It's still a gamble, no matter how you cut it you are risking your money to strike it rich. Just the same way you can play single deck blackjack with a few teammates. Yeah, you increase your chance to make money (or reduce your risk of losing) but you still gamble it.
Venture Capitalists do it all the time and their success rate is somewhere around 30-45%. You only need to make it big once, like Blizzard did with World of Warcraft.
Developers are not sure what the market demand actually is; they are confused. It was assumed for quite some time that the market wanted Warcraft style themeparks. However this cannot be the case since every attempt has failed to reach World of Warcraft’s subscription levels. It is therefore seen as a failure in the eyes of the industry, investors, and other developers.
Developers are further confused because the majority of players who initially flock to these new themeparks eventually return to World of Warcraft, because it soon becomes apparent that the new themepark is a Warcraft immitation (and why should they pay to experience an imitation when they can play the original?), so it appears that the Warcraft style themepark model holds market dominance, when it fact it really doesn’t. If this weren't true, then there should exist (at the very least) a group of themeparks with multi-million subscribers, yet this is not the case. No themepark has ever came close to the success of Warcraft, and the themeparks that do exist have relatively similar subscription levels to MMORPGs that came before Warcraft.
In reality, the Wacraft style themepark does not hold market dominance, World of Warcraft itself, alone holds market dominance. It is an anomaly in the history of the MMORPG.
Great post Royalkin, I wanted to write something like that for quite some time, but never had the time to do so.
In your post you said 2 crucial truths that the MMO industry seems to overlook:
1) Players want something different from WoW. Why pay for a WoW imitation when you can play the original which has 7 years worth of content?
I am an example of this. I am basically a Sandbox guy who plays WoW because there is not any AAA Sandbox to be played at the moment, all the indie ones are missing something which are generally gamebraking.
I recently played my free month in Swtor and quit, and promptly I re-subscribed to WoW which compared to Swtor is a breath of fresh air (Yes it's difficult to believe that when you talk about a 7 y/o game)
2) There is not a WoW genre market.................there is only a WoW market, which is basically dominated surprisingly enough by ............. WoW
I hope developers realize the big mistakes they are making.
Good read, im just confused that you take "8 years" as some point where wow magically went old, and even a proof of something, one would think that aging in general would manifest itself as a (slow) decline with no outside influences, not a single point when "coincidentally" some game changes happened.
Just saying.
"8 Years" was not referenced as a specific time frame for being old, but rather to provide context, being that Warcraft is 8 years old. I didn't mean to claim that something 'magical' happend at that specific time.
Nitpicking, I know, but wow isn't 8 years old. US version was 7 years old in November, and the EU version isn't even that old, it will become 7 years old next month.
As for your points:
Way too much generalizing. You make it sound like all players are alike, with the same tastes and preferences. Which obviously is far from the truth.
I suggest to MMO companies to offer a 3-month free play, that will give them enough time to fix most of the nasty bugs and perhaps have content added by then. Besides, we have seen over and over that MMOs are released with half assed content and full of bugs. It appears that beta testing is worthless and it's just used for hype. I cannot spend more time in TOR because of the ability delay issue. It makes gameplay a miserable experience for me. So I canceled and went back to Age of Conan, which is F2P and can run it in high settings with better graphics and better combat.
Good read, im just confused that you take "8 years" as some point where wow magically went old, and even a proof of something, one would think that aging in general would manifest itself as a (slow) decline with no outside influences, not a single point when "coincidentally" some game changes happened.
Just saying.
"8 Years" was not referenced as a specific time frame for being old, but rather to provide context, being that Warcraft is 8 years old. I didn't mean to claim that something 'magical' happend at that specific time.
Nitpicking, I know, but wow isn't 8 years old. US version was 7 years old in November, and the EU version isn't even that old, it will become 7 years old next month.
As for your points:
Way too much generalizing. You make it sound like all players are alike, with the same tastes and preferences. Which obviously is far from the truth.
No offense but arent you doing the exact same thing? How do you know its not closer to the truth? Just generalizing the opposite way lol. I see more people here agreeing with the op than disagreeing
I think it's amazing how the companies making these games don't understand the actual market at all... after all, don't they always tell us they are all 'masssive gamers' and are making games they themelves 'want to play'?
It's confusing.
Maybe it's down to the fact that whatever game is released is always 5 years out of step with the market... when the design docs are laid out it is for a game thats popular THEN, rather then what will be popular in 5 years in the future.
Take SWTOR... 3-5 years ago it was probably seen as what the market wanted. It was all about, from a dev point of view, themeparks. Since, especially n the lsat year or two, then we have seen a big part of the market burn out on themeparks and change the type of game they want to see.
The trouble is you cannot change your core system design at that point and change your themepark in to a hybrid sandpark... you have to just keep going.
