I as well respect your views and thought, but I still hold to my origional thoughts. Its hard to skirt the issue with words "not making much money". It doesnt matter if they are not getting Everquest rich - they are still getting rich and until that stops, if it ever does, we will continue to see mmorpgs pop up left and right. Some will fail before ever getting released and all of them for different reasons. But to have a saturated market you must first have a lack of something or someone. There is still plenty of money to be made and even more people out there wanting and willing to play.
Just my thoughts here.
Originally posted by molecule Valorus, while I respect your opinion, to state that the market isn't oversaturated just because the top of the list is games that are already "making money" is kinda false in my opinion. Lets see... out of that list alone, I'd say there are definitely some games not making much money: AC1, AC2, E&B, Horizons, Shadowbane, TSO and WWII. That's roughly 1/3 of the entire list of games! And I don't know about games like Neocron, EVE or Savage Eden, but just the fact that I haven't heard much about them makes me think they aren't exactly rolling in dough either (I could be wrong, that's why I didn't include them in my initial list). Plus, I could think of a few other MMO's that are in trouble that aren't on this list at all: Ashen Empires and Rubies of Eventide come to mind immediately. What can I say? I just have a feeling that the MMO industry is about to crash and burn and only a few games are going to remain unaffected or manage to rise from the ashes. Only time will tell though! EDIT: Just want to say that I'm not trying to be some kind of Doomsayer who is predicting the end of the MMO industry. I just don't think that there are enough people who are willing to pay monthly subscriptions to support all of these games!
The MMO market develops in steps. Think that the average duration for teh development of a MMORPG is around 3 years. After the first MMOs have been succesfull everybody wanted in and suddenly there were 80 MMOs in development. There is no way that the market can support 80 games plus the ones already running. Some of them got canceled on the way and from the initial 80 games only 20 are close to completion or still in development. From the 20 games in development only 2 or 3 will be succesfull and I assume that they will be: EQ2, WoW and GuildWars. Succesfull means a game with more than 100.000 payed subscriptions. The rest will struggle. To develop a MMO or to keep it running you ned at least 20 people at the development part. They cost you around 100.000$ per month, ignoring the support people, the cable connection and everything. I assume that the total costs are at a minimum of around 300.000$ per month. Which means 30.000 payed subscriptions per month at least to keep the game running. Except the 3 games I mentioned before there will be at most 3 or other 3 that will have more than 30 thousands payed subscriptions per month. Wish will die because of the high costs assigned to each world. Maybe Matrix will have more than 30.000 players. Next my money are on Mourning and Vanguard. Tabula Rasa are restarting the game after all their management team quit the job.
Originally posted by molecule Valorus, while I respect your opinion, to state that the market isn't oversaturated just because the top of the list is games that are already "making money" is kinda false in my opinion. Lets see... out of that list alone, I'd say there are definitely some games not making much money: AC1, AC2, E&B, Horizons, Shadowbane, TSO and WWII. That's roughly 1/3 of the entire list of games! And I don't know about games like Neocron, EVE or Savage Eden, but just the fact that I haven't heard much about them makes me think they aren't exactly rolling in dough either (I could be wrong, that's why I didn't include them in my initial list). Plus, I could think of a few other MMO's that are in trouble that aren't on this list at all: Ashen Empires and Rubies of Eventide come to mind immediately. What can I say? I just have a feeling that the MMO industry is about to crash and burn and only a few games are going to remain unaffected or manage to rise from the ashes. Only time will tell though! EDIT: Just want to say that I'm not trying to be some kind of Doomsayer who is predicting the end of the MMO industry. I just don't think that there are enough people who are willing to pay monthly subscriptions to support all of these games!
[quote]not just some E3 demo or some perpetually in closed beta *cough DE, Mourning, DnL, etc cough*.[/quote]
Mourning hasnt been perpetually in closed beta.. neither has has dark and light or Dragon empires.. all those games were/are in a beta or closedbeta because they are still being worked on..
