A note on measuring success.

Turel_Azure

I just want to make something as clear as day to everyone here that keeps thinking about measuring a MMO's success based on how it compares to World of Warcraft.

 

World of Warcraft, on release, had a target of around 500,000 players.  The amount of servers they had should be a reflection of this.  Then www.gamespot.com/news/2005/02/15/news_6118587.html this happened.  The reason, if any recall, that the servers were down so much on Warcraft release was that they did not anticipate the amount of players they got.

And also keep in mind, that the player base has gradually grown since it's release.  It quickly got up to 2 million in the US, and then surged up to probably around 4.5 million now.  That should ring some bells with some people, as it points out that the majority of WoW players are actually in China.  Blizzard really hit their notes when they released in China and in Europe, and that contributed highly to their success.

So in terms of MMO success, I recommend keeping in mind it's relative player base compared to it's target (in which case WAR missed their target of something like 1 million in the US), and Age of Conan far exceeded their expectations, as if they missed them, they would not still be around.  WAR is suplementing their supposed failure of setting their goal too high by releasing the game in more countries around the world, just like WoW did.

So when measuring an MMO's success, I ask you keep a couple things in mind:

The player base target for the developer.

How long the MMO has been around

Warcraft far exceeded expectations for success.

Warhammer expected too much, because EA is like that, and isn't used to having to work for their money.

SomeOldBloke

A game is a success when:

1. People enjoy playing
2. You have subscriber retention
3. You see a return on investment within the predicted timescales

 

 

 

djFEVA

When everyone else tries to mimic what you did, I think that's a solid marker of success. In other terms, if WoW wasn't successful (in whatever means you want to measure it), there wouldn't be other MMOs made in its image.

What ultimately determines success boils down to is the dollar sign. It's just fact of life.

MarL

Originally posted by mbd1968


A game is a success when:

People enjoy playing
You have subscriber retention
You see a return on investment within the predicted timescales

 
 
 

And thats the truth, almost all mmo's make money and thats the goal. When you invest less guess what you dont need 1 million players, 100k subs is still 1.5 million a month and if the game lasts 5 years you just made 90 million.

Xiaoki

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Originally posted by MarL


And thats the truth, almost all mmo's make money and thats the goal. When you invest less guess what you dont need 1 million players, 100k subs is still 1.5 million a month and if the game lasts 5 years you just made 90 million.

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Grade school level math doesnt work in the business world.

Yeah, the company would bring $1.5 million a month but how much do they keep? You are forgetting expenses like: customer service, servers, development and the list goes on and on and on.

Barely scraping by with little to no profits is not a definition of "success".

MarL

Grade school math does work for showing revenue..........

Servers are cheap, everything else is up to the company to determine how much they will spend. If you have 100k subs and u spend more than 1.5 MILLION a month there is something wrong.

Ilvaldyr

A quote from an article around 9 months ago regarding WoW:

"Everyone always talks about how monumental a money generator World of Warcraft has been for Blizzard, but here's a figure you don't hear much about: How much does WoW actually cost Blizzard to maintain? According to Kotaku's report, Blizzard stated during their Analyst Day conference call yesterday (15/09/2008) that the price has been over $200 million since the game launched in 2004.

That's $200 million for the total cost of upkeep since the game's November, 2004 release (presumably not including the initial cost to develop the game). This includes payroll for the entire staff, hardware support, and -- apparently the biggest infrastructure cost -- customer service."

Just to put that into perspective, they're currently pulling in $90m per month purely from NA/EU subscriptions; I know there's a different business model in asia which makes it harder to calculate profit based on subscriptions, but factor in Asia and the RMTs and I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard makes that $200m in a month and WoW has a LOT of servers.