... But remember guys! To be a success an MMOG has to have over 11 million subs worldwide!!! Not WoW is an aberration, it is an anomaly that should never, ever be considered a benchmark for an MMOGs success or failure level. 50k to 100k unique users might be a success for some companies, or even less than that. As for the Lifetime subscription being a sign of a bad game destined to fail... that is ridiculous.
So lets just keep settling for mediocre MMOS, that will make companies work harder on them. I'm so almost done with this genre. Any company will make any half lame attempt at an MMO because they know they'll at least make a little money..... So pathetic.
(Not saying anything in reference to this game. Just get sick to my stomach when I see "Well LoTRO isn't doing that bad") Come on nothing is going to change unless we stand up and stop accepting this BS.
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
Bill Roper, the same man behind Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo.
6-12 months from now. Your opinion will likely be altered for the worse. In none of those titles (of which he was only greatly involved in diablo) was he part of the deciding parties regarding the pricing model. He however was is on HGL and CO. Both are convoluted.
Bill Roper, the same man behind Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo.
6-12 months from now. Your opinion will likely be altered for the worse. In none of those titles (of which he was only greatly involved in diablo) was he part of the deciding parties regarding the pricing model. He however was is on HGL and CO. Both are convoluted.
Link to me the proof he was responsible for the prices for Hellgate and CO.
It's like saying "We don't have confidence that our game will have high subscription retention". Every game I can think of that has a lifetime subscription has been a failure. (EG. WW2 Online)
"failure" isn't the right word to use because as others have pointed out, LOTRO offered a lifetime subscription (and still do) and it's doing ok.
But the game is probably a failure by their own internal financial standards - which is why they offered the lifetime subscription. They publicly predicted that they'd get over 1 million subscribers and they had 1 million players in beta, i.e. they had server resources ready for 1 million players at launch. At best they got a quarter of that.
I think a lifetime subscription is appealing to players - but they really don't make good financial sense from the developer's point of view unless it looks like box sales will be low and they need a quick injection of cash.
I agree with this logic so we do see things similarly
I believe the LotRO lifetime accounts that were offered at one point are now a drain on the game. They cost $199 I think and I still hear a lot of people using them. It is actually a bad business model to use and here's why.
The only people who will buy lifetime subs are those who plan on sticking with an MMO for a long period of time, someone that generally only plays for a few months will neve make that kind of purchase because he knows it won't pan out. So all the lifetime accounts sold go to those who will use them for the life of the game (or after they're done sell the accounts to someone else to use) and so those are all now accounts that the company isn't making money on. If you try to compensate by charging for 4 years of game time then even the hardcore players won't buy them.
Basically it will always end up in a way that the company loses out. Either they charge enough to make it interesting ($199) and then those accounts stay active well past their value so the company loses money. Or they charge so much to make sure they don't lose money that no one will buy them. Since $199 is slightly more then the cost of a year as soon as you are a year and 2 months in it's a drain on the company. But who is going to make an investment of $550 bucks or more not knowing how long the game will last.
Yes, but they have their cash shop to make up for that. Business wise it's a smart choice.
Game wise I see people who bought the lifetime sub being disappointed in a couple months, but Cryptic is offering STO beta access which counteracts that by being 'something to look forward to'. It's really a brilliant strategy on their part, especially since CO is such a weak game.
It makes me very trepidacious about what STO will be like.
@SnarlingWolf First of all there's no way the company will lose more than $250 on a lifetime player unless that player is on the server every second of every day for say, 20 years. Bandwidth is cheap and is only getting cheaper.
2ndly. IMO the reason they're doing it is so that the player base ends up larger. As lifers will have more invested in the game and try to get their friends to join. It's a jumpstart.
@xaldraxius how can you possibly know CO is a weak game, it's not even finished yet? from what i've seen it's going to be a great game. I'd be surprised if it received anything less than 8/10s on average. about the same as CoX did 5 1/2 years ago.
Remember Infogrames bought Atari, their stock is running high right now. Why would they invest in the development of 2 MMOs if all it was going to do was ruin the compnay? Think about it, one being Star Trek. That's guarunteed to be a success, champions is tied directly to it in development. the engine advancements apply to both so investment cost has a high return; which is good for players.
