It shows that publishers are more un-interested than ever in MMO's, I don't think we'll see much side of stuff coming from Korea and continuing expansion of already existent ones.
Amazon is developing one medieval MMO that is a great to be seen what will be about and its quality, that I'm following a they get to release more news about it.
In the near future... no. MMORPGs have become niche once again following years of triple A developers trying to create the next WoW in terms of success and failing to do so. There isn't as much interest nowadays. MMORPGs are expensive to create, take a long time to build and possibly even longer to maintain. Instead of investing in a risky market, you may as well create a Destiny-like game which is a safer bet. Making a pvp-centric game like a MOBA could be an option too. Why risk investing in an MMORPG when you can make a mobile game? The latter seems to have a much more flourishing industry. While the last comparsion is a little but unfair since we are comparing an industry to a genre, I think my point still stands - the MMORPG genre is a risky bet and currently there seems to be much better options for investment.
I do expect MMORPGs to make a comeback in the future though. Humans have always been interested in creating alternate realities to dive into and MMORPGs are surely fascinating if they are done correctly. I think MMORPGs need more advanced technology to make use of so I do think it is going to take a while before we see the next big thing. I also believe future MMORRPGs are going to offer players much more freedom in playing them. Much more sandboxy and sim-like.
As far as themepark MMORPGs go, I don't think we are going to go back there. Other than eastern MMORPGs I don't see triple A developers being interested in themeparks anylonger.
Since "fun" is so hard to quantify and varies from player to player developers have gone with what is selling well and / or generating the best return on their investment.
Smart from a business perspective for sure, but doesn't translate to fun game play, at least for some of us.
I don't think they always know what will sell and what don't. Sure, sequels to a great success always sell well but for something new you just can't make any sure predictions with some exceptions to really niche or poorly made stuff.
I think it is more about playing safe, you wont earn as much as making something completelly new but you can at least predict to get in a few times your invested money.
Good games do better then so-so games, but it isn't always obvious what will be good when you start a project and the more different a game is the greater are both the risk and the potential earnings. Most just play safe since a spectacular failing can kill your company.
AAA just means they are going to throw more money at it and spend a lot of money on development. AAA doesn't mean a game will be good by any stretch of the imagination and frankly in the gaming world it is becoming quite synonymous with the same old boring crap. AAA money heavily needs a return on investment and no one is willing to take risks so they churn out the same crap over and over and over.
isnt Ashes of creation AAA? it looks damn good for just pre-alpha too, it could be the genres saving grace but then i think that about every triple A mmorpg that comes out until i actually play it for few months....
No. AAA means more than just pretty environments, and Ashes of Creation doesn't have the necessary budget to create that something.
They might become AA game, but they're much smaller production than AAA games like ESO, SWTOR or FF XIV.
I think the quality of the product has more to do with Triple A than the size of the budget. While an argument can be made that having a big budget should produce a better game I think we all (this is totally subjective) can point to a huge budget game that is just a pile of crap (Aion springs to mind) and a small studio game that is really quite good.
So triple A budget does not always produce a triple A game. Tying the triple A moniker to the budget is a mistake, in my opinion, it should rest on the quality of the game.
That's the thing though. AAA is literally just about budget. You can get shitty games with AAA money. And the person you are responding to needs to realize that AAA really won't really mean much. Frankly I've seen many lower budget mmorpgs that aren't AAA introduce many newer mechanics vs the bigger budget mmorpgs over the years.
MMOs need to get out of Wows shadow if it want to start to attract new players again.
There is no reason why devs need to hold on to MMOs. Since most players don't really care if an online game is a "true" MMO or not, the devs should just develop something fun, use the design the works, and forget about having to make "real" MMOs.
Since "fun" is so hard to quantify and varies from player to player developers have gone with what is selling well and / or generating the best return on their investment.
Smart from a business perspective for sure, but doesn't translate to fun game play, at least for some of us.
I suppose the correct way of saying it is .. "fun for enough of their targeted audience to become successful".
Successful games are certainly fun for someone, just not you.
That's the thing though. AAA is literally just about budget. You can get shitty games with AAA money.
True. But you also can get great games. What you cannot get without a AAA budget is production values.
