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It's beyond me that they are shutting down another game
Billius8
Member Posts: 574
First, it was Mythica, before the game was even born. Now it's Earth and Beyond, a low key and pleasant (if not exiciting) MMORPG about space adventures. Who will be the next to shut their doors? Shadowbane? UO?
We are in a time, gentle readers, in which many, many MMORPG's will be taking that last long walk down "pink slip" lane. I hate to see this happen. Even if I don't play a game, I never want to see one close down.
Comments
UO will never die..
1st.. there are 3rd party free server out there that you can connect to without charge. Those will last a LONG while.
BUT
I do feel that MANY MANY MMORPGS will close down.
MMORPGS cost ALOT ALOT ALOT of $$$ to maintain.. and with the saturated market.. not all of them will make $$...
They will DIE.
WIch is GOOD.
I semi-predicted this would happen - not that you needed a crystal ball to see this coming. Essentially, it's Darwianian: not in the narrow bullshit corporate sense i.e. survival of the fittest, but in terms of those MMOG's that can adapt to the current environment, will be better equipped to survive and prosper.
Theory of Evolution in a nutshell: organisms produce more offspring that can possibly survive, and those organisms who have desirable traits to adapt to their present environment, will more often than not, survive long enough to reproduce, passing these genetic traits down to their offspring.
Where am I going with this? Quite simply, after SoE's massive success with EQ, there were a few decent MMOG's before a whole deluge of variable ones when other developers decided to milk the cash cow for all it's worth. The signs were present many years ago that developing a successful MMOG is not plain sailing i.e. Anarchy Online - the worst possible launch of any MMOG EVER. Never played it, but heard the horror stories of EQ players who returned to the EQ fold with their tails between their legs. Yet it survived, partly because Funcom adapated and made some brave changes, not to mention a little bit of luck.
In the last year or so there have been plenty of MMOG's but for various reasons, the market share of these MMOG's have been mixed. Whether because of the pricing module, the game mechanics haven't exactly developed from UO and simply because developers were too busy squeezing the golden tit and released sub-standard products i.e. SB, SWG and Horizons.
What we are seeing now is the MMOG market start to mature, and those with a decent subscriber base, a developed, supported product with an engaged community are holding their own whilst others are starting to look doomed.
Personally, I think it's a good thing. If you look at the posts on this site, a lot of gamers are disgruntled that they're being taken for a ride by developers releasing barely beta products. Gamers lose faith, become disengaged and finally (goddamnit!) start to become more discerning, which should hopefully get through to the developers.
Of course, as we know from Beta vs VHS, as well as early gaming in the 80's, the best product doesn't necessarily become the most successful. Marketing plays a powerful role.
Whilst it is sad, on one hand, that games are struggling - so reducing choice - on the other, this should be a clear warning that gamers are not willing to tolerate slip-shod products, especially when they are paying $40 plus for the boxed game, plus a subscription fee.
I believe the games that survive will be ones that either are so big (EQII, WoW, SWG) due to either existing subscribers, community support and a large appeal amongst non-gamers (the Sims, like it or loathe it). The ones that will struggle are the ones that persistently take their customers for granted. Too many gamers who in good faith wish to support the product, are being taken for a ride by developers, failing to either listen to their customer base and/or fail to deliver upon their promises.
The MMOG market has been around for quite a while now and gamers are a lot more wiser and hopefully, a lot more discerning.
This should hopefully be good for the industry as a whole, forcing developers to become more responsive and to also push the genre forward.
Sadly, I suspect that some half-decent games will fall by the wayside as players become impatient due to being treated badly in the past.
That's it. I've finished now.
Regards,
Riotgirl
"she's like this cleavagey, slut-bomb walking around going 'oh, check me out. i'm wicked cool. i'm five by five'."
"If you think I'm plucky and scrappy and all I need is love, you're in way over your head. I don't have a heart of gold or get nice. There are a lot nicer people coming up. We call them losers."
Billus, your understanding of how a company runs and how the free market operates is a source of continuous amazement for me.
Who is this omnipotent "they" you speak of?
Do you believe there is some grantee you get to succeed just because you put on a good start? Or flap out gums allot about how wonderfull the product you haven't made is.