How come no one brought up the fact that LOTRO offered their lifetime subscriptions after the game launched? This gave people enough time to experience the full scope of the game and make a decision. With CO you only get until the day before launch. If they had confidence people would be impressed by their product enough they would offer it for the first month of the game. If they had enough confidence in their product, don't you think they wouldn't offer a lifetime sub at all? Then they could keep cashing in on people each month after it became profitable to the player to stay in the game.
It really just makes me think its a get money quick scheme, designed to bolster their profit numbers of the launch.
Bill Roper....
First of all, this lifetime sub is at a discount, and is only for pre-order customers. Secondly, after release, the price will go up. It's merely an offer to those anxious enough to splurge - which hundreds have been happy to do.
Lastly, lay off Bill. Seriously. He took a swing at doing something truly unique and innovative, instead of attempting to misuse those cliches, and missed. If he'd made off like a bandit with all these people's money, he wouldn't have bankrupted himself trying to keep his personal project alive, and need to take a job at Cryptic after hitting rock bottom (financially).
It's like saying "We don't have confidence that our game will have high subscription retention". Every game I can think of that has a lifetime subscription has been a failure. (EG. WW2 Online) I thought about getting Champions since Cryptic made City of Heroes which was a decent game, but then I saw the lifetime subscription thing, coupled with the game being published by Atari of all companies....
So, tell me something... If Blizzard was to, say, announce a Starcraft MMO and then announce that pre-order customers could get a lifetime subscription, would you be saying the same thing?
It's like saying "We don't have confidence that our game will have high subscription retention". Every game I can think of that has a lifetime subscription has been a failure. (EG. WW2 Online) I thought about getting Champions since Cryptic made City of Heroes which was a decent game, but then I saw the lifetime subscription thing, coupled with the game being published by Atari of all companies....
You are so clueless. CO may fail, but it won't be because they offer a lifetime option.
First of all, this lifetime sub is at a discount, and is only for pre-order customers. Secondly, after release, the price will go up. It's merely an offer to those anxious enough to splurge - which hundreds have been happy to do. Lastly, lay off Bill. Seriously. He took a swing at doing something truly unique and innovative, instead of attempting to misuse those cliches, and missed. If he'd made off like a bandit with all these people's money, he wouldn't have bankrupted himself trying to keep his personal project alive, and need to take a job at Cryptic after hitting rock bottom (financially).
I actually think lifetime membership is a great idea and it doesn't prove that the game is a failure. Guildwars uses the same principle even though it is a lot cheaper but you can't call GW a failure, only MMO selling more boxes is Wow. LOTRO also have life time subs and while it never been close to GW it is still far from a failure.
As for Roper, he can do good stuff. However In Diablo he worked together with Jeff Strain who is somewhat of a genius, Roper is good taking cares of the mechanics of a game but he needs a good partner. If he is teamed up with the right guy he can work wonders but he do need someone to keep him on the earth.
I am not really impressed of what I seen so far from CO but I thought CoX was boring too and many others love them. But basing that the game sucks on the lifetime membership and Roper is just stupid. Saying that it is crap because youre in the beta is surely fine by me but Roper have made good games and succesful games have lifetime membership.
Lifetime subscription says to me that they don't have the confidence in their product that you will continue to pay to play the game for as many months as it would take to get the money from you on a per-month basis.
Also, with everything I am hearing/seeing about this game, it's 85% character creator.. and a great one at that. However, no depth, the longterm playability is severely lacking, it feels/looks and plays just like every other NCsoft title (and that's a BAD thing)
I wish this game were going to be something deeper, with more replayability.. something closer to the top tier MMO's in terms of lasting appeal.. I, like way too many others, feel that this game is basically CoX 2, with some updates.
@SnarlingWolf First of all there's no way the company will lose more than $250 on a lifetime player unless that player is on the server every second of every day for say, 20 years. Bandwidth is cheap and is only getting cheaper.
2ndly. IMO the reason they're doing it is so that the player base ends up larger. As lifers will have more invested in the game and try to get their friends to join. It's a jumpstart.
