Originally posted by sempiternal Gameloading, here's a project for you. Find out how much money, your King and Lord, EA, spent on developing their own amazing MMOG, The Sims Online, with all their amazing knowledge, analysts, and reasearch and then find out how well it did and report back here at MMORPG.COM.
Hehe, Semp has a very good point here to express his statements that EA sucks at handling and managing online games. I was gonna bring up how horribly EA has handled and managed The Sims Online myself in my previous post but thought better of it because it kinda feels like hitting EA where it counts, lol.
But to add to the whole EA - Sims Online thing, The Sims Online could probably be looked at as a successful game for EA. I am sure that they have made a good profit on the game. It didn't do nearly as well as they had hoped however. More important to me though is how terribly The Sims Online has been handled over the years. The Sims Online is actually a VERY SIMPLE mmo when you compare it to an mmo like Everquest or WOW. Very simple. And even years after it's release, it was constantly problematic and haunted with ongoing and frustrating bugs and errors. EA never seemed to fix the bugs, but were always focused on adding more expansions and new stuff which only magnified all the ongoing issues and bugs that this online game was plagued with. And THIS is not good mmo management. It's horrible. This is why I, myself, have about 1000 times the respect for Mythic Entertainment and even Turbine over EA. Both put EA to shame on how they fix and handle bugs and problems with their games and also how they handle and treat their paying customers.
Game makers can do what they want. Make every game a WoW clone from here on out, I won't say a word. The fire in me died fighting the good fight against Full Motion Video games back in the nineties. Now that the threat from FMV is over, I'll let you youngins fight the next one.
Game makers can do what they want. Make every game a WoW clone from here on out, I won't say a word. The fire in me died fighting the good fight against Full Motion Video games back in the nineties. Now that the threat from FMV is over, I'll let you youngins fight the next one.
Yes pretty much anything is preferable to Night Trap. Ahh the good old days when FMV and ring around the collar were the biggest threats. Whatever happened to ring around the collar anyway? THere used to be like 6 commercials telling you how to get rid of it during any sitcom.
Again Hakiko misses the entire point. The graph I posted is entirely accurate for the period under discussion, the non-consensual pre-Trammel UO and the graph covers that entire period. It's better to focus on what you are discussing rather than spam the thread with a giant scrolling graph that is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Your main problem is that you still don't understand that we were discussing pre-Trammel UO and Gameloading claimed that the only reason it was successful was because it had no competition.
I was pointing out that, in fact (and I'm not using that word loosely) he was wrong , pre-Trammel UO had competition to the tune of over 325,000 competitive MMOG subscriptions and yet continued to grow at approximately the same rate as it had since release. The non-consensual Pre-Trammel UO was simply a great game and attracted and kept more players interested in playing and signing up than it lost during it's entire two and a half year existence and as a result it grew at a very steady rate the entire time. It was not until after Ultima Online became a consensual game that it began to compete directly with consensual games - if you don't get that, then all hope is lost on you.
But you, Hakiko, you also go on to present you own faulty speculations. You ridiculously claim that the market became saturated when it is a fact the MMOG market as been growing exponentially since it began. Did you know that in order to have saturation the market growth would have to look like a plateau, (that means flat) ? Once again, more facts in trade for the speculations of forum kiddies; exponential growth of the MMOG market: Exponential Growth
You also seem to miss the fact that all three consensual games, Everquest, Asheron's Call and Ultima Online all began losing subscriptions all at exactly the same time - when the non-consensual DAoC was released and began growing. What happened later does not change that fact, nor does all the speculation in the world.
Again Hakiko misses the entire point. The graph I posted is entirely accurate for the period under discussion, the non-consensual pre-Trammel UO and the graph covers that entire period. It's better to focus on what you are discussing rather than spam the thread with a giant scrolling graph that is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Your main problem is that you still don't understand that we were discussing pre-Trammel UO and Gameloading claimed that the only reason it was successful was because it had no competition. I was pointing out that, in fact (and I'm not using that word loosely) he was wrong , pre-Trammel UO had competition to the tune of over 325,000 competitive MMOG subscriptions and yet continued to grow at approximately the same rate as it had since release. The non-consensual Pre-Trammel UO was simply a great game and attracted and kept more players interested in playing and signing up than it lost during it's entire two and a half year existence and as a result it grew at a very steady rate the entire time. It was not until after Ultima Online became a consensual game that it began to compete directly with consensual games - if you don't get that, then all hope is lost on you. But you, Hakiko, you also go on to present you own faulty speculations. You ridiculously claim that the market became saturated when it is a fact the MMOG market as been growing exponentially since it began. Did you know that in order to have saturation the market growth would have to look like a plateau, (that means flat) ? Once again, more facts in trade for the speculations of forum kiddies; exponential growth of the MMOG market: Exponential Growth You also seem to miss the fact that all three consensual games, Everquest, Asheron's Call and Ultima Online all began losing subscriptions all at exactly the same time - when the non-consensual DAoC was released and began growing. What happened later does not change that fact, nor does all the speculation in the world.
