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Is it the technology, capacity limitations, or the market, that is making everyone's dream of a real
markyturnip
Member UncommonPosts: 837
There have been many compelling fictional representations of what the great MMOs of the future could be - you know, large non-instanced contiguous worlds where people hang out and form vibrant communities, build cities and keeps, wage long multi-faceted campaigns against their opponents; where pvp happens all over the place, sometimes in huge numbers, sometimes in small epic struggles; where people craft fun stuff, unearth hidden secrets, explore the paths less trodden; where there is a sense of adventure rather than grind, of epic size yet tight communities, personal progression, yet realm-wide struggles; where genuine relationships are formed, creativity is encouraged etc etc
WoW was a passing first approximation, and was - whatever the haters say - the closest thing yet to a great MMORPG, but obviously falls below this standard on many level (no player housing! no guild halls! no real world city sieges! etc); and a slew of recent games have gone shockingly backwards in terms of the quality of product on offer (WAR, AOC - games far less accomplished than a game made four years before them).
What's going on?
I remain convinced this amazing genuine living breathing MMO is possible. iS more than just a pipe dream. Yet why are we faced with such a staggering string of pathetic duds?
Is it simply that today's networking technology can't cope? Or is it that the market won't support such a large endeavour? Or is there a fundamental lack of ambition?
I would love to hear opinions from people who have a clear sense of the industry right now. Wgy are we gaced with such an endless procession of turkeys?
Comments
My theory, I have coined it the "commercialization theory," is that innovation is lacking or absent in MMORPGs because of the tension between commercialized and immersion gamers.
Immersion gamers, unforutnately, though a sizable one, are a minority. Commercialized gaming --controlled gameplay, static works, parallel content, etc.-- is the industry standard.
Simply put, commercialized gamers need to UNSUBSCRIBED to commercialized games. I am playing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes right now for a trial, and it is the closest immersion game I have played in a very (very) long time.
My theory, I have coined it the "commercialization theory," is that innovation is lacking or absent in MMORPGs because of the tension between commercialized and immersion gamers.
Immersion gamers, unforutnately, though a sizable one, are a minority. Commercialized gaming --controlled gameplay, static works, parallel content, etc.-- is the industry standard.
Simply put, commercialized gamers need to UNSUBSCRIBED to commercialized games. I am playing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes right now for a trial, and it is the closest immersion game I have played in a very (very) long time.
I played vanguard and did not feel immersed at all, all i even liked about the game was diplomacy as everything else was just a carbon copy of every other game on the market atm, then i figured out you cant play diplomacy with other players and quit.
My theory, I have coined it the "commercialization theory," is that innovation is lacking or absent in MMORPGs because of the tension between commercialized and immersion gamers.
Immersion gamers, unforutnately, though a sizable one, are a minority. Commercialized gaming --controlled gameplay, static works, parallel content, etc.-- is the industry standard.
Simply put, commercialized gamers need to UNSUBSCRIBED to commercialized games. I am playing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes right now for a trial, and it is the closest immersion game I have played in a very (very) long time.
I played vanguard and did not feel immersed at all, all i even liked about the game was diplomacy as everything else was just a carbon copy of every other game on the market atm, then i figured out you cant play diplomacy with other players and quit.
I will not accept the role of Vanguard-defender, because it would be a dishonest one.
The immersion features include (a) open-and-diverse world; (b) non-parallel content; (c) varied options for leveling-up (diplomacy, crafting, and adventure; (d) diplomacy as a feature that is truly significant and somewhat innovative; (e) multiple travel options including your own ship; (f) class customization with (i) stats and (ii) other paths; (g) customization through (i) titles, (ii) racial mounts, (iii) appearance, (iv) other; (h) and more but I am leaving soon.
The problem is all of the above.
The markets the problem: What you want in a mmo might cost too much and appeal to a tiny amount of people. You need mass appeal to warrent large development costs. You cant have this dream mmo without a lot of highly skilled programmers/managers working for a long peroid of time....all while the product they are making is making nothing.