So if you are happy with fun (to you) games with no production values, fine. But some of us like both great gameplay and production values. The good news is that there are plenty, just not MMOs.
I think the quality of the product has more to do with Triple A than the size of the budget. While an argument can be made that having a big budget should produce a better game I think we all (this is totally subjective) can point to a huge budget game that is just a pile of crap (Aion springs to mind) and a small studio game that is really quite good.
So triple A budget does not always produce a triple A game. Tying the triple A moniker to the budget is a mistake, in my opinion, it should rest on the quality of the game.
That's the thing though. AAA is literally just about budget. You can get shitty games with AAA money. And the person you are responding to needs to realize that AAA really won't really mean much. Frankly I've seen many lower budget mmorpgs that aren't AAA introduce many newer mechanics vs the bigger budget mmorpgs over the years.
It means some things, the engine and coding should vary from acceptable to good at least. But it also means that chances are high that it wont be particularly groundbreaking and similar to other games of it's type.
There have been exceptions to that but most companies that throw AAA money want something safe that gives them five times the money back instead of risking losing everything or get a extremely high payoff (chances for failure tend to be a lot higher after all).
That's the thing though. AAA is literally just about budget. You can get shitty games with AAA money.
True. But you also can get great games. What you cannot get without a AAA budget is production values.
So if you are happy with fun (to you) games with no production values, fine. But some of us like both great gameplay and production values. The good news is that there are plenty, just not MMOs.
Overproduced games don't necessarily mean fun games. Production value has a place sure, but that comes after making sure gameplay and other aspects are actually good. A game isn't fun because of high production values and a lot of money in budgets is thrown away on useless crap that isn't fun and just looks nice or sounds nice.
Again I've seen lower budget games have better animations and more fun than anything AAA has done because a lot aren't just sharting out the same mundane crap that was fun at one point, but has grown old. Zeno Clash is a prime example or a high production value, fun, and strange game that didn't have a massive AAA budget.
Yes there will be another big budget AAA mmorpg. But it's not likely to be another version of things that are already on the market. Some company will need to come up with a big new idea - a game that distinguishes itself from the pack. Maybe virtual reality. Maybe a major AI advancement. Maybe a big UI advancement, such as total voice control. Something that represents real progress, not just adding three cups of sugar instead of two.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
That's the thing though. AAA is literally just about budget. You can get shitty games with AAA money.
True. But you also can get great games. What you cannot get without a AAA budget is production values.
So if you are happy with fun (to you) games with no production values, fine. But some of us like both great gameplay and production values. The good news is that there are plenty, just not MMOs.
Overproduced games don't necessarily mean fun games. Production value has a place sure, but that comes after making sure gameplay and other aspects are actually good.
So? Production value and fun gameplay are not mutually exclusive. There are so many good games that there is zero reason to settle for just one of the two. Nothing is coming after anything. I don't play games with bad gameplay. I also don't play games that look like shit.
Look at Deus Ex Mankind Divided or Dishonored 2. High production value + good fun gameplay. There are plenty of other examples.
Overproduced games don't necessarily mean fun games. Production value has a place sure, but that comes after making sure gameplay and other aspects are actually good. A game isn't fun because of high production values and a lot of money in budgets is thrown away on useless crap that isn't fun and just looks nice or sounds nice.
Again I've seen lower budget games have better animations and more fun than anything AAA has done because a lot aren't just sharting out the same mundane crap that was fun at one point, but has grown old. Zeno Clash is a prime example or a high production value, fun, and strange game that didn't have a massive AAA budget.
No, nobody said that.
If you want a massive hit you do need that production value and the fun part though (a few exceptions like Minecraft exist but if Wow had EQs production value it would have done a lot worse).
You can still make a hit game just on it being fun, many great games have been made with a low budget. Guildwars for instance had a really low budget but did great because it was fun and the fact that their lead programmer (Strain, quit long before GW2 came out) is one of the best there is.
You can cover for low production value with really talented people, it is rather hard but have been done more then a few times.
I don't think that you could succed with a MMO as large as Wow with just talent though, you really need the high production value to attract more then a couple of million players (GW did sill about 9 million boxes but that includes 3 campaigns and an expansion, I think that is about as far as you can get on a low budget).
