I doubt anything will happen this year, but when Star Wars: The Republic comes out. Well all bets are off, SWTOR is gonna own so hard. No one not even WOW will be able to stay alive. Nuff said.
When we get back from where we are going, we will return to where we were. I know people there!
Maybe not many games go under, but some companies might. Many MMO's mentioned in this thread are valuable assets - at least IP-wise which should make cashing them easy if needed.
My prediction is that Funcom collapses, with AoC and maybe even AO sold to another company...
In times of recession would in fact see a growth in the subscription of games.
Actually no.
As stated before, a recession would see people scaling back to only 1 MMO at a time and dropping multiple accounts.
Also, MMOs do provide the best ratio for entertainment to cost and if more people look to MMOs during hard economic times not all MMOs will benefit from this. They would seek out the most popular, which means WoW.
Suppose that a game cost $50 million to develop. Once the game is done, it doesn't sell very well, so it brings in $200 thousand per month, while costing $100 thousand per month to keep the game going. You see no prospect for increasing that $200 thousand per month figure.
Do you shut the game down? If you do, the net cost of doing so is $100 thousand per month. You may well cut off future development on the game, but as long as the game brings in more than enough to cover the costs of hosting it, you keep the game running. You may wish that you hadn't spent $50 million to develop the game, but shutting it down only makes a bad situation worse.
That's why online games rarely shut down entirely. It's also why they don't randomly go free to play, as that gives up what revenue is coming in. That's trying to lose money on every customer, but make it up in volume.
A lot of good points here. What I am thinking is that we may be looking at a year that will be something of an anomaly. If the economy hits as hard as most experts are predicting then I suspect a large number of games will close down. Due to their parent corporations going bankrup, being sold, or restructuring their product lineups. No, I don't think the major players will shut down and I doubt if the newly developed games (at least those with large corporation backing will shutdown either) - but the business climate could be such that the plug will be pulled on a lot of older games and a lot of smaller corporations will either go under, or leave the marketspace.
Age of Conan will probably close it's servers this year and Warhammer will soldier on until 2011 when it will close it's servers. Tabula Rasa will close it's servers next month.
What I'm wondering about is how the heck can Asheron's Call still be alive and kicking?
It has less than 10k active subs... very strange indeed.
And Dungeons & Dragons Online must be close to dying as well.
You forgot Hellgate London: it closes down right now.
Add to the list Pirates of the Burning Sea and Spellborn (yes I know they still have to launch in the US, but the game is already dead on the EU continent. Reason is no players even with a 3 month free playing time).
EA will certainly end DAoC and UO and with FunCom not only AoC will end but also AO.
I don't think War will hold it till 2011. I always wonder how many people simply have no taste at all. War can't possibly hold out more than 150 K paying players after 6 months. And Darkfall/Aion could halve its subs further.
The big shake out will come in the summer of 2009. No model with less than 100K subs will be economically sound.
I only see EVE and LotrO as 100% survivers, and for War it all depends what EA will do. They could cut it at 159 K subs and this number will certainly be reached next summer. War is already dead in EU. NO new sales generated means the word is out on its low quality.
-----
I think this is a very good sign for the players. If all those above games would have been a success, in the end, it would have been us - the players - being the victims of unpolished and lousy game designs.
Future projects just need to be better - much better.
* Ultima Online: Stygian Abyss (TBA, 2009) will feature a new playable race, the Gargoyle, and a new skill, imbuing. Stygian Abyss will also feature significant upgrades to the Kingdom Reborn client, which will be renamed to the Stygian Abyss client. The legacy client will still be supported.[11]
Aion is coming out soon, and although it may not do well in NA/EU it will have a very strong Asian audience. To us in the US we would probably say in a few months after it release, "I bet that game is about to go under," while the Aisan community will continue to be strong and make NCSoft tons of money.
Suppose that a game cost $50 million to develop. Once the game is done, it doesn't sell very well, so it brings in $200 thousand per month, while costing $100 thousand per month to keep the game going. You see no prospect for increasing that $200 thousand per month figure. Do you shut the game down? If you do, the net cost of doing so is $100 thousand per month. You may well cut off future development on the game, but as long as the game brings in more than enough to cover the costs of hosting it, you keep the game running. You may wish that you hadn't spent $50 million to develop the game, but shutting it down only makes a bad situation worse. That's why online games rarely shut down entirely. It's also why they don't randomly go free to play, as that gives up what revenue is coming in. That's trying to lose money on every customer, but make it up in volume.