Maybe thats why a game like SWTOR seems so out of time... maybe thats why it feels like it should have launch at least 5 years ago?
Just look at ANYTHING in the market, everything is about grabbing the market from a profitable venture, Apple releases the Iphone, every phone company in the world is trying to make the best smart phone to compete and take the market.
Broadband is released now every ISP is competing to offer better and better broadband and make more money than the previous one.
McDonald's creates a multi billion dollar fast food franchise and there are now hundreds of fast food franchises making money and competing for the same market.
This is how the real world works, until someone makes a successful product that hits the market other wont follow.
I am not sure MMORPGs follow the same rules though... They really are unique in the way they behave in so many ways.
Maybe applying 'real world' conventional thinking to them is exactly the problem that has led us to this point. Maybe the way forward is to stop looking at the current market to guide us what people will want in 5 years time, because it really isn't much of a guide at all, not for MMORPGs.
As far as I can see the biggest successes (and by that I don't mean necessarily financial) from this genre came from a time when it was more guess work then science... Maybe games like Salem get that and we will see a new wave of people building games based on inspiration rather then 5 year outdated spreadsheets.
It's of course all hindsight speculation, but ok, here's my addition to the disccussion:
- the older MMO generation didn't avoid WoW as the plague, that's a blatant falsehood. In fact, as good as all MMO's lost a major chunk of their subscriber base when EQ2 and WoW came out, with huge numbers of EQ gamers going to the new MMO's and staying there, especially WoW. Even SWG lost a significant part of its playerbase with the arrival of the new MMO's.
- outside of WoW, themepark MMO's have dominated the genre. One could say that it was because alternatives weren't present, nevertheless those were the MMO's that managed to pull in higher sales than pre-WoW MMO's before, and also had higher subs than former MMO's with the exception maybe of EQ. Other non-themepark MMO's that came afterwards didn't have the clout to interest MMO gamers in large numbers. So overall the themepark MMO generation was more successful and popular than other MMO's.
- innovation =/= entertainment. And it isn't just automatically that little innovation = no fun. The main thing that people want is to be entertained and have fun. This can be done by MMO's that feel the same as WoW, or this can be done by different styled MMO's, the main consideration however is whether a game is entertaining to a person, not whether it's innovative. Having fun is the prime determining factor.
- the MMO playerbase isn't some homogenous entity, a fact that many people often seem to forget with the thought that if they think and feel in a certain way, then everyone else does too. I see it as a lack of empathy or understanding of others and the larger world. For some people, the same gameplay they have been playing for years, equals no fun. Innovation has for them become equal to no fun, or maybe better said little innovation has for them become equal to no fun. It remains to be seen whether innovative gameplay really will mean fun to them, or if they'll gain a high level of boredom again after a month or 2. However, for other MMO gamers, have no issue with MMO's that have traditional gameplay, they still enjoy themselves or other criteria count heavier like playing those games with friends and fun people, just like someone can play the same sport and be in the same sports team for years after years and not be burnt out by it but still have fun, or how people play shooters and be in clans for many years while still enjoying themselves, even if the gameplay isn't that different from 10 years ago.
That said, we'll see how the market will develop. It's certainly an interesting time with the diversity of MMO's that is coming out this year and next. The main problem with WoW is that the perception has changed of how people regard success. Before, over 100k MMO gamers was a good, healthy sign for an MMO to be profitable to the company and to see continuing expansion and updates. These days, if it doesn't come close to WoW's success or at least maintain over 1 million subs, an MMO is already considered a fail. Which is just odd.
Especially this point that I am trying to explain many times to people :
In reality, the Wacraft style themepark does not hold market dominance, World of Warcraft itself, alone holds market dominance. It is an anomaly in the history of the MMORPG, and no future MMORPG will ever garner the subscription numbers that it had even at its worst point. Developers falsly think they can achive this, and thus continue to follow the same false design philosophy.
Blizzard cornered the market when they released World of Warcraft, and they were able to do this because of expert timing, and for the first time someone created an MMORPG for non-MMORPG gamers. They took what was perceived to be the best parts of single-player experiences and likewise from the previous generation of MMORPGs and melded them together. And while the older generation of MMO gamers avoided it like the plague, it attracted a huge audience of new gamers - non-MMORPG gamers. However, what they failed to realize is that just like single-player experiences, these games have finite longevity. Eventually (8 years later) players will grow tired of continuously repeating the same content. The slow loss of subscribers that World of Warcraft is experiencing is proof of this.
However, this understanding has not yet reached the board rooms of developers, publishers, and investment groups. What is really happening is stagnation and over-saturation, which exists because of the two following factors;
1. Market Confusion
Developers are not sure what the market demand actually is; they are confused. It was assumed for quite some time that the market wanted Warcraft style themeparks. However this cannot be the case since every attempt has failed to reach World of Warcraft’s subscription levels. It is therefore seen as a failure in the eyes of the industry, investors, and other developers.