The markets wants something, gets it, hates it, then wants something else. In the blink of an eye millions of dollars of development can go down the tube if the audience turns on you. Its risky putting up hundreds of thousands or millions of doallars and resting most of that money on a highly emotional preteen-young adult audience. Also there is a dominant player in this market as well as expectations from the market segment.
Technology is the problem. You want it all, the best graphics, super realism, ever imaginable theme park attraction as well as sandbox elements. You want top notch sounds and voice overs for all of the thousands of npcs, as well as cinematics for quests. But you only have 50gigs of hard drive space, a single core cpu and a 2 year old card. Your not plopping down the $3,000 for the computers its going to take to run this game...are you? Remember your spending insane amounts of money developing this high quality game.....better make sure enough people can, and are willing to, spend a good chunk of change so they can pay you to play the game.
Capacity limitations is a problem. You probably want to play with a lot of people, have larger pvp or rvr battles.....really large and epic battles. You somehow have to fit tons of people into the same world, make it feel not too crowded, have enough mobs to satisfy all these players, and have it all run in sync and smoothly. How to fix the sync problem when some kid loggs on to his fax modem from Lagistan?
There are a lot more reasons beyond this why you might not be satisfied, developing a AAA mmorpg is no small feat. Perhaps this is a phase the industry is going through....its going to take another big success to break the current mold.
This is why you see a lot of low risk mmo's......Just like the dominant player in the game, not too much development time involved, low-medium tech....all an attempt to make everyone happy while making no one completely satisfied.
You gotta take mmo's for what they are.....a temporary source of entertainment. Enjoy it while you have fun then move on when it gets boring. Ignore the hype and play it for face value and you might end up liking the games more.
I think you're asking for a lot of opposites. Tight knit community, epic size world, and able to explore paths less trodden.
Decide whether you want a tight knit community, or an epic size world with paths less trodden that feels empty.
If you know how to put both in the same game, I'd certainly like to hear your idea.
My opinion is that it IS the technology, speciificallly the COST of the technology. When the cost comes down you'll see some different stuff, until then probably not.
when AMD came out with Pacifica and Ring 0 addressing truly monumental computing tasks became possible. It was possible with past Virtualization tech but the overhead was too great to make it work on things where latency was important. With Virtualization you couls build a database that only need to be plugged into another system to get almost 100% boost from the neighboring system. and you can keep doing this as long as you like provided the DB can feed the virtualized servers.you can even virtualize in steps to create a virtualized main database and thus eliminating the Bandwidth bottleneck such an operation would cause. Keep in mind HT3.0 backplanes have been around a couple years now.
so it isn't a technology issue. the prob I see is most computer users are a couple years behind on technology so the market wasn't quite there. I think it is now though with the advent of ATI stream computing, CUDA and DX11 offloading a huge workload to the GPU.
I think with the next batch of MMO's you will either be happy enough to wait for the matrix, or just doomed to wait for something you can't have because your imagination is faster than progress.
Feeling "lived-in" is also going to be impacted by world size. Devs could make a huge world populated by NPCs, but it might not be "lived-in" enough for you since real people would be rare to see.
I'm really not totally sure why building-construction/housing isn't found in more MMOs. Presumably it starts out on the planned items for a lot of MMOs but ends up being one of the cut things once the devs fully realize how much tech and content work has to go into it. Perhaps more accurate: how much effort has to go into it for it to really feel solid.
It's not without problems, but I don't see the problems as totally insurmountable. It's just a matter of finding the right limitations on buildings -- the right limits on where players can build, what they can build, and how they can modify what they build. Other games (AOC and Shadowbane pop to mind) have solved many of these problems before. But perhaps the effort required to make buildings work was why the rest of the game sucked (wasn't a huge fan of AOC or SB.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I'd have to say the market.
People say they want a world where their actions make a difference and there's a vibrant economy and advancement is based entirely on merit and death is something to be avoided and you don't have to play a billion hours a month just to keep up with the Jones'.