QFT.
Look at Sony's games, and how much real support they get in terms of development. They don't get any love...they just get kept on life support.
However, the SOE plan is to combine all of them into one single fee, and keep costs down per game. I suspect that masks how little interest there are in some of the games. Sony could prune one or two games from the herd if those games fail the cost/benefit test on their own.
Yeah SOE will probably die in 2009 (took them long enough). SOE is in massive debt (in the billions). It will be a happy day for gamers when the disease known as SOE is finally gone!
I won't be happy. I play planetside for free for 14 days at a time and totally love it lolz.
Look for hybridized subscription models to become more prevelant. Keep it free. Then give those on a small budget a decent benefit for a flat rate. Then give the opportunity for those that have cash to spend to drop money on cash shop benefits. Maximize revenue and keep everyone more or less "happy",.
All you have to do is take a good look at the upcoming mmos listed on this site and just feel the disappointment heading our way again, well atleast for the first half of the year.
If you look at the top most anticipated games on this site you will find they are all graphically good. That’s all we have to go on, so we order our preference on the basis of the videos and stills we see. Or like KothOR we use the reasoning that we liked the solo game so we are going to like the MMO.
Crazy reasoning really. This tells us nothing about gameplay but then its hard to easily evaluate gameplay in a game you are not in.
Those who say that AOC will close down in 2009 are day dreaming.
Its a horrible mmo alright no contest there but they will get enough moolah
AOC will be launched for Xbox360 , I feel it will be more sucessful as a single player or coop mode style game perfect for xbox360
They will also launch the expansion with n no of hype and expectation 90% of which will fall flat but that wont stop a million of player s to grab a copy of the expansion.
Tabula Rasa might have survived had they mad it F2P with cash option
With the deteriorating world economic situation, will large numbers of fringe/struggling MMO's go the way of the Dodo? I suspect we could see large numbers of closures as struggling parent corporations cut loose their baggage in attempts to become more profitable. Do you guys agree and if so, which MMO's do you think get the axe?
I definitely do not agree. Hard economic times will just make people seek cheap alternatives and thus cheap entertainment. Now that internet is a "must have" to many, the extra cost of an MMOG or two is something most can afford. It's cheaper than travel, partying, going to the movies, renting or buying DVDs, etc. If anything, I think current gamers will bring in more friends and family to MMOGs.
However, some MMOGs are definitely in the danger zone. Tabula Rasa is closing soon, and with the latest games closing down we've seen a more or less standard model for closing down a subscription game being developed, paving the way for other non-profitable titles to be axed by their investors without too much thought needed on how.
I won't speculate exactly which games will go down, as I have no interest in provoking their supporters or saddening their developers. Instead I wish them all the best. C'mon guys, you'll be fine. :-)
well maybe not go out of business, but surely file for bankruptcy. The only reason they added the cash shops to thier games is to bring in additional revenues. All the cash shops will do is drive more players away than it will make money. SOE is thinking that f2p cash shop games are making so much money with thier cash shop we'll add it to our subcription games. This won't fly with 99% of the gaming community. If I won the lottery or had a million dollars then I could careless, but until that happens, SOE is in a world of hurt, and in their own masochistic way, like to hurt themselves even more.
SONYoe. Do you really think they don't have money?
Hold on Snow Leopard, imma let you finish, but Windows had one of the best operating systems of all time.
If the Powerball lottery was like Lotro, nobody would win for 2 years, and then everyone in Nebraska would win on the same day. And then Nebraska would get nerfed.-pinkwood lotro fourms
AMD 4800 2.4ghz-3GB RAM 533mhz-EVGA 9500GT 512mb-320gb HD
Those who say that AOC will close down in 2009 are day dreaming. Its a horrible mmo alright no contest there but they will get enough moolah AOC will be launched for Xbox360 , I feel it will be more sucessful as a single player or coop mode style game perfect for xbox360 They will also launch the expansion with n no of hype and expectation 90% of which will fall flat but that wont stop a million of player s to grab a copy of the expansion.
A console version and an expansion are the LAST things Funcom should be doing right now.
Development costs for a console version and especially an expansion would completely deplete whatever profits Funcom has made with AoC.
Also, whatever meager sales they could manage would be not be enough to off set the development costs and for high end graphics like AoC you can be assured the development costs would be rather high.
Funcom needs to build their reputation back up so people trust them before they release any new products, otherwise they would just be committing suicide.