Developers are further confused because the majority of players who initially flock to these new themeparks eventually return to World of Warcraft, because it soon becomes apparent that the new themepark is a Warcraft immitation (and why should they pay to experience an imitation when they can play the original?), so it appears that the Warcraft style themepark model holds market dominance, when it fact it really doesn’t. If this weren't true, then there should exist (at the very least) a group of themeparks with multi-million subscribers, yet this is not the case. No themepark has ever came close to the success of Warcraft, and the themeparks that do exist have relatively similar subscription levels to MMORPGs that came before Warcraft.
2. Market Stagnation
Developers and investors have a large amout of trepidation in regards to taking chances on anyting that breaks with the current perception of the 'successful' design philosophy. This is not because the Warcraft style themepark is successful per se, but because it is the model which is thought to provide the most potential success (Blame Warcraft). Any developer that attempts to do so marginalizes themselves, and they face a serious battle to find financing (even if any is available).
Also, MMORPG development is expensive, and because of this developers do not want to move too far away from what they already know how to do. This also goes along with risk mitigation, wherein investors do not want to invest in a perceived 'unproven' design philosophy. Also, developers/investors are interested in achieving the best return on investment possible, and because the costs associated with a Warcraft style themepark are well known in most cases, they can better asses risk mitigation and maximize returns.
So while there might be some demand for a differing design philosophy, developers are not yet willing to address that.
In reality, the Wacraft style themepark does not hold market dominance, World of Warcraft itself, alone holds market dominance. It is an anomaly in the history of the MMORPG, and no future MMORPG will ever garner the subscription numbers that it had even at its worst point. Developers falsly think they can achive this, and thus continue to follow the same false design philosophy.
I contend that, a brave developer is going to have to step out of this confused, stagnated, and over-saturated market by creating something truly unique, otherwise the current situation will continue. While there are games that are drastically different than Warcraft style themeparks, these games lack features, polish, and because of such cannot garner enough support to actively compete with current titles.
I'm not suggesting we will see a return of sandbox virtual worlds, but players can only tolerate so much of the same thing before they clamor for something that is genuinely different, and I think we are beginning to see that. I make no predictions and do not claim to know where that will lead.
Nha, Blizz just surfed the web boom that happened between 2k and 2005, if you make a quick search you'll see how much more people got access to internet between those years, and they match perfectly the 10 million sub obtained by Blizz. It was exactly the same with Uo/EQ when the 1r mmos was made compared to other computer games because they used the 1r boom of dial up. They just delivered the mmo that fit the most that new wave, that's all they did really.
I don't think they are confused at all, they have their own goals that are not always the same as players. They also have the constrains of technology they have to deal with, a lot people idea are great and doable, but they probably aren't doable in a proper time frame and resource. And most dev don't really care tbh, they just want to make money, and thinking is like in the way to do that for some people, it use too much time and risk for them.
That said, we'll see how the market will develop. It's certainly an interesting time with the diversity of MMO's that is coming out this year and next. The main problem with WoW is that the perception has changed of how people regard success. Before, over 100k MMO gamers was a good, healthy sign for an MMO to be profitable to the company and to see continuing expansion and updates. These days, if it doesn't come close to WoW's success or at least maintain over 1 million subs, an MMO is already considered a fail. Which is just odd.
Yes, this is a very good point, and something that I somewhat mentioned in my original post. I would add a couple things. First, it is true than prior to Warcraft, a subscription base of a couple hundred thousand was considered healthy, and anything over that was considered a huge success. Secondly, you are right to point out that games which don't garner a million or more subscriptions is considered a failure, but this is because investors want a quick return on their investment. If the game fails to provide that quick investment, well, excrement hits the fan. Also though, the gaming community is also quite fickle, and when something something doesn't smell right, no one wants to be the last one off a sinking ship (no pun intended).
That said, we'll see how the market will develop. It's certainly an interesting time with the diversity of MMO's that is coming out this year and next. The main problem with WoW is that the perception has changed of how people regard success. Before, over 100k MMO gamers was a good, healthy sign for an MMO to be profitable to the company and to see continuing expansion and updates. These days, if it doesn't come close to WoW's success or at least maintain over 1 million subs, an MMO is already considered a fail. Which is just odd.
Yes, this is a very good point, and something that I somewhat mentioned in my original post. I would add a couple things. First, it is true than prior to Warcraft, a subscription base of a couple hundred thousand was considered healthy, and anything over that was considered a huge success. Secondly, you are right to point out that games which don't garner a million or more subscriptions is considered a failure, but this is because investors want a quick return on their investment. If the game fails to provide that quick investment, well, excrement hits the fan. Also though, the gaming community is also quite fickle, and when something something doesn't smell right, no one wants to be the last one off a sinking ship (no pun intended).