That's not an accurate way of looking at it because those who pay a monthly fee aren't on every second of every day for a month either. If a liftime account is billed at 200 bucks, that is about 13-14 months of a monthly fee. So as soon as that person crosses that time frame it's a money loss. Since that same person paying a monthly fee would still be paying. Obviously this gets worse as the person is playing for 3-5 years and longer.
Don't confuse monthly cost with bandwidth, that is factored in on what the average player will use already. A significant amount of that cost goes to pay the workers who are creating new content, new code, new art. So with the exception of huge hits like WoW, the companies need those dollars from all the players.
Champions Online will be around for a couple years at least. City of Heroes has been around for over 5 years and it has had even lower numbers.
I wouldn't be surprised if CO fails to match CoX subscription numbers.
Jack Emmert has said they don't need to to be profitable - over 100k subscribers and they're in the profit zone - but CO has higher system requirements than CoX and a more controversial payment model. And yes I know CoX has some MTs - but most of them are account service fees and the few real MTs are MTs-lite and are tolerated by many in the context that CoX has released years worth of major updates without asking players to cough up money for expansions.
I think the CO lifetime subscription offer is an indication that pre-order sales have been low and they don't expect to hit that 100k target. But they may also keep the game alive purely to keep it on their books. Their plan is to release an mmo every 18 to 24 months, so they want a collection of mmos and while their collection is small, even a badly performing mmo is good.
CO has higher system requirements than CoX, and CoX had higher system requirements than EverQuest. your point?
All that means is that CoX's graphics engine is dated.
What's to say that the MT's in CO wont be used to put out free expansions? Also CoX has had some pretty questionable MTs. for example science pack lets you change your toon's frame build average/huge/male/female. which was impossible before. something that should have been part of a game update, but it's $10.
What are the pre-order sales numbers, you are insinuating you know them. What are they then, where's your proof? I think the fact that 10-15k beta keys (per site) got taken in around an hour on virtually all sites (MMORPG, massively, tentonhammer, etc.) they were offered on says something. It's also the #1 seller on direct2drive.
As for your assertion that their plan is to release a new MMO every 18-24 months, i call BULLSH!T. Proof? Champoins and Star Trek aren't exactly minor IPs. If you think they arent going to invest heavily in making them long term profitable-growth games you're crazy.
@xaldraxius how can you possibly know CO is a weak game, it's not even finished yet? from what i've seen it's going to be a great game. I'd be surprised if it received anything less than 8/10s on average.
Sure, it'll get 8/10 or higher reviews for a month or more, so has just about every new MMO that comes out.
I can't argue the whys and wherefores of my opinion of the game at this time.
Lifetime subscription says to me that they don't have the confidence in their product that you will continue to pay to play the game for as many months as it would take to get the money from you on a per-month basis. Also, with everything I am hearing/seeing about this game, it's 85% character creator.. and a great one at that. However, no depth, the longterm playability is severely lacking, it feels/looks and plays just like every other NCsoft title (and that's a BAD thing) I wish this game were going to be something deeper, with more replayability.. something closer to the top tier MMO's in terms of lasting appeal.. I, like way too many others, feel that this game is basically CoX 2, with some updates.
This isn't even a NCSoft title. It's by Cryptic and being published by Atari...why don't you just wait to play the game before your judge it?
@xaldraxius how can you possibly know CO is a weak game, it's not even finished yet? from what i've seen it's going to be a great game. I'd be surprised if it received anything less than 8/10s on average.
Sure, it'll get 8/10 or higher reviews for a month or more, so has just about every new MMO that comes out.
I can't argue the whys and wherefores of my opinion of the game at this time.
No every MMO that has come out has not gotten at least 8s. Hellgate got 5s, 6s & 7s. So did Auto Assault. So did Vanguard. So did Final Fantasy XI. So did Dungeons & Dragons Online. etc..
If you can't back up what you proclaim as fact, then don't proclaim it. You opinion is meaningless w/o reasoning behind it.
