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EvE's lucky break?
Shadoed
Member UncommonPosts: 1,459
I know this is an old subject, but i was looking back over some stats produced by Voig on market share between MMO's and it occured to me that EvE had a lucky break when Earth & Beyond was killed off.
Neither games market share was huge, with both hovering around the 0.5-0.8% mark, but Earth & Beyond always held the lead, even after the initial rush to EvE. This was true up until the announcement that E&B was going to close and then EvE's market share began to rise heavily (in relation to past market share and E&B losses) as E&B's dropped.
I was just wondering whether EVE would have made it this far if Earth & Beyond had not closed when it did, or do you think that EVE would have made it regardless?
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Comments
Had nothing to do with a lucky break. CCP offered current E & B players I believe a free month trial for EVE when the announcement went out that E & B was closing.
But that pretty much enforces my point as they wouldn't have done that if E&B hadn't been closing. I joined EVE myself when E&B closed, but i don't think i would have bothered if it hadn't.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
eve's population was still growing although slowly. it wasn't until the castor patch that the game really started growing though as that's essentially when the game was really complete. before then it was missing a lot of features.
Actually it was a lucky break but EVE would have continued to grow anyway as it already was growing slowly at the time. E&B was just a nice windfall along the way. Actually EVE has had two very big lucky breaks of this type as E&B was cancelled and gave them a quick jump in subscribers when they were low (30,000 or so just before E&B was announced to be cancelled and climbed to about 50-55,000 within the year E&B died. Then when they were sitting at around 60,000 subscribers LucasArts and SOE started butchering SWG first with the CU and then, far worse, with the NGE. That year EVE went from 60,000 or so subscribers to over 140,000 subscribers. It's ALWAYS grown but it has had two HUGE spurts of growth that can be directly correlated to a competitor in the genre collapsing or shooting themselves in the foot.
Since SWG shot themselves in the head EVE hasn't had a real competitor in the Sci-Fi space genre. AO is 100% ground based so really isn't a competitor nor are many of the others. Some of the 'free' titles in the genre out are 'ok' but they're just not in EVE's league. It's first real test that I can see will be when Jumpgate Evolution releases as the game is VERY similar in concept to EVE (and no it's not a copycat they've been around longer actually) but with first person spaceflight (flight sim) rather than the point-and-click interface that EVE has.
Other future competition includes, but is not limited to, Stargate Worlds, Star Trek Online and Infinity.
Now that there will be several competitors in the Genre it will be interesting to see how EVE holds up. I honestly suspect that it will experience a slight to moderate dip in membership as folks move to other titles in the genre. Depending on how solid those titles are will affect how severe the hit is. Regardless of what happens though I suspect EVE will keep the lion's share of their current subscribers as those who like EVE tend to really like it due to many of it's player development and economy mechanics and nothing coming out really shares those (Though jumpgate is similar).
"A ship-of-war is the best ambassador." - Oliver Cromwell
EVE's focus on quality and unwillingness to compromise on its goals was what gave it its "lucky break". They entered the market with a high quality product, didnt pay attention to the "wow-effect" sweeping MMO's, ignored many of the trends that have sucked in and destroyed many MMO's.
They have interacted well w/ thier community, have always been creative. Of course the impolosion of E and B, as well as the utter crap on the market continues to help EVE but that argument could be made for virtually every MMO that has succeeded where others have failed.
Imho EVE will continue to grow and flourish-if the game releases of the past 18 months are any indication of what the future holds EVE has little to worry about as long as it continues to innovate, update and keep the gaming experience along the cutting edge.
After all take a peak at POTBS, LOTRO, Hellgate, Fury etc. All potential big games-with the exception of LOTRO all will languish near the bottom of the MMO ladder. Perhaps some of the new AAA titles will erode EVE's base but if history is any indicator I fear not.
That said I am hopeful that Age of Conan, Warhammer and StarGate are in fact quality games with a clear direction and an uncompromising desire to make a game that fits a vision not a focus group tested set of game behavior designed to be the next wow-killer.
I completely agree with Taram, Eve has had steady growth since it came out, but some boosts from other games dying, E&B and SWG helped a lot.
And yeah, I was one of those that migrated from E&B shortly before the servers were shut off. I'm still mad at EA for closing it down, lol.
My first corp had a EnB refugee. I didn't really pay attention to the effect the SWG refugees had.
But I started when prime time online member counts were around 6k, and slowly over the years growing higher and higher, and in the past year or two seemed to be growing in leaps and bounds, up to the back then undreamed of 35-40k players.
I will concur with other opinions here and agree that the unfortunate events in those other two MMOs did help EVE, but it would have grown well on it's own.
Probably it's luckiest break was the implosion of SWG in 2005 due to the Combat Downgrade and then the New Gawdawful Experience which deleted 2/3rds of the game and dumbed it down. Prior to the NGE, SWG was EVE's only real competitor as a skill based sci-fi space game. I started playing EVE recently and have noted literally TONS of ex SWG players.
Looking over at mmogdata, EVE takes a HUGE jump after late 2005, which correlates to the NGE disaster. As we know, SWG's subs never have returned, so they had to go somewhere, I'd guess at least 20% of them went to EVE.
E&B had no effect on Eve in my opinion. Eve was always a far better game. E&B just had far less of a learning curve so many of the short term players flocked to it. I don't see E&B having much of an effect on Eve, even if it was still around.
I think EvE was lucky for several reasons. But first ill say that i feeel that it would still have grown regardless because it was and is the only PvP based space sci-fi mmo.
Anyway EvE got lucky for several reasons.