It isn't just investors, it's also or maybe even more the perception of MMO gamers of what is considered a success or not. Many MMO's have maintained sub numbers post-WOW over an extended period of time that easily surpass all pre-WoW MMO's except for EQ. Yet, still they are deemed a 'failure' by a lot of MMO gamers, even if their sub numbers beat the sub numbers of pre-WoW MMO's, and even if the market sees a lot more MMO's and competition than the 2000-2004 era, where MMO's and MMO companies were in the comfortable position that they had relatively few other MMO's to compete with. Compared with now, where there's hundreds of all kinds of MMO's and dozens of AAA MMO's that all vie for the hand of the same MMO playerbase.
Vesavius, I dont think the majority of ppl hace changed only the small old school minority, cause the majority of players are still playing WoW that is what they want.
And some ppl really hit the nail on the head, there isnt 10mil ppl that other MMOs can take the market from, there is maybe 2mil ppl total that will play other MMOs besides WoW, once WoW is dead those ppl wont touch other MMOs. The MMORPG market is very small compared to the WoW market.
People dont realize that the other option to these investors instead of not trying to gain the returns that WoW did, is to not invest in MMORPGs.
People seem to think that people investing in these games are somehow misguiding their investment, but the truth is, they are doing it cause there is a potential to make money out of the non-MMORPG crowd and that is it.
Sandbox games never had a massive investment return and there is nothing suggesting that a sandbox game would have the potential to attract 10 million players and making 1bil of profits. Just look at EVE its not a billion dollar profit making IP, because sandbox games do not attract enough players.
When games like SWTOR fail investors are not going to want more investment in MMORPGs simple, I wouldnt hold my breath over any real investment in any sandbox games in the near future.
These are pointless discussions and I would suggest that if you want to see this game ( sandbox game ) so badly you round up a group of investors try and convince them that sandbox is the right way and gamble with your own money and reputation to make it happen otherwise it will never happen, these investors are worth billions of dollars making money is their living, I doubt anyone here knows how to better invest their money.
You're mistaken. I just had to clear that up.
You can't say that because Eve isn't more successful, people don't want sandboxes.
I love sandboxes, as does my wife and most of our gaming friends. None of us play Eve. I have no desire to play Eve. I'm in no way attracted to the game Eve. You can't just assume that because people like a certain style of game they'll tolerate any product in that style regardless of quality or setting.
There simply has not been a sandbox game with anywhere near the budget of WoW clones (as mentioned, who would take a risk?). As such you can't factually say that a sandbox with a 100+ million dollar budget wouldn't be succsessful. We don't have that information. WoW introduced many people to the MMO genre, I'm sure many of those players get the idea and are ready to experience something similar but different. Afterall, didn't Farmville do quite well? From what I've seen of that I'd say it's more of a sandbox experience than themepark, how did their numbers compare to WoW? It's possible it wasn't as successful as I thought of course, I just recall hearing/reading that it did quite well.
You are right about one thing, we won't see big industry taking chances any time soon. While we're lucky to have some games on the horizon that finally branch away from the WoW experience (ArcheAge and Guild Wars 2 primarily), it probably won't be until an indie company produces something successful and worthy of cloning that we see any varience in what the mainstream MMO market offers.
Also for the record I don't really think it's a pointless discussion as you seem to think it is, I think the original post was enjoyable and apt as were some of the responses. That's enough of a point for an MMO discussion forum.
Good read, im just confused that you take "8 years" as some point where wow magically went old, and even a proof of something, one would think that aging in general would manifest itself as a (slow) decline with no outside influences, not a single point when "coincidentally" some game changes happened.
Just saying.
"8 Years" was not referenced as a specific time frame for being old, but rather to provide context, being that Warcraft is 8 years old. I didn't mean to claim that something 'magical' happend at that specific time.
Well, i more or less wanted to say, that wow is a better example for design changes influencing the game, not age, the subs show more trend change around expansions being released (something magical has happened ), than some lingering loss of players due to age or being burned out.
I don't agree with multiple points of your analysis.
And while the older generation of MMO gamers avoided it like the plague, it attracted a huge audience of new gamers - non-MMORPG gamers.
I'm part of that older generation and I played WoW for about 4 years, from pre-order vanilla through the middle of Wrath, then picked it back up for the first 8 months of Cata. So I find this statement to be false and generalized.
It's not false - in fact, its probably right on target. The numbers don't lie - WoW attracted millions of players that did not play MMO's. For many it was their very first MMO. As for other older gamers, if you look at other MMO's subs during WoW's first couple of years, you'll see that they stayed relatively stable until people finally left.