Companies start and fail each and every day. E&B wasn't making enough money to make it worth while for AE to keep paying for it to run.
Let's pretend for a moment.
Let's say it costs you 100,000 a month to keep your lights turned on, your and your employees paid.
When you open the doors you make 150,000 a month... but the next month you only make 140K then 130K, and after awhile you only make 90K or 80K. What are you going to do? You don't have the money to paying people, so you let some of them go. Now it only costs you 60K a month.
But soon your only bring in 40K a month... so what's left? Turn off the lights and go home.
There is no THEY. There is only costs and revenue.
If you where so worried about E&B why didn't you play it? Well, maybe that's the reason not enough other people were also. By not giving E&B your money you put those people out of work. Who makes it to pay the bills another day, is completely up to the consumers.
Fear not, those people will all find jobs somewhere else, it's not like losing your job is like being decapitated.
Personally Billus, I thought you'd be hoping for SB to fail. If it does I'm sure we'll never hear the end about how bad PvP sucks from you.
-=-=-=-=-
Make no mistake, MMORPG's are not games, they are hobbies. If you have a job, you'll need to give up watching TV in order to play one. You'll be better off for it.
Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% Test learn what it means here.
-=-=-=-=-
Achievers realise that killers as a concept are necessary in order to make achievement meaningful and worthwhile (there being no way to "lose" the game if any fool can "win" just by plodding slowly unchallenged). -bartle
Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.
EaB let it's subscribers know from the beginning the product was only guarenteed for 90 days (the warning on the box that they only would keep servers up for 90 days.) And then leading on those willing to endure that, that the remaining 1/3 of the ship types would be added in a few months... mayby in the next 6 months... mayby next year.. well stuff you we are shutting down. EA basically stoped supporting EaB sept 2003 when the subscribers just got fed up with the lies about the frivolous promised content and constant firings of staff making it even tougher to get content and problems fixed. The subscriber numbers were taking a nose dive. It amazes me they held off washing their hands of the project this long. EaB was a funish soloable game up through about half the leveling treadmill, and in group was still fun up through 3/4 of the leveling treadmill. It is basically lacking content, but nice eye-candy. But was still a funish space type game. If only those last "promised" class/ships had been delivered from the beginning likely they could have kept it economical for at least another year.
Riotgirl " SOE's massive success with EQ..." well at one time there were almost 300k unique subscribers, (now about 150k many with two and three accounts, >> 400k subscriptions;) 100k to 400k is not massive success, it is good profitability but nothing like the 3 to 7 MILLION subscribers in Lineage and the console games. EQ started off with only US accounts being of interest. Lineage started off with all of asia as it's market. Sony never intended for EQ to compete with nintendo and to date there still is no asian server for EQ. So much for the two to four billion (ie. thousand million) market share available thereabouts.
The basic problem with mmorpg is most new projects are same old same old (stolen from previous games) + 1 new feature. To keep people's interest the next best thing must have something really good and interesting to pull subscribers from one another game. Face it, gamers are cheap, and ponying up for a second or even third $10 to $15 subscription is just too much. It is not like we have that many spare hours available to justify subscribing to two or three games since one can only play one at a time, and RL also has demands on one's time. Like how many can give up sleep or eating to have more time for gaming (giving up bathing and RL relationships having already been done [hence the adiction threads.])
Growing is an expand and contract cyclic endeavor. The gaming market likewise has to follow this cycle to mature. There are only so many PCs that can play games. The next step is to go world-wide and attract those viable gamers into the fold. But that means the flavor of the game will have to support other than the limited taste of US gamers. Bring on the anime, and 3D fun.
I think there is one more aspect in considering the future of current and upcomming mmorpg's success and that is customer service.
Although mmorpgs are a product industry, they are also a service industry. As with most service industries the quality provided can either make or break a company. Constant billing errors, long waits on the phone for a customer service rep, poor in-game support response and resolution, server/hardware stability and overall lack of customer communication can hinder the reputation of a mmorpg.
I agree with most of the posts above but I thought I would throw in this variable.
Originally posted by Brahm
This paragraph for me is right on the money. There are other variables and as Clever_Glove mentioned, none in their own right will guarantee that a MMOG will survive, but these factors will certainly increase a game's chance of survival.