Comments
In times of recession would in fact see a growth in the subscription of games.
I doubt anything will happen this year, but when Star Wars: The Republic comes out. Well all bets are off, SWTOR is gonna own so hard. No one not even WOW will be able to stay alive. Nuff said.
When we get back from where we are going, we will return to where we were. I know people there!
I doubt there will be any new deaths in 2009
(beyond Tabula Rasa and Hellgate London)
mmo deaths are uncommon in context to the new mmos that launch
2004 - Earth and Beyond
2005 - Asherons Call 2
2006 - none
2007 - Auto Assault
2008 - Sims Online, Dark and Light
2009 - TR and HGL
EQ2 fan sites
Maybe not many games go under, but some companies might. Many MMO's mentioned in this thread are valuable assets - at least IP-wise which should make cashing them easy if needed.
My prediction is that Funcom collapses, with AoC and maybe even AO sold to another company...
Playing: AC2
Played: UO, DaoC, Horizons, Ryzom, WAR, LotRO, Eve, VG...
Age of Conan will probably close it's servers this year and Warhammer will soldier on until 2011 when it will close it's servers.
Tabula Rasa will close it's servers next month.
What I'm wondering about is how the heck can Asheron's Call still be alive and kicking?
It has less than 10k active subs... very strange indeed.
And Dungeons & Dragons Online must be close to dying as well.
Actually no.
As stated before, a recession would see people scaling back to only 1 MMO at a time and dropping multiple accounts.
Also, MMOs do provide the best ratio for entertainment to cost and if more people look to MMOs during hard economic times not all MMOs will benefit from this. They would seek out the most popular, which means WoW.
Well, 2008 marked the death of all MMOs to me. I've pretty much lost faith in the genre.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Suppose that a game cost $50 million to develop. Once the game is done, it doesn't sell very well, so it brings in $200 thousand per month, while costing $100 thousand per month to keep the game going. You see no prospect for increasing that $200 thousand per month figure.
Do you shut the game down? If you do, the net cost of doing so is $100 thousand per month. You may well cut off future development on the game, but as long as the game brings in more than enough to cover the costs of hosting it, you keep the game running. You may wish that you hadn't spent $50 million to develop the game, but shutting it down only makes a bad situation worse.
That's why online games rarely shut down entirely. It's also why they don't randomly go free to play, as that gives up what revenue is coming in. That's trying to lose money on every customer, but make it up in volume.
A lot of good points here. What I am thinking is that we may be looking at a year that will be something of an anomaly. If the economy hits as hard as most experts are predicting then I suspect a large number of games will close down. Due to their parent corporations going bankrup, being sold, or restructuring their product lineups. No, I don't think the major players will shut down and I doubt if the newly developed games (at least those with large corporation backing will shutdown either) - but the business climate could be such that the plug will be pulled on a lot of older games and a lot of smaller corporations will either go under, or leave the marketspace.
You forgot Hellgate London: it closes down right now.
Add to the list Pirates of the Burning Sea and Spellborn (yes I know they still have to launch in the US, but the game is already dead on the EU continent. Reason is no players even with a 3 month free playing time).
EA will certainly end DAoC and UO and with FunCom not only AoC will end but also AO.
I don't think War will hold it till 2011. I always wonder how many people simply have no taste at all. War can't possibly hold out more than 150 K paying players after 6 months. And Darkfall/Aion could halve its subs further.
The big shake out will come in the summer of 2009. No model with less than 100K subs will be economically sound.
I only see EVE and LotrO as 100% survivers, and for War it all depends what EA will do. They could cut it at 159 K subs and this number will certainly be reached next summer. War is already dead in EU. NO new sales generated means the word is out on its low quality.
-----
I think this is a very good sign for the players. If all those above games would have been a success, in the end, it would have been us - the players - being the victims of unpolished and lousy game designs.
Future projects just need to be better - much better.
UO and many others are not ending
look at the history of UO expansions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online
a new one is forthcoming:
* Ultima Online: Stygian Abyss (TBA, 2009) will feature a new playable race, the Gargoyle, and a new skill, imbuing. Stygian Abyss will also feature significant upgrades to the Kingdom Reborn client, which will be renamed to the Stygian Abyss client. The legacy client will still be supported.[11]
www.uoherald.com/stygianabyss/gameoverview/gargoyle/
EQ2 fan sites
Don't forget the market is far from an EU/NA entity.