Eventually (8 years later) players will grow tired of continuously repeating the same content. The slow loss of subscribers that World of Warcraft is experiencing is proof of this.
I find this particularly ironic considering the average life of MMO's and even Single player games is far, far less than this. The fact that WoW is still millions of subscribers strong and almost a decade old, with what people term as an outdated sub model, is testament to the contrary. While it may be true that WoW has added content every couple of years, it was essentially the same game - as you state, "repeating the same content".
MMO's have a notoriously strong retention rate. It comes to no surprise that WoW held players in its grasp for so long. WoW is currently experiencing a steady loss of subs.
Developers are not sure what the market demand actually is; they are confused. It was assumed for quite some time that the market wanted Warcraft style themeparks. However this cannot be the case since every attempt has failed to reach World of Warcraft’s subscription levels. It is therefore seen as a failure in the eyes of the industry, investors, and other developers.
Except we now have SWTOR which beat(?) WoW's pre-order record? They had something like 1.5 million sub's at game launch? I remember watching a GBTV episode where they stated that BioWare was releasing early access to about 100k pre-orders 2x a day for a couple weeks? I don't know, you say Developers are not sure what the market demand actually is" yet we are sitting at another WoW-esque MMO release?
While some look at the RIFT release as small and their subscriber base as small, it's still in the hundreds of thousands which the largest sub'd game which alot of people would contest as a sandbox game would be Eve Online which only has what, 230k subs? (I could be off on that but I thought it was somewhere around there) RIFT was released at a bad time and just after WoW release Cataclysm - which was touted as the expansion to fix alot of issues with PvP and other aspects of the game, so it was highly anticipated. Essentially, WoW smothered the RIFT release due to timing.
First of all, you can't compare WoW's pre order record and TOR's. Why? Because WoW was released 6, 7 years before TOR. The market landscape is completely different now from then. Nearly everyone have computers and internet access. MMO's are much more acceptable now than they were then. Tor was marketed to hell. WoW? Wow wasnt marketed not *nearly* as much.
Wrong about EvE. The largest sandbox game is Minecraft, not EVE. Minecraft has 10 million + players.
RIFT released at the worst time? Lol. RIFT is a drop in the bucket compared to WoW and is just another failure. Blatant failure, at that. It never got close to WoW's sub numbers.
"We're not in Azeroth anymore." OH YES TRION, WE'RE STILL IN AZEROTH!!!
In reality, the Wacraft style themepark does not hold market dominance, World of Warcraft itself, alone holds market dominance. It is an anomaly in the history of the MMORPG, and no future MMORPG will ever garner the subscription numbers that it had even at its worst point. Developers falsly think they can achive this, and thus continue to follow the same false design philosophy.
I think you have it backwords. The themepark style does hold market dominance, if you look at the demographic of gamers that play WoW and others like it. WoW gamers jump to other games like it, they jumped to RIFT as well as a nice chunk of gamers jumped form WoW to SWTOR. I'd imagine some of those gamers will even maintain subs on both. What you don't find, is alot of cross-genre gamers or those who play games like Mortal Online and Eve Online as well as games like RIFT and World of Warcraft. Furthermore, developers hope they can chip off a huge chunk of the World of Warcraft subscribers, that's why they continue to produce such games. SWTOR is probably the biggest success story for a runner up of WoW - even though we'll likely never have the stats to prove it.
Its obvious the themepark style doesnt hold market dominance because nearly all of the themepark games tanked. In reality TOR should have 3, 4 ,5 6 ,7 8 million players with an IP like that. But they dont.
If anything, the sandbox style actually holds dominance. Why? Because most of the MMO's that have come from small developers have become massive success stories, and theyre all sandboxes.
Runescape was a sandbox MMO created in some kid's basement in 2001 (!!!) and at its peak had nearly 2 million players. It still probably holds at least half a million currently - at least.
Minecraft hit a home run with 10 million and climbing. It has 16 bit graphics. But yeah, lets just ignore that.
In a move of utter stupidity, SOE removed all of the beloved sandbox elements in SWG and replaced them with themepark. Guess what happened? Take a look at the SWG veterans forum on here and you'll get your answer.
Lol - and here we have TOR, released with the Star Wars IP by Bioware AAA, and it got what, 1.5million max? Thats pathetic.
It goes like this - if someone want's WoW's gameplay, THEN THEY PLAY WOW. WHAT A SURPRISE?
This whole line of thinking that themepark is the dominant model for MMO's is OLD. Its archaic. Its a dead horse. The market had 5, 6 years of this drivel and not one MMO got close to WoW's numbers. This line of thinking was acceptable for 07-08, but its 2012 now. Get with the times.