The next game that will be cancelled is either Middle earth online or Dungeons and dragons online..
[quote]Originally posted by Egomancer [b]Wish will die because of the high costs assigned to each world. Maybe Matrix will have more than 30.000 players. Next my money are on Mourning and Vanguard. Tabula Rasa are restarting the game after all their management team quit the job.
[b][/quote]
If you are the same Egomancer that is the Egomance over at the Mourning boards, Gireada Andrei, Project Manager of Mourning, then it's no surprise you would have optimistically predicted success for your own game. A parent would seldom say they child would be a failure.
I would just be careful when predicting failure for others when it doesnt seem like you are aware of their facts. Your prediction on Wish's failure is based on the high costs of each world, when in fact, they, unlike most of these games coming out, have only one world/server. Plus the fact that Wish already is making money off of ICE from it's licensing, and not to mention they are already making money off their licensing of their engine to Sui Tang Online (something most MMOG developers dream of, getting their foot in the under developed market that is China). So they already have 2 legs up on their competition for those other slots to be successful outside of WoW, EQ2, and GW. Three if you count the fact they don't have the extra expenses for all those extra servers that their competition will undoubtedly have to pay for. So they have positioned themselves to make money in other avenues of the market as well.
Regarding Wish they have ONE SERVER that consists in around 100 computers. Each of them is a double processor computer. Do you have any idea how much that costs? I mean the entire network? I assume that it is around 1 mil $. And they support 50.000 players on that (we have no proof that this is true but for the sake of the argument let's assume that this is true). Now let's suppose that they have 50.000 players when they launch the game. They get around 7$ from each box sold and another 25$ during the first 3 months. For a total of 1.600.000$ income for the first 3 months. They reamin with 600.000$ to pay for the internet, support and continuous development. This is the ideal case and they still loose 300.000$. Now, if after 3 months 40% from the players (20.000) quit the game they remain with 30.000 subscriptions that bring them an income of 360.000$ per month. And as I said in a previous post it costs around 300.000 minimum per month to support a game at this scale... 60.000 profit per month IF THEY ARE LUCKY from which they need to get the 300.000 they lost with the launch. Here we do not consider costs with advertising... What if they have 60.000 players? They need to buy two server clusters. They cost 2 million USD. And if after first 3 months 50% of the players quit the game they are bankrupt. If you want I can make you the math... The idea is simple: the servers cost too much for a game that hasn't 100% chances of succes. We all like risks, but I don't want to be in the position of the guy that is risking 2 mil $ for a great idea. Would you? Besides EQ2 just blows Wish away, bith as graphics and brad name, and it costs less to maintain.
And fo course from that I know the technology for clustering 100 computers IS BOUGFHT FROM A THIRD PARTY. That is the core of Wish....
First of all you said "And they support 50.000 players on that (we have no proof that this is true but for the sake of the argument let's assume that this is true)."
Then later go on to say if they add 10,000 more people they'd have to get another rack.
That's completely wrong.
50,000 people online at once would equal to a subscription base of 500,000 (The MMOG rule of 1/10). To get to the supposed 60,000 simultaneous players online, and the magical number they would need to get another rack, they would need 600,000 subscriptions. ANd if they ever in their wildest dreams got there, they'd more than have enough capitol to afford the extra rack.
And if they got to 50,000 subscriptions a month, they would be looking at a neighborhood of $750-$1M a month or there about from subscriptions if they were charging from $15-20. And the assumptions on the box sales could be completely off because they are mulling just having free download and no free month as opposed to box sales and a free month which saves the customer money and also creates more profit to them.
So using your $300,000 number per month to maintain, and even if they were to only charge $15 a month (which will probably be higher), that's $750,000/mos. That's a profit of $450,000/mos (not really profit, salary, overhead, advertisement, etc, but certainly not this loss of $300,000 you state).
