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Whats with MMO's announcing new games years in advance?
angrylama15
Member Posts: 23
The MMO fanbase is not patient, why bother us with new games not being released until a year from now?
By the time most of these games are released, we already know EVERYTHING about them, we mentally play them in our MMO addled minds until release date, only to find that its nothing like we thought it was,and proceed to drool over the next "great", "next gen", "truly unique" massive multiplayer online role playing game ( the sarcasm is tangible).
What do i suggest?
Let us know a couple months prior to release, still plenty of time to get your extortion *eh hem* i mean preorders in and when we decide not to play your pathetic excuse for an MMO, we can at least say we only dedicated (waisted) a couple months of our lives.
Think about it, we are stuck in an MMO- RUT, the last 5 years has seen little to no advancement in the MMO industry.
Thoughts?
Comments
I agree as well, and to add to that point. I think letting us know years in advance actually makes us STOP playing our current mmo's because we cannot stop thinking about the mmorpg coming out in the far future. I agree with letting us know on a maximum time of 6 months...
But in another point, mmorpgs still need a massive amount of time to get their alpha testing, beta testing done before the annoucement of preorders/release date. I believe the whole thing is just a publicity stunt but this is just my opinion. I'd love to hear other people's opinions on this as well.
Have played: Old School Runescape, Flyff, Maplestory, 2Moons, World of Warcraft, Aion, Aika Online, Battle of the Immortals, Allods, Global Agenda, Heroes of Three Kingdoms, SWTOR, TERA, FFXIV, Vindictus, RIFT, Planetside 2, Elder Scrolls Online, WoW Classic, Guild Wars 2, Destiny 2
Waiting for Outriders and Wow Classic TBC
hype = money
They do it to build up hype and get people all excited and be like ohh i wait years for this game. And then it is just a big let down... ahh isn't life grand
Dustin
MMO's need hype and sites like this need to write articles. If you compare the number of articles written on this or any gaming site you will find far more about a MMO prior to its release than after its release. The funny thing is post launch articles are very useful, but we get more questwork articles by far.
Hype + beta testers needed
A year? Some companies even announce things half a decade in advance. As far as I can remember it has always been like that.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
General rule of advertising make sure you have a market to sell to and make sure that market knows when it is coming out.
But i do agree sometimes waiting for 5 years seems a little over top. But then again, i think most MMO's are being released way to early then they are should be due... saddens me to see unfinished crap shelved out and marketed with all the various bells and whistles of "early opt in" or "exclusive hats" etc.
Making so much noise you dont know when to listen.
1 year? Try 2 or 3. How long from TOR being announced to release date? 2 1/2 years about. And I don't expect The Secret World until 2012, but it was announced in 09. 3 frigging years I have to wait to find out if this horror game, a genre I've been dying for someone to make an MMO in, is any good.
I'm too old to wait in anticipation for 3 years. Wake me up 6 months before release please.
Two reasons come to mind, and both boil down to cash generation.
The first to try and pull in investors to put cash in for the development and the second to draw in an initial cash boost from those who get drawn in by the hype, pay for the game, maybe even pay a couple of months worth of subs before wandering off after having decided that the game is rubbish
Hype, but really u rarely know EVERTHING about them before they release but you do get a good idea.
But this is needed its like press, or you will not get subs.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
I personally suggest not hyping yourself up and stop "mentally playing" them before they are released.
You as a human being should be able to handle information, not need it blocked from you because you use it in a way which makes things worse for yourself.
Don't blame McDonald's for making you fat when you choose to eat it, don't blame MMOs for letting you down when you choose to distort the information they release and then find the game is not what you created in your head.
Well everyone's sort of close, but it has very little to do with the actual player base.
There's TWO groups to whom these early announcements play to, and one that it exploits.
Big time publishers like EA, Atari, NCSoft to an extent, and so on. We know these names, we know Sony likes to pick up development titles and help them along only to ruin them with their wily ways. A small to medium sized group of devs know they need a big time partner to move things so they throw out all of their ideas to appeal to the exploitable fan base.
The second group is general investors. There's a whole lot of money tied up to a few people and a few of these people group together and have seed money they're willing to throw at ANYTHING they think can turn a profit. (Check out Activision's history.) If a batch of fresh ideas can come along and generate a lot of interest amongst the expolitable, then companies and developers can use this interest to gain capitol from investors to further develop their game.
