Would you pay for an MMO you knew was going to end ?

Phasics

No I'm not talking about an MMO which is in the final stages of dying I'm talking about an MMO in its prime making the choice to end the game.

 

Currently MMO's have no end, there may be "end game" there may be achivments but none of them acutally plan to end and given the chance would happily continue on till the end of time.

But humans arn't geared for this.

Think about your MMO history , why did you stop playing your last MMO ? bored ? found somthing better ? felt you'd done it all yet the game was still running ?

What if the next MMO you play'd categorically stated it would start Jan 2011 and would end Jan 2016. As in the game your charcters and everything would be shutdown , the game would finish , it would have a conclusion.

Now forget the money side for a moment. how would that effect your MMO experence ? all of a sudden your charcter is not imortal he/she will live for 5 years and at the end of that 5 years he/she will have accomplished all they are ever going to.

Now if such an MMO had PvP that mattered where you can control territory and wrest it from other people then when the MMO ended you and your guild would forever know that you owned and controlled this chunk of the world. You were this many people in a game of many more and you beat the odds to own this territory and nothing will ever change that.

Now think about the writting that could go into an MMO that is going to have an end, thing about the mechanics which can shift towards that end. If faction A can really obliterate Faction B forever then thats a seriously memorable ending to a game you and 200'000 people took on 200'000 others and beat them back to oblivion , you won , yes WON! converse you could LOSE yes LOSE.

What if on the final server day death was permenent you die and thats really it your charcter lies dead on the ground (you can still observe the rest of the day unfold but your part in it is over) there will be those who are left standing and those who have fallen and the result will forever be fixed in time.

Everything from the most money to the biggest ship the most territory all of it would have an end point. and when it was over there would be a monument website detailing the exploits of 400'000 people over 5 years.

 

 

However games arn't for gamers they are to make money so how does one spin this idea into a viable strategy for making money. Heh well thats the hard part , having a success MMO running for 5 years your hardly going to want to pull the plug unless you've got somthing to tip all of your subscribers into. plus you don't exactly want to throw away a perfectly good game engine after 5 years worth of refinements.

One possible answer is that a new version of the game would be released to begin as the other ends. New story perhaps 500 years further into the story's future. perhaps a new direction for PvP and PvE, a new style of game graphics are all of your 400'000 subs going to like your new game ? probably not but then you told them when they started the game it was going to end Jan 1st 2016, its not like you didn't warn them.

 

Heh probably not the best buisness plan for making money long term but if you could capture the finality and urgency of a game that has an ending you might just find people who want to come along for the ride. Just like life ends your charcter will end and knowing this changes everything.

 

I can already picture all the responses about "why put time into a charcter that will end" etc etc well I ask you why put time into a charcter your eventually going to tire from and leave for dead in the game anyway ? Can anyone reading this can honestly say they would still be playing the same charcter in the same MMO 50 years from now assuming the server is still online. and I'm not talking about oh I might pop in every so often, thats just spectating on an old account. I'm talking about playing for that long.

Meh I lack the eloqance to accurately portray the image for such a game as I see it in my mind so I'm not expecting you all to like or even understand why I think "its just crazy enough to work"

 

pepsi1028

I played Auto Assault even though I knew it would fail....

Jimih

I live knowing I'm going to die...so yeah.

Sovrath

Yes, because in the end they are all going to end.

So as long as I am having fun it doesn't matter. It's not like my investment of time is going to yield any solid benefits. Enjoyment is the only actual benefit that one can get.

tehikk

No, because just like my own life, I don't want to know when it's going to end.

jimr9999us

No. And I won't play mmorpg's by companies who end them, either.

I'm looking at you NCSoft. You're dead to me.

Unknown

 not sure why not if i enjoyed it. all mmos come to an end.

Dnomsed

 The story would have to be REALLY epic and the lifetime sub would have to be folded into the box sales somehow, but yeah, id be game for it.  I think the potential for world rocking events is huge if you know you only have 5 years to write/develop for.

 

GTwander

Originally posted by Dnomsed


 The story would have to be REALLY epic and the lifetime sub would have to be folded into the box sales somehow, but yeah, id be game for it.  I think the potential for world rocking events is huge if you know you only have 5 years to write/develop for.
 

 

Oooo. I got a side-question for you all...

What if a game had a story that evolved over episodic content drops with a beginning and end?

Like, if the incentive was to play on day one so you don't miss the limited time-span on the content, and the death of the game was foretold ahead of time. Then the game shuts down or rolls over into a new lite-version of some kind.

 

~The only real problem either way, is trying to rekindle subs on the end of it's stretch. When you are on the "final season", in a sense, you will find people saying they are "too late to the party". You're going to lose out on tons of subs, even if people miss out on the epic conclusion. I'm sure some have the mentality of "well I better hop on before its over", yet many others would say "I'd rather not get invested knowing how little time is left for it". To make any money at that point you'd have to sell the ending as an expansion and offer the last 6+ months for free.

Kaynos1972

That would be very weird to set and absolute end time for an MMO.....  Would i play such a game, good question, i guess the answer is

1-If i like it

2-If it's going to last for a fair amount of time.