And you can't really just factor in the initial cost of the server since they might have bought it from a third party, but they actually did buy it and own it. In fact, they are partnered with ZeroC (Both MR and ZeroC have the same president), so the cost of the initial server has already been bought and paid for by another company that is already in the black making money.
So they are in effect supporting one cluster. A large one, but one cluster none the less. As for other games, each server of itself represents a cluster.
Taagnik`Zur, the 1/10 rule does not apply to new launched games. When I buy a game I buy it to play it, not to look at it. And that rule certainly does not apply to the peak hours. So for 50.000 simultaneoulsy players they need to have around 70.000 accounts during the first month (which is the month that matters).
And yes, to support another 10.000 players they need to buy another cluster of 100 computers. The price will be at most 15$ (I assume 13$) because it can not be higher than DAOC for example, or AC2. Both these games are better than Wish and charge less. I do not know how much AO does charge per month but if they have the price less than 15$ then Wish is forced to have that one too.
I said that the middleware (meaning the software that makes the computers to act as one big server) is bought from a third party. When I said that the server costs around 1 mil I was talking aobut the hardware (the computers+switch+other hardware). I think they do not own Interl or Dell .
We will see, think that this game is 2-3 times more complicated than a normal MMORPG...
some numbers - June 28, 2000 - HORZIONS mmorpg costs w/a staff of 20
Development: to finish the development, roughly $3.5 million
Implementation: equipment, NOC, approx another $2.5 million
Distribution and Marketing: another $1.5 million
Total budget: $7-8 million
It's finance-able, the total capital is about $5 million, with lease financing of another 2.5 million, which gets paid off from revenue. With the right market penetration the game becomes profitable within the first year, and continues to be profitable from there on out.
100,000 people at $10 a month = $1,000,000 per month + the initial $50 * 100,000 for the boxed units.
... and they STILL went Bankrupt.
What i hate most is that, just like "designed for the Console" development we PC gamers love so much , only big Corporate mmogs are allowed to succeed. Bye Bye innovation. Hello Least Common Denominator.
Originally posted by CactusmanX Looks like these developers are finding out how hard it is to make a MMO. I hope that this buisness doesn't go to the "Well known" developers only, I like the idea of a little guy making a game
Sorry buddy, but MMOs are just not conducive to small developers. MMOs are the most demanding genre of game to develop (massive ammounts of content, incredibly flexible yet incredibly fast engines, a client-server model that supports tens of thousands of simultaneous users) they keep costing the company after the game is written (maintaining the hardware, maintaining the software on that hardware, keeping tight security, maintaining the game, developing new content for the game to keep subscribers from getting bored, a very very expensive internet connection). And what small developer has the capital to even attempt this type of venture? The engine and client-server programming demand professionals with years of experience in those fields and they're hard to come by and not cheap either.
Though this idea is probably not even feasible, if someone developed a MMO that ran on a P2P platform instead of Client-Server then the company would pay almost nothing for hosting. (And that would make it more interesting for the Open-Source community as well since those cheap bastards, myself included, don't like paying for anything.) If I figure out a way to do it, I'll surely share it with you all, but the concept is inherently problematic.
Comments
WTF!?!
I too was looking forward to this game especially as an alternative to WoW.
The MMO market develops in steps. Think that the average duration for teh development of a MMORPG is around 3 years. After the first MMOs have been succesfull everybody wanted in and suddenly there were 80 MMOs in development. There is no way that the market can support 80 games plus the ones already running. Some of them got canceled on the way and from the initial 80 games only 20 are close to completion or still in development.
after all their management team quit the job.
From the 20 games in development only 2 or 3 will be succesfull and I assume that they will be: EQ2, WoW and GuildWars. Succesfull means a game with more than 100.000 payed subscriptions.
The rest will struggle. To develop a MMO or to keep it running you ned at least 20 people at the development part. They cost you around 100.000$ per month, ignoring the support people, the cable connection and everything. I assume that the total costs are at a minimum of around 300.000$ per month. Which means 30.000 payed subscriptions per month at least to keep the game running.