So out of the 3 involved the hyped people and beta testers are basically the grime under a larger dirty toenail in the dog eat dog world of business.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
Despite the slighty whiny tone of the OP, I agree with him in principle.
The only reason I can think of announcing these games years in advance is hype. We (players) will always generate far more hype than a company ever can, as long as the company provides little bits of information to keep our appetites satisfied. Think about it. All the conjecture, guesswork, and prophesying, all the factless criticism and blind optimism, all the wishlists and outrage that favorite features will not be included... all of it generates discussion about a game and keeps it in the spotlight. People hear about it, their interest is piqued, they go to the website to learn more and BAM, they're hooked too. Before long, they start offering their opinions, adding fuel to the fire.
All a company has to do is offer a short interview, or dev blog, or video presentation, and we will analyze, disect, attack, praise, and slobber over it for days or weeks to come. Strategically offering such things over time will keep hype at a high level. Article, discussion, loss of interest, waiting, another article, more discussion, more loss of interest, more waiting, another article... rinse and repeat. If a game was only announced 6 months or so before launch, it'd have less time to generate hype. I'd say we'll never see a game announced sooner than a year before release.
We're not patient, so the only thing we can do is talk about the game. A good thing, from the company's perspective. Scot brings up a good point about the number of pre-release articles vs. post-release, but to be fair to sites like this one, only major changes are really newsworthy and those don't come often in the MMO genre (for only one game, at least).
Not just mmos but games in general. Software as a whole has always been annouced far in advance. I'm not sure why this is an issue. It is marketing to let the consumers know of their upcoming product. It is a cheap avenue of advertising if you want to look at it that way.
You as a human being should be able to handle information, not need it blocked from you because you use it in a way which makes things worse for yourself.
Don't blame McDonald's for making you fat when you choose to eat it, don't blame MMOs for letting you down when you choose to distort the information they release and then find the game is not what you created in your head. Customer can blame the seller for anything they want. It is their money they are giving up. It is not like the seller can say, aww man you guys don't like are product because you were excited for it. Why didn't just lower your expectations so you would keep subscribing to our game! If the game doesn't meet the expectations of the player than guess what, they stop paying for it. Only person losing is the seller of the game. The McDonald's metaphor doesn't really work. It would be more like you see all those ads for the Big Mac that make them look huge and delicious. Then you go and get one and its a little nasty hamburger that gives you a headache. So you never go to McDonald again.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
The new advertisement is Hype. Let the folks of the forums, gaming news sites, and gamers them selves spread the game info for you. Putting something out and slowly spoon feeding the spreading population information that is bating has been proven to work of late. It gets opening door sales like movies with a catchy trailer. Something that keeps the interest going for an extended period of time. I actually don't mind it, I prefer it. It gives me a chance to actually think about the purchase instead of impulse buy at the store. I learn about the game and can make an educated decision instead of just grabbing the box cause it "looks" cool.
END OF LINE_
~V
Why stop doing it? Because the rest of us have to listen to people whine after a game is released every single time. Plus the person who does it is constantly let down (and oddly enough is typically the foolish type of person who pre-orders as well). Personally I'd rather have games I enjoy in place of months of excitement followed by a major let down over and over again due to me not being realistic about what the next new game will be. I am a realistic person and it makes life far more enjoyable in the long run.
The problem with your version of the McDonald's ad is that is not what the OP is talking about. He isn't saying the game developers are falsely represnting their game (as McDonald's does in their commercials). He is saying that he chooses to let his mind create what he wants the game to be once he knows it is released and doesn't have information on it. He is then disappointed because he designed a game in his head that isn't going to exist (and likely isn't even possible). You are discussing misleading advertising, he is discussing self created expectations.
When it comes to MMOs I have a few rules that I like to follow, these rules make my gaming so much more enjoyable.
1) BE REALISTIC about what the next game will be. It will never be a truly innovative/revolutionary game. That doesn't happen and it never will. Each game changes the genre a little bit (can be for better or worse) but follows most of the core concepts. Change happens slowly. If you are realistic going into a game, you are fall more likely to have fun instead of being let down.
