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Yeah, I know SOE fucked up SWG (even more than it already was). You could argue that they did the same with PS.
I'm just curious as to whether they've ever actually outright shut down a game. EQ, EQ2, PS, MxO, and Vanguard are all still going. MxO was basically dead at launch. The least launch sales of any MMO released by a major studio in a long, long time, and the numbers have only gone downhill since then. Yet still they've kept it alive. Both NCSoft and EA have shown a willingness to kill weak games.
Comments
SOE has one difference tho - it has the Station Pass that can provide life support for any of their games
wish other mmo companies would offer something similar, score 1 for SOE
EQ2 fan sites
Not any game worth crying about that I know of, if any at all
SoE takes care of their games, even if they do make colossal mistakes at times.
Station pass is great for business, bad for the consumer.
It basically enables SoE to fetch a premium price for games that are old or downright awful.
Just because SoE gives you a bucket full of shit when someone else would only give you a meager handful of shit for the same price, it does not mean you are getting a deal... Unless you're in the fertilizer business.
SoE's All Access Pass allows games undeserving of life to survive, it encourages a lack of quality and production value in MMORPGs, it lowers standards of the genre when they're already low enough.
patience. its coming.
i like station pass. +1 again for SOE.
station pass is a great thing and they games they offer are very good as well! Vanguard, EQ2, SWG and POTBS are all quality games....
Eh, if some poor saps like it, why shut it down? Take MxO as an example.
The lesson of MxO has already been learned. Monolith stated almost immediately that they were getting out of the MMORPG business. WB dumped the title as fast as they could when they saw the meager sales it generated. Everybody knows it was a failure, and everybody knows why. It sucked.
So if some people still play it and enjoy it, even if it's only a few thousand people, why should we wish for it to be shut down? Let them have what they want. I only say this because I really enjoyed Earth and Beyond, and EA shut that game down. Yeah, E&B had flaws, but overall, I thought it was quite good.
There is a potential goodside to half-decent games surviving, though. Yes, some companies release buggy messes which barely survive, polish them up, then do the exact same thing with their next title, not learning from their mistakes. Funcom is a good example. Others, though, release games which need a lot of work, but they learn from their mistakes. Look at Turbine. AC2 was a disaster in many ways, but LotRO is a good title and quite polished. DDO may not have a huge following, but its a very solid title at this point, with a fanbase that likes it.
Eh, if some poor saps like it, why shut it down?
Well I'm not quite sure how to explain it to folks in great detail. I know it's nice for the few fans some of these misift mmo's have to see them go on, but basically it violates the natural order of things... in a business sense.
SoE is kinda like the equivalent of a government bail out for failed businesses. If you fail because you delivered an inferior product, poor service, lack of quality, bad design, whatever- out you go. Someone else takes your place, and does better.
Bailing out bad businesses, bad MMORPGs, is bad for the consumer because it lowers standards and the need to compete.
Some people hate SoE for what they did to SWG. I hate them for there business model that shows the rest of the industry that lack luster products are still a way to make money.
You can pat SoE on the back, but in doing so you are kicking your own ass.
how this is bad for the consumer?
NCSoft has
Lineage
Lineage2
City of Heros/Villians
Tabula Rasa
Dungeon Runners (free game but has perks if you sub)
and at least 3 forthcoming MMOs
yet there is no bundle package to pay monthly fees for more than 1 game (beyond game cards)
monthly access to all games is what the Station Pass offers
- dont like it? dont pay for it
but Station Pass helps people that play many games from the same company
EQ2 fan sites
It's 15$ a month to play a game.
What is the price to keep a server rack up? Really it's not that costly to keep a server up and running when thousands of people are still paying you 15$/month.
MMO's seem to be lucrative even when your MMO fails. If you have build enough hype you will get out of the cost and the players sticking around will pay for your server costs.
I don't know if I agree with you there...
- Server maintenance (Technicians are expensive)
- Bandwith
- Customer Service
- Billing
- Marketing (prior to launch, possibly after)
- Developers (day 1++), Artists, etc etc
- Electricity
- Rent
I may have forgotten some major points, but development alone costs millions - and no, box sales do not go directly into the pockets of the developer (distribution, retailers share...).
Anyhow, there mus be a lot of money in MMOs, otherwise we wouldnt see so many being developed (and screwed up ^^)
Eh, if some poor saps like it, why shut it down?
Well I'm not quite sure how to explain it to folks in great detail. I know it's nice for the few fans some of these misift mmo's have to see them go on, but basically it violates the natural order of things... in a business sense.
SoE is kinda like the equivalent of a government bail out for failed businesses. If you fail because you delivered an inferior product, poor service, lack of quality, bad design, whatever- out you go. Someone else takes your place, and does better.
Bailing out bad businesses, bad MMORPGs, is bad for the consumer because it lowers standards and the need to compete.
Some people hate SoE for what they did to SWG. I hate them for there business model that shows the rest of the industry that lack luster products are still a way to make money.
You can pat SoE on the back, but in doing so you are kicking your own ass.