That is because MMOs are way more complicated then a regular game and almost all low budget MMOs have been buggy as the temple off Doom. But hey, a couple of million players is nothing to commplain on and it have been done in the past so it should be possible to repeat if you have good enough ideas and talented people.
Whatever the largest MMO will be 10 years from now (no, it wont be Wow, my bet is on Lineage: Eternal) it will have a high production value and at least be pretty fun. There are few low budget MMOs on the top 10 list at the moment, Eve comes to mind that had a really modest start but if you want really high sales high production value certainly helps.
That said, I hope to play Pantheon pretty soon which have a relatively low budget. A gtame the devs actually are passionated to make tend to be make more fun games then when someone at EA decides they want to cash in on Wow and order one of their studios to make it. They tend to forget that Blizz actually were passionated about Wow when they made it even if later expansions feel forced.
That said, I hope to play Pantheon pretty soon which have a relatively low budget. A gtame the devs actually are passionated to make tend to be make more fun games then when someone at EA decides they want to cash in on Wow and order one of their studios to make it. They tend to forget that Blizz actually were passionated about Wow when they made it even if later expansions feel forced.
I agree with you on that one man, I really look forward to Pantheon as well. I think that despite the budget it has a lot of potential to recapture some of that magic that I felt like EQ had such as a more social experience because of the need to group. Most of the good times I had in EQ/DAoC were because of the people I was playing with, rather than the actual content or production level.
That said, I hope to play Pantheon pretty soon which have a relatively low budget. A gtame the devs actually are passionated to make tend to be make more fun games then when someone at EA decides they want to cash in on Wow and order one of their studios to make it. They tend to forget that Blizz actually were passionated about Wow when they made it even if later expansions feel forced.
I agree with you on that one man, I really look forward to Pantheon as well. I think that despite the budget it has a lot of potential to recapture some of that magic that I felt like EQ had such as a more social experience because of the need to group. Most of the good times I had in EQ/DAoC were because of the people I was playing with, rather than the actual content or production level.
That last part re fellow players struck a chord. AAA mmo's - and I'll stick to the classic dungeon/raid/progression format here, have similar core mechanics. WoW, FFXIV, SWTOR - each has evolved and will continue to evolve.
It's this evolution which reflects changing expectations, and dare I say, the need to have everything in a shorter timescale. Now this has the danger of derailing the topic onto the playerbase. But they are of course linked, and therefore a fundamental part of the equation.
If a new AAA mmo was launched tomorrow containing the slower progression and reward pace, would it really succeed? Would a sizable playerbase - enough to support a large mmo - have the mindset to fail, fail, get back in a dungeon/raid etc and try again? It doesn't even have to be the dungeon/raid scenario. It can be a longer path to gear/level/crafting progression. I don't really think that would be well received by a large enough playerbase.
So it's faster content production, faster rewards, faster progression - all these are more suited to the more disposable type of games populating the market. The play for a couple of months, then hop to the next one sector.
So. We may well see a new AAA mmo, in terms of budget, support, promotion etc. But would it in fact just be another quick reward game - just in a larger format?
Overproduced games don't necessarily mean fun games. Production value has a place sure, but that comes after making sure gameplay and other aspects are actually good. A game isn't fun because of high production values and a lot of money in budgets is thrown away on useless crap that isn't fun and just looks nice or sounds nice.
Again I've seen lower budget games have better animations and more fun than anything AAA has done because a lot aren't just sharting out the same mundane crap that was fun at one point, but has grown old. Zeno Clash is a prime example or a high production value, fun, and strange game that didn't have a massive AAA budget.
No, nobody said that.
If you want a massive hit you do need that production value and the fun part though (a few exceptions like Minecraft exist but if Wow had EQs production value it would have done a lot worse).
You can still make a hit game just on it being fun, many great games have been made with a low budget. Guildwars for instance had a really low budget but did great because it was fun and the fact that their lead programmer (Strain, quit long before GW2 came out) is one of the best there is.
You can cover for low production value with really talented people, it is rather hard but have been done more then a few times.
I don't think that you could succed with a MMO as large as Wow with just talent though, you really need the high production value to attract more then a couple of million players (GW did sill about 9 million boxes but that includes 3 campaigns and an expansion, I think that is about as far as you can get on a low budget).