Furthermore, people don't give enough vocal credit to Blizzard and WoW. WoW was the Einstein of themepark MMO's and still continues to innovate far beyond what we are seeing out of even the newest AAA themeparks. Evidence of that can be seen in the questing. BioWare may have all the voice overs but WoW has more interactive and fun quests such as Gnomerageddon and such. Where the quests are still quests to do tasks but those tasks aren't just a rehash of the tasks you've completed the last 50 levels. That's the type of stuff that draws the long term subs and you just don't see that type of questing innovation in games like RIFT and SWTOR. WoW also is very fluid. Their animations look top-notch and seem to flow better during combat actions. It may be an old game but it's still pumping out some of the best MMO innovation in the industry. So you may feel that it's because it's World of Warcraft due to Market Confusion and Stagnation but it's because Blizzard put out a superior product and continues to prove that their development staff still knows how to hang onto the ball in a clutch situation - despite Kyle Williams.
Actually Blizzard is given plenty of credit. To call WoW the "Einstein" of MMO's is LUDICROUS. The only Einstein of MMO's is UO. The first and the only one to really experiment with virtual worlds.
WoW took existing ideas and perfected them.
Lets put it this way. Theres a market for everyone. For themeparks, and for sandboxes. But the fact of the matter is, theyve been chasing a pipe dream. RIFT gets its share, TOR does, but they will never reach the subs of WoW.
If they want the next big MMO, then they are going to have to become innovative. Period.
The OP is right, WoW is an anomly. It was released in the right time, in the right state, with the right IP. It was the gateway game that brought MMO's into everyday life and households. It was a game on easy mode that was easy to get into and featured carrot-on-a-stick gameplay that kept people endlessly grinding raids for the next best gear to no end.
Just because WoW still holds millions of subs means that the WoW model will forever reign supreme. It had its run. It had its run for 6-7 years now and the only themepark to come close was TOR and that was on a huge budget with an international IP.
Its a dead horse. The games over. RIP themeparks. You won't be missed.
"I want blah blah blah ...." .. are you willing to invest your own MONEY or at least CAREER in making such a game?
I don't. I just look at the market and play what i like. There are enough good entertainment out there that there is always somethign fun to do. Don't like the current MMOs? Play FPS. Don't like FPS, go play war games at your local gaming store.
"I want blah blah blah ...." .. are you willing to invest your own MONEY or at least CAREER in making such a game?
I don't. I just look at the market and play what i like. There are enough good entertainment out there that there is always somethign fun to do. Don't like the current MMOs? Play FPS. Don't like FPS, go play war games at your local gaming store.
If every discussion were prevented simply by the notion of it being a moot point, humanity would have remained in caves.
The, "If you don't like this, go play/do this." is a gross simplification, and thus a strawman argument. Also, if I had the money to invest in an mmo, or the capability to acquire it, I certainly would. The truth is I do not, therefore I must rely on what is produced by others, and I find the majority of it wholly inadequate (and catering to the whims of childish interests).
If you want to participate in the 'actual' discussion, excellent, but don't attempt to sideline it.
I don't think there is any hope. MMORPGs are a consumer's market now. If one expects the consumer to design a good game, one will, I think, meet with sore disappointment. The consumer is not discerning; the consumer merely consumes. His whims are outrageous and insensible, the products of ridiculous fads and the slightest social cues. Gaming used to thrive on a balance of consumers and hobbyists; the consumers played realistic, unimaginative games like sports and whatever they were told was popular; hobbyists played whatever appealed to their interests and imagination. Now that the consumer can engage in the most vulgar realism in any type of game he wants, he has chosen to invade a wider variety, MMORPGs being one of them.
Comments
It's still a gamble, no matter how you cut it you are risking your money to strike it rich. Just the same way you can play single deck blackjack with a few teammates. Yeah, you increase your chance to make money (or reduce your risk of losing) but you still gamble it.
Venture Capitalists do it all the time and their success rate is somewhere around 30-45%. You only need to make it big once, like Blizzard did with World of Warcraft.
Great post Royalkin, I wanted to write something like that for quite some time, but never had the time to do so.
In your post you said 2 crucial truths that the MMO industry seems to overlook:
1) Players want something different from WoW. Why pay for a WoW imitation when you can play the original which has 7 years worth of content?
I am an example of this. I am basically a Sandbox guy who plays WoW because there is not any AAA Sandbox to be played at the moment, all the indie ones are missing something which are generally gamebraking.
I recently played my free month in Swtor and quit, and promptly I re-subscribed to WoW which compared to Swtor is a breath of fresh air (Yes it's difficult to believe that when you talk about a 7 y/o game)
2) There is not a WoW genre market.................there is only a WoW market, which is basically dominated surprisingly enough by ............. WoW
I hope developers realize the big mistakes they are making.