I never used to think about service whilst playing EQ - used to stick a hatpin through my frontal lobes didn't even consider customer support (some people would argue that it barely existed). I was also incredibly fortunate that I didn't have a problem that relied on CS. With the maturation of the gaming market, it is much more a big issue because there is much more choice and we're more demanding as consumers.
If we take a case history we can compare how Funcom managed to turn around AO to say, Horizons. AO had possibly the worst MMOG launch ever and many players have commented that despite all the bugs, technical issues etc, what kept the game going was the attitude of Funcom i.e. communicating to the player base and didn't they refund or allow free play to their subscribers?
Compare Horizons released around 3 years later. Bugs, technical issues and broken promises. What do AE do if all the posts on this forum, Stratics and the offical forum are valid ... ZIP! Refuse to communicate to their player base. For me, that's the single worst thing a company can do in their position. Developers need to communicate and engage their players who make up their community. No players - no subs fees. When EVE online had technical difficulties over the summer, CCP kept their player-base informed and after that troubled summer (I was there, was bad for a fortnight, but other than that no worse than EQ was - in fact, I was surprised at just how playable it was upon release) CCP introduced a Dev discussion corner on their official forum to discuss and introduce future patches and ideas that were going to be introduced to the game.
CS and actually engaging your paying community is not enough by itself to make a successful game. But if you have a troubled birth with a product, failing to engage the community is bad enough but going as far as ignoring them is biting the hand that feeds. Why should players stick around in the hope that x game may get better if nothing is forthcoming from the dev team? Why should players remain loyal if their loyalty and faith is thrown back in their faces?
Player expectations for MMOG's have raised but I'm glad to say that it appears that we also expect to have CS that actually give a damn.
<Beavis style rant off/>
That's it. I've finished now.
Regards,
Riotgirl
"she's like this cleavagey, slut-bomb walking around going 'oh, check me out. i'm wicked cool. i'm five by five'."
"If you think I'm plucky and scrappy and all I need is love, you're in way over your head. I don't have a heart of gold or get nice. There are a lot nicer people coming up. We call them losers."
I don't think you can ever expect much for customer service without paying a higher subscription. I worked (a long time ago, fortunately) in a customer service call center for a famous long distance company. The cost of a single phone call, we were told, was $20 to the company. Of course, they derived this by adding up all the salaries, equipement, and building costs in a year and divided this among the number of calls to get this figure. But about $20 per call is the service and infrastructure costs to have decent customer service.
EQ fees are $15? or in that ballpark. EQ Legends (which had customer service) was $40 per month (half of which, no doubt is to fund - Customer Service).
How much can we expect for 50 cents per day? A soda machine won't give you the time of day for that little change.
I expect enugh customer service to make me happy. They can charge whatever they want to get to that point, and if I fell they are charging too much I won't pay it.
With 400,000 subscribers, EQ is pulling $4 million plus a month. There is no way they can't afford good customer service. They are taking that money, spending it on other projects and supppllying no customer service whatsoever.
Bottom line is, I can expect as good customer service as I want. If I feel it is not as good as it should be, then I will quit. If they want to supply a service, they have to expect to supply customer service.
The business world as a whole i strying to escape the customer service arena and it is BS. Outsourcing customer service to companies in India with employees that barely speak english. This gets on my nerves and gets my service canceled quickly.
I called a credit card company once and realized my call had been routed to a foreign country. Instead of asking the question I had planned to ask, I asked them to cancel my account.
We as consumers need to quit putting up with the BS these companies are handing down. QWest (the phone company) is terrible with their customer service. They get fined once or twice a year here in Oregon. Every 5 or 6 months I will see a $10 or $20 rebate on my account because the Oregon Public Utility Commission slammed them for something and made them give rebates to their customers. And it is almost always Customer Service related. When you talk to them on the phone and threaten to call the OPUC, there customer service people immediately connect you to a manager.
Actually before Electronic Arts axed EB they axed Battletech 3025 while in beta much to the amazement of all the players, then they axed Motor City Online.
Before that 3DO pulled the plug on it's Merridean 59 way back when. Was that the 1st mmorpg to get axed?
EA = king of shutting down games
Add to the list UO2 when it was just about to go beta.Alpha was more or less done.