That is because MMOs are way more complicated then a regular game and almost all low budget MMOs have been buggy as the temple off Doom. But hey, a couple of million players is nothing to commplain on and it have been done in the past so it should be possible to repeat if you have good enough ideas and talented people.
Whatever the largest MMO will be 10 years from now (no, it wont be Wow, my bet is on Lineage: Eternal) it will have a high production value and at least be pretty fun. There are few low budget MMOs on the top 10 list at the moment, Eve comes to mind that had a really modest start but if you want really high sales high production value certainly helps.
That said, I hope to play Pantheon pretty soon which have a relatively low budget. A gtame the devs actually are passionated to make tend to be make more fun games then when someone at EA decides they want to cash in on Wow and order one of their studios to make it. They tend to forget that Blizz actually were passionated about Wow when they made it even if later expansions feel forced.
Ncsoft just had a financial call and they spoke of how the revenue from pc games were declining while mobile games were soaring, last quarter there was a 300% increase in revenue for mobile games, mostly thanks to lineage M. Lineage has dropped 70% since its peak and is now behind blade&Soul.
Right now they are shifting some of their internal teams away from pc games to work on making more mobile games because that's where the money is, noticed some footage of a mobile game based on aion. They are also working on a console version of blade&soul. They never mentioned Lineage eternal.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
I think you are definitely right about that one JudgeUK. The problem is that MMORPG's have competitively pushed forward towards this new "evolution" of higher production level, and content... with all them trying to become the next "WoW Killer".
It's to the point now where it's just completely unsustainable in this current model because people expect instant gratification, and have very little patience to sit in a slower paced game. The result is that no company can keep up with the demand for this kind of content, because the player base just plows through it far too quickly... WoW expansions immediately come to mind.
It used to be that the content/world, within an MMORPG was more of a backdrop, or setting... and the players themselves contributed to the fun factor through social group experiences. These occurred because of the slower pace. It was more about the journey, than the end result.
AAA imo means a big mmo made by one of the big companies, ashes of creation is not made by a big company but the game looks like the ones the big companies make.
I think the next big thing will come after WoW shuts down /star citizen fails... These two take up too much of the financial player base. Oh, also if the trend of kickstartes ends.
Basically clicking away text windows ruins every MMO, try to have fun instead of rushing things. Without story and lore all there is left is a bunch of mechanics. Reply Add Multi-Quote
That last part re fellow players struck a chord. AAA mmo's - and I'll stick to the classic dungeon/raid/progression format here, have similar core mechanics. WoW, FFXIV, SWTOR - each has evolved and will continue to evolve.
It's this evolution which reflects changing expectations, and dare I say, the need to have everything in a shorter timescale. Now this has the danger of derailing the topic onto the playerbase. But they are of course linked, and therefore a fundamental part of the equation.
If a new AAA mmo was launched tomorrow containing the slower progression and reward pace, would it really succeed? Would a sizable playerbase - enough to support a large mmo - have the mindset to fail, fail, get back in a dungeon/raid etc and try again? It doesn't even have to be the dungeon/raid scenario. It can be a longer path to gear/level/crafting progression. I don't really think that would be well received by a large enough playerbase.
So it's faster content production, faster rewards, faster progression - all these are more suited to the more disposable type of games populating the market. The play for a couple of months, then hop to the next one sector.
So. We may well see a new AAA mmo, in terms of budget, support, promotion etc. But would it in fact just be another quick reward game - just in a larger format?
Even Wow had a far slower progression at launch and it did fine, not EQ slow but still 5 times slower then anything today.
If playing as you progress is fine then there is no problem since people enjoy themselves. If you instead treat leveling as a long tutorial for the endgame, something common today, you have a huge problem.
Lineage is the second largest MMO ever and it have done fine since 1999 and is still the second largest P2P game with far more subs then games like FF XIV. It have really slow progression but people play it anyways (fine, nowadays mainly in Korea but whatever).
Looking too much on how long time it takes to reach max level is a huge misstake, particularly when you get a grindy gear hunt once you are there. As long as whatever content the players are in is fun they will continue to play. The fast progression games of the last 10 years generally have players for a shorter time then once with longer progression. The reason for that is of course the crappy endgame.
