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Why are we not going to see another SWG or UO?
TheLizardbones
Member CommonPosts: 10,910
You'll have to remember MMOData to follow this. He stopped tracking MMORPGs because publishers became more and more close mouthed about their numbers, and more and more MMORPGs started using F2P so the subscription numbers became meaningless. But there's enough information there to follow this.
If you download the spreadsheet information, and look at SWG, UO and SWToR, then fill in the blanks for all the months where there is no data. Do it the easy way. Just assume each month continues on as if there were no changes. So this:
1000 - blank - blank - 2000 - blank -blank - 1000
becomes
1000 - 1000 - 1000 - 2000 - 2000 - 2000 - 1000
You'll have to dig a bit to get numbers for SWToR, but they seem to have hovered around 500k for awhile. I assumed they dropped to 300k, until they jumped back up to 500k after the F2P release. I didn't add any numbers after the F2P release for SWToR (stopping at May, 2013). This will extend the difference in the amount of times used for each of the three games, giving SWToR the least amount of time since it won't count subs to the present, but it doesn't matter.
Calculate/Estimate total revenue for each of those three games. Sum up the total subs per month, then multiply it by $15.
SWToR - $213M total subs
SWG - $261.4M total subs
UO - $283.4M total subs
Now, divide each of those numbers by the number of months it took to generate those numbers.
SWToR - 18 months, $11.9M per month
SWG - 102 months, $2.6M per month ($3.3M adjusted for inflation)
UO - 118 months, $2.5M per month ($3.7M adjusted for inflation)
Even adjusting for inflation, neither UO or SWG come close to generating the kind of revenue that SWToR is generating. I would bet other theme park style games compare this well against "classics" financially. So if you ever wonder why those old sandbox games aren't making a comeback, this is why. $Money$
That's not to say that some new style of sandbox game won't exist, or that older style sandbox games won't exist, just at a smaller scale than AAA theme parks. Especially since newer styles of sandboxes are getting made, and older styles of sandbox games are getting made, just at a much smaller scale than the AAA theme parks.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Comments
OP, as a proud and one of the few here to experienced being a Light Jedi Knight Pre CU, chased across the planets from bounties and their coverts as well as the pleasure I had of building my ranks in Britannia, from a homeless person with a crappy 7x7 on a snake island to a successful trader who PvP'ed hardcore through the nights...Let me just say it this ONCE
ONCE YOU EXPERIENCE THE BEST, YOU NEVER SETTLE FOR LESS.
I got beta access to SWTOR for full summer prior release and only played it for an hour or two (can swear on my parents/future children) and I was the one here who made this thread, asking the community not if but WHEN SWTOR will go F2P...
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?game=367&view=forums&thread=329028&page=1&val=1&uh=68EE285460BFEDDD54E6860C69D7A898
I skipped games here most have not. Never bought GW2, never played SWTOR more than few hours...and I was a hardcore Guild Wars 1 player at one time myself.
To answer your question: Why are we not going to see another SWG or UO? Simple, as Mr X continues to get sales, revenue for developing games with half the $, time/effort it cost to produce he will continue to pump those games. Of course, there has been exceptions and regardless if the game is SWG/UO type or some themepark if done right with proper love, care, innovation and polish it can turn into WOW and I'll gladly spend $ on it (talkin about WOW 2004-2010) It had something special, cuz everyone else was copying with less on the table. If there was another SWG/UO done with the type of care Blizzard invested in building WOW I would be playing that over WOW any time...
You're forgetting a key figure, MMOs were VASTLY less popular 11 years ago, when SWG came out, and ~17 years ago when UO came out. Warcraft was the first game in western culture that gained massive popularity thus bringing it much closer to social acceptance. By the time people grew tired of WOW and such, why would they go back and play an 'old' game such as SWG that hadn't t caught the popularity wave and basically had no content added to it, only core systems changed to try and grab the wow crowd.
Pretty much this. Look at the number of people playing MMO's back in the day of UO/SWG compared to the number of people playing MMO's now. Those numbers are severely scaled in favor of SWTOR.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
True but what kinds of people did the mmo market attract ?
Sandbox is a very loud group of people but are they numerous enough to support a game and open minded enough to stick with one that doesn't get everything exactly how they think it should be made ? Of course they'll tell you that are...unfortunatly history would disagree.