When people actually play an MMO like that (there's a few, EvE being the one that comes most immediately to mind), most people hate it because if your actions make a difference, so does everyone else's and lots of toes get stepped on (or stomped on, as the case may be), a fully functional economy means lots of competition, death that makes numbers go down and not up makes people feel they wasted their time, and game mechanics based on real time tend to annoy people because they can't grind (regardless of what they say about grinding).
The future of MMOs is the past - WoW is WoW, a game like that will never be made again. In order for this genre to move forward new games have to look back to their roots and realize MMOs will never be casual and have a very limited capacity to become mainstream. You can't take Joe the average casual gamer who plays Madden with his buddies on the weekends and stick him in a persistent environment and expect him to do well, without annoying all of your core customers.
I dislike the terms 'casual' and 'hardcore' because they're mostly meaningless terms used to sling mud. Games need to know the demographic their targeting their games at, pitch their games to that market, and be willing to accept that they can get a 200K-500K subs sure thing by making a good, solid, fun game for a relatively few people or get a flash in the pan like so many MMOs that have come out lately by trying to be all things to all people.
I was saying the same thing, but I said it's the technology, or rather the COST of the technology.
In other words, when you can make an MMORPG cheaply enough that you can make a big profit on your investment with 200K to 500k subs, THEN you'll see more of these requested niche games, until then you won't.
Hero Engine, being used now for TOR and several games still under NDA, drops down to 20K or something like that, plus bandwidth continues to get cheaper, adn then we'll have more options.
Its not tech cost, whilst they hinder smaller companies from exploring new things, the issue is the market. If the market would support these new things then the bigger companies would spend the money needed.
Hero Engine isn't sufficiently expensive that a large company can't make an MMO to do these things and aim for a return on 100,000 subs a year.
It is just that none of the large companies are interested in doing something unproven, therefore it is the market or rather the people who believe they know the market that is holding it all back.
I agree. Big studios think they can get more subscriptions by taking the short cut and making games the EQ/WoW way. They create a simple 3d world, invent a back story or buy an IP, throw in a lot of kill X quests and bring Y there quests, add some instances in form of minigames and raids, some itemization, the usual powers - levels - classes - progression system. And then all hope that gamers will swoon for their flashy new game. And all of them are looking at WoW's succes.
Big companies believe in linear, hold-your-hand, dumbed down games.. Bioware admits to this. Bioware's CEO loves WOW. They all do.
SWG had a lot of game breaking bugs, but it was the most ambitious mmo ever produced. They took it as a matter of fact to include housing, non-combat classes, in-depth crafting, expansive moveable ressource nodes, a large open worlds to explore... So despite all its failures it was very ambitious.
I think the next company to make a polished and (relatively) bug-free version of SWG could have a minor succes on its hands. Like EVE numbers. The market is there. Players do want it.
I also think the next WoW will not look like WoW (or EQ or Lotro or WAR or AoC) at all.. the next big succes will be something new and fresh.
Players want immersion and creating their own heroes and their own stories. A great mmo is a game where you can do all these things. Bioware seem to think they need to hold your hand (they even say it out loud). Mythic (WAR) seem to think you just need the usual mmo routines with some rvr and then the game won't be hollow and boring.
Development of mmos are expensive, but what gaming companies forget is that if they want to immerse players long enough to get that subscription fee for months - there must be variations to the gameplay. No matter how cool the combat system is (or isn't) - no matter how many stories BIOWARE will direct you through - no matter how many raid dungeons they create - no matter how many quests they add - if it feels old - feels repetitive, then it will not hold players interest for long..
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CASUAL CONFESSIONS - Draccan's blog
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Allot of good points and a couple missed marks so far.
I esp. agree about SWG and the dynamics that type of MMO brings to the players. But I will get down to my simple points..
The technology is there, the money is there all is needed is a company with the vision to realize that there are about 100k-750k player types willing to pay $15ish dollars a month (my best educated guess) for an MMO that fits in these guide lines and will stick with it (and IMHO most of these players have very stable incomes and will often pay for multiple accounts to secure their nitch if you will).
But for arguments sake this number is on the low end at 100k subs a year, that would be a company earning 1.5 mill a month from it's game and 18 mill a year....sounds like some damn good money to me. And on the high end (truthfully) is some wicked income. It's not the 10+ mill subs a year WoW has boasted, but like some others have pointed out..WoW just isn't enough for this smaller sect of MMO players who want a place to call their own in that world...a house, a city, a guild hall..a nitch.
That MMO build with a non generic in depth crafting system, character builds that you can change or hybrid, a pvp system that can be turned off and on (covert/overt), large area maps or worlds that have hubs (bars/cantinas/entertainers/markets) so you have areas that large numbers of people come together along with side paths and more secluded areas that would allow a secret surprise/discoveries (or a less trodden path as the OP hinted on), guilds that can war each other exclusively or add others, player made keeps/bases/cities that can be attacked/taken or destroyed adds so much for the pvpers who want to protect something they made and own or for those who want to destroy a thing that means something to your enemies and give them the feeling of loss....or victory for you if you prevail.
SOE "could" have had a decent player base (at least 500k+ IMHO, that's 7.5+ mill a month) with SWG if they had stuck with their guns in the first place, but they didn't and they alienated the majority of that original very loyal player base by basically flushing 1-3 years of MMO immersion that those players put into it.
So in closing a smart company could take that model for SWG and enhance it with some newer technologies + some of the newer ideas that are great from other games (UI modding and such..thumbs up to cursegaming) and run with it. Hell allot of the prework and ideas are already done (yes people have been using others ideas and expanding and or profiting on them since before the wheel) I would estimate at least a solid 5-10 years of life for a game like this (prob more like 10-20 years+ if ran right...maybe a part 2 in 20 years tho with the advancment of tech and all)) at, at least 500k-1 mill subs a year.
PIRATE LORDS
The engine is just one cost of production. You also need developers, artists, animators, writers, marketing, bandwidth, etc.
IMO, it's still the cost. 18 million a year by your calculations is GROSS, not profit. It's not "damn good money" till you pay your overhead.
It's hard to say since neither of us has access to accurate numbers. But, in an article on the homepage here at MMORPG.com, watching trends, it says the F2P games are spending close to ten million on production of the game alone.
The AAA games are spending upwards of 50 million. 18 million a year minus overhead wouldn't cut it for that sort of budget.
Don't forget there are always new and fresh players too. They start as babies, grow up to be teens, and start playing video games. For them, WoW, EQ, Lotro, etc. is new and fresh.
I think we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that the only player base is jaded players that have played a bunch of MMORPGs already, but that's not the case.
The engine is just one cost of production. You also need developers, artists, animators, writers, marketing, bandwidth, etc.
IMO, it's still the cost. 18 million a year by your calculations is GROSS, not profit. It's not "damn good money" till you pay your overhead.
It's hard to say since neither of us has access to accurate numbers. But, in an article on the homepage here at MMORPG.com, watching trends, it says the F2P games are spending close to ten million on production of the game alone.
The AAA games are spending upwards of 50 million. 18 million a year minus overhead wouldn't cut it for that sort of budget.
Any argument about this can go on and on so I will just respond with simple points.
1. I know business and know how to run one, grew up in a family business and have since created a couple from the ground up. I have also worked closely with the automotive industry and have good intel on what they gross/net/profit/pay their workers + benifits/insurance etc And any company that can basically do all of it's work within a "lets face it" relatively small patch of real estate safe and away from any harmfull evironmental conditions and no real dangers inside from blowing themselves up etc. . With a staff of 50 or less people and all of the above conditions 18 mill a year is damn good money EVEN if it only profits a mill a year.......
2. Success is mainly dependant on how smart it's ran and failure usually depends on how greedy you get and how lazy your employiees can be if left unchecked and of course if you carry on misstreating your customer base.