@xaldraxius how can you possibly know CO is a weak game, it's not even finished yet? from what i've seen it's going to be a great game. I'd be surprised if it received anything less than 8/10s on average.
Sure, it'll get 8/10 or higher reviews for a month or more, so has just about every new MMO that comes out. I can't argue the whys and wherefores of my opinion of the game at this time.
No every MMO that has come out has not gotten at least 8s. Hellgate got 5s, 6s & 7s. So did Auto Assault. So did Vanguard. So did Final Fantasy XI. So did Dungeons & Dragons Online. etc.. If you can't back up what you proclaim as fact, then don't proclaim it. You opinion is meaningless w/o reasoning behind it.
LOL! Hello Mr. Overreactionpants meet Mr. Idon'treallygiveacrap.
Man I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore. That "world-weary cynicism about everything that didn't fit my perfect world vision was doomed to fail" was exhausting.
"I used to think the worst thing in life was to be all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone." Robin Williams
Originally posted by grunty Man I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore. That "world-weary cynicism about everything that didn't fit my perfect world vision was doomed to fail" was exhausting.
I'm in my 30's and world-weary cynicism is just about all I can do. But hey, I bagged on WoW when I was in beta and look how that turned out. It's because I'm not a teenager that I've realized that my opinion doesn't much matter anymore, but I still like to voice it from time to time.
Lifetime subscription says to me that they don't have the confidence in their product that you will continue to pay to play the game for as many months as it would take to get the money from you on a per-month basis. Also, with everything I am hearing/seeing about this game, it's 85% character creator.. and a great one at that. However, no depth, the longterm playability is severely lacking, it feels/looks and plays just like every other NCsoft title (and that's a BAD thing) I wish this game were going to be something deeper, with more replayability.. something closer to the top tier MMO's in terms of lasting appeal.. I, like way too many others, feel that this game is basically CoX 2, with some updates.
This isn't even a NCSoft title. It's by Cryptic and being published by Atari...why don't you just wait to play the game before your judge it?
Cryptic and NCsoft were in bed together last year.. and Cryptic sold CoX to NCsoft back in ..07 i think? They are related. the design team for NCsoft has old Cryptic people on it... the games are related.
CO looks/feels/plays just like CoX. CoX was not a deep game, had no long term replayability and was merely a character creator wrapped about terriblly uninteresting fight mechanics. there were neat things to CoX (travel powers were fun).. but really, comparing it to what other MMO's out now (WoW/EQ/Eve/WH) have in terms of depth.. CO scores a 4/10 .. and i'm being generous with that score.
No excuse to be that shallow either.. you have years to design a game to be as deep as your competition.. ideas to steal and improve upon.
heres to hoping DCU or Marvel is a good superhero game.
Comments
Bill Roper, the same man behind Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo.
So lets just keep settling for mediocre MMOS, that will make companies work harder on them. I'm so almost done with this genre. Any company will make any half lame attempt at an MMO because they know they'll at least make a little money..... So pathetic.
(Not saying anything in reference to this game. Just get sick to my stomach when I see "Well LoTRO isn't doing that bad") Come on nothing is going to change unless we stand up and stop accepting this BS.
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
You'd think by reading this that people would actually prefer fewer options rather than more options. Kinda silly really.
6-12 months from now. Your opinion will likely be altered for the worse. In none of those titles (of which he was only greatly involved in diablo) was he part of the deciding parties regarding the pricing model. He however was is on HGL and CO. Both are convoluted.
What is this BS you're talking about?
6-12 months from now. Your opinion will likely be altered for the worse. In none of those titles (of which he was only greatly involved in diablo) was he part of the deciding parties regarding the pricing model. He however was is on HGL and CO. Both are convoluted.
Link to me the proof he was responsible for the prices for Hellgate and CO.
"failure" isn't the right word to use because as others have pointed out, LOTRO offered a lifetime subscription (and still do) and it's doing ok.
But the game is probably a failure by their own internal financial standards - which is why they offered the lifetime subscription. They publicly predicted that they'd get over 1 million subscribers and they had 1 million players in beta, i.e. they had server resources ready for 1 million players at launch. At best they got a quarter of that.
