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Every Mmo since WoW has been a failure.
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I took the most successful game in the genre, took 10% of their player base as a determination of success, and applied that constraint to the rest of the games in the genre.
As such there has not been a successful MMO since WoW.
by your definition of succes, every movies who came after Avatar are a failure, and before that every movie after Titanic was a failure....
So WAR, AoC, SWTOR, and TSW are all successes?
A game is not a failure if it makes a profit for a company. Especially if it turns a profit over a long period of time. And generally speaking, if a game is not making a profit, it will shut down. Those are the failures. It works the same way as just about any business.
It's also silly to base your point on subscriptions. What about MMOs that don't have subscriptions? Are they all failures? Even if they make the developers and investors a whole bunch of money?
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Be afraid.....The dragons are HERE!
The only actual "failure" is when your game is forced to shut down completely.
APB, Hellgate, Tabula Rasa, SWG, etc. All failures (regardless of their bastardized ressurections).
Changing from sub to F2P or freemium, dropping below 1 million subs, none of these are failure conditions. Granted there's a wide spectrum between success and failure, but an actual shut down should be the only time we use the word "failure."
Avatar made $2.7b so 10% of that is 270m. If a movie makes less than $270m then I would indeed classify it as a failure according tthis method. many movies since then have made well in excess of $270m, so your statement is wrong.
I don't consider maintainng a 1m+ subs a success. I'll just say Eve. Just because a lot of people play something doesn't necessarily mean it's the best. It just means that the alternatives are limited. It's like saying McDonalds is the best restaurant in the world because it has the most franchises. So don't confuse volume with quality.
I agree with OP. I don't think there is a number or formula which can say if an MMORPG is a success or not but the dramatic drop in subs just a few months after release would be a strong indication of failure as an MMORPG.
That would not prevent it from making money but any game, MMORPG or not, can make money. What makes an MMORPG a success is if it can retain subs over time and since WoW, almost no MMORPG have had good retention. Which is odd seeing as many MMORPGs before WoW had good retention, even a year after release.
Besides, why would I as a gamer care of a game makes money or not? I care in the sense that it keeps the game running but that is not a metric I use to measure success as an MMORPG gamer.
My gaming blog
aha and that my statement who is wrong lol. You should learn the real definition of succes or failure.
Geez man you are so over your head with this tway of thinking.
If i make a movie and it cost me 25 million and this same movie make lets say 50 million then i just double my initial fair. So this is a succes. If my movie is really good an i make more then your ridicule 10% theorie about avatar and i make 270m+ then this is just a bigger succes but in any case if i dont lose money this is not a failure.
There are movies that would have been deemed failures, but due to their extremely small budget, they are actually very profitable and successful.
The movie, "Clerks," took $27,000 to make and made $3.2 million. $3.2 million is considered awful by today's sales records, but, because it only took $27,000 to make, it was extremely profitable. And that's a success.
Well this method isn't being used for movies. I am applying it it MMO games, and MMO games have additional costs after their release in the maintainence of servers as well as the development of additional content and while 200k may be enough to maintain the servers, it leaves a lot to be desired in the development budget when compared to the multi million dollar original development budges leading to less high quality additional content. AKA Failure.
wondering how much that guy got to say it on this forum
Well, yes, it is used to determine the success in MMOs in the perspective of the publishers. It's used to determine the success of many things.
Just take upkeep into account when you total up the cost of development and marketing.
Either all have been a failure, or all have been a success.
What I find funny is when the same crowd call one game a failure and another a success when they have the same number of sales, depending on whether they're interested on hyping or giving or badmouthing a mmo.
My opinion is my own. I respect all other opinions and views equally, but keep in mind that my opinion will always be the best for me. That's why it's my opinion.
Why would I get anything for saying it. I simply made a resonal constraint separating success and failure, then applied it to MMOs. It's the truth.
Everyone is fully aware that you work for Zenimax and Bethesda's PR department.
one-tenth or ten times... doesn't really make a difference when you're 1) creating an arbitrary (random, actually) gauge for success and 2) using an anomaly as the basis for it.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Actually I work for Exxon Mobile as a geologist. Care to try again?
I don't accept the premise as stated, I don't see having fewer than 1m subs being a 'failure'.
In addition, I believe that GW2 has over 1m active players, SWToR maybe hovering below that, but I wouldn't be surprised if they have 1m+ after f2p. ; so this would also invalidate the premise. However, the fact that GW2 can have at or over 1m without the sub model, may indicate a failure to look at the problem correctly. This would indicate it wasn't the games that failed, but rather the subscription model itself. As further evidenced by VG, EQ, EQ2, LoTRO, AoC, etc. all switching to f2p models.
If it were re-stated:
Why has no game since WoW been able to maintain over 1m subs?
I think the answer would involve a combination of the following:
- oversaturation of the market
- lack of innovation in the games post WoW
- f2p models becoming prevalent
- limited audience (there are only so many of us mmo geeks)
- project constraints (Moneyholder says to developer, 'make it this way by this date')
- unpleasable, skeptical audience
- unintended self perpetuating player patterns (we play a game 3 months and quit; if this becomes an established pattern, developers start developing games with this 3 month average in mind)
There are probably even more variables.
Some seem to want it to boil down to one and one thing only; unfortunately life, social patterns and business are more complicated than that.
I like a lot of your list.
You forgot "an enormous army of unpaid, relentless, and absolutely free viral marketers". Blizzard says "Thanks guys!" and pockets more stacks of money. "Oh, we're gonna give you some Pandas. You love pandas, right?" (Zombie moans) "Thought so!"
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.