As I said before I will not be addressing the statistics related to the launch of DAoC again in this thread. You either can grasp why the whole picture must be taken into account or not. You cannot cherry pick certain portions of the data. Taken alone your small portion of the data seems to support your claim but it is invalidated by later events.
You however have a serious misunderstanding about what market saturation means. You are confusing it with market stagnation. Market saturation does not mean that the market is not growing. In fact it has nothing to do with the growth rate and everything to do with the total size of the market at any instant.
A saturated market means that there are too many options for what the current size of the market is. As long as the market is not stagnent (which it wasn't and I never claimed it was) it can grow into the amount of products available and will no longer be saturated (which is what it eventually did). However at that point in time it was not large enough to support all those games.
This is why EQ, AC, and UO saw those dips and flattening out of their growth curves on the DAoC launch. The market was not growing fast enough to support the rate at which the number of games was growing. This is saturation.
This saturation hurt DAoC in may ways, as people are often reluctant to leave their current community (mostly EQ in this case) and come back to their old game after trying a new one (see Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds and Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Patrovsky's Developing Online Games for more info on this common phenomenon). Despite having an excellent launch (and in many ways a superior game) DAoC was really hurt by the fact that there just weren't enough new MMO players yet for it to reach its full potential. AC on the other hand was absolutley devestated by this effect.
Both EQ and UO excelled at forming long lasting social bonds for their players. This meant that people who left the games were very likely to come back to play with their friends. This really hurt the other MMOs that tried to launch during the rest of 1st generation. It wasn't till games with significant technology differences appeared that people could be drawn away in droves. Even then these two games are amazingly resilient for their age.
Also please stop refering to people as kiddies etc. It undermines your own arguments and can only hurt you. In formal debate this is a greatly frowned upon practice and results in logical fallicies in your argument. It also overall hurts the debate we are having. It adds nothing.
Also please do not attempt to claim that your opponents are arguing something they are not. This is another logical trap you fall into. I never claimed that the market was not growing only that it had not yet grown enough. You however constructed an artificial argument on my part and then argued against it. This adds nothing to your own argument because you are essentially arguing against an argument of your own creation. The debate moves nowhere.
As to stagnation vs saturation: I understand that the differences between the instantaneous rate of change of a value and the displacement of a value at an instant seem trivial, but they are not trivial and are completely relevent to this issue. These differences are the foundations of calculus and modern statistical analysis.
I am not here to introduce "new" facts merely set the record straight on your use of the ones already in play. I personally have no opinion the state of competition during the early years of UO due to the fact that I have not seen any verifiable data presented by either you or Gameloading on this issue (no references for your numbers).
There has only been one set of actual data introduced and that is the chart in question. The object of discussion and debate is to introduce data and then discuss its implications. There does not have to be a constant influx of new data. In fact its best if most of the hard numbers are all present at the beginning of the debate.
I am not disputing your claim that UO had competition pre-Trammel due to the fact that I have no data to form a hypothesis with. However I do have enough data (in internet land anyway) to form a hypothesis about the causes of UO's subscription levels throughout its life. I have already presented it and in the last post was clarifying it to you due to the fact that you either misunderstood it or deliberatly misrepresented it in your previous post. You were in fact arguing against a hypothesis I had not made.
I guess its OK to continue this debate here because it looks like the rest of this threads discussion is dead anyway.
If you would like to present specific arguments as to how you fell my actual hypothesis is flawed and how yours is not I will be glad to accept them.
For the record my hypothesis is again (for the third time): The major factor in the fluctuations of UO's subscription numbers is the total number of available players compared to the total number of available games and ultimatly the introduction of a very similar but far more graphically appealing game (SWG). I feel that the data presented shows no strong and lasting correlation between the launch of DAoC and the ultimate subscription loss of UO.
Eve is the exception because as a general rule of thumb for Eve: if you're a complete idgit skin sack - you will get nowhere in Eve. Corps DO NOT tolerate incompetents in that game! Idgits simply cannot survive there.
Well, now it's clear that you're guilty of replying without reading the thread. 26 posts up, Hakiko.
As for DAoC, why are you confused? Why are you debating something nobody else here is? The only metion of DAoC as it relates to UO subscriptions before you got off-track was, that it "appears to have stolen the first significant groups of subscribers" since the rates of growth of the other three major MMOGs happened to decrease all at the same time surrounding the release of DAoC. No long-term implications were brought into the debate until you incorrectly assumed that blame was being placed for any time after the period shown and wrongly claimed that I left the rest of the chart out to hide what we were not even discussing.
If it was a discussion about how DAoC affected UO over the history of the games then the whole chart would have been included, but we were only discussing UO and it's competition pre-Trammel for which the chart covers. The text on the chart, which only describes the release of DAoC and nothing more, is explained for you in the above paragraph.