I think a lifetime subscription is appealing to players - but they really don't make good financial sense from the developer's point of view unless it looks like box sales will be low and they need a quick injection of cash.
I agree with this logic so we do see things similarly
Yes, but they have their cash shop to make up for that. Business wise it's a smart choice.
Game wise I see people who bought the lifetime sub being disappointed in a couple months, but Cryptic is offering STO beta access which counteracts that by being 'something to look forward to'. It's really a brilliant strategy on their part, especially since CO is such a weak game.
It makes me very trepidacious about what STO will be like.
@SnarlingWolf First of all there's no way the company will lose more than $250 on a lifetime player unless that player is on the server every second of every day for say, 20 years. Bandwidth is cheap and is only getting cheaper.
2ndly. IMO the reason they're doing it is so that the player base ends up larger. As lifers will have more invested in the game and try to get their friends to join. It's a jumpstart.
@xaldraxius how can you possibly know CO is a weak game, it's not even finished yet? from what i've seen it's going to be a great game. I'd be surprised if it received anything less than 8/10s on average. about the same as CoX did 5 1/2 years ago.
Remember Infogrames bought Atari, their stock is running high right now. Why would they invest in the development of 2 MMOs if all it was going to do was ruin the compnay? Think about it, one being Star Trek. That's guarunteed to be a success, champions is tied directly to it in development. the engine advancements apply to both so investment cost has a high return; which is good for players.
Bill Roper....
First of all, this lifetime sub is at a discount, and is only for pre-order customers. Secondly, after release, the price will go up. It's merely an offer to those anxious enough to splurge - which hundreds have been happy to do.
Lastly, lay off Bill. Seriously. He took a swing at doing something truly unique and innovative, instead of attempting to misuse those cliches, and missed. If he'd made off like a bandit with all these people's money, he wouldn't have bankrupted himself trying to keep his personal project alive, and need to take a job at Cryptic after hitting rock bottom (financially).
So, tell me something... If Blizzard was to, say, announce a Starcraft MMO and then announce that pre-order customers could get a lifetime subscription, would you be saying the same thing?
You are so clueless. CO may fail, but it won't be because they offer a lifetime option.
This game won't fail...(i'm in beta)
I second that.
People need to stop being tards.
A man who changed this industry forever.....makes one mistake, and he has to live with the stain of it eternally.
Why is human nature so predicated on negativity?
I actually think lifetime membership is a great idea and it doesn't prove that the game is a failure. Guildwars uses the same principle even though it is a lot cheaper but you can't call GW a failure, only MMO selling more boxes is Wow. LOTRO also have life time subs and while it never been close to GW it is still far from a failure.
As for Roper, he can do good stuff. However In Diablo he worked together with Jeff Strain who is somewhat of a genius, Roper is good taking cares of the mechanics of a game but he needs a good partner. If he is teamed up with the right guy he can work wonders but he do need someone to keep him on the earth.
I am not really impressed of what I seen so far from CO but I thought CoX was boring too and many others love them. But basing that the game sucks on the lifetime membership and Roper is just stupid. Saying that it is crap because youre in the beta is surely fine by me but Roper have made good games and succesful games have lifetime membership.
Lifetime subscription says to me that they don't have the confidence in their product that you will continue to pay to play the game for as many months as it would take to get the money from you on a per-month basis.
Also, with everything I am hearing/seeing about this game, it's 85% character creator.. and a great one at that. However, no depth, the longterm playability is severely lacking, it feels/looks and plays just like every other NCsoft title (and that's a BAD thing)
I wish this game were going to be something deeper, with more replayability.. something closer to the top tier MMO's in terms of lasting appeal.. I, like way too many others, feel that this game is basically CoX 2, with some updates.
2ndly. IMO the reason they're doing it is so that the player base ends up larger. As lifers will have more invested in the game and try to get their friends to join. It's a jumpstart.
That's not an accurate way of looking at it because those who pay a monthly fee aren't on every second of every day for a month either. If a liftime account is billed at 200 bucks, that is about 13-14 months of a monthly fee. So as soon as that person crosses that time frame it's a money loss. Since that same person paying a monthly fee would still be paying. Obviously this gets worse as the person is playing for 3-5 years and longer.