Except the 3 games I mentioned before there will be at most 3 or other 3 that will have more than 30 thousands payed subscriptions per month.
Wish will die because of the high costs assigned to each world. Maybe Matrix will have more than 30.000 players. Next my money are on Mourning and Vanguard. Tabula Rasa are restarting the game
a
a
[quote]not just some E3 demo or some perpetually in closed beta *cough DE, Mourning, DnL, etc cough*.[/quote]
Mourning hasnt been perpetually in closed beta.. neither has has dark and light or Dragon empires.. all those games were/are in a beta or closedbeta because they are still being worked on..
The next game that will be cancelled is either Middle earth online or Dungeons and dragons online..
[quote]Originally posted by Egomancer
after all their management team quit the job.
[b]Wish will die because of the high costs assigned to each world. Maybe Matrix will have more than 30.000 players. Next my money are on Mourning and Vanguard. Tabula Rasa are restarting the game
[b][/quote]
If you are the same Egomancer that is the Egomance over at the Mourning boards, Gireada Andrei, Project Manager of Mourning, then it's no surprise you would have optimistically predicted success for your own game. A parent would seldom say they child would be a failure.
I would just be careful when predicting failure for others when it doesnt seem like you are aware of their facts. Your prediction on Wish's failure is based on the high costs of each world, when in fact, they, unlike most of these games coming out, have only one world/server. Plus the fact that Wish already is making money off of ICE from it's licensing, and not to mention they are already making money off their licensing of their engine to Sui Tang Online (something most MMOG developers dream of, getting their foot in the under developed market that is China). So they already have 2 legs up on their competition for those other slots to be successful outside of WoW, EQ2, and GW. Three if you count the fact they don't have the extra expenses for all those extra servers that their competition will undoubtedly have to pay for. So they have positioned themselves to make money in other avenues of the market as well.
It may be just a name coincidence
.
Regarding Wish they have ONE SERVER that consists in around 100 computers. Each of them is a double processor computer. Do you have any idea how much that costs? I mean the entire network? I assume that it is around 1 mil $. And they support 50.000 players on that (we have no proof that this is true but for the sake of the argument let's assume that this is true).
Now let's suppose that they have 50.000 players when they launch the game. They get around 7$ from each box sold and another 25$ during the first 3 months. For a total of 1.600.000$ income for the first 3 months. They reamin with 600.000$ to pay for the internet, support and continuous development. This is the ideal case and they still loose 300.000$.
Now, if after 3 months 40% from the players (20.000) quit the game they remain with 30.000 subscriptions that bring them an income of 360.000$ per month. And as I said in a previous post it costs around 300.000 minimum per month to support a game at this scale... 60.000 profit per month IF THEY ARE LUCKY from which they need to get the 300.000 they lost with the launch. Here we do not consider costs with advertising...
What if they have 60.000 players? They need to buy two server clusters. They cost 2 million USD. And if after first 3 months 50% of the players quit the game they are bankrupt. If you want I can make you the math...
The idea is simple: the servers cost too much for a game that hasn't 100% chances of succes. We all like risks, but I don't want to be in the position of the guy that is risking 2 mil $ for a great idea. Would you?
Besides EQ2 just blows Wish away, bith as graphics and brad name, and it costs less to maintain.
And fo course from that I know the technology for clustering 100 computers IS BOUGFHT FROM A THIRD PARTY. That is the core of Wish....
a
a
First of all you said "And they support 50.000 players on that (we have no proof that this is true but for the sake of the argument let's assume that this is true)."
Then later go on to say if they add 10,000 more people they'd have to get another rack.
That's completely wrong.
50,000 people online at once would equal to a subscription base of 500,000 (The MMOG rule of 1/10). To get to the supposed 60,000 simultaneous players online, and the magical number they would need to get another rack, they would need 600,000 subscriptions. ANd if they ever in their wildest dreams got there, they'd more than have enough capitol to afford the extra rack.
