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Where is the money going?
crysent
Member UncommonPosts: 841
Ok, so I'm a MMO vet. I've played like every MMO on the forums list to the left and every single free one I could find that got even halfway decent reviews.
I started on Ultima Online moved to Everquest and then to Asherons and then DAOC and after that there is really nothing worth mentioning despite game after game after game including WAR.
My question is what are the big companies thinking...I mean really? Look at the hype surronding Darkfall, it's big, real big, in fact I bet its what most people here are waiting for. Why? because of the freedom it allows. IT doesnt take a rocket scientist to hang out in the MMO community to discover that people want freedom in there MMOs. Now Darkfall might just fail, in fact there is a good chance it will, I hope it does not, but it might. Also Darkfall has taken FOREVER to finish. If it doesn't fail then I'm happy it took so long but if its a failure...ack
Anyways this leads to my question what are the big companies thinking. Why has Sony or turbine not put there money behind a project like Darkfall? Imagine if one of the companies with endless resources actually put them into a game worth a crap, I mean The Agency is what Sony is investing in? really? really thats where they think the mmo crowd wants to go?
I feel like these companies are in a situation similar to the Car Companies, they wont change there model. Since WOW was so successful every single BIG company has tried to produce a replica or emulate it despite the fact that most players want something new. They REFUSE to change. WAR is possibly the best example of this, it isn't a horrible game but my god its so similar to WOW and every other game thats been released in the last 3 years.
It seems like the smaller companies have the right ideas just never the money. Then it seems like the big companies with the money just throw it away, really..Anyone get on WAR lately? EQ2? PotBS? LoTRO? Tabula? Vanguard? I mean the list goes on and on and on, the populations are ok...but nothing special. All these games could have been so much more...
I guess I don't really know where I'm going with all this, my point is that its just such a damn disippointment that the companies with the money to actually complete and make an amazing game have the worst idea's and try to sell us pure crap or WOW clones with nothing new added. Then the companies with limited resources or no money seem to have the right idea but just cant ever deliver (Dark and Light) I know the two games I'm counting on are Darkfall and Mortal, thats it...If they cant come through then I guess I'm SOL...
Comments
well you ahve a point there, but you cannot forced them to invest a money in a game that they do not know can compete with those mazing new games now look at warhammer, WOW and Atlantica online they are the newst games and really competetive but no great financing company offer for help in its improvemnt however the decision will be in their hands.
Good post, I totally agree with you. It's a damn shame.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
A little business 101:
Don't invest in anything that won't make you money.
You even stated, yourself, that Darkfall will likely fail. Why would a company want to invest in a project that appears to be doomed?
Business 102:
The more money invested, the larger the return should be.
A little MMO Business 101:
Investors are quite more rare then you'd imagine. This is my 3rd MMO Company (and likely last because I can't even bring myself to play MMOs anymore), and I can honestly say while sitting down with Investors from any of them they want examples of how that Design has worked in the past.
Investors care less about originality then they do the familiar. When they ask for Examples, they expect to be pointed at a game where your idea worked, not where it was implemented. In several cases, the concept, itself, was great... but the game was considered somewhat of a failure, and that means the concept was part of that, and gets shot down.
Think of it like Japanese stuff from the 80s: Take American Innovation, make it better, sell it back to them.
So why don't large Corps like SOE or Turbine or EA invest in startlingly different MMOs? Because they know what works (better then even "veteran" gamers... who by the way is the smallest, dwindling, crowd to pitch to right now), and they want to make money, so they can make more games.
The majority of gamers are not the Forum Warriors you see writing on the boards about how to improve the games... that's less then 1% of your total market segment. Gamers, overall, prefer to play the game, and rarely, if ever, look at Forums or even the website. At one company I did some work for, our Publisher actually had a Producer on site who wanted to know where we got the idea that "That's what gamers want."
In the end:
Gamers speak with their wallets far greater then with words on Forums. The ones on the Forums are just the loud ones... regretfully, they're muffled by the silent ones throwing cash.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
It takes 4+ years to make a mmorpg so the games coming out now were started around the time or just after WoW was released and cloning it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. These games were probably too far along the development path to be changed so will not have had the opportunity to benefit from seeing the hordes of WoW lemming games hurling themselves off a financial cliff. I expect things will change in the future. A lot of this years releases seem to follow different models.
OP you are wrong. Darkfall is wrong. Introducing anything more than a grind in an MMO environment means failure. The playerbase can't handle the complexity. Eve is a fine example of a complex MMO environment which allows skill to determine the outcome. It will always be a niche product, because MMO gamers are not skilled.
Don't spend paragraphs trying to justify MMO gamers being skill based, its not true.
Therefore all successful MMOs will need to be based upon grinding and low skill combat, advancement in order to succeed.
Notice most of the patches to WAR have been to dumb down the game further. This has always been the case with MMO PVP. Because someone with skill finds a tactic that works and the community whines until the tactic is nerfed. Removing all skill and tactics is the ultimate outcome of MMO pvp.
So the companies are giving the gamer what they demand.
Quoted for truth!!!
Totally bullshit nobody here on forums or even on darkfall forums know how darkfall will be.
Claiming that it will fail is just rediculous why you all keep saying Darkfall will fail?
Even if you DON'T like the style of Darkfall you all should applaus this game for daring to be different and hope it succeed its one of few companys who dare to be different and not like any game on the market yet.
Its your own fault decline of mmo's first you constantly talk negative about Darkfall and secondly you all still play wow and all the trash out there.
Stop playing those casual carebear games and play Darkfall or STFU:p
99% of market play themeparks in easy mode so i blame you all:(
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Personally, I think the OP is way off base here.
From my experiences of new MMOs in the last few years; there's been no AAA "WoW Clones" at all.
WoW is unique amongst MMOs in that it offers the widest range of accessible gameplay of any MMO ever released; this is why it's popular amongst casual and hardcore gamers alike. We like variety, and if we can get that variety with a single subscription fee.. more the better.
There exists a vocal minority who are clamoring for AAA games catering specifically to their gaming style; be that PvP, RvR, PvE, etc.. but the majority (by a clearly significant amount, judging on subscription figures) want the same variety of gameplay that they wanted 5 years ago.
As was mentioned above by another poster; we all vote with our wallets. WoW's continuing subscriber retention (and apparent growth) can only be testament to the fact that Blizzard have the superior MMO model.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift