally think will be a larger success, last number I saw was 600K pre orders so far in the US alone).
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)
What a big Lie. A couple of years ago when the Godaddy commercial first aired at the Super Bowl no one had any idea who Godaddy was. No one had heard of them before that, yet they gambled on the 2.4 million dollars it cost for 30 seconds worth of advertisement during the Super Bowl. Fox didn't say We don't know who you are so F off we aren't taking your money. Yeah right. They said sure we will take your 2.4 million dollars no problem. The same thing goes for these network television shows. The product pays to be placed in their show. It doesn't matter if the product is known already or not. All that matters is how much money the company is willing to pay for the advertising. That is how television works. If you think these shows have some type of artistic values that they will hold to, you are surely mistaken. Shows like these are run by suits in the network offices. And they only care about one artistic value and its how green the money is!
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)
What a big Lie. A couple of years ago when the Godaddy commercial first aired at the Super Bowl no one had any idea who Godaddy was. No one had heard of them before that, yet they gambled on the 2.4 million dollars it cost for 30 seconds worth of advertisement during the Super Bowl. Fox didn't say We don't know who you are so F off we aren't taking your money. Yeah right. They said sure we will take your 2.4 million dollars no problem. The same thing goes for these network television shows. The product pays to be placed in their show. It doesn't matter if the product is known already or not. All that matters is how much money the company is willing to pay for the advertising. That is how television works. If you think these shows have some type of artistic values that they will hold to, you are surely mistaken. Shows like these are run by suits in the network offices. And they only care about one artistic value and its how green the money is!
Listen, Cabe.
Don't make a post about TV spots in scripts for TV shows and then switch the subject to ads. Sure, anyone can run an Ad if they are willing to pay the money to do so. Getting into South Park's script (and the other scripts you mentioned) requires recognition before hand. Do you think South Park would do a show about Godaddy?
Don't change the subject mid-argument to weasel away from your earlier examples, because I will call you on it every time.
What a big Lie. A couple of years ago when the Godaddy commercial first aired at the Super Bowl no one had any idea who Godaddy was. No one had heard of them before that, yet they gambled on the 2.4 million dollars it cost for 30 seconds worth of advertisement during the Super Bowl. Fox didn't say We don't know who you are so F off we aren't taking your money. Yeah right. They said sure we will take your 2.4 million dollars no problem. The same thing goes for these network television shows. The product pays to be placed in their show. It doesn't matter if the product is known already or not. All that matters is how much money the company is willing to pay for the advertising. That is how television works. If you think these shows have some type of artistic values that they will hold to, you are surely mistaken. Shows like these are run by suits in the network offices. And they only care about one artistic value and its how green the money is!
Listen, Cabe.
Don't make a post about TV spots in scripts for TV shows and then switch the subject to ads. Sure, anyone can run an Ad if they are willing to pay the money to do so. Getting into South Park's script (and the other scripts you mentioned) requires recognition before hand. Do you think South Park would do a show about Godaddy?
Don't change the subject mid-argument to weasel away from your earlier examples, because I will call you on it every time.
That isn't changin the subject. They are all ads. Do you really think that Southpark said hey we want to do an episode on WoW and we want to do it all in your game and show lots of Blizzard emblems all over the show and two of your founders and they did it all for free? Yeah it prolly cost them less because they were known already and may parker and stone are fans of the game (I have no idea) but to think that this wasn't another example of advertising, not sure what to say if that is what you truely believe.
SOE could of done the same thing with their MMOs if they actually spent that kind of money on advertising.
Yeah maybe it cost Blizzard only hundreds of thousands of dollars for the South Park episode since they were a known product. And Maybe it would of cost say SOE and EQ2 5 million dollars to get the same thing. ( made up numbers used to convey a point) The thing is that everything can be bought. So it is just a matter of negotiating over the price it would take to get TV placement of your product during the shows.
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)