Personally I'm waiting for Tom Clancy's The Division it looks to be exactly what I've been waiting for. Multiplatform including tablets, sandbox, pvp, huge map, etc.
Originally posted by SoMuchMass Originally posted by GulerStarting big and waning is a natural state for most forms of media. It isn't just MMOs it's with new books, movies, and comics. Best and most well known example is with box office sales, first weeks are huge, second and third weeks a little smaller, then by the forth week on, not so much. People get exposed to the content in the first week, some go back and view the content again, some tell their friends for week two and three, by week four anyone that was going to go see it in the theater has done so for the most part.Sure, every once in a while one piece of media defies the odds and goes from no one hearing about it to becoming a nation wide best seller with a super loyal fan base, but those are few and far between.
But MMOs and multiplayer games are a different beast, if they are good they grow. It isn't like the "market" has changed where games can't grow anymore. Retention is the ultimate goal of MMOs. This isn't a console game where success is based on initial sales. Other games like LoL and DotA 2 have seen growth. Even Minecraft and World of Tanks has seen growth in interest and players.
I want to see an MMO release and grow and continue to grow. But the trend for pretty much every mainstream MMO has been launch and massive decline. Even the ones that start small (TSW) decline from launch. Maybe there needs to be some drastic change in the market for that to happen, a MMO that is outside the saturated norm.
Minecraft's growth can be attributed to both a total lack of advertising and the game spending so long in a 'beta' state. League of Legends grew by word of mouth instead of advertising. Advertising is fast, word of mouth is slow. World of Tanks did not grow slowly. They experienced a very sudden expansion. So did LoL for that matter. It's notable that neither game is advertising huge leaps in their playerbase now. Minecraft is the only game of the three that's growing enough to publish the numbers, and they are doing it by expanding to more platforms. First to mobiles, then the XB360 and now to the PS3. In each case where Minecraft adopted a new platform, the pickup rate by players was very rapid.
When Eve and Minecraft first released to the public, and started collecting money, what state were they in? They were cr@p games. They had promise, of course, but what game doesn't? What makes them different from other games? They were self funded. CCP didn't have investors breathing down their necks. They funded Eve with a board game of all things, so they could spend the time it took to turn Eve into the game it is today. Minecraft worked much the same way. It was a tiny, cr@p game, but it didn't matter because the developer could just keep working on it until it was a good game.
I do not want a "slow growth" game, because that means some cr@ppy little game is going to release, and then years later it'll be worth playing. No thank you. I would much rather a developer release a game that's worth playing when it releases. I play a bunch of games all the time that are ready when they release, so it would be nice if I could play an MMORPG that was ready when it released too.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
If you're talking about new games that fit into the two-faction, themepark PvE/Battleground PvP game template... nope. I expect they'll continue to open big and quickly deflate. If people want to play WoW, they'll play WoW. I wish big studios could get that through their heads.
You get a very rare exception like GW2, but don't expect another one of those to come along that quickly.
GW2 fell just as hard if not harder than SWTOR, I don't see how that is an exception, it is exactly what I am talking about, it is the norm. SWTOR and GW2 is the embodiment of what I am talking about.
I thought GW2 had remained more stable than other MMOs in the last few years. Big drop of soon after launch as always, but it has been reported as steadily growing. I don't know the real situation. Does anyone have figures to see what the real situation is?
You get a very rare exception like GW2, but don't expect another one of those to come along that quickly.
GW2 fell just as hard if not harder than SWTOR, I don't see how that is an exception, it is exactly what I am talking about, it is the norm. SWTOR and GW2 is the embodiment of what I am talking about.
I thought GW2 had remained more stable than other MMOs in the last few years. Big drop of soon after launch as always, but it has been reported as steadily growing. I don't know the real situation. Does anyone have figures to see what the real situation is?
The real situation is that it dropped just as badly as SWTOR and all the other MMOs. Pretty much every source we have on the subject states that. But that should be expected, and even though I am actually exicted for both ESO and WildStar they will also follow the same trend. The market needs a dramatic shift to see growth. As others have said, maybe its games like Destiny and Star Citizen, who knows.
SWG, DAOC, Shadowbane, AC2, Earth and Beyond, as well as The Matrix MMO, did not see steady growth. Even EVE didn't see initial steady growth. In EVE's case that growth didn't begin until after several years of additions and improvements to the core game.
WOW was really the first and last to sustain massive growth, I'd argue that it's initial growth came from being the only MMO of it's type at the time (streamlined). Everything out there at the time was a deeper more confusing experience to get into. WOW made those initial MMO hurdles small.