Besides, if you consider how long time it actually takes to max out both level and gear wise most modern MMOs are not as fast as you might think, except GW2. Most of them have a horrible grind once you go over from XP progression to gear progression.
Fast progression and fast rewards is only ways to bribe the players because the content isn't fun enough to keep them at the game and it only works short term. The only thing that keeps a lot of the players in such games are the fact that their friends still play, the social aspect is important as well.
Plenty of people still play Counter strike with zero rewards besides it being fun. That you constantly have to bribe them is just because of bad game design.
Ncsoft just had a financial call and they spoke of how the revenue from pc games were declining while mobile games were soaring, last quarter there was a 300% increase in revenue for mobile games, mostly thanks to lineage M. Lineage has dropped 70% since its peak and is now behind blade&Soul.
Right now they are shifting some of their internal teams away from pc games to work on making more mobile games because that's where the money is, noticed some footage of a mobile game based on aion. They are also working on a console version of blade&soul. They never mentioned Lineage eternal.
Yeah, their mobile division is doing pretty amazing. But both Lineage and B&S is still making loads of money. And yeah, it dropped the last quarter but it is the weakest quarter for it last year as well. The quarter before it did a lot better, just as the year before. B&S instead went up a lot (I assume they added some new really good content).
And Lineage have dropped 70% since it's peak? Dude, the game is from 1999 and still have second most P2P subscribers of any MMO. If that isn't impressive I don't know what is.
But L1 always drop during the summer, I assume people play less and don't bother to sub then but don't mind play a little F2P and maybe buys something as they play. It wouldn't surprise me if Wows and FF XIV also drop subs during the summer and regain them in the autumn.
AAA imo means a big mmo made by one of the big companies, ashes of creation is not made by a big company but the game looks like the ones the big companies make.
Its too early to say if they are going to be successful though, once the game is made then it will be possible to judge whether it is a AAA game or an Indie game, but first things first, they have to make the game.
AAA imo means a big mmo made by one of the big companies, ashes of creation is not made by a big company but the game looks like the ones the big companies make.
Its too early to say if they are going to be successful though, once the game is made then it will be possible to judge whether it is a AAA game or an Indie game, but first things first, they have to make the game.
They do have some talented and experienced devs so it is not impossible that they can pull it off, talent can replace money to some degree at least. Guildwars had just a fraction of the AAA MMOs budget and still outsold many of them.
If Ashes can do the same or not? We just have to wait and see. I won't hold my breath though, the success of low budget MMOs after Wows release is not a huge list (can we count Eve? It released before Wow but became popular in the mid-late 00s). It is hard but not impossible.
Ncsoft just had a financial call and they spoke of how the revenue from pc games were declining while mobile games were soaring, last quarter there was a 300% increase in revenue for mobile games, mostly thanks to lineage M. Lineage has dropped 70% since its peak and is now behind blade&Soul.
Right now they are shifting some of their internal teams away from pc games to work on making more mobile games because that's where the money is, noticed some footage of a mobile game based on aion. They are also working on a console version of blade&soul. They never mentioned Lineage eternal.
Yeah, their mobile division is doing pretty amazing. But both Lineage and B&S is still making loads of money. And yeah, it dropped the last quarter but it is the weakest quarter for it last year as well. The quarter before it did a lot better, just as the year before. B&S instead went up a lot (I assume they added some new really good content).
And Lineage have dropped 70% since it's peak? Dude, the game is from 1999 and still have second most P2P subscribers of any MMO. If that isn't impressive I don't know what is.
But L1 always drop during the summer, I assume people play less and don't bother to sub then but don't mind play a little F2P and maybe buys something as they play. It wouldn't surprise me if Wows and FF XIV also drop subs during the summer and regain them in the autumn.
Let me expand, all their mmorpg on PC dropped this quarter and they also dropped compared to a year ago.
Lineage 1. 35% drop compared to last quarter, 65% drop over a year, Lineage 2. 10% last quarter, 10% drop over a year Aion. 20% last quarter, 40% drop over a year. Blade&Soul. 10% last quarter, 20% drop over a year. Guild Wars 2. 5% last quarter, 15% drop.
The drop lineage 1 had over a year is equal to the revenue Lineage 2, Aion, and Blade&soul had last quarter combined.