MMORPGs are not games.........but worlds
Nitpicking, I know, but wow isn't 8 years old. US version was 7 years old in November, and the EU version isn't even that old, it will become 7 years old next month.
As for your points:
Way too much generalizing. You make it sound like all players are alike, with the same tastes and preferences. Which obviously is far from the truth.
I suggest to MMO companies to offer a 3-month free play, that will give them enough time to fix most of the nasty bugs and perhaps have content added by then. Besides, we have seen over and over that MMOs are released with half assed content and full of bugs. It appears that beta testing is worthless and it's just used for hype. I cannot spend more time in TOR because of the ability delay issue. It makes gameplay a miserable experience for me. So I canceled and went back to Age of Conan, which is F2P and can run it in high settings with better graphics and better combat.
No offense but arent you doing the exact same thing? How do you know its not closer to the truth?
Just generalizing the opposite way lol. I see more people here agreeing with the op than disagreeing 
I remember having this discussion in SWG few months after WOW released. Obviously it takes years for some people to get it.
I am not sure MMORPGs follow the same rules though... They really are unique in the way they behave in so many ways.
Maybe applying 'real world' conventional thinking to them is exactly the problem that has led us to this point. Maybe the way forward is to stop looking at the current market to guide us what people will want in 5 years time, because it really isn't much of a guide at all, not for MMORPGs.
As far as I can see the biggest successes (and by that I don't mean necessarily financial) from this genre came from a time when it was more guess work then science... Maybe games like Salem get that and we will see a new wave of people building games based on inspiration rather then 5 year outdated spreadsheets.
- the older MMO generation didn't avoid WoW as the plague, that's a blatant falsehood. In fact, as good as all MMO's lost a major chunk of their subscriber base when EQ2 and WoW came out, with huge numbers of EQ gamers going to the new MMO's and staying there, especially WoW. Even SWG lost a significant part of its playerbase with the arrival of the new MMO's.
- outside of WoW, themepark MMO's have dominated the genre. One could say that it was because alternatives weren't present, nevertheless those were the MMO's that managed to pull in higher sales than pre-WoW MMO's before, and also had higher subs than former MMO's with the exception maybe of EQ. Other non-themepark MMO's that came afterwards didn't have the clout to interest MMO gamers in large numbers. So overall the themepark MMO generation was more successful and popular than other MMO's.
- innovation =/= entertainment. And it isn't just automatically that little innovation = no fun. The main thing that people want is to be entertained and have fun. This can be done by MMO's that feel the same as WoW, or this can be done by different styled MMO's, the main consideration however is whether a game is entertaining to a person, not whether it's innovative. Having fun is the prime determining factor.
- the MMO playerbase isn't some homogenous entity, a fact that many people often seem to forget with the thought that if they think and feel in a certain way, then everyone else does too. I see it as a lack of empathy or understanding of others and the larger world. For some people, the same gameplay they have been playing for years, equals no fun. Innovation has for them become equal to no fun, or maybe better said little innovation has for them become equal to no fun. It remains to be seen whether innovative gameplay really will mean fun to them, or if they'll gain a high level of boredom again after a month or 2. However, for other MMO gamers, have no issue with MMO's that have traditional gameplay, they still enjoy themselves or other criteria count heavier like playing those games with friends and fun people, just like someone can play the same sport and be in the same sports team for years after years and not be burnt out by it but still have fun, or how people play shooters and be in clans for many years while still enjoying themselves, even if the gameplay isn't that different from 10 years ago.That said, we'll see how the market will develop. It's certainly an interesting time with the diversity of MMO's that is coming out this year and next. The main problem with WoW is that the perception has changed of how people regard success. Before, over 100k MMO gamers was a good, healthy sign for an MMO to be profitable to the company and to see continuing expansion and updates. These days, if it doesn't come close to WoW's success or at least maintain over 1 million subs, an MMO is already considered a fail. Which is just odd.
Expertly written. Could not do it better myself.
Especially this point that I am trying to explain many times to people :
In reality, the Wacraft style themepark does not hold market dominance, World of Warcraft itself, alone holds market dominance. It is an anomaly in the history of the MMORPG, and no future MMORPG will ever garner the subscription numbers that it had even at its worst point. Developers falsly think they can achive this, and thus continue to follow the same false design philosophy.
Nha, Blizz just surfed the web boom that happened between 2k and 2005, if you make a quick search you'll see how much more people got access to internet between those years, and they match perfectly the 10 million sub obtained by Blizz. It was exactly the same with Uo/EQ when the 1r mmos was made compared to other computer games because they used the 1r boom of dial up. They just delivered the mmo that fit the most that new wave, that's all they did really.