3. IE. don't pay 100 jack a$$es 80-100k a year for a job that 20 can do, then you can afford a decent CSR team to handle the PR work. In the end, It all comes down to how smart the person is running the operation.
EDIT-
4. With this model 20 ppl at 100k a year=2 mill, + 30 at 40k a year= 1.2 mill is a total of 3.2 mill a year...lets say 5 mill in tech equipment= 8.2 mill for that 1st year and lets add another 5 mill for production and marketing and content creation...thats 12.2 mill for that first year leaving over 5 mill so lets take half of that and buy the staff an investment/health package at 2.5 mill.
And yourr gonna try and tell me a profit margin of 2-3 mill a year and some very comfortable and happy employees isn't a damn good thing?? or damn good money??? AND this is at the smallest of a projected scale of a customer base of 100k subs.........not to mention any monies from expansions or release...release being a base $50 for the game= ANOTHER 5 mill and then any expansions wich would tipically bring 1-5 mill ave.. AGAIN these are the extreme low end specs.....dude.
PIRATE LORDS
The engine is just one cost of production. You also need developers, artists, animators, writers, marketing, bandwidth, etc.
IMO, it's still the cost. 18 million a year by your calculations is GROSS, not profit. It's not "damn good money" till you pay your overhead.
It's hard to say since neither of us has access to accurate numbers. But, in an article on the homepage here at MMORPG.com, watching trends, it says the F2P games are spending close to ten million on production of the game alone.
The AAA games are spending upwards of 50 million. 18 million a year minus overhead wouldn't cut it for that sort of budget.
Any argument about this can go on and on so I will just respond with simple points.
1. I know business and know how to run one, grew up in a family business and have since created a couple from the ground up. I have also worked closely with the automotive industry and have good intel on what they gross/net/profit/pay their workers + benifits/insurance etc And any company that can basically do all of it's work within a "lets face it" relatively small patch of real estate safe and away from any harmfull evironmental conditions and no real dangers inside from blowing themselves up etc. . With a staff of 50 or less people and all of the above conditions 18 mill a year is damn good money EVEN if it only profits a mill a year.......
2. Success is mainly dependant on how smart it's ran and failure usually depends on how greedy you get and how lazy your employiees can be if left unchecked and of course if you carry on misstreating your customer base.
3. IE. don't pay 100 jack a$$es 80-100k a year for a job that 20 can do, then you can afford a decent CSR team to handle the PR work. In the end, It all comes down to how smart the person is running the operation.
I believe you. Get some capital together, buy the Hero Engine, hire some good developers, outsource your 3d artwork and animation to Hong Kong or Singapore, and I'll pay the 14.95 a month to play the game you produce.
But something is wrong with this picture. There's all that money lying on the table, and NOBODY is willing to pick it up? It seems like if the numbers really do work, then SOMEBODY would cash in on this.
I have a hard time believing theres' millions laying around for the taking, but NOBODY will take, because they're all so evil and greedy they pass it up betting on Billions.
Really, NOBODY wants this money? Surely somebody must want this 18 mill a month.
The engine is just one cost of production. You also need developers, artists, animators, writers, marketing, bandwidth, etc.
IMO, it's still the cost. 18 million a year by your calculations is GROSS, not profit. It's not "damn good money" till you pay your overhead.
It's hard to say since neither of us has access to accurate numbers. But, in an article on the homepage here at MMORPG.com, watching trends, it says the F2P games are spending close to ten million on production of the game alone.
The AAA games are spending upwards of 50 million. 18 million a year minus overhead wouldn't cut it for that sort of budget.
Any argument about this can go on and on so I will just respond with simple points.
1. I know business and know how to run one, grew up in a family business and have since created a couple from the ground up. I have also worked closely with the automotive industry and have good intel on what they gross/net/profit/pay their workers + benifits/insurance etc And any company that can basically do all of it's work within a "lets face it" relatively small patch of real estate safe and away from any harmfull evironmental conditions and no real dangers inside from blowing themselves up etc. . With a staff of 50 or less people and all of the above conditions 18 mill a year is damn good money EVEN if it only profits a mill a year.......