I still miss the days of original EverQuest. And I loved grinding in Lineage 2 with 8 other guildmates. I would have followed my guild into hell in that game and often did.
That being said let me tell you I do have fun in WoW. I'm the kind of person who doesn't exaggerate things. WoW isn't the devil. It's the kind of game that gives you alot of rewards, it's true. I know people who enjoy that game just to collect all the pets, or all the mounts or interesting-looking sets of armor. WoW isn't afraid to throw in pop culture references. It's humor is cheeky and light hearted. There is no immersion, and because challenges are easy, people can get in there and knock down crap in the 2 hours they have between work and taking out their significant other. There are advantages. Because ultimately , the more challenging something is, the longer it is going to take to prepare for and complete.
I do miss a good challenge, though.
I was looking forward to Vanguard because alot of the creators are the same as those who created original EQ. Until SOE became it's publisher. SOE, the #1 creators of soft, unchallenging games. And 'lo and behold do I hear through the grapevine that alot of changes have taken place that one might see as been taken from WoW.
This is human nature though, guys. We always find ways to make challenges easier. Back in the early days of EQ, UO, etc... we didn't have Ventrilo to make raiding easier. We didn't have macros and people couldn't make UI scripts that would tell them when a boss is about to AE fear or breathe fire. Every time players create something like that, developers have to figure out a way to either incorporate it and still make the game challenging, or make it so players can't make those things. On the coding side of things, you can see how that might be very difficult.
Plus, players demand new and better graphics. Smarter mob AI. More creativity. It's getting more and more expensive to create MMOs, unless you follow the NCSoft route of reusing the Unreal Engine and slapping new skins on old world graphics with the same gear drop formulae and calling it a new game.
Basically, you're going to find it less and less possible as time goes by that design companies are going to take that leap and make something truly challenging and unique. Because it costs more and more. Not when there are accepted things that work and will yield profits. It's all about risk versus reward.... for COMPANIES, as much as players. So you see where the struggle lay. It's not something I foresee being immediately fixed.
If Trammel killed UO (you wish), then what killed Shadowbane?
Funny, every time they make a game that has FFA PvP, it dies.
Eve is the exception here, not the rule. It would be extremely difficult to port the concepts from Eve into a fantasy setting.
What players tell me killed Shadowbane was bad design, that there were no penalites whatsoever to killing other players and that things could be destroyed too easily. Neither of these were the case with pre-Trammel UO, as enough people were happy with the game that it always grew and it did have penalites.
There are advantages. Because ultimately , the more challenging something is, the longer it is going to take to prepare for and complete.
Not true. try getting to lvl 75 in Titanion. Even if you accomplish this, it'll won't take more than 10 minutes and will be one of the hardest things you've ever done. You can get through Classic Rogue in about 4 to 8 hours, but it'll take you about 50 tries before you're able to do that though. Oasis has all the depth of Civ3, but it was made to take less than 15 minutes to play though.
I don't know what you've been huffing since UO had the ability to make macros right from the jump. They were very primitive by todays standards, but they could train your character up to 7X grand master if you left them running overnight.
Now I'm no fan of WoW, but I'm not a big fan of grinding off exp debt either. Let's face it, not everyone is a big fan of the whole "Make more penalties just for the sake of being difficult" thing.
By the way, I wouldn't say that the MMO community has really "embraced" these types of games. I've heard way too many self proclaimed "hardcore" gamers moan about the subject to agree.
I turn to you now, father death. I beg of you, please consider you may have been wrong... -Blind Guardian
I think the reason we see WoW clones is that WoW is a very successful MMO and game publishers are all about making money on the tried and true not about being innovative (with a few exceptions of course). As far as the grind or time sinks go I think a great game should be about the journey not the end result. So quests/missions should be fun and and adventurous not something stupid like going to some forest and killing perpetually respawning wolves along with dozens of other people so you can get a few gold coins to buy an armor upgrade. Time spent ingame should be more than just trying to level up so you can start having fun or avoid being constantly ganked.
Now this is the way to argue for a more virtual world like game. Well written, non-flaming, intelligent. The debate for more "hardcore" games needs more voices like this. Many of the people arguing for a more virtual world type game take a very PvP griefer tone, this hurts the argument.
This could come from the fact that there are at least four different types of players that want more "challenging" games: the true virtual world enthusiast (Richard Bartle), the h@rdc0r3 1337 PvP griefer who just wants to be able to kill everybody all the time, the player who really wants Counterstrike the MMO, and the truely hardcore raider.
The problem is that by far the most vocal of these groups are the elitist raiders, and the PvP griefer. The "Counterstrike" crowd has been shown that MMO developers are interested in their cause with Guild Wars so they don't have as much to yell about. Virtual world enthusiasts are usually by nature more thoughtful and less likely to jump all over forums yelling and flaming. The real problem is that these types only seem to want the same game in fact they want four totally different games.
For never having been highlighted appropriately before, this was perhaps the most important thing stated thus far.
I am absolutely with the Bartle Virtual World Enthusiasts, and I would just like to see at least ONE game catering to my kind. Because all MMO's are grind based, linear levelling affairs, I don't play MMORPG's.
Moreover, I'd be interested in how large a share of the Virtual Worlders are Permadeath Proponents, and by that I don't mean "three strikes and you're out", but exactly what is says. I am one. Any others?
Now I'm no fan of WoW, but I'm not a big fan of grinding off exp debt either. Let's face it, not everyone is a big fan of the whole "Make more penalties just for the sake of being difficult" thing.
One should not be penalised for dying, one should be rewarded for staying alive.
So quests/missions should be fun and and adventurous not something stupid like going to some forest and killing perpetually respawning wolves along with dozens of other people so you can get a few gold coins to buy an armor upgrade. Time spent ingame should be more than just trying to level up so you can start having fun or avoid being constantly ganked.
Exactly. Who has ever seen a forest full of wolves standing about so you could kill them (or they kill you)? Sure, in the wild there are wolves and other game, but they need to be hunted. From prey you get meat, hides and fur and other useful items, yet how could it be they drop gold coins?
MMO designers should really look into hunting simulators for inspiration on how to make game and hunting features in a game.
You killing boars and spiders, 20 meters outside your dwelling, with a sword, who constantly attack you and respawn, is about the lamest idea anyone has ever dreamt up. How could it be it got so integrated into MMO's we are still stuck with it?
What you are failing to realize is that games are made for 1 reason and 1 reason only.
To make money. They are not made to give you a "deeper" gaming experience, they are not made to be challenging, they are made to make money.
Blizzard/Virinda (or whatever that parent company is called) were BRILLIANT in thier design of WoW.
They did not go out on a limb and try something new - they took what seemed to work in many different games out there and incorporate it into one game.
And more importantly they targeted a new and yet almost untouched market - young adults.
I have played WoW. I have a level 51 warrior, 47 priest and then some little guys. Yes I find WoW boring now. The newness of the game has worn off for me but I am also over 35 years of age.
When I was a child I found the merry-go-round fun and exciting. I loved going high on the swings. I would go to the park and play for hours on end. This went on for a few years.
I am much older now and while jumping on the swings or merry-go-round will be a thrill for about ... 30 seconds now.. it will not hold my interest for long.
I have matured and expect more for my entertainment. Blizzard is not targeting me as their market....they are targeting those much younger than I and those that expect much less.
So I guess my point in all this rambling is to say that why would a game design company spend the money it takes to give a smaller market "deeper" and "challenging" games when they can simply target the larger merry-go-round market and spend less capital on investment and return a bigger profit.
While there is a ton of complaints today about Ultima Onlines Trammel expansion and how it ruined the game, the fact is that a great deal more people loved Trammel ... when the fact is Trammel wasn't such a bad move on the part of EA financially.
Ultima Online is a good MMOG study as it relates to the topic since it has gone from one extreme of a challenging multiplayer player versus player virtual world to the other extreme of a mostly single player consensual only game of virtual item collecting fed by constant developer created content to keep players busy.
However, the two "facts" I quoted you on are actually only opinions. I don't know where or how you came to believe them and debating opinions is one of the greatest time sinks, so let's focus on some facts:
Regardless of non-consensual complaints that are sometimes cited as making Renaissance necessary, 100% of the revenue generating player base was satisfied with the entirely non-consensual PvP UO enough to maintain overall growth during it's entire existence; growing to 185,000 subscriptions before the consensual Renaissance was released.
The 185,000 subscriptions that Ultima Online grew to without the consensual only Trammel is 74% of Ultima Online's peak subscription numbers.
Chew on that a little bit, if necessary I will provide more. I have done extensive research on Ultima Online, specifically because the developers have altered it so greatly by what the perceived market is. Most of what I find players believing, even those like yourself that enjoyed the challenging multiplayer Ultima Online game, is that because Electronic Arts went consensual and remained consensual and content based with Ultima Online that it was most likely the wise and correct decision to make.
Based on the real facts, my research of the last 10 years, and first-hand experience, I strongly disagree.
The UO consensual Myth has survived over the years mostly based upon common opinion derived from the bias information provided from the very people that created it and that naturally do not want to be shown wrong. The Myth is also bolstered, in spite of the consensual only Trammel and five other consensual expansions producing very little growth for Ultima Online, because Electronic Arts has not closed the doors on Ultima Online. But, keep in mind, that it would make sense for such a large game corporation like Electronic Arts, of which Ultima Online only accounts for a very small fraction of revenue, to keep their main MMOG franchise, an intellectual property which helped to lead the MMOG industry, alive even if it was not profitable. Fortunately in this case for those interested in developing the quality MMOGs of the future, because Electronic Arts is such a well-run public corporation overall, much of it's data is also public.