WOW then had a few years without too much real competition, EQ2 would be closest to competition for it, yet it had many issues caused by a launch that was rushed.
By the time real competition to WOW's simplified model came to be, it was already far ahead in both improvements and content additions, it simply offered more.
Everything after that is MMO history. No one really stood a chance at seeing that type of growth, now the genre is saturated with titles. The only real possible shake up today would be something totally from left field that no one expected.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Recently all MMOs we have seen has started big and dropped big time a couple of months. Here are some examples including SWTOR and GW2. I will use Google but there are plenty of other sources:
So can we actually see an MMO that launches and grows? Or is that era over, in this over saturated market?
I hope we wont see. It used to be 50k people gradually increasing over time to 70k and then dropping to 40k etc. Now we have 1 million people dropping to 300k, I call that progress. I hope we won't get back to the dark ages, when mmorpg was labeled to geeks.
Give me example of "old" mmorpgs, that have larger player base than the ones you mentioned as "dropping". It is normal, the bigger number of players, the bigger the drop. Back in the days there was nothing to drop from. Of course we are not using exceptions as any reliable statistic source (WoW etc.)
Many of the bigger older games grew and peaked to 150k to 500k and stayed there 2-3 years. Many new games peak 400k to 1 million and drop to 80k to 300k. EQ run is still by todays standard very successful to the average MMORPG.
I would say it probably would be a indie mmo. The big mmos titles have such inflated initial numbers, especially with f2p. If their is no cost to try something, but then you take the numbers of everyone that played it at least 1 minute and tout how many unique people logged into your mmo...I don't think it is too realistic to think a f2p would grow from that. Now if you take the numbers at the end of month 1 and count from there, maybe.
IF we are going to count LoL (which I play) as a mmo, then please just say games period, LoL is about as much mmo as Civ IV.
There will be an MMO that stops the downward trend.. When?
When all of these companies stop hiring these old guys in the gaming industry. All of these people working on the games soon to be released have worked on previous releases, or been involved in the gaming industry for some time now. Just choose a game right now.. Name the person heading up the entire project and I can guarantee that guy has been in the MMO or gaming industry for some time now. You will never get anything new and inventive from these people. They are old dinosaurs that can't create innovation anymore. Their time is past, yet we keep supporting these relics in hopes that they will somehow 'get it'.
Honestly, the only hope is from Indie companies. EA, Sony, Blizzard, Activision, they will never create anything worthwhile ever again.
"Launch big and then taper off" seems to indeed be the new norm in the AAA segment.
Sadly (for many of us), this influences how upcoming games are designed.
Years back I think gaming companies gave up on idea that long term players were going to return their investment. They have become designed like solo games to make money like a solo game, big sales followed by a sharp tall off. When it comes to design, I think the big shift was to polish. Using the solo game model, a MMO has to be perfect as it launches, you need great reviews. End game on the other hand has become an afterthought, after all if you leave after one or two months are you even going to get to end game?
There seems to be some disagreement on GW2, but most seem to think it had the same problems the others had. Regardless, this is a swamped market, any new MMO that bucks the trend may need to be a different beast. A MMOFPS or the like, launching a traditional MMO in a market swamped by traditional MMOs is a tough prospect.
I think ESO will for good or bad. I honestly believe it will touch 5-6 million this year. Some leaving but more coming. What till the TV commercials start running. gg
Recently all MMOs we have seen has started big and dropped big time a couple of months. Here are some examples including SWTOR and GW2. I will use Google but there are plenty of other sources:
So can we actually see an MMO that launches and grows? Or is that era over, in this over saturated market?
Depends on how you look at it. Indie Devs will be the life savers of the MMO industry, for the most part they are working on some pretty great games and will only release them once finished and such indie games include GrimDawn (Not a mmo, but still kick ass) , Star Citizen and Novus Aeterno, these are the most anticipated games at the moment, in which case we won't be seeing until sometime in 2015. We're in a era right now where big time Devs and Pubs release a new MMO as soon as possible but is still in Alpha with a cash shop already open, that's the new trend. I would much rather support and back up projects like GrimDawn, SC , NA on KickStarter, which I already did. Way better then wasting my time on unfinished releases. Only thing missing now is for EA to start a new Star Wars project with a game play like EVE-Online, and with that 10 year contract, I hope they do!
And for the record, EVE-Online will drop big time once Novus or / and SC releases, both being F2P, both created by hardcore gamers and understand that a cash shop is a big no no. Fun times are coming back to the MMO world, just need to be patient for a couple of years! Just like when Red Alert 95 was on HEAT, those were the best years!