2. Success is mainly dependant on how smart it's ran and failure usually depends on how greedy you get and how lazy your employiees can be if left unchecked and of course if you carry on misstreating your customer base.
3. IE. don't pay 100 jack a$$es 80-100k a year for a job that 20 can do, then you can afford a decent CSR team to handle the PR work. In the end, It all comes down to how smart the person is running the operation.
I believe you. Get some capital together, buy the Hero Engine, hire some good developers, outsource your 3d artwork and animation to Hong Kong or Singapore, and I'll pay the 14.95 a month to play the game you produce.
But something is wrong with this picture. There's all that money lying on the table, and NOBODY is willing to pick it up? It seems like if the numbers really do work, then SOMEBODY would cash in on this.
I have a hard time believing theres' millions laying around for the taking, but NOBODY will take, because they're all so evil and greedy they pass it up betting on Billions.
Really, NOBODY wants this money? Surely somebody must want this 18 mill a month.
I am the gamer now not someone who wants to put my foot up more slackers a$$es every week but that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about...and oh ya there are companies trying to get this money...THERE IS A WHOLE FREAKING LIST OF THEM ON THIS WEBSITE!!!! Imagine that, oh that's right this website is padded by proceeds of that same money we are taking about LOL in some way shape or form. Or either there are some more immersed gamers than you or I.
PIRATE LORDS
I have the money, now show me hard proof that your vision of an MMO will work.
I want working examples already in the market place before I will give you $18 million, cause I'm not going to give you that money unless I know I will get it back.
THAT is the problem, whilst as gamers we may believe we know that this market exists, without any real proof, no one with money is going to invest in it. Even the publisher I work for isn't about to put up that kind of money on an unproven game design, even though all of us who would work on it just know through and through that this can work.
I think that's the major issue right there.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
If you have the money and are serious then contact me in private and set up a meeting, if you're legit then I could spend some extra hours and get some hard proof of the numbers via contacts (I have lots of free time).
Hell I even know a MMO passionate long term guidie/beta tester/content advisor/tech who would put in some of his free time and could even lead the project for ya since his relax money is about to run out. Hell my wife (who is a 3D animator) would put in some free time for it I'm sure. (all of us long time MMO gamers as well all the way back to the beginning with UO and EQ)
Hellofa start for joo...but if your not serious then I'm not gonna spend any more time on it that posting my opinion and questioning if you had a valid point without the smoke since there seems to be many companies trying to get our monies but most not even holding our main attention after the first few months because of a poor exicution. The list of those companies can be found within this website. But the proof is here within these forums on the lips of the customer base, the proof is on the lips of quite a few companies (often x-)employees. The proof isn't that hard to find for someone with the smarts and the will to find it.
I understand what you are saying but I've seen the numbers and I know a very large player base. IE I talk/talked/gamed with them read game chats for years now, know people who work/have worked with some of these companies.
PIRATE LORDS
I'm gonna add another possible cause; the players.
What your vision of a "perfect" MMO is does not match mine. Neither is wrong. The problem is that you'd be hard-pressed to design such a game unless you included everything that everyone wants, which is impossible.
A quick example would be open world pvp. Some want it, some don't. Some want it with limitations, others with FFA. So, right on this one aspect alone we have conflicting visions. You can't offer both when they are at opposites.
The only solution is to have different rules per server. Can you imagine the impact if you took this further: servers 1 thru 5 operate with these rules, 6-8 are these rules, server 9 is a niche server for those who prefer....
Since that would obviously be a disaster, the only other choice is two different games. But for many, neither of those games quite meets their "perfect" game, so you create a third game. And another, and so on til you have what we see today.
So I say that "everyone's dream" isn't possible because it that dream doesn't exist. We might all desire that same goal, but that perfect end-product is different for each of us.