We shall see if it will become Mythic too.
I can see I am going to need to take this to a new thread or derail Zaxtor's
You could be correct Semp. I really don't know. All I know is that I played UO myself before and after the Trammel addition to the game. I know for me, it ruined the game. But I am also open minded and played it for a good while after Trammel came out. When they added the Trammel facet to the Felucia facet, I remember actually thinking that EA was "BRILLIANT" for doing such even though it pissed me off as a player. The servers at that time were getting WAY over crowded. Finding a spot for land for a new house for new players was next to impossible and the prices to buy an existing spot for a house was getting ridiculous. By adding the Trammel facets to each of their servers, they really had to do very little work. This was obviously a much easier task then making and designing all new lands and territory that would double the space on each server. Mirroring their existing lands and simply adding a few moongates and throwing in some random loot on mobs as moonstones or whatever they were was brilliant I thought. They solved a lot of overcrowding problems without having to design new lands and requiring players to download or install such huge new data. They also solved the problems of any players who thought that Felucia was too hardcore. They very likely expanded their player base to incorporate much younger and older players, less hardcore players etc in the same way that WOW today has so many players with its extremely easy mmo .
It was more then just changing the servers to prevent PvP Semp. If you did such drastic studies on the 10 years of Ultima Online, then you simply cannot ignore the other obvious reasons that EA added Trammel to their online game. A big reason, I guarantee you, was to essentially double the space on each server and give the players twice as much room. After Trammel was added, frustrated players that couldn't get themselves a new house suddenly had wide open spaces to place their "dream home". And this made a LOT of players very, very happy.
Look at the stats all you want to. But also look at the big picture of everything EA was trying to accomplish and all the problems they wanted to resolve at that time. I still think that Trammel was BRILLIANT on the part of EA. They solved some big problems and didnt have to host new servers and didn't have to design and create all new lands for their game. I hated it at the the time, especially when Felucia was left abandoned for the most part. But I understood why EA did what they did. Bad for me as a gamer looking selfishly at the game. Hell I already had a house in Felucia. Trammel made the value of my home drop about 10,000%. Trammel "pussified" the game in my terms and I hated that too. But bad for me. Good for EA. I still think it was a good move for EA at the time they did it, for the reasons I gave above. You can throw stats at me all you want. I'll use common sense over stats any day my friend.
Comments
Hehe, Semp has a very good point here to express his statements that EA sucks at handling and managing online games. I was gonna bring up how horribly EA has handled and managed The Sims Online myself in my previous post but thought better of it because it kinda feels like hitting EA where it counts, lol.
But to add to the whole EA - Sims Online thing, The Sims Online could probably be looked at as a successful game for EA. I am sure that they have made a good profit on the game. It didn't do nearly as well as they had hoped however. More important to me though is how terribly The Sims Online has been handled over the years. The Sims Online is actually a VERY SIMPLE mmo when you compare it to an mmo like Everquest or WOW. Very simple. And even years after it's release, it was constantly problematic and haunted with ongoing and frustrating bugs and errors. EA never seemed to fix the bugs, but were always focused on adding more expansions and new stuff which only magnified all the ongoing issues and bugs that this online game was plagued with. And THIS is not good mmo management. It's horrible. This is why I, myself, have about 1000 times the respect for Mythic Entertainment and even Turbine over EA. Both put EA to shame on how they fix and handle bugs and problems with their games and also how they handle and treat their paying customers.
- Zaxx
Again Hakiko misses the entire point. The graph I posted is entirely accurate for the period under discussion, the non-consensual pre-Trammel UO and the graph covers that entire period. It's better to focus on what you are discussing rather than spam the thread with a giant scrolling graph that is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Your main problem is that you still don't understand that we were discussing pre-Trammel UO and Gameloading claimed that the only reason it was successful was because it had no competition.
I was pointing out that, in fact (and I'm not using that word loosely) he was wrong , pre-Trammel UO had competition to the tune of over 325,000 competitive MMOG subscriptions and yet continued to grow at approximately the same rate as it had since release. The non-consensual Pre-Trammel UO was simply a great game and attracted and kept more players interested in playing and signing up than it lost during it's entire two and a half year existence and as a result it grew at a very steady rate the entire time. It was not until after Ultima Online became a consensual game that it began to compete directly with consensual games - if you don't get that, then all hope is lost on you.
But you, Hakiko, you also go on to present you own faulty speculations. You ridiculously claim that the market became saturated when it is a fact the MMOG market as been growing exponentially since it began. Did you know that in order to have saturation the market growth would have to look like a plateau, (that means flat) ? Once again, more facts in trade for the speculations of forum kiddies; exponential growth of the MMOG market: Exponential Growth
You also seem to miss the fact that all three consensual games, Everquest, Asheron's Call and Ultima Online all began losing subscriptions all at exactly the same time - when the non-consensual DAoC was released and began growing. What happened later does not change that fact, nor does all the speculation in the world.