EvE is obviously the most successful sandbox game and how many people does it actually have playing ( not subs but people ) 250k...maybe ? Those are still swg/UO numbers 10 years later. They just found a way to get people to have multiple accounts.
If you're going to make an AAA title with a 50-100 mil budget there isn't a lot of incentive to go after that tiny market of people or even to take the massive risk of " but if you do it right you might get more "...but get it wrong and no plays and f2p wont save you.
I disagree, a sandbox in theory has something for everyone, the creators, the social, the economists, the political factions, the pvpers, the themepark riders(who play off the creations). This is why Minecraft and GTA are so popular.
Which looks like a hybrid between SWG and a less harsh (mechanics-wise) EVE-Online on the PVP servers.
As far as UO.... Albion Online and Gloria Victis.
So knowing those upcoming games how are your predictions holding up OP?
We could do the same thing with EQ or WoW. The results would be the same.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Since none of these games could be called "AAA", pretty well. If you read my last paragraph.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Not quite an accurate assumption. Simply because of the shear number of MMO's out today, they are spreading the player base thin.
So if you were to factor out all these 100's of MMO's to be comparable to what was around in SWG's day, I think you'd find it would balance out, or even tip in SWtOR favor.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
Sandbox (to me) is a more generic way of saying 'virtual world'.
I am not a purist in the sense of even needing FFA PVP (although many do) or even PVP at all.
The first games were far more Virtual World with SWG making it the closet. There is evidently a mix of theme park and sandbox ideals but "quest line" and "everyone follows the same basic twists and turns of a predetermined story" are not present.
What happened was that the genre degressed starting with WOW . WOW was a great game , but it was so insanely popular and came along in a time when everyone had a computer where as in the older days most familes did NOT have a computer and the internet was still very much new (people still didnt trust online shopping in the UO days)- Developers took the wow formula and recycled basing the game on the lowest common average of player to gain the most subs.
Comparing that data is pointless as a decade and half ago a computer was the realm of nerds and hard core gamers- Now a computer is just 'cable TV' for the main stream.
A good sandbox would make huge amounts of money but would probably be F2P and cost a fortune to really play lol... But yes,. You cannot just take UO or SWG and remake them. It wont work. It needs to evolve but from THAT branching path where as the industry branched off of wow for its accesability. All the recent sandboxes have been online arena gankfests with little to no sand- Pure PVP games by. Also buggy as hell.
I think your logic is kinda messed up on the premise that not many people at all were exposed to MMOs when UO And SWG came out or i am sure that there numbers would have much stronger across the board , just look at some of the real deuces for games that generate more than either of those 2 titles now... And only because the market has more than quadrupled in size since 97 ... If the market had the millions of gamers exposed to MMOS then as it has now , they would have pulled in great numbers ...
Neither SWG nor UO can be considered AAA productions either so your point is moot hence why I omitted it from consideration (EQ could nominally be called AAA and WoW most certainly).
While you are right, a SWG or UO doesn't generate the kind of cash the a SWTOR, ESO or GW2 generates, NONE of these COMBINED are generating even a fraction of the cash the WoW is STILL generating after a decade.
When SOE was developing SWG and GW2 at the same time, some experts at the time were debating that SOE could really only canabalize its own market, that the people playing SOE games was the ENTIRE pool of MMO players.
Then Blizzard launched WoW and the game crashed because so many people wanted to play that for a long time Blizzard just couldn't keep up.
The game did NOT canabalize SOE, it destroyed it, the company has never been the same and now has to partner with pro.sieben for Everquest Next, something only korean games have to do.
But it did not just take SOE gamers, it attracted over 10 mil extra players, it didn't just eat the entire pie, it increased the pie 10 fold at least.
And since then NOBODY has come even close to that.
I have been told by people that SWTOR is a success because it has 500k players (a figure I doubt) which is a fraction of what WoW does and you don't create a Star Wars game to be a niche game.
But when WoW launched and EQ2 only a small group had internet access at home and most were on dialup. Today everyone in the west has broadband and games like Farmville have created a massive gaming audience willing to pay for gaming.
And NOBODY in the MMO industry has come even close to tapping that potential. We are now reduced to thinking that 500k is some kind of max again (ignoring WoW as a kind of industrial blind spot).
