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In 10 years from now, MMORPG will not be a genre anymore...
Dis_Ordur
Member Posts: 1,501
...and this website will be shut down.
Here is why. If you total up all of the people playing MMO's worldwide, you still will not get the kind of numbers WoW has. Being that there is such a heavy concentration in one game, the game itself has come to define our beloved "genre", and all MMO games since have tried replicating WoW's success in one way or the other. This is why there is so much angst online whenever you bring up WoW.
WoW came along and became a defining game title like the 'Sims'. Imagine if Sims became a genre itself, this is close to what we have here with MMO's and WoW. WoW IS the MMORPG genre.
We see MS backing out of MMO's completely, and other titles not seeing the light of day. Ever notice how the "Games in Development" list to keeps getting shorter and shorter?
This is not a prognostication I am making to start a flame war, or to be negative. I love MMO's, but we are in a period of time called the "honeymoon of the MMO-ere". These games simply cost too much to maintain and develop. If companies cannot expect the type of ROI WoW has created, no one is going to develop AAA titles anymore, and the MMORPG "genre" will consist of rogue developer houses like CCP who no longer make games that belong to a genre, but rather make games for a very insignifcantly sized niche market.
Genres like RTS, FPS, RPG and adventure games offer distictly different styles of gameplay. MMO's, while typically turn-based, do not differentiate their mechanics much differently than an adventure game, RPG or a ladder based FPS type game. One could argue that the RPG genre will consume MMO's, and that years down the road, people will eventually find the idea of paying a subscription for a game to be completely ridiculous.
My $0.02.
Comments
I don't think the genre will be gone because there will always be the "next big thing" on the horizon. Much like Atari and Intellivision were the be-all-end-all consoles, who needed anything better?
Everyone wants something new. If nothing else, WoW 2 or 3 will be out
.
Anyways, Microsoft can't make quality OS's, let alone games. They've been bailing on MMO's since 2001 (Battletech 3025 anyone?)
-- unless you want to count Asherons Call, which they sold back to Turbine
EQ2 fan sites
I for one do not see that happening i have been playing MMO's from the start i have every mmo on the market. And to correct your post and plz dont take offence to this but WoW has what 8-9 mill subscriptions and about 200K of them or more are trials and not to mention its under my understanding lineage 2 has 14 million subscribers so yes WoW may be big here in the US for now and i stress for now but it is in no way the biggest MMO subscription base in the world all the asian MMO's are bigger . WoW has alot of negatives and some positives.But there is also diffrent catergories of MMo's .Again this is not a flame just my 2 cents that i have researched over and over again because i for one do not like WoW and will never play it again.
lol
SIMS *has* become a genre of its own .. more or less.
I dunno. There are certainly up and downs in different genres. Big budget war games is more or less dead. Graphical adventure is not dead but a lot smaller (in percentage of the market) than before.
I don't see MMO going away though. As long as WOW is commanding millions of subbers, other companies would try to take it away. Plus that even much smaller games can be profitable once the sub pop passes a certain threshold.
Eve Online has no where the numbers close to WOW but it is still profitable.
yeah!...wait...what????
to correct your post, WoW has over 10 million subscriptions and none of them are trials. And Lineage 2 has no where even remotely close to 14 million subscribers.
p.s. The Lineage numbers are total number of unique accounts ever, not concurrently.
The OP would be correct if every developer tries to make a game that requires an audience the size of WoW's.
However, that is the only case in which the original assumption would be correct.
It is also standard industry knowledge that the actual market "out there" hasn't even come close to being fully exposed.
However, yes.. if companies keep trying to change their games to be more WoWsy.. and iconic or making games that would require 10 million subs.. they will fail.
Enough development companies failed before WoW... and plenty will fail after.
That has more to do with Cost, Mismanagement.. and failure to understand the marke.. expand the market or going after a under utilized market.. than anything else.
Again not a flameing war here but vince you really need to read the fine print under subscription totals for WoW it says includes trial accounts. and Lineage 2 dose have 14 million or atleast it did untill some of the other new asian MMO's came out but again this is the last comment i post because there is no need for flaming wars or drama just facts and with WoW loyalist around every corner one such as myself will never be at peace from the flames i get for dissing it.
Wrong. Ignorant people see WoW as the MMORPG genre, intelligent people will look at the game for what is and not what WoW has to do with it.
Everyone just stfu about WoW already, it is popular and successful, but nothing more than just another MMO.
Halo is amazingly popular, but it does not mean that once they stop making Halo, no one will be playing FPS's.
from Q3 2007
www.massively.com/2007/11/08/ncsoft-q3-2007-financial-report-and-mmog-subscription-numbers/
Lineage II
[World-Wide]: 931,263 subscriptions
[North America + Europe]: 78,953 subscriptions
EQ2 fan sites
First of all, I'm not a WoW loyalist and actually hate the game. Second of all, it's not a flame war...you're simply wrong.
WoW hits 10 million subs
Now you notice from that article, "Blizzard noted that the term subscriber encompasses those who have paid a subscription fee, have an active prepaid WOW card, are within their first free month of game access after purchasing the game, or have logged into the game from an Internet cafe within the last 30 days. The tally does not include expired or canceled subscriptions, or those playing under free promotional accounts."
So no, none of those are trial accounts.
As to your Lineage 2 numbers...as someone posted above...you're wrong again. Lineage 2 has less than 1 million current subs, they've had 14 million TOTAL since LAUNCH...not at the same time...not even close. WoW's number of total subs ever would probably be ridiculous.
p.s. I'm also confused why you'd even pick Lineage 2 as an example, when Lineage has about 70% more subs than Lineage 2...
Saying WoW is going to be the genre is like saying Doom is the genre for FPS's.