You however have a serious misunderstanding about what market saturation means. You are confusing it with market stagnation. Market saturation does not mean that the market is not growing. In fact it has nothing to do with the growth rate and everything to do with the total size of the market at any instant.
A saturated market means that there are too many options for what the current size of the market is. As long as the market is not stagnent (which it wasn't and I never claimed it was) it can grow into the amount of products available and will no longer be saturated (which is what it eventually did). However at that point in time it was not large enough to support all those games.
This is why EQ, AC, and UO saw those dips and flattening out of their growth curves on the DAoC launch. The market was not growing fast enough to support the rate at which the number of games was growing. This is saturation.
This saturation hurt DAoC in may ways, as people are often reluctant to leave their current community (mostly EQ in this case) and come back to their old game after trying a new one (see Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds and Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Patrovsky's Developing Online Games for more info on this common phenomenon). Despite having an excellent launch (and in many ways a superior game) DAoC was really hurt by the fact that there just weren't enough new MMO players yet for it to reach its full potential. AC on the other hand was absolutley devestated by this effect.
Both EQ and UO excelled at forming long lasting social bonds for their players. This meant that people who left the games were very likely to come back to play with their friends. This really hurt the other MMOs that tried to launch during the rest of 1st generation. It wasn't till games with significant technology differences appeared that people could be drawn away in droves. Even then these two games are amazingly resilient for their age.
Also please stop refering to people as kiddies etc. It undermines your own arguments and can only hurt you. In formal debate this is a greatly frowned upon practice and results in logical fallicies in your argument. It also overall hurts the debate we are having. It adds nothing.
Also please do not attempt to claim that your opponents are arguing something they are not. This is another logical trap you fall into. I never claimed that the market was not growing only that it had not yet grown enough. You however constructed an artificial argument on my part and then argued against it. This adds nothing to your own argument because you are essentially arguing against an argument of your own creation. The debate moves nowhere.
As to stagnation vs saturation: I understand that the differences between the instantaneous rate of change of a value and the displacement of a value at an instant seem trivial, but they are not trivial and are completely relevent to this issue. These differences are the foundations of calculus and modern statistical analysis.
There has only been one set of actual data introduced and that is the chart in question. The object of discussion and debate is to introduce data and then discuss its implications. There does not have to be a constant influx of new data. In fact its best if most of the hard numbers are all present at the beginning of the debate.
I am not disputing your claim that UO had competition pre-Trammel due to the fact that I have no data to form a hypothesis with. However I do have enough data (in internet land anyway) to form a hypothesis about the causes of UO's subscription levels throughout its life. I have already presented it and in the last post was clarifying it to you due to the fact that you either misunderstood it or deliberatly misrepresented it in your previous post. You were in fact arguing against a hypothesis I had not made.
I guess its OK to continue this debate here because it looks like the rest of this threads discussion is dead anyway.
If you would like to present specific arguments as to how you fell my actual hypothesis is flawed and how yours is not I will be glad to accept them.
For the record my hypothesis is again (for the third time): The major factor in the fluctuations of UO's subscription numbers is the total number of available players compared to the total number of available games and ultimatly the introduction of a very similar but far more graphically appealing game (SWG). I feel that the data presented shows no strong and lasting correlation between the launch of DAoC and the ultimate subscription loss of UO.
Funny, every time they make a game that has FFA PvP, it dies.
Eve is the exception here, not the rule. It would be extremely difficult to port the concepts from Eve into a fantasy setting.
Eve is the exception because as a general rule of thumb for Eve: if you're a complete idgit skin sack - you will get nowhere in Eve. Corps DO NOT tolerate incompetents in that game! Idgits simply cannot survive there.
Well, now it's clear that you're guilty of replying without reading the thread. 26 posts up, Hakiko.
As for DAoC, why are you confused? Why are you debating something nobody else here is? The only metion of DAoC as it relates to UO subscriptions before you got off-track was, that it "appears to have stolen the first significant groups of subscribers" since the rates of growth of the other three major MMOGs happened to decrease all at the same time surrounding the release of DAoC. No long-term implications were brought into the debate until you incorrectly assumed that blame was being placed for any time after the period shown and wrongly claimed that I left the rest of the chart out to hide what we were not even discussing.
If it was a discussion about how DAoC affected UO over the history of the games then the whole chart would have been included, but we were only discussing UO and it's competition pre-Trammel for which the chart covers. The text on the chart, which only describes the release of DAoC and nothing more, is explained for you in the above paragraph.
Let's see if you finally get it this time.