I think there is room for another massive MMO, a game that will do what WoW did to the EQ world, no destroy it but change it in the way Doom changed Wolvenstein and Quake changed Doom and then Valve game along and Quake with Half-life was never the same again.
Were is the next MMO that doesn't just go for revenue but redifines the industry? Sets a new goalpost? The game that goes for 100 mil subscribers? With a world wide audience, it is possible.
But that game won't be another cheap korean or korean knock-off game, it must be a game that is truly ground-breaking. A game that turned the extremely nerdy EQ style into something more accessible like WoW did but in a different way.
What that way is? I got some idea but that is a different article but it is clear that just another MMO is not going to do it.
To many tried, the game to break the next record is going to have to be something special, for a LOT of people. And you don't do that with Hack&Slash with some network code.
Again, we can do the same comparison with EQ and WoW and get the same results. Both were contemporaries of these games and both outperformed them by a wide margin.
**
SWToR is apropos because it is widely regarded as a total failure on these forums. Even adjusting for inflation, SWToR earns more than double what each of those games earned and it's very close to earning in two years what each those games earned in their entire lifetimes.
Also, before anyone takes the conversation in that direction, I don't like SWToR. WoW clone, not enough class storyline content versus world story content, odd or bad F2P choices made, small worlds that don't feel like worlds, etc. Take your pick of flaws. The cumulative effect of them was that I did not enjoy playing the game. That's not the point. The point is why the industry moved away from games like UO and SWG in the first place. $Money$
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Both games were AAA productions for their time. Especially SWG.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Wrong, EQ barely outperformed SWG(While being out first and having an established fanbase of people willing to shell out 15$ a month) and when you compare WoWs polish and accessibilityjust a short year after SWG, which actually in technology is a HUGE leap, enough for many more homes to have computers, better internet(DSL/Cable), etc. We should be able to agree that WoW is an anomaly and can't be used as comparison as no MMO has done as well.(That we know of)
Keep dreaming. SWG in terms of graphics and overall bling factor was below games 4-5 years older and UO wasn't even remotely comparable in terms of bling factor to Diablo 1 or other similar isometric games of the day.
Now kindly stop trying to retroactively apply shitty labels idiots use today to segment gaming in completely arbitrary categories and which usually do not impact the quality of gameplay in any way.
Er, have you seen the numbers for EQ? Half a million players peak, versus the 300k players for SWG. EQ didn't have a short run either. It's actually still running in a F2P incarnation.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Start a thread on "sandbox" gaming. The SWG vets will show up, talking about how great the game was. With Raph Koster's name attached and the SW IP, Sony and industry pundits expected the game to hit a million subscriptions. Double what EQ managed. At the time, developing a game that people expected to have the most subs of any game sounds pretty AAA.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
And? The game got killed by its own devs (goes to your observation above in regards to EQ) and if names and support equals AAA for you then fine have it and keep looking at big names for big results but before EQ and before UO their respective teams were nobodies and SWG if it did not have the SW IP would've probably still been around today and non-NGE'd so yeah.
Depending on what number you use for ToR's cost (probably no matter the number you use also), UO still is probably ahead of ToR.
You're leaving out a lot of factors.
1. When UO and many of the older games the majority of players were on dialup.
2. There were less people on the internet.
3. The playablity was far worst because WoW hadn't standardize the MMORPG UI.
4. WoW brought a lot of gamers that never played MMORPG or even tried one for many reason that have nothing to do with MMORPG. Simple fact is that Blizzard had a cult following of already online battlenet fans that got hooked on a quality first MMORPG. Its why the success hasn't been repeated. But the point is by the Time SWTOR came out there were millions more playing MMORPGs.
And did you just choose to ignore the fact that I referenced it NOT having any polish and accessibility from the get-go, not to mention HORRIBLY unoptimized, none of which have to do with it being a sandbox. If you didn't have a great computer the game was going to run horribly, especially in high population areas, and that was pretty sad for a bad looking game in the first place. It definitely was not for everyone and thus had a very niche crowd of dedicated players. Until you know, they decided to change it to a different game twice.
Hrm, play this game that just came out with all sorts of controversy and issues, or play this new game that runs great on crappy machines, is gaining a lot of steam, and is highly polished!(comparitively)