I don't think they are confused at all, they have their own goals that are not always the same as players. They also have the constrains of technology they have to deal with, a lot people idea are great and doable, but they probably aren't doable in a proper time frame and resource. And most dev don't really care tbh, they just want to make money, and thinking is like in the way to do that for some people, it use too much time and risk for them.
Yes, this is a very good point, and something that I somewhat mentioned in my original post. I would add a couple things. First, it is true than prior to Warcraft, a subscription base of a couple hundred thousand was considered healthy, and anything over that was considered a huge success. Secondly, you are right to point out that games which don't garner a million or more subscriptions is considered a failure, but this is because investors want a quick return on their investment. If the game fails to provide that quick investment, well, excrement hits the fan. Also though, the gaming community is also quite fickle, and when something something doesn't smell right, no one wants to be the last one off a sinking ship (no pun intended).
Yes, this is a very good point, and something that I somewhat mentioned in my original post. I would add a couple things. First, it is true than prior to Warcraft, a subscription base of a couple hundred thousand was considered healthy, and anything over that was considered a huge success. Secondly, you are right to point out that games which don't garner a million or more subscriptions is considered a failure, but this is because investors want a quick return on their investment. If the game fails to provide that quick investment, well, excrement hits the fan. Also though, the gaming community is also quite fickle, and when something something doesn't smell right, no one wants to be the last one off a sinking ship (no pun intended).
It isn't just investors, it's also or maybe even more the perception of MMO gamers of what is considered a success or not. Many MMO's have maintained sub numbers post-WOW over an extended period of time that easily surpass all pre-WoW MMO's except for EQ. Yet, still they are deemed a 'failure' by a lot of MMO gamers, even if their sub numbers beat the sub numbers of pre-WoW MMO's, and even if the market sees a lot more MMO's and competition than the 2000-2004 era, where MMO's and MMO companies were in the comfortable position that they had relatively few other MMO's to compete with. Compared with now, where there's hundreds of all kinds of MMO's and dozens of AAA MMO's that all vie for the hand of the same MMO playerbase.Vesavius, I dont think the majority of ppl hace changed only the small old school minority, cause the majority of players are still playing WoW that is what they want.
And some ppl really hit the nail on the head, there isnt 10mil ppl that other MMOs can take the market from, there is maybe 2mil ppl total that will play other MMOs besides WoW, once WoW is dead those ppl wont touch other MMOs. The MMORPG market is very small compared to the WoW market.
You're mistaken. I just had to clear that up.
You can't say that because Eve isn't more successful, people don't want sandboxes.
I love sandboxes, as does my wife and most of our gaming friends. None of us play Eve. I have no desire to play Eve. I'm in no way attracted to the game Eve. You can't just assume that because people like a certain style of game they'll tolerate any product in that style regardless of quality or setting.
There simply has not been a sandbox game with anywhere near the budget of WoW clones (as mentioned, who would take a risk?). As such you can't factually say that a sandbox with a 100+ million dollar budget wouldn't be succsessful. We don't have that information. WoW introduced many people to the MMO genre, I'm sure many of those players get the idea and are ready to experience something similar but different. Afterall, didn't Farmville do quite well? From what I've seen of that I'd say it's more of a sandbox experience than themepark, how did their numbers compare to WoW? It's possible it wasn't as successful as I thought of course, I just recall hearing/reading that it did quite well.
You are right about one thing, we won't see big industry taking chances any time soon. While we're lucky to have some games on the horizon that finally branch away from the WoW experience (ArcheAge and Guild Wars 2 primarily), it probably won't be until an indie company produces something successful and worthy of cloning that we see any varience in what the mainstream MMO market offers.
Also for the record I don't really think it's a pointless discussion as you seem to think it is, I think the original post was enjoyable and apt as were some of the responses. That's enough of a point for an MMO discussion forum.
Well, i more or less wanted to say, that wow is a better example for design changes influencing the game, not age, the subs show more trend change around expansions being released (something magical has happened
), than some lingering loss of players due to age or being burned out.
Most of the discussion is moot.
"I want blah blah blah ...." .. are you willing to invest your own MONEY or at least CAREER in making such a game?
I don't. I just look at the market and play what i like. There are enough good entertainment out there that there is always somethign fun to do. Don't like the current MMOs? Play FPS. Don't like FPS, go play war games at your local gaming store.
If every discussion were prevented simply by the notion of it being a moot point, humanity would have remained in caves.
The, "If you don't like this, go play/do this." is a gross simplification, and thus a strawman argument. Also, if I had the money to invest in an mmo, or the capability to acquire it, I certainly would. The truth is I do not, therefore I must rely on what is produced by others, and I find the majority of it wholly inadequate (and catering to the whims of childish interests).
If you want to participate in the 'actual' discussion, excellent, but don't attempt to sideline it.