That being said let me tell you I do have fun in WoW. I'm the kind of person who doesn't exaggerate things. WoW isn't the devil. It's the kind of game that gives you alot of rewards, it's true. I know people who enjoy that game just to collect all the pets, or all the mounts or interesting-looking sets of armor. WoW isn't afraid to throw in pop culture references. It's humor is cheeky and light hearted. There is no immersion, and because challenges are easy, people can get in there and knock down crap in the 2 hours they have between work and taking out their significant other. There are advantages. Because ultimately , the more challenging something is, the longer it is going to take to prepare for and complete.
I do miss a good challenge, though.
I was looking forward to Vanguard because alot of the creators are the same as those who created original EQ. Until SOE became it's publisher. SOE, the #1 creators of soft, unchallenging games. And 'lo and behold do I hear through the grapevine that alot of changes have taken place that one might see as been taken from WoW.
This is human nature though, guys. We always find ways to make challenges easier. Back in the early days of EQ, UO, etc... we didn't have Ventrilo to make raiding easier. We didn't have macros and people couldn't make UI scripts that would tell them when a boss is about to AE fear or breathe fire. Every time players create something like that, developers have to figure out a way to either incorporate it and still make the game challenging, or make it so players can't make those things. On the coding side of things, you can see how that might be very difficult.
Plus, players demand new and better graphics. Smarter mob AI. More creativity. It's getting more and more expensive to create MMOs, unless you follow the NCSoft route of reusing the Unreal Engine and slapping new skins on old world graphics with the same gear drop formulae and calling it a new game.
Basically, you're going to find it less and less possible as time goes by that design companies are going to take that leap and make something truly challenging and unique. Because it costs more and more. Not when there are accepted things that work and will yield profits. It's all about risk versus reward.... for COMPANIES, as much as players. So you see where the struggle lay. It's not something I foresee being immediately fixed.
What players tell me killed Shadowbane was bad design, that there were no penalites whatsoever to killing other players and that things could be destroyed too easily. Neither of these were the case with pre-Trammel UO, as enough people were happy with the game that it always grew and it did have penalites.
http://mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/1148710#1148710
There are advantages. Because ultimately , the more challenging something is, the longer it is going to take to prepare for and complete.
Not true. try getting to lvl 75 in Titanion. Even if you accomplish this, it'll won't take more than 10 minutes and will be one of the hardest things you've ever done. You can get through Classic Rogue in about 4 to 8 hours, but it'll take you about 50 tries before you're able to do that though. Oasis has all the depth of Civ3, but it was made to take less than 15 minutes to play though.
we didn't have Ventrilo
We had Roger Wilco.
We didn't have macros
I don't know what you've been huffing since UO had the ability to make macros right from the jump. They were very primitive by todays standards, but they could train your character up to 7X grand master if you left them running overnight.
Other than that, you were dead on.
Now I'm no fan of WoW, but I'm not a big fan of grinding off exp debt either. Let's face it, not everyone is a big fan of the whole "Make more penalties just for the sake of being difficult" thing.
By the way, I wouldn't say that the MMO community has really "embraced" these types of games. I've heard way too many self proclaimed "hardcore" gamers moan about the subject to agree.
I turn to you now, father death. I beg of you, please consider you may have been wrong...
-Blind Guardian
Zaxtor. Yes all of these games sucks. They have no challenge.
Their utopian worlds built with a grind.
But the players pay the bills. So they must be doing something right. Afterall everyone wants to be a hero.
guys settle down...to the OP just play Eve....if you didn't notice some people (adults) like it.
I am absolutely with the Bartle Virtual World Enthusiasts, and I would just like to see at least ONE game catering to my kind. Because all MMO's are grind based, linear levelling affairs, I don't play MMORPG's.
Moreover, I'd be interested in how large a share of the Virtual Worlders are Permadeath Proponents, and by that I don't mean "three strikes and you're out", but exactly what is says. I am one. Any others?
MMO designers should really look into hunting simulators for inspiration on how to make game and hunting features in a game.
You killing boars and spiders, 20 meters outside your dwelling, with a sword, who constantly attack you and respawn, is about the lamest idea anyone has ever dreamt up. How could it be it got so integrated into MMO's we are still stuck with it?
Defies all reason.
Zaxtor,I couldn't agree more. This is why I follow Darkfall,currently the only MMORPG I've seen that will offer something interesting.
What you are failing to realize is that games are made for 1 reason and 1 reason only.
To make money. They are not made to give you a "deeper" gaming experience, they are not made to be challenging, they are made to make money.
Blizzard/Virinda (or whatever that parent company is called) were BRILLIANT in thier design of WoW.
They did not go out on a limb and try something new - they took what seemed to work in many different games out there and incorporate it into one game.
And more importantly they targeted a new and yet almost untouched market - young adults.
I have played WoW. I have a level 51 warrior, 47 priest and then some little guys. Yes I find WoW boring now. The newness of the game has worn off for me but I am also over 35 years of age.
When I was a child I found the merry-go-round fun and exciting. I loved going high on the swings. I would go to the park and play for hours on end. This went on for a few years.