Don't confuse monthly cost with bandwidth, that is factored in on what the average player will use already. A significant amount of that cost goes to pay the workers who are creating new content, new code, new art. So with the exception of huge hits like WoW, the companies need those dollars from all the players.
I wouldn't be surprised if CO fails to match CoX subscription numbers.
Jack Emmert has said they don't need to to be profitable - over 100k subscribers and they're in the profit zone - but CO has higher system requirements than CoX and a more controversial payment model. And yes I know CoX has some MTs - but most of them are account service fees and the few real MTs are MTs-lite and are tolerated by many in the context that CoX has released years worth of major updates without asking players to cough up money for expansions.
I think the CO lifetime subscription offer is an indication that pre-order sales have been low and they don't expect to hit that 100k target. But they may also keep the game alive purely to keep it on their books. Their plan is to release an mmo every 18 to 24 months, so they want a collection of mmos and while their collection is small, even a badly performing mmo is good.
CO has higher system requirements than CoX, and CoX had higher system requirements than EverQuest. your point?
All that means is that CoX's graphics engine is dated.
What's to say that the MT's in CO wont be used to put out free expansions? Also CoX has had some pretty questionable MTs. for example science pack lets you change your toon's frame build average/huge/male/female. which was impossible before. something that should have been part of a game update, but it's $10.
What are the pre-order sales numbers, you are insinuating you know them. What are they then, where's your proof? I think the fact that 10-15k beta keys (per site) got taken in around an hour on virtually all sites (MMORPG, massively, tentonhammer, etc.) they were offered on says something. It's also the #1 seller on direct2drive.
As for your assertion that their plan is to release a new MMO every 18-24 months, i call BULLSH!T. Proof? Champoins and Star Trek aren't exactly minor IPs. If you think they arent going to invest heavily in making them long term profitable-growth games you're crazy.
Sure, it'll get 8/10 or higher reviews for a month or more, so has just about every new MMO that comes out.
I can't argue the whys and wherefores of my opinion of the game at this time.
This isn't even a NCSoft title. It's by Cryptic and being published by Atari...why don't you just wait to play the game before your judge it?
Sure, it'll get 8/10 or higher reviews for a month or more, so has just about every new MMO that comes out.
I can't argue the whys and wherefores of my opinion of the game at this time.
No every MMO that has come out has not gotten at least 8s. Hellgate got 5s, 6s & 7s. So did Auto Assault. So did Vanguard. So did Final Fantasy XI. So did Dungeons & Dragons Online. etc..
If you can't back up what you proclaim as fact, then don't proclaim it. You opinion is meaningless w/o reasoning behind it.
LOL! Hello Mr. Overreactionpants meet Mr. Idon'treallygiveacrap.
Beta tester, lifetime member now too. After trying out the game and weighing my options, the lifetime membership was a total steal for me.
Man I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore. That "world-weary cynicism about everything that didn't fit my perfect world vision was doomed to fail" was exhausting.
I'm in my 30's and world-weary cynicism is just about all I can do. But hey, I bagged on WoW when I was in beta and look how that turned out. It's because I'm not a teenager that I've realized that my opinion doesn't much matter anymore, but I still like to voice it from time to time.
This isn't even a NCSoft title. It's by Cryptic and being published by Atari...why don't you just wait to play the game before your judge it?
Cryptic and NCsoft were in bed together last year.. and Cryptic sold CoX to NCsoft back in ..07 i think? They are related. the design team for NCsoft has old Cryptic people on it... the games are related.
CO looks/feels/plays just like CoX. CoX was not a deep game, had no long term replayability and was merely a character creator wrapped about terriblly uninteresting fight mechanics. there were neat things to CoX (travel powers were fun).. but really, comparing it to what other MMO's out now (WoW/EQ/Eve/WH) have in terms of depth.. CO scores a 4/10 .. and i'm being generous with that score.
No excuse to be that shallow either.. you have years to design a game to be as deep as your competition.. ideas to steal and improve upon.
heres to hoping DCU or Marvel is a good superhero game.