2) NEVER PRE_ORDER. There is no reason to. On release the game will be at the point where it has the most balance/bug issues, yet oddly that is when it costs the most. Wait a few months for the free trial, free box, only pay subscription after the trial period to begin. You save $50-60 and you get a much more balanced/polished experience.
3)NEVER DO A LIFETIME SUB. The vast majority of people will never get their money's worth because they will get bored after a few months. Yes they will come back more times due to having a free account but the majority won't play enough to cover the cost. Also you completely lose the ability to speak with your wallet forever.
4) DON'T RUSH TO END GAME. I used to be the opposite of this, for many years and many MMOs. After looking back at what MMOs I enjoyed the most and which ones I didn't have very interesting memories about it all came down to this fact. In my earliest MMOs I did not care how quickly I got to the end game. I ran around and explored, I made discoveries, and I didn't sit on a wiki site getting walk throughs of all the content. Those were fun and exciting times. Then I went through the "I know what MMOs are, been there done that, so I'm going to full out level as fast as I can in this new one and become as powerful as I was in the MMO I left" phase. MMOs were boring, they felt like a chore, I missed out on fun quests because grinding this or that was more efficient. Now I approach MMOs without no rush. I take my time and have fun with it, and I actually have fun. Stop and take the time to have fun in the game, don't simply try to beat it as fast as you can.
Maybe its because there's a market for it. For the hype alone, you have sites like this, full of people clamouring for the latest info, reading through articles about all these games, as if there were tons of them to choose from - and then you look at what's actually being released, and it's one game in two months, another in four months, and a small handful sometime next year. And then after all that waiting, most of them turn out be be crap. Almost seems like MMO hype is a bigger business than MMOs themselves.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I think scientists are lazy because we don’t yet have stasis chambers we can go to sleep in until the next great game comes out. Come on scientists, innovate so we can play those great games now!
Hype.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
HYPE.
If you release a tiny bit of info about your game, everyone has their mind set up it will be awesome. The next few months those people will ignore everything else coming out because they are already convinced it will be great.
Come release, they're super disappointed. But the company doesn't care, you bought their MMO, and they just made 40$ of you.
Recent example: Aion. Was announced years in advance, built up massive hype and many clueless sheep bought it without willing to acknowledge any flaws. NCsoft made money, many players disappointed. Developers 1 - Player base 0.
The majority of MMOs do not promise things and then not deliver. A couple companies have done that (Funcom is the only non-indie one I can think of at the moment). Most of the time they mention a small information about what they plan on implementing, or even say "We are considering.." "Or we are looking into the possibility...", and then the fans run off and twist the information they're given into a bunch of things the devs never said. That is what actually happens in the majority of cases.
True innovation is an entirely new style of game, having your game be 99% like previous games and then adding one new feature is not innovation, it's not even in the ballpark of innovation, it is standard run of the mill progress. Also the PQ system in WAR was terrible, and for many reason at that. What exactly did you find so innovative about Guild Wars? When I tried out that game, and was amazed at how bad it was for the year it was released, I did not see innovation.
I think that a few consultations of a dictionary may definitely be a help to you. Most of what you said is patently untrue.
Announcing too early is a veritable minefield of dangers for developers. Come out too early and you risk people losing interest if you do not keep up a constant flow of information (sorry Funcom but TSW has dropped off my radar, despite how much I love the idea). There is also the danger of manufacturing information to fill the void and keep the interest up.
Mythic fell on their faces by making huge claims about their game that had not even been coded. They announced too early and needed something to talk about so they talked about things that were still in the planning stage, and they talked about them as if they were set in stone.
Then come game-time vast swathes of what they promised, not just said "hey wouldn't it be nice to...", was missing. This is the norm for the MMO industry. It is why Arenanet's approach with GW2 seems so refreshing - they are talking about aspects of the game that are finished and playable right now.
To answer the OP though, I honestly have no idea why games are announced so early. To me it seems like an extremely bad idea, one which needs constant resources poured into it to prevent it actually damaging the reputation of the game. MMO developers do need to do one thing though. If they announce early they need to employ professional PR people. Allowing devs to speak to anyone and everyone is a recipe for disaster as we have seen with SW:TOR. An innocent remark from a dev can cause tidal waves throughout the fanbase. These things need to be checked before they are released.