I am much older now and while jumping on the swings or merry-go-round will be a thrill for about ... 30 seconds now.. it will not hold my interest for long.
I have matured and expect more for my entertainment. Blizzard is not targeting me as their market....they are targeting those much younger than I and those that expect much less.
So I guess my point in all this rambling is to say that why would a game design company spend the money it takes to give a smaller market "deeper" and "challenging" games when they can simply target the larger merry-go-round market and spend less capital on investment and return a bigger profit.
"WoW" designed games are here to stay IMHO.
Ultima Online is a good MMOG study as it relates to the topic since it has gone from one extreme of a challenging multiplayer player versus player virtual world to the other extreme of a mostly single player consensual only game of virtual item collecting fed by constant developer created content to keep players busy.
However, the two "facts" I quoted you on are actually only opinions. I don't know where or how you came to believe them and debating opinions is one of the greatest time sinks, so let's focus on some facts:
Regardless of non-consensual complaints that are sometimes cited as making Renaissance necessary, 100% of the revenue generating player base was satisfied with the entirely non-consensual PvP UO enough to maintain overall growth during it's entire existence; growing to 185,000 subscriptions before the consensual Renaissance was released.
The 185,000 subscriptions that Ultima Online grew to without the consensual only Trammel is 74% of Ultima Online's peak subscription numbers.
Chew on that a little bit, if necessary I will provide more. I have done extensive research on Ultima Online, specifically because the developers have altered it so greatly by what the perceived market is. Most of what I find players believing, even those like yourself that enjoyed the challenging multiplayer Ultima Online game, is that because Electronic Arts went consensual and remained consensual and content based with Ultima Online that it was most likely the wise and correct decision to make.
Based on the real facts, my research of the last 10 years, and first-hand experience, I strongly disagree.
The UO consensual Myth has survived over the years mostly based upon common opinion derived from the bias information provided from the very people that created it and that naturally do not want to be shown wrong. The Myth is also bolstered, in spite of the consensual only Trammel and five other consensual expansions producing very little growth for Ultima Online, because Electronic Arts has not closed the doors on Ultima Online. But, keep in mind, that it would make sense for such a large game corporation like Electronic Arts, of which Ultima Online only accounts for a very small fraction of revenue, to keep their main MMOG franchise, an intellectual property which helped to lead the MMOG industry, alive even if it was not profitable. Fortunately in this case for those interested in developing the quality MMOGs of the future, because Electronic Arts is such a well-run public corporation overall, much of it's data is also public.
We shall see if it will become Mythic too.
I can see I am going to need to take this to a new thread or derail Zaxtor's
You could be correct Semp. I really don't know. All I know is that I played UO myself before and after the Trammel addition to the game. I know for me, it ruined the game. But I am also open minded and played it for a good while after Trammel came out. When they added the Trammel facet to the Felucia facet, I remember actually thinking that EA was "BRILLIANT" for doing such even though it pissed me off as a player. The servers at that time were getting WAY over crowded. Finding a spot for land for a new house for new players was next to impossible and the prices to buy an existing spot for a house was getting ridiculous. By adding the Trammel facets to each of their servers, they really had to do very little work. This was obviously a much easier task then making and designing all new lands and territory that would double the space on each server. Mirroring their existing lands and simply adding a few moongates and throwing in some random loot on mobs as moonstones or whatever they were was brilliant I thought. They solved a lot of overcrowding problems without having to design new lands and requiring players to download or install such huge new data. They also solved the problems of any players who thought that Felucia was too hardcore. They very likely expanded their player base to incorporate much younger and older players, less hardcore players etc in the same way that WOW today has so many players with its extremely easy mmo .
It was more then just changing the servers to prevent PvP Semp. If you did such drastic studies on the 10 years of Ultima Online, then you simply cannot ignore the other obvious reasons that EA added Trammel to their online game. A big reason, I guarantee you, was to essentially double the space on each server and give the players twice as much room. After Trammel was added, frustrated players that couldn't get themselves a new house suddenly had wide open spaces to place their "dream home". And this made a LOT of players very, very happy.
Look at the stats all you want to. But also look at the big picture of everything EA was trying to accomplish and all the problems they wanted to resolve at that time. I still think that Trammel was BRILLIANT on the part of EA. They solved some big problems and didnt have to host new servers and didn't have to design and create all new lands for their game. I hated it at the the time, especially when Felucia was left abandoned for the most part. But I understood why EA did what they did. Bad for me as a gamer looking selfishly at the game. Hell I already had a house in Felucia. Trammel made the value of my home drop about 10,000%. Trammel "pussified" the game in my terms and I hated that too. But bad for me. Good for EA. I still think it was a good move for EA at the time they did it, for the reasons I gave above. You can throw stats at me all you want. I'll use common sense over stats any day my friend.
- Zaxx