It was the most popular at the time, but it hasn't defined the FPS genre. FPS is FPS, doesn't matter what it is.
When I'm looking for a good FPS, I don't think to myself "I'd like to play a good Doom type game". I would propably think something like "I would like to play good F.E.A.R. or CoD4 type game" Not trying to start arguments over if these games are the most popular or not, but you see my point about referencing the genre to what is more current.
When people were playing UO (which made it into the Guiness Book of World Records at the time), they thought it was the best thing ever - I know I did. But not often do we refere MMO's being tied to UO; right now it's WoW, next year it could be WAR, 5 years from now it will be something else.
Just because the numbers are there now, doesn't mean that it is going to stick
Also, just because WoW is successful, it doesn't mean companies won't compete because of Blizzards ROI. We are in the Growth cycle of the MMO genre, there is still PLENTY of room for competition, and there will be.
People are getting tired of WoW - why would anybody not want to pick up that market of gamers?
They do. and they will.
I suspect we will not be seeing market maturity for MMORPG's for some time to come.
Man I'm so tired of people assuming World of Warcraft is the only mmorpg that matters. It would benefit you to look at overall market share for mmorpgs. Go by revenues and you will see why many will disagree with this post
Genre cannot die, this is just lol.
WoW is a virus, you gotta understand, that no company expects to have 10 million subs. Funcom said that if they hit million subs they will report AoC as a success. Even Blizzard expected only 300k subs when they made WoW. So if the game has like 500k subs, the game is success.
WoW isnt a genre for itself lol. WoW is a shallow mmo imo, made for preteen kids, but is highly addictive. The main reson of its success is Warcraft 3 and DotA multiplayer map, and offcourse amazing game promotion and marketing Blizzard has done. I bet number of subs will lower dramaticly when WAR,AoC and Aion are released. That doesnt mean they will "kill" WoW, couse thats just impossible. But I think WoW will die in time, like 3-5 years from now.
i can understand what you are saying so im not gonna bash you. I dont want MMO's to go away either, but i think you are falling into a slippery slope logic and not completely understanding the market as it is today. Ya WoW did invoke quite a bit of influence over the market of MMO gaming and alot of people take their ideas and try to improve on them. While everyone is screaming "WoW-clone", isnt it really just the case that everything starts with ideas gathered from similar things and tries to make it better? i know alot of threads have talked about this so im not gonna go into detail, but basicly everything and everyone finds ideas that work and try to improve on them. thats the only way to make something better is realize what works and what is bad then change it.
As far as MMO's all being: Niche market, WoW-ish, or quitting i dont think thats very true. It APPEARS that way, but thats only the last few years since WoW has been such a success. However their are games in development that will be of interest to many different tastes. I dont think you should just give up on MMO's b/c they suffered a few years on the down slope. As with anything, you can only be going up for so long until you regress back to the mean, and usually fallows with you ending up on the down side.
have faith, MMO's will return to the way they were ment to be, it just may take a few years to get back on track
Protip: If someone does NOT list at least one positive and one negative about the game they are critiquing, its best to ignore the post.
While I 100% agreed with your first sentence...you then basically go on and contradict it. If you go by overall market share for MMORPGs...WoW has as many subscribers as every other game combined
Go by revenues, and you're talking about a billion dollar enterprise.
No offense, but those are exactly the statistics you don't want to use.
You do realize, even if each game took 2 million each of WoW's subscribers...which they won't...WoW would still have twice as many subs as all of them.
A MMORPG does not have to have "Wow" success to be profitable. Profitable = self-sustaining + generating more income than cost. WoW has merely opened up the MMO industry to a wider playerbase, creating more potential players for the genre. Whether it is WoW2, or some other future MMORPG, WoW will eventually become an outdated game, and the next generation of MMOs will continue.
btw, my last two posts are intended to emphasize you're doing exactly what the OP is talking about. You're comparing market share to WoW, talking about WoW's demise, worrying about how many WoW subs X game can take, etc.
The future of the MMO business, IMO, is to ignore WoW...at best to say "hey, thanks for mainstreaming our industry"...and then build games that appeal to 50-150k subs, offer something unique and GOOD, and keep building them.
Go by revenues, and you're talking about a billion dollar enterprise.
No offense, but those are exactly the statistics you don't want to use.
I read ZT Online is #1 in China. WoW cant be #1 everywhere surely... I'm too lazy to go look it up so I'm relying on others to fill the gaps
Also, sure WoW has #1 market share but Second Life was doping well
You do realize, even if each game took 2 million each of WoW's subscribers...which they won't...WoW would still have twice as many subs as all of them.
If you have quoted a little more of me, you would see that I do realize that
I said those games will not "kill" WoW, but will take a share of WoWs playerbase.
You do realize, even if each game took 2 million each of WoW's subscribers...which they won't...WoW would still have twice as many subs as all of them.
If you have quoted a little more of me, you would see that I do realize that
I said those games will not "kill" WoW, but will take a share of WoWs playerbase.
LOL...yeah, but then you said WoW would die in 3-5 years...come on man, let's just face it. EQ never dreamed of WoW like numbers, and is still alive and running...why would WoW lose 10 million subs and die in 3-5 years??? Matrix Online has survived 3 years with like 10k people playing for god's sake!!!
okay found the link:
MMOGDATA
Click on "market share". A big piece of that pie is shared by Second Life and others
Bottom line, and I think most of us agree; the MMO genre is not dying.
OK, you're absolutely not pulling me into the whole "mmogdata" and "mmogchart" discussion, I've made my opinions on those sites extremely clear
That said, as of March 2007, Second Life had less than 60,000 paid subscribers. Free really doesn't count.
p.s. Even if they had 60,000,000 paid subs, I'm not sure I'd count Second Life until they actually put the "G" in MMORPG