The Asian consumers dominate the MMO trends, although we in NA only see the NA games. And all we discuss here are the NA games.
WoW - over half of their customers are Asian: http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart11.html
After WoW the next two highest subscribed games are Asian: Lineage 1 and Lineage 2: http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html
(Runescape is free so not really relevant)
Aion is coming out soon, and although it may not do well in NA/EU it will have a very strong Asian audience. To us in the US we would probably say in a few months after it release, "I bet that game is about to go under," while the Aisan community will continue to be strong and make NCSoft tons of money.
QFT.
Look at Sony's games, and how much real support they get in terms of development. They don't get any love...they just get kept on life support.
However, the SOE plan is to combine all of them into one single fee, and keep costs down per game. I suspect that masks how little interest there are in some of the games. Sony could prune one or two games from the herd if those games fail the cost/benefit test on their own.
I won't be happy. I play planetside for free for 14 days at a time and totally love it lolz.
Sad to say, after a highly disappointing year, 2009 does not look too thrilling either for MMOs.
Unless we see a random stroke of genius out of leftfield, the next couple of years look bleak.
The main hope, IMO, is that WAR somehow turns itself around.
As for the old ones, I suspect they'll start to dry up.
Look for hybridized subscription models to become more prevelant. Keep it free. Then give those on a small budget a decent benefit for a flat rate. Then give the opportunity for those that have cash to spend to drop money on cash shop benefits. Maximize revenue and keep everyone more or less "happy",.
----ITS A TRAP!!!----
All you have to do is take a good look at the upcoming mmos listed on this site and just feel the disappointment heading our way again, well atleast for the first half of the year.
What about Aion? Do you guys think that will suck? I been keeping up with the videos on youtube and it actually looks half way decent.
If you look at the top most anticipated games on this site you will find they are all graphically good. That’s all we have to go on, so we order our preference on the basis of the videos and stills we see. Or like KothOR we use the reasoning that we liked the solo game so we are going to like the MMO.
Crazy reasoning really. This tells us nothing about gameplay but then its hard to easily evaluate gameplay in a game you are not in.
Those who say that AOC will close down in 2009 are day dreaming.
Its a horrible mmo alright no contest there but they will get enough moolah
AOC will be launched for Xbox360 , I feel it will be more sucessful as a single player or coop mode style game perfect for xbox360
They will also launch the expansion with n no of hype and expectation 90% of which will fall flat but that wont stop a million of player s to grab a copy of the expansion.
Tabula Rasa might have survived had they mad it F2P with cash option
Ahahaha this made me laugh but ok here we go:
01. WoW = 100%
02. Eve Online = 100%
03. Lotro = 100%
p.s. Dont laugh Azrile started it
Futilez[Do You Have What It Takes ?]
I definitely do not agree. Hard economic times will just make people seek cheap alternatives and thus cheap entertainment. Now that internet is a "must have" to many, the extra cost of an MMOG or two is something most can afford. It's cheaper than travel, partying, going to the movies, renting or buying DVDs, etc. If anything, I think current gamers will bring in more friends and family to MMOGs.
However, some MMOGs are definitely in the danger zone. Tabula Rasa is closing soon, and with the latest games closing down we've seen a more or less standard model for closing down a subscription game being developed, paving the way for other non-profitable titles to be axed by their investors without too much thought needed on how.
I won't speculate exactly which games will go down, as I have no interest in provoking their supporters or saddening their developers. Instead I wish them all the best. C'mon guys, you'll be fine. :-)
I'm such a nice guy. :-p
Define "large number". There haven't been that many MMOs going down yet, so 3 could be a large number for the genre. 3 might happen. 20 won't.
SONYoe. Do you really think they don't have money?
Hold on Snow Leopard, imma let you finish, but Windows had one of the best operating systems of all time.
If the Powerball lottery was like Lotro, nobody would win for 2 years, and then everyone in Nebraska would win on the same day.
And then Nebraska would get nerfed.-pinkwood lotro fourms
AMD 4800 2.4ghz-3GB RAM 533mhz-EVGA 9500GT 512mb-320gb HD
A console version and an expansion are the LAST things Funcom should be doing right now.
Development costs for a console version and especially an expansion would completely deplete whatever profits Funcom has made with AoC.
Also, whatever meager sales they could manage would be not be enough to off set the development costs and for high end graphics like AoC you can be assured the development costs would be rather high.
Funcom needs to build their reputation back up so people trust them before they release any new products, otherwise they would just be committing suicide.