1. E&B failed and CCP offered free trials to members.
2. SWG bombed a bit so it sucked some of them in.
3. 99% of MMO's are fantasy so any well made sci-fi mmo will do well with certain types of players.
"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
-- Jean Rostand
CCP remind me of Valve.
-----------------------------
SWG - PrePub9 Jedi mastered all professions - June 26th 2003 > Nov 15th 2005
EVE Online - 24 million SP - May 6th 2003 > Early 2005
PlanetSide - BR20 CR5 - May 23rd 2003 > Sept 2003
Sorry, but you only have to look at the market share figures to see that it had a direct impact at the time. E&B was already about when EvE was released, there was a slight dip in E&B as EVE gained some subs, then after a couple of months E&B gained again and EVE levelled out. The next big change was after the announcement of the E&B closure and there was a big boost in EvE's figures over the following months until closure.
Anyone knows from WoW's success that it's not always better graphics or mechanics that makes a game successful, it is just giving the players what they want and E&B seemed to do that and do it well.
I also believe that EVE would have grown too even if E&B hadn't closed, but i don't think you can deny the impact E&B's closure had on the game.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
One thing that must be included is the problems that EVE had at the start with its publishers at the time. EnB had a little bit more of a name backing it as well which also helped. Name recognition helps a lot in the gaming industry as people instinctively trust certain companies and distrust others. EVE came from a no-name company at the time and EnB had the Westwood name on it IIRC which at the time was a very solid company.
Um
When E&B and EVE both existed
EVE had about 25-30,000 subscribers
E&B had about 25-30,000 subscribers
Then E&B announced they were closing down
CCP offered all E&B players a free copy of EVE and free gametime if they provided CCP with their E&B CD Key as proof they owned the game
By the time E&B officially shut down EVE had grown from where it started to between 55 and 60,000 subscribers. Might want to check your history. E&B had a huge effect on EVE. When it closed EVE was actually somewhat struggling. After it closed EVE was completely healthy and out of any danger of closing itself.
"A ship-of-war is the best ambassador." - Oliver Cromwell
The colosure of EnB just mea ns that EvE has 90% more carebears to make the fighters ships.
I have to think that the NGE at SWG was a good break for Eve. I know that incident made me look elsewhere and thats where I found a home in Eve.
It was. EVE grew by over 70,000 accounts in the few months immediately following the NGE. I find it hard to believe that's just a coincidence.
"A ship-of-war is the best ambassador." - Oliver Cromwell
I miss E&B. Shutting it down was probably one of the most stupid moves ever done by EA.
"Oh, look, our subscriber numbers haven't beat EQ. The game sucks. Shut it down!"
Morons...
Currently playing: No MMOs. They all suck.
MMM... in all fairness to EA the game was operating in the red for it's entire existence. It wasn't generating positive cash flow. While I detest EA for their willingness to just can MMO's whenever the urge hits from a 'business' standpoint the move made fiscal sense.
"A ship-of-war is the best ambassador." - Oliver Cromwell
In all fairness, EA 'ensured' that the game was running at a loss by their strategy with the game. The game was, on release, a fair success for the time and had a good strong community behind it, but from there things went a bit askew with EA.
- They killed off Westwood Studios and closed it's offices
- Got rid of a lot of original developers and moved others to their offices to work on other projects
- Cut all advertising for the game to zero in favour of Sims Online
The sum total of all of these actions was a loss of subscribers and nothing to replace them with, i mean who is going to play a game they don't know about? EA's own figures at the time (I admit i can't find them now, so i stand to be corrected) said that the game was profitable, just not profitable enough. Plus they made a mint in the closure months as they had no developers, minimal support, but they were still taking full subscription fees!
If i also remember correctly, EA 'misreported' the subscriber numbers at the time they announced the closure (I remember them saying 15k subs when it was actually closer to 25k which is $195k/month vs $325k/month revenue), only admitting later after the closure that they were actually a lot higher than they had said when someone found a financial report.
I just can't believe that after moving all the operations in house EA couldn't run this game at a profit when CCP were running EVE on far smaller numbers independently?
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Just goes to show how lucky or Good CCP was in its early days. Well jump-gate is looking OK so who knows.
"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
-- Jean Rostand
I remember reading a post or blog or something on the EVE website (or maybe here cant remember now) but they said the dev's at CCP went without pay for 3 months or so just to see the game continue
ah found it it was here on MMORPG Link
All I can talk about is my own experience, and the data from SirBruce's site and MMOData.
I wasn't in E&B very long before they shut it down. Had they not shut it down, I'd of probably still play E&B.
I was in SWG a long time. Had they not butchered SWG, I'd still be there, and not in EVE. To tell you the truth, if they opened up Pre-CU tomorrow, I'd quit EVE and play SWG Pre-CU.
I was also in (gulp) Seed. That game had everything I liked about EVE (mainly skills) without all the gankage and ePeen of EVE. If it hadn't of closed down, I'd still be there.
The reason I'm in EVE isn't so much that I like it because it's EVE, but rather, it is about as close as I can get to those old games right now. So in my case, I'd have to say that my loss is EVE's gain. When I see the correlation between EVE's rise in subs and the decline in subs from other sci-fi games, I tend to think I'm not alone.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
^^^ This (except the part about E&B... I tried it and found it mind numbingly boring once I hit 50/50)
And I too would go back to SWG in an instant if they opened a pre-cu server. Or at least Pre-NGE. I'd probably even re-activate my all-access pass. Dunno if I'd keep playing EVE or not to be honest.
"A ship-of-war is the best ambassador." - Oliver Cromwell