Something around 4-5 years minimum, anything shorter than that would not be very interesting to me cause the mmo's i played for the longest were around that duration.

laokoko

ya i mean, most of the mmorpg i play only last me 1~3 month of play time.

the only exception is wow, atlantica online,

lucabrasi

I would play if it was enjoyable. If I am playing a console game, I am going to go through all of the content in a week or 2. I will then have to purchase a new console game. If I am playing a P2P game, I spend the 60$ and then maybe it will last 6 months @90$ total or longer. It is still cheaper than buying console games. I have found out that when I am inbetween mmo's, I spend more on games.

patri0tz

It would also be cool if, upon shutdown, they provided you with a digital memorial booklet or something like that with a screenshot of your character, your stats, achievements, inventory listing, completed quest/mission listing, etc.  That would be good for sentimental reasons and to lessen the feeling that it was a pointless grind.  I always keep my single player savegames indefinitely so I'll have the option of taking a trip down memory lane years later if I want.

 

EricDanie

Depends... what genre are we talking about? MMORPG? MMOFPS? MMORTS?

A MMO based on INDIVIDUAL progression? No, I wouldn't. No point, unless you do take something on to the next continuation.

A MMO based on LARGE-SCALE progression? Maybe, I don't know. Would depend a lot on how it works.

Interestingly we do have this kind of feature, usually on sports (season/tournament end) or web games (these web conquest games that feature resets once every X months), but they feature real tangible prizes at the end for the best players, so it isn't really only about the "fun" for many.

If we are talking about an absolute end, then no, why play or even try it if I may miss it, and that's what will surely happen if I do enjoy the game... so better avoid. At least on single-player games we can pick it up again anytime to play, MMOs aren't like that when the servers are no more.

johnmatthais

Well, I'm only paying for the time I get, no?

As long as it's a hell of a ride, why not?

Harabeck

There are MMO's that end. A Tale in the Desert for instance, has gone through multiple tellings. After someone reaches win conditions, the game restarts.

Loktofeit

I think the really alarming issue here is how many MMO gamers actually think these things will last until the day they die.

maji

That reminds me on a browsergame I once played. The strongest players could aquire there an Armageddon spell. If a player invoked that spell, every other player saw a huge message, saying something like "a mage has started invoking armageddon, 1/3 of the sea turned to blood". The player had then it's status, location etc known to all other players and could be attacked by everyone. If he survived, another player could one week later invoke armageddon again, with a message like "the sun and moon turned dark" and could also be attacked. And so on, if enough players survived to invoke the spell long enough, lots of restrictions in the game would get removed. Like restrictions whom to attack and so on. About one week later the game then ends, with the mages invoking the armageddon beeing mentioned as heroes or something. Then some time later the game would start anew.

To some degree it would be fun if an MMORPG would do the same. Of course the stuff to invoke the spell would have been that hard to get, that it could only happen once every few years, but it surely would be impressive.

Fdzzaigl

If it's a great game why not? You'll stop playing a game anyhow, now you've just got a fixed date, although that might be frustrating when the time comes, you'll still have the fun in those years before that date.

But then this is kind of an unlikely scenario, if it's good, the company running it will go on longer to keep reeling people in.

just2duh

 Thinking this way, knowing your time is limited, can work two ways. The answer kind of depends on your view of life itself.

Say a doctor diagnosed you with only a few years to live, which would you choose? 

1) enjoy every momment while you can.

2) just give up seeing it all as pointless.

 I think the same concept sort of applies to this situation :P

 

 Nothing is forever, including your games. Eventually any mmo will need to shutdown, and even your consoles CD/DVD games are slowly decaying, becoming unreadable over time. (now that is depressing lol)

Sinella

The MMO "A Tale in the Desert" is a game like that. The game runs for like 2 years after the start, and after the players reached some goals it ends. A new version of the game ( called telling) starts again after some days, all the characters are wiped, u can get some title though, which depends on what did you achieve in the former telling. In the new telling your character may get the title of being the grandchild of your former character.

The MMORTS Travian is like that too, the players play to win the server, and about after 1 year one guild builds the final building, the Wonder of the World, and the game ends 1 day later.

VengeSunsoar

Some games are designed for this and have a decent following (decent for the scope of the game anyway).  ATITD is a great example.  Going in you know the game will end, average is 1-2 years, and now they are trying to shrink that to roughly 6 months, I believe someone posted on that allready here.

So yes I would, if the game was fun I would play it.

Venge Sunsoar

Thillian

Yes I'm playing Vanguard for a long time now with no false hopes.

donjn

If EA announced that Ultima Online had 60 days left I would come back and do all the things I never did...

Amathe

I used to worry about how long the mmos I played would last. But now I realize that the most I have ever played the same one is 3 years, and the rest half that. They all last at least that long. So I don't sweat it anymore.

tazalanche

Yes. As long as I enjoy playing it, I would pay for an MMO I knew was going to end, as long as it was 5+ years from release. Sometimes the planned timeline gets extended to a later date.

For example, Anarchy Online was released with a 5 year planned timeline before the servers were to be shutdown. It will have its ninth anniversary this June.