You will notice that he doesn't link any reliable source. He just pretends "every source" (whatever that means) confirms his opinion, which he thinks is therefore fact, without providing any proof.
GW2 definitely hasn't grown to WoW size, and no game will ever do that again, but it definitely has a very healthy population as can be witnessed by anyone just logging into the game. Lion's Arch full of people, queues for WvW, patch areas crowded, GW2 is just fine, thank you very much.
I posted a source in the first page. I can link things like website traffic for the GW2 subreddit, GW2 offical forums, GW2Guru which all saw drops of 80% - 90%. Including data from things like Xfire. Also, Youtube traffic for people like Wooden Potatoes if you wish. Let me know what you want to see. Every measurable source we have tells a similar story. GW2 and SWTOR took the same exact path. I am sure you can consider "SWTOR healthy population" also.
I like how claimed a lot of things, with zero data either. Based on one or a couple of servers. I will offer this data for any one of these games. Just ask. A lot of games have "healthy" populations including games like Tera, but that doesn't mean it is growing as my original point stated, they are all declining.
Edit: Seems like Greenreen did a lot of the work for me. But I can provide plenty more, just ask. I didn't want to make this a thread about one game but the overall market.
Originally posted by bcbully I think ESO will for good or bad. I honestly believe it will touch 5-6 million this year. Some leaving but more coming. What till the TV commercials start running. gg
The point is not the number of players they get for the first couple of months. The point is how much they keep and grow. It is easy to get the people at the beginning with a big name IP or a hype machine, it is harder to keep them.
If you can somehow convince all your friends and gaming buddies to move on to the new MMO, then sure. I don't see that happening though. That's why it's so difficult and why it's not always about the game.
People tend to not like to start over or make new friends, especially gamers.
You get a very rare exception like GW2, but don't expect another one of those to come along that quickly.
GW2 fell just as hard if not harder than SWTOR, I don't see how that is an exception, it is exactly what I am talking about, it is the norm. SWTOR and GW2 is the embodiment of what I am talking about.
I thought GW2 had remained more stable than other MMOs in the last few years. Big drop of soon after launch as always, but it has been reported as steadily growing. I don't know the real situation. Does anyone have figures to see what the real situation is?
The real situation is that it dropped just as badly as SWTOR and all the other MMOs. Pretty much every source we have on the subject states that. But that should be expected, and even though I am actually exicted for both ESO and WildStar they will also follow the same trend. The market needs a dramatic shift to see growth. As others have said, maybe its games like Destiny and Star Citizen, who knows.
I'd like to see this source, because everything I have heard on the subject suggests otherwise. They state themselves the game did see your initial drop off, but nothing like SWTOR and they continue to see growth of both sales and active players since then.
I really don't see that as anything new or likely to change. WoW likely experienced similar drop off but it was canceled out by the hordes of people coming in every month. Now, the genre's player base is pretty well defined. Unless we can find an MMO that brings non MMO players into the genre like WoW did, I don't think we will see another MMO that doesn't drop off in the beginning.
first i've heard that claim -- even xfire won't support that
over a year later, GW2 is still in the top 10
SWTOR and Diablo3 are tied at rank 16
It supports it perfectly. Rank means nothing in Xfire, especially when most games especially newer ones aren't supported. And the fact that the games are separated by dozens or hundreds of hours .Here is Xfire's in terms of looking at the "trend" over time for both games.
GW2 started at 93k hours played at launch, and today it is at 2.6k hours played.
SWTOR started at 76k hours played at launch, and today it is at 2.0k hours played.
% wise the drop is pretty similar, more than 90% drop, which was the point.
The difference between GW2 and SWTOR in Xfire is 600 hours. Raptr also shows them to be neck in neck, and to me Raptr is a better source with significantly larger sample size.
Who said they didn't? The drops are pretty drastic though. I am just saying GW2 and SWTOR followed the same exact trend just like every other MMO which I stated in my original post. Massive hype to massive decline. People argued that point including using Xfire to state otherwise, but Xfire supports my claim perfectly.
Xfire is one source, Google is another. But there are many others that state the same exact thing.
Comments
Minecraft
LoL
World of Tanks
I want to see an MMO release and grow and continue to grow. But the trend for pretty much every mainstream MMO has been launch and massive decline. Even the ones that start small (TSW) decline from launch. Maybe there needs to be some drastic change in the market for that to happen, a MMO that is outside the saturated norm.
