The reason some of those games never became the next big thing was simply due to poor advertising.
Take Game of War as an example. Run enough commercials and advertising and even a piece of trash, mobile, $100 a transaction game can make billions but if people don't know about it, they aren't going to play.
Word of mouth may be free, but it doesn't get the job done in most cases.
It's been beaten to death but for good reason. Any original mmorpg gamer either played or knew about EQ. It set the stage for a lot of what came after. To omit is a pretty grievous error....
Meridian 59 gets credit because a few of the EQ creators mentioned it as an influence, but really at that time hardly anyone knew about it or played it.
I don't think ALL the vitriol about the exclusion of EQ is warranted, but some of it is very legit. EQ didn't so much as shake things in the MMO world as just about CREATED the MMO world. People were not bathing and playing EQ for days on end back when that behavior was unheard of. But I do think at the very least it deserves an honorable mention. And the exclusion from the other article that was posted by one of the earlier commenters is pretty lame.
Most of the articles here are pretty good. Some have been not so great, but it's easy to judge when you aren't posting articles for thousands of nit-picky geeks to read.
Comments
The reason some of those games never became the next big thing was simply due to poor advertising.
Take Game of War as an example. Run enough commercials and advertising and even a piece of trash, mobile, $100 a transaction game can make billions but if people don't know about it, they aren't going to play.
Word of mouth may be free, but it doesn't get the job done in most cases.
I don't think ALL the vitriol about the exclusion of EQ is warranted, but some of it is very legit. EQ didn't so much as shake things in the MMO world as just about CREATED the MMO world. People were not bathing and playing EQ for days on end back when that behavior was unheard of. But I do think at the very least it deserves an honorable mention. And the exclusion from the other article that was posted by one of the earlier commenters is pretty lame.
Most of the articles here are pretty good. Some have been not so great, but it's easy to judge when you aren't posting articles for thousands of nit-picky geeks to read.
-iX