This is true, different markets or demographic of sorts are always in play...
A) do I go for hard core pvpers or the pvers?
C) do we want to cover everything???
So on and so forth...BTW if you chose C) then you would have failed since the OP outlined some specifics and his focus is what I responded to but your response is outside of his basic outline.
PIRATE LORDS
In a perfect world Technology and the Market goes hand in hand, but we do not live in a perfect world. The Cost of Technology and the improvements of said technology sometimes far outstrips the market ability to afford the increase in costs.
Take Window Vista for example, the hype was vast improvement in operating software, the reality was that Microsoft screwed up. Vista by far was too buggy, security nightmare and with game developers and publishers making games for only vista put the hurt on the folks who could not afford to upgrade thier systems to Vista and were still using XP and this hurts the market in both the short term and long term.
And since the market is now in a world wide recession, the cost of technology has become too expensive for the poor to low/medium income families. There are several MMO's that are in danger of being scrapped or delayed until further notice due to the recession in the world wide market.
Star Trek Online forums, different postings suggest different things but it looks like from one dev post that in order to play STO one must have a super fast system capable of handing ultra-high graphics. Since everyone is not the same and only a small portion of the community namely those who can afford to get faster systems will be abled to afford to play Star Trek Online leaving the rest of us in the dirt and far behind.
Seems to me that companies like Netdevil and Bioware do not bother to know what is going on with the large segment of the recession market population, they rather rely on the so can fanboy and fangirls and other mouthpieces giving them light at the tunnel speeches and not bothering to look at the reality of the market economy during the recession.
Someone mentioned SWG. I was a beta tester for SWG before the freaking exodus. If they had BOTHER TO LISTEN TO US TELL THEM THAT THE NEW GAME ENVIROMENT WAS A FREAKING BAD IDEA THEN THERE WOULD HAVE NOT BEEN A MASSIVE EXODUS and loss of over 50% of the subscriber base.
The current subscriber base for SWG is the same after the exodus, not many have come back, even though they sort of fixed most of the problems that came with the NGE it is still screwed up.
Bioware's effort to create a new SWG type game based on the Old Republic is laudable at it's best but they have been looking also at the lucas arts ent devs NGE idea which could be a bad thing since this is the same NGE idea that caused the massive exodus from SWG. You do the math? Would you really fork over investment money or pay to play a game that uses the same formula that caused a massive loss of subscrbers in another mmo?
As you all know Netdevil's JGE been delayed due to reasons that are not the acutal reasons, loss of investors is one reason for the delay. Netdevil is not a super large company like SOE, EA and few others. Not having enough $$$ to contiune development can delay the launch date of a game. But they never going to mentioned that in public. One can only SPECULATE after reading between the lines in the official forums.
It will come a time when the spending forces of the market will not be abled to handle the techology improvements. No matter how many morons say that the technology has no bearing on the market or that the market will be abled to ride out the world wide recession, they are telling you falsehoods to lure you into a false sense of security.
There are way too many MMO's in development and a finite number of people and money. With the high costs of education and high demand for computer system trained people, the market recession has a major impact on the number of people getting a education.
hopefully Mortal online will give me something to sink my teeth into.
Unfortunately, I think it simply boils down to the return on investment game developers can get with their MMO product. Based on the success, albeit, short-lived success of many cookie-cutter MMOs lately, I'm sure developers prefer the lower risk approach of a simple, highly instanced MMO. Low investment and they sell a ton of boxes with a good marketing and sales approach. They make money and then the game shrivels to a small number of subscribers and they put in on maintenance mode and move on to their next big box seller.
On the other hand, games like Vanguard had a huge investment and long development time to create the immersive world you describe. But because of the disasterous launch and the length of time it took to fix the game the Vanguard subscriber base is now small. For the investors in this game, I'm sure they never saw a return. Other developers will look at this and shy away from the high-risk, high investment approach and stick with the quick 'one-and done' type of MMOs.