And if they got to 50,000 subscriptions a month, they would be looking at a neighborhood of $750-$1M a month or there about from subscriptions if they were charging from $15-20. And the assumptions on the box sales could be completely off because they are mulling just having free download and no free month as opposed to box sales and a free month which saves the customer money and also creates more profit to them.
So using your $300,000 number per month to maintain, and even if they were to only charge $15 a month (which will probably be higher), that's $750,000/mos. That's a profit of $450,000/mos (not really profit, salary, overhead, advertisement, etc, but certainly not this loss of $300,000 you state).
And you can't really just factor in the initial cost of the server since they might have bought it from a third party, but they actually did buy it and own it. In fact, they are partnered with ZeroC (Both MR and ZeroC have the same president), so the cost of the initial server has already been bought and paid for by another company that is already in the black making money.
So they are in effect supporting one cluster. A large one, but one cluster none the less. As for other games, each server of itself represents a cluster.
Fate is a wheel, it will reveal, all you've become, all that you feel. Destiny knows what has to be, you'll pay the price, nothing is free.
-65 dark elf, Archoness of the Nameless.
- Tienaere Damondred, 70High Priestess of the Nameless
-Onela Damondred, Necro/Ranger of Guild Wars.
-Onela, Magician/Wizard of Ragnarok.
Taagnik`Zur, the 1/10 rule does not apply to new launched games. When I buy a game I buy it to play it, not to look at it. And that rule certainly does not apply to the peak hours. So for 50.000 simultaneoulsy players they need to have around 70.000 accounts during the first month (which is the month that matters).
And yes, to support another 10.000 players they need to buy another cluster of 100 computers. The price will be at most 15$ (I assume 13$) because it can not be higher than DAOC for example, or AC2. Both these games are better than Wish and charge less. I do not know how much AO does charge per month but if they have the price less than 15$ then Wish is forced to have that one too.
I said that the middleware (meaning the software that makes the computers to act as one big server) is bought from a third party. When I said that the server costs around 1 mil I was talking aobut the hardware (the computers+switch+other hardware). I think they do not own Interl or Dell
.
We will see, think that this game is 2-3 times more complicated than a normal MMORPG...
a
a
some numbers - June 28, 2000 - HORZIONS mmorpg costs w/a staff of 20
Development: to finish the development, roughly $3.5 million
Implementation: equipment, NOC, approx another $2.5 million
Distribution and Marketing: another $1.5 million
Total budget: $7-8 million
It's finance-able, the total capital is about $5 million, with lease financing of another 2.5 million, which gets paid off from revenue. With the right market penetration the game becomes profitable within the first year, and continues to be profitable from there on out.
100,000 people at $10 a month = $1,000,000 per month + the initial $50 * 100,000 for the boxed units.
... and they STILL went Bankrupt.
What i hate most is that, just like "designed for the Console" development we PC gamers love so much
, only big Corporate mmogs are allowed to succeed. Bye Bye innovation. Hello Least Common Denominator.
Sorry buddy, but MMOs are just not conducive to small developers. MMOs are the most demanding genre of game to develop (massive ammounts of content, incredibly flexible yet incredibly fast engines, a client-server model that supports tens of thousands of simultaneous users) they keep costing the company after the game is written (maintaining the hardware, maintaining the software on that hardware, keeping tight security, maintaining the game, developing new content for the game to keep subscribers from getting bored, a very very expensive internet connection). And what small developer has the capital to even attempt this type of venture? The engine and client-server programming demand professionals with years of experience in those fields and they're hard to come by and not cheap either.
Though this idea is probably not even feasible, if someone developed a MMO that ran on a P2P platform instead of Client-Server then the company would pay almost nothing for hosting. (And that would make it more interesting for the Open-Source community as well since those cheap bastards, myself included, don't like paying for anything.) If I figure out a way to do it, I'll surely share it with you all, but the concept is inherently problematic.
Yes. I rant. You have a problem with that?