I think in the mobile space, some developers are losing focus on running a long term business. You don't have a long running trusted company by ripping off your customers and expecting them to be an endless piggy-bank. Fair market pricing and offering an enjoyable experience is in the best interest of any company that wants to be open a year later.
well most of the older mmorpg companies have taken a bit hit in the west apart from blizzard that seems to be going stronger now with overwatch origin -UO.long dead and UO belongs to a third party now mythic - daoc.same as above now game run by broadsword also.company dead Funcom- barely hanging in there SoE- once king of mmorpg now nothing more then a shell owned by some conglomerate that just wants to milk it.apart from massive layoffs.loads of shutdown and cancellation of EQnext (with the poor practice of trying to sell landmark on steam) ,you only need to go into EQ and see the sad money grabbing(almost desperate) ways now I spent more time talking about SoE because this game pre wow had 500k subs in EQ and close to 500k in SWG.with all its games that was 1million subs approximately in 2003/2004.massive at that time sadly it fall from top is probably the worst of them all so yeah sad news for all the old school mmorpg
well most of the older mmorpg companies have taken a bit hit in the west apart from blizzard that seems to be going stronger now with overwatch origin -UO.long dead and UO belongs to a third party now mythic - daoc.same as above now game run by broadsword also.company dead Funcom- barely hanging in there SoE- once king of mmorpg now nothing more then a shell owned by some conglomerate that just wants to milk it.apart from massive layoffs.loads of shutdown and cancellation of EQnext (with the poor practice of trying to sell landmark on steam) ,you only need to go into EQ and see the sad money grabbing(almost desperate) ways now I spent more time talking about SoE because this game pre wow had 500k subs in EQ and close to 500k in SWG.with all its games that was 1million subs approximately in 2003/2004.massive at that time sadly it fall from top is probably the worst of them all so yeah sad news for all the old school mmorpg
I don't see how overwatch is a MMO so Blizzard have taken a hit as well in the MMO department, unless of course you also see Unreal tornament as a MMO. Overwatch os a FPS game, you could possible call it MOFPS but that is it.
Square Enix seems to be doing as well as ever though. NC soft as well. Arenanet have alsobeen around for a long time as (founded 3001, first game released 2005) and is doing fine, it have been better within 6 months after any of their launches but that is more or less expected.
Of course you could argue that the only old school MMO those companies have running is Lineage but in that case you would have to remove Blizzard from the list as well, Wow is hardly what of us would call oldschool either.
The genre have certainly lost players to regular multiplayer games and more then a few of the MMO companies seems to think that you can live on the same game for 10+ years but that old games have a really hard time to attract new players (after all is their nothing more uncool to a teen then something their parents like) not to mention that MMOs 8 year plus tend to get a bit dated both in graphics and gameplay even if you try to update them.
None of the older companies that have problems have released a new game in a long time besides Daybreak/SOE and the games they have made have been rather low budget, I don't think that is a coincident. Of course a new game you release also need to be good or it is just a waste of money but I think the problem here is that the owners of the old companies use them as cashcows without investing into them.
The problem with F2P is that it actually hurts decent games with free competition. Instead of survival of games people will pay for games are funded by the few who have too much money to spend. Now those games that would have died from natural causes live on causing oversaturation and slowing market correction.
I guess you could say F2P is market correction. It's seems more like it is slowing the bleeding and not addressing why most of your player don't want to pay for your game.
Vermillion_Raventhal said: I guess you could say F2P is market correction. It's seems more like it is slowing the bleeding and not addressing why most of your player don't want to pay for your game.
This. +1
Lotro actually had better than average run for an post-WoW MMORPG. Lotro had around 2 years since release without major shrinkage of playerbase and content quality drop, it wasn't until Mirkwood until players started to hemmoraging fast and game starting to detoriate.
Most other AAA MMORPGs released in similar peroid like Age of Conan, Warhammer, Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, etc hemmoraged their playerbase much quicker and much faster, some almost immedietaly after release.
... It's seems more like it is slowing the bleeding and not addressing why most of your player don't want to pay for your game.
Regardless of how good a game is, people will NOT spend money on it out of pure altruism.
The vast majority will not spend a dime unless that buys them something cool in the game, in addition to the great game play. And when they spend that money, they're spending it on the extra benefit they're buying, not on the base game.
I have no doubt that a small percentage of players will "support the developer" by donating a small token amount, but even that will rarely be anything remotely close to the standard retail box price.
Comments
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
origin -UO.long dead and UO belongs to a third party now
mythic - daoc.same as above now game run by broadsword also.company dead
Funcom- barely hanging in there
SoE- once king of mmorpg now nothing more then a shell owned by some conglomerate that just wants to milk it.apart from massive layoffs.loads of shutdown and cancellation of EQnext (with the poor practice of trying to sell landmark on steam) ,you only need to go into EQ and see the sad money grabbing(almost desperate) ways now
I spent more time talking about SoE because this game pre wow had 500k subs in EQ and close to 500k in SWG.with all its games that was 1million subs approximately in 2003/2004.massive at that time
sadly it fall from top is probably the worst of them all
so yeah sad news for all the old school mmorpg
Square Enix seems to be doing as well as ever though. NC soft as well. Arenanet have alsobeen around for a long time as (founded 3001, first game released 2005) and is doing fine, it have been better within 6 months after any of their launches but that is more or less expected.
Of course you could argue that the only old school MMO those companies have running is Lineage but in that case you would have to remove Blizzard from the list as well, Wow is hardly what of us would call oldschool either.
The genre have certainly lost players to regular multiplayer games and more then a few of the MMO companies seems to think that you can live on the same game for 10+ years but that old games have a really hard time to attract new players (after all is their nothing more uncool to a teen then something their parents like) not to mention that MMOs 8 year plus tend to get a bit dated both in graphics and gameplay even if you try to update them.
None of the older companies that have problems have released a new game in a long time besides Daybreak/SOE and the games they have made have been rather low budget, I don't think that is a coincident. Of course a new game you release also need to be good or it is just a waste of money but I think the problem here is that the owners of the old companies use them as cashcows without investing into them.
I guess you could say F2P is market correction. It's seems more like it is slowing the bleeding and not addressing why most of your player don't want to pay for your game.
Lotro actually had better than average run for an post-WoW MMORPG. Lotro had around 2 years since release without major shrinkage of playerbase and content quality drop, it wasn't until Mirkwood until players started to hemmoraging fast and game starting to detoriate.
Most other AAA MMORPGs released in similar peroid like Age of Conan, Warhammer, Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, etc hemmoraged their playerbase much quicker and much faster, some almost immedietaly after release.
The vast majority will not spend a dime unless that buys them something cool in the game, in addition to the great game play. And when they spend that money, they're spending it on the extra benefit they're buying, not on the base game.
I have no doubt that a small percentage of players will "support the developer" by donating a small token amount, but even that will rarely be anything remotely close to the standard retail box price.