Most other mmorpg developers has had a similar experience and that's why others already shifted to mobile development. One of the few mmorpg in development for pc is lineage eternal and the reports from first beta was less than favorable.
China is one of few countries where mmorpg are blooming but nothing from China is close to come up to AAA standards.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
Didn't Lineage Eternal already get cancelled? I never really followed it because I found the last Lineage title I tried to be boring grindfesty trash, but I could have sworn it's already gone the same route as Everquest Next.
Comments
Amazon is developing one medieval MMO that is a great to be seen what will be about and its quality, that I'm following a they get to release more news about it.
I do expect MMORPGs to make a comeback in the future though. Humans have always been interested in creating alternate realities to dive into and MMORPGs are surely fascinating if they are done correctly. I think MMORPGs need more advanced technology to make use of so I do think it is going to take a while before we see the next big thing. I also believe future MMORRPGs are going to offer players much more freedom in playing them. Much more sandboxy and sim-like.
As far as themepark MMORPGs go, I don't think we are going to go back there. Other than eastern MMORPGs I don't see triple A developers being interested in themeparks anylonger.
I think it is more about playing safe, you wont earn as much as making something completelly new but you can at least predict to get in a few times your invested money.
Good games do better then so-so games, but it isn't always obvious what will be good when you start a project and the more different a game is the greater are both the risk and the potential earnings. Most just play safe since a spectacular failing can kill your company.
Successful games are certainly fun for someone, just not you.
True. But you also can get great games. What you cannot get without a AAA budget is production values.
So if you are happy with fun (to you) games with no production values, fine. But some of us like both great gameplay and production values. The good news is that there are plenty, just not MMOs.
There have been exceptions to that but most companies that throw AAA money want something safe that gives them five times the money back instead of risking losing everything or get a extremely high payoff (chances for failure tend to be a lot higher after all).
Again I've seen lower budget games have better animations and more fun than anything AAA has done because a lot aren't just sharting out the same mundane crap that was fun at one point, but has grown old. Zeno Clash is a prime example or a high production value, fun, and strange game that didn't have a massive AAA budget.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
So? Production value and fun gameplay are not mutually exclusive. There are so many good games that there is zero reason to settle for just one of the two. Nothing is coming after anything. I don't play games with bad gameplay. I also don't play games that look like shit.
Look at Deus Ex Mankind Divided or Dishonored 2. High production value + good fun gameplay. There are plenty of other examples.
If you want a massive hit you do need that production value and the fun part though (a few exceptions like Minecraft exist but if Wow had EQs production value it would have done a lot worse).
You can still make a hit game just on it being fun, many great games have been made with a low budget. Guildwars for instance had a really low budget but did great because it was fun and the fact that their lead programmer (Strain, quit long before GW2 came out) is one of the best there is.
You can cover for low production value with really talented people, it is rather hard but have been done more then a few times.
I don't think that you could succed with a MMO as large as Wow with just talent though, you really need the high production value to attract more then a couple of million players (GW did sill about 9 million boxes but that includes 3 campaigns and an expansion, I think that is about as far as you can get on a low budget).
That is because MMOs are way more complicated then a regular game and almost all low budget MMOs have been buggy as the temple off Doom.
But hey, a couple of million players is nothing to commplain on and it have been done in the past so it should be possible to repeat if you have good enough ideas and talented people.
Whatever the largest MMO will be 10 years from now (no, it wont be Wow, my bet is on Lineage: Eternal) it will have a high production value and at least be pretty fun. There are few low budget MMOs on the top 10 list at the moment, Eve comes to mind that had a really modest start but if you want really high sales high production value certainly helps.
That said, I hope to play Pantheon pretty soon which have a relatively low budget. A gtame the devs actually are passionated to make tend to be make more fun games then when someone at EA decides they want to cash in on Wow and order one of their studios to make it. They tend to forget that Blizz actually were passionated about Wow when they made it even if later expansions feel forced.
AAA mmo's - and I'll stick to the classic dungeon/raid/progression format here, have similar core mechanics.
WoW, FFXIV, SWTOR - each has evolved and will continue to evolve.
It's this evolution which reflects changing expectations, and dare I say, the need to have everything in a shorter timescale. Now this has the danger of derailing the topic onto the playerbase. But they are of course linked, and therefore a fundamental part of the equation.