You post is full of logical inconsistencies. If the products make money, how could it be failed (in a business sense)? You may not like it ... but hey it is a commercial success.
Secondly, more power to companies who can make profits off lack luster products. That is not a failure .... that is a monumental business success.
And lastly, no one ask YOU to pay for it or play it. I don't play any of those games but that does not make them failure just like I don't shop at Walmart and it is far far from a failure.
SoE is one of the best at running MMOs cheaply by overworking staff on multiple games, pooling bandwidth, reassinging equipment from project to project, using the same under-paid customer non-service throughout.
It's like how Aldi has a gallon of milk for 2.50 while Meijer wants 4 bucks. Aldi makes you buy bags, will not accept credit cards because of % of sale fees, requires a deposit on a cart as each cart cost over a hundred dollars to replace, uses a smaller store with more efficient heating/cooling (very few windows), and their employees are always ridiculously slow and I assume that reflects their pay and benefits package or lack there of. Their products seem ok but dont expect to find many name brand groceries.
There's always a way to cut corners.
But I do shop at Aldi- because their milk is just as good as anyone else's. If the same were true of SoE's games I might be a customer of theirs as well... but their games are awful.
SoE buys failed games. It's what they do. These are games that, had SoE not stepped in with their filthy publisher's money, would no longer be running today. That sounds like failure to me. Just because SoE bought them and now runs them for it's own purposes, does not make them any less of a failure in my eyes.
Marketing,power,server,customer supor, develpment, goverment taxes. the actual profit flux from country to country and profit is good but not near as mutch as most people think. a mmo that fails is a huge risk, were talking about millions in triple xxx.xxx.xxx,- a sucesfull mmo has 200k sups do that math, its not that mutch. ( wow is the only exception in the industie, they do make flithy mutch but only deu number, there cost are just as high as any other mmo)
how this is bad for the consumer?
NCSoft has
Lineage
Lineage2
City of Heros/Villians
Tabula Rasa
Dungeon Runners (free game but has perks if you sub)
and at least 3 forthcoming MMOs
yet there is no bundle package to pay monthly fees for more than 1 game (beyond game cards)
monthly access to all games is what the Station Pass offers
- dont like it? dont pay for it
but Station Pass helps people that play many games from the same company
They also have Guildwars with no monthly fees at all. That is a lot better than a station pass, GW is not a worse game than Vanguard & EQ2... The rest of SOE games is old crap for nostalgic players. And GW2 will be an open world. Those monthly fees cant last forever. Turbine life time deal on LOTRO is good too even though i dont care much for the game.
But SOE have a staff that takes care of all their game, it wont cost more than a really big one and still generates a descent amount of cash. Not as much as a game like wow but they do have something like 600K-1M subs on all their games and thats not that bad. It's not making Smedley rich but they are earning money. The station system makes the billing not more expensive for all their game than for a company with just 1.
But still, SOE do need a hit, Sony might just close them down or sell them otherwise, Sony do want their name to be status and old crap games isnt what they want people to thing when they hear the name. Vanguard and for that matter EQ2 isnt bad games but booth where horrible at release and EQ2 released same time as WOW. DC universe might actually be a turning point, even if it wont sell that great on PC, a real MMO for PS3 will generate a lot of players. The world have a lot of fans (but so have SW, LOTR and Conan, none of those games are really big), who havnt heard the names like Batman and Superman? So maybe, just maybe SOE can do a real comeback.
But hey will not kill a game that have 10K subs or more, even if it just gives em a few bucks that is better than none.
Quite honestly I cannot understand how people can play multiple MMO's anyway. If I'm bored of playing one MMO and feel the need to log out and play another then that tells me I'm not really completely satisfied with the experience offered in the first game.
So I guess I can understand where Darcx is coming from. The Station Pass seems to be a breeding ground for mediocre games. Otherwise any of these games would be capable of standing on their own and making SoE more porfit. As a matter of fact I believe I recall a time when SWG was not apart of the Station Pass, probably because the expectation was that it would make massive profit for SoE without having to rely on other games in their bundle to gain exposure.
SOE doesnt shut games down, they beat the shit out of them with patches to drive away a community, then let it sit and simmer until the end of time.
Playing: EVE Online
Favorite MMOs: WoW, SWG Pre-cu, Lineage 2, UO, EQ, EVE online
Looking forward to: Archeage, Kingdom Under Fire 2
KUF2's Official Website - http://www.kufii.com/ENG/ -
SOE are not fools. They know it takes roughly 150K people to keep a game viable and they know the costs to maintain a MMO. Say what you will about Star Wars Galaxies, they have managed many MMOs to keep them profitable. Matrix and Vangaurd problably would be shut down if SOE did not pick them up.
Think of it . The high costs of game development are not a factor because the previous company has done a majority of it. So when the company either fails in budgeting or content a big brother like SoE can swoop in and take the reigns. Almost as if they are Wal Mart of the MMO industry.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Is there much of a difference between literally shutting down a games server and relocating all of the games resources to another game? Very little, if any, in my opinion.