Minecraft's growth can be attributed to both a total lack of advertising and the game spending so long in a 'beta' state. League of Legends grew by word of mouth instead of advertising. Advertising is fast, word of mouth is slow. World of Tanks did not grow slowly. They experienced a very sudden expansion. So did LoL for that matter. It's notable that neither game is advertising huge leaps in their playerbase now. Minecraft is the only game of the three that's growing enough to publish the numbers, and they are doing it by expanding to more platforms. First to mobiles, then the XB360 and now to the PS3. In each case where Minecraft adopted a new platform, the pickup rate by players was very rapid.
When Eve and Minecraft first released to the public, and started collecting money, what state were they in? They were cr@p games. They had promise, of course, but what game doesn't? What makes them different from other games? They were self funded. CCP didn't have investors breathing down their necks. They funded Eve with a board game of all things, so they could spend the time it took to turn Eve into the game it is today. Minecraft worked much the same way. It was a tiny, cr@p game, but it didn't matter because the developer could just keep working on it until it was a good game.
I do not want a "slow growth" game, because that means some cr@ppy little game is going to release, and then years later it'll be worth playing. No thank you. I would much rather a developer release a game that's worth playing when it releases. I play a bunch of games all the time that are ready when they release, so it would be nice if I could play an MMORPG that was ready when it released too.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Depends on how tightly you define "mmorpg".
If you're talking about new games that fit into the two-faction, themepark PvE/Battleground PvP game template... nope. I expect they'll continue to open big and quickly deflate. If people want to play WoW, they'll play WoW. I wish big studios could get that through their heads.
I thought GW2 had remained more stable than other MMOs in the last few years. Big drop of soon after launch as always, but it has been reported as steadily growing. I don't know the real situation. Does anyone have figures to see what the real situation is?
The real situation is that it dropped just as badly as SWTOR and all the other MMOs. Pretty much every source we have on the subject states that. But that should be expected, and even though I am actually exicted for both ESO and WildStar they will also follow the same trend. The market needs a dramatic shift to see growth. As others have said, maybe its games like Destiny and Star Citizen, who knows.
"Launch big and then taper off" seems to indeed be the new norm in the AAA segment.
Sadly (for many of us), this influences how upcoming games are designed.
SWG, DAOC, Shadowbane, AC2, Earth and Beyond, as well as The Matrix MMO, did not see steady growth. Even EVE didn't see initial steady growth. In EVE's case that growth didn't begin until after several years of additions and improvements to the core game.
WOW was really the first and last to sustain massive growth, I'd argue that it's initial growth came from being the only MMO of it's type at the time (streamlined). Everything out there at the time was a deeper more confusing experience to get into. WOW made those initial MMO hurdles small.
WOW then had a few years without too much real competition, EQ2 would be closest to competition for it, yet it had many issues caused by a launch that was rushed.
By the time real competition to WOW's simplified model came to be, it was already far ahead in both improvements and content additions, it simply offered more.
Everything after that is MMO history. No one really stood a chance at seeing that type of growth, now the genre is saturated with titles. The only real possible shake up today would be something totally from left field that no one expected.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Many of the bigger older games grew and peaked to 150k to 500k and stayed there 2-3 years. Many new games peak 400k to 1 million and drop to 80k to 300k. EQ run is still by todays standard very successful to the average MMORPG.
I would say it probably would be a indie mmo. The big mmos titles have such inflated initial numbers, especially with f2p. If their is no cost to try something, but then you take the numbers of everyone that played it at least 1 minute and tout how many unique people logged into your mmo...I don't think it is too realistic to think a f2p would grow from that. Now if you take the numbers at the end of month 1 and count from there, maybe.
IF we are going to count LoL (which I play) as a mmo, then please just say games period, LoL is about as much mmo as Civ IV.
There will be an MMO that stops the downward trend.. When?
When all of these companies stop hiring these old guys in the gaming industry. All of these people working on the games soon to be released have worked on previous releases, or been involved in the gaming industry for some time now. Just choose a game right now.. Name the person heading up the entire project and I can guarantee that guy has been in the MMO or gaming industry for some time now. You will never get anything new and inventive from these people. They are old dinosaurs that can't create innovation anymore. Their time is past, yet we keep supporting these relics in hopes that they will somehow 'get it'.
Honestly, the only hope is from Indie companies. EA, Sony, Blizzard, Activision, they will never create anything worthwhile ever again.
LMFAO, are you serious?
Years back I think gaming companies gave up on idea that long term players were going to return their investment. They have become designed like solo games to make money like a solo game, big sales followed by a sharp tall off. When it comes to design, I think the big shift was to polish. Using the solo game model, a MMO has to be perfect as it launches, you need great reviews. End game on the other hand has become an afterthought, after all if you leave after one or two months are you even going to get to end game?