If a new AAA mmo was launched tomorrow containing the slower progression and reward pace, would it really succeed?
Would a sizable playerbase - enough to support a large mmo - have the mindset to fail, fail, get back in a dungeon/raid etc and try again?
It doesn't even have to be the dungeon/raid scenario. It can be a longer path to gear/level/crafting progression.
I don't really think that would be well received by a large enough playerbase.
So it's faster content production, faster rewards, faster progression - all these are more suited to the more disposable type of games populating the market. The play for a couple of months, then hop to the next one sector.
So. We may well see a new AAA mmo, in terms of budget, support, promotion etc. But would it in fact just be another quick reward game - just in a larger format?
Right now they are shifting some of their internal teams away from pc games to work on making more mobile games because that's where the money is, noticed some footage of a mobile game based on aion. They are also working on a console version of blade&soul. They never mentioned Lineage eternal.
It's to the point now where it's just completely unsustainable in this current model because people expect instant gratification, and have very little patience to sit in a slower paced game. The result is that no company can keep up with the demand for this kind of content, because the player base just plows through it far too quickly... WoW expansions immediately come to mind.
It used to be that the content/world, within an MMORPG was more of a backdrop, or setting... and the players themselves contributed to the fun factor through social group experiences. These occurred because of the slower pace. It was more about the journey, than the end result.
Basically clicking away text windows ruins every MMO, try to have fun instead of rushing things. Without story and lore all there is left is a bunch of mechanics.
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If playing as you progress is fine then there is no problem since people enjoy themselves. If you instead treat leveling as a long tutorial for the endgame, something common today, you have a huge problem.
Lineage is the second largest MMO ever and it have done fine since 1999 and is still the second largest P2P game with far more subs then games like FF XIV. It have really slow progression but people play it anyways (fine, nowadays mainly in Korea but whatever).
Looking too much on how long time it takes to reach max level is a huge misstake, particularly when you get a grindy gear hunt once you are there. As long as whatever content the players are in is fun they will continue to play. The fast progression games of the last 10 years generally have players for a shorter time then once with longer progression. The reason for that is of course the crappy endgame.
Besides, if you consider how long time it actually takes to max out both level and gear wise most modern MMOs are not as fast as you might think, except GW2. Most of them have a horrible grind once you go over from XP progression to gear progression.
Fast progression and fast rewards is only ways to bribe the players because the content isn't fun enough to keep them at the game and it only works short term. The only thing that keeps a lot of the players in such games are the fact that their friends still play, the social aspect is important as well.
Plenty of people still play Counter strike with zero rewards besides it being fun. That you constantly have to bribe them is just because of bad game design.
Yeah, their mobile division is doing pretty amazing. But both Lineage and B&S is still making loads of money. And yeah, it dropped the last quarter but it is the weakest quarter for it last year as well. The quarter before it did a lot better, just as the year before. B&S instead went up a lot (I assume they added some new really good content).
And Lineage have dropped 70% since it's peak? Dude, the game is from 1999 and still have second most P2P subscribers of any MMO. If that isn't impressive I don't know what is.
But L1 always drop during the summer, I assume people play less and don't bother to sub then but don't mind play a little F2P and maybe buys something as they play. It wouldn't surprise me if Wows and FF XIV also drop subs during the summer and regain them in the autumn.
If Ashes can do the same or not? We just have to wait and see. I won't hold my breath though, the success of low budget MMOs after Wows release is not a huge list (can we count Eve? It released before Wow but became popular in the mid-late 00s). It is hard but not impossible.
Lineage 1. 35% drop compared to last quarter, 65% drop over a year,
Lineage 2. 10% last quarter, 10% drop over a year
Aion. 20% last quarter, 40% drop over a year.
Blade&Soul. 10% last quarter, 20% drop over a year.
Guild Wars 2. 5% last quarter, 15% drop.
The drop lineage 1 had over a year is equal to the revenue Lineage 2, Aion, and Blade&soul had last quarter combined.
Most other mmorpg developers has had a similar experience and that's why others already shifted to mobile development. One of the few mmorpg in development for pc is lineage eternal and the reports from first beta was less than favorable.
China is one of few countries where mmorpg are blooming but nothing from China is close to come up to AAA standards.