There seems to be some disagreement on GW2, but most seem to think it had the same problems the others had. Regardless, this is a swamped market, any new MMO that bucks the trend may need to be a different beast. A MMOFPS or the like, launching a traditional MMO in a market swamped by traditional MMOs is a tough prospect.
Depends on how you look at it. Indie Devs will be the life savers of the MMO industry, for the most part they are working on some pretty great games and will only release them once finished and such indie games include GrimDawn (Not a mmo, but still kick ass) , Star Citizen and Novus Aeterno, these are the most anticipated games at the moment, in which case we won't be seeing until sometime in 2015. We're in a era right now where big time Devs and Pubs release a new MMO as soon as possible but is still in Alpha with a cash shop already open, that's the new trend. I would much rather support and back up projects like GrimDawn, SC , NA on KickStarter, which I already did. Way better then wasting my time on unfinished releases. Only thing missing now is for EA to start a new Star Wars project with a game play like EVE-Online, and with that 10 year contract, I hope they do!
And for the record, EVE-Online will drop big time once Novus or / and SC releases, both being F2P, both created by hardcore gamers and understand that a cash shop is a big no no. Fun times are coming back to the MMO world, just need to be patient for a couple of years! Just like when Red Alert 95 was on HEAT, those were the best years!
Moving goalposts, no standards, forum rabblerabble, the only real games are from the last century.
If we accept these judging criteria, then no; no game ever will pass.
The nice thing about forums is that we really don't have to accept the judgement from the extremes.
I posted a source in the first page. I can link things like website traffic for the GW2 subreddit, GW2 offical forums, GW2Guru which all saw drops of 80% - 90%. Including data from things like Xfire. Also, Youtube traffic for people like Wooden Potatoes if you wish. Let me know what you want to see. Every measurable source we have tells a similar story. GW2 and SWTOR took the same exact path. I am sure you can consider "SWTOR healthy population" also.
I like how claimed a lot of things, with zero data either. Based on one or a couple of servers. I will offer this data for any one of these games. Just ask. A lot of games have "healthy" populations including games like Tera, but that doesn't mean it is growing as my original point stated, they are all declining.
Edit: Seems like Greenreen did a lot of the work for me. But I can provide plenty more, just ask. I didn't want to make this a thread about one game but the overall market.
The point is not the number of players they get for the first couple of months. The point is how much they keep and grow. It is easy to get the people at the beginning with a big name IP or a hype machine, it is harder to keep them.
first i've heard that claim -- even xfire won't support that
over a year later, GW2 is still in the top 10
SWTOR and Diablo3 are tied at rank 16
EQ2 fan sites
If you can somehow convince all your friends and gaming buddies to move on to the new MMO, then sure. I don't see that happening though. That's why it's so difficult and why it's not always about the game.
People tend to not like to start over or make new friends, especially gamers.
I'd like to see this source, because everything I have heard on the subject suggests otherwise. They state themselves the game did see your initial drop off, but nothing like SWTOR and they continue to see growth of both sales and active players since then.
I really don't see that as anything new or likely to change. WoW likely experienced similar drop off but it was canceled out by the hordes of people coming in every month. Now, the genre's player base is pretty well defined. Unless we can find an MMO that brings non MMO players into the genre like WoW did, I don't think we will see another MMO that doesn't drop off in the beginning.
It supports it perfectly. Rank means nothing in Xfire, especially when most games especially newer ones aren't supported. And the fact that the games are separated by dozens or hundreds of hours .Here is Xfire's in terms of looking at the "trend" over time for both games.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AimCXydAYDLYdHUwWGhfWXg2S3pVWFY5QjcxOWlLRUE#gid=0
GW2 started at 93k hours played at launch, and today it is at 2.6k hours played.
SWTOR started at 76k hours played at launch, and today it is at 2.0k hours played.
% wise the drop is pretty similar, more than 90% drop, which was the point.
The difference between GW2 and SWTOR in Xfire is 600 hours. Raptr also shows them to be neck in neck, and to me Raptr is a better source with significantly larger sample size.
True, if you transpose WoW's subs over that Google chart they pretty much line up perfectly.
games having less played hours post launch
i don't see that changing (w exception to games expanding into new regions)
example: when GW2 launches in China
EQ2 fan sites
Who said they didn't? The drops are pretty drastic though. I am just saying GW2 and SWTOR followed the same exact trend just like every other MMO which I stated in my original post. Massive hype to massive decline. People argued that point including using Xfire to state otherwise, but Xfire supports my claim perfectly.
Xfire is one source, Google is another. But there are many others that state the same exact thing.