You don't have to like it but social and causal is the key for the next generation online gaming.
The online community has discovered themselves in a live online socail environment after getting lost in virtual worlds with writers/actors/bots packed with costly but worthless virtual items. Yes, I believe most farmville players don't really spend in or even play the game but free social entertainment is a lot better than $1,000 a month credit card bills a month on 'games'.
But how much profit does it provide compared to a moderately successful commercial MMORPG?
I find your question interesting.
In my opinion they probably make a hell of a lot more than a MMO.
Think about it a minute.
You know paid advertisement that hits the eye of the beholder is know advertisement. They know it was seen, you see. Now every page has a banner add or two which is paid advertisement. Most of those spots are nickel and dime a shot, Talk about nickel and dimming to death, paid so if for instance 10% of the player base hits that site every day they make about a quarter a hit. that is 7,000,000 x $.25 and it isn't chicken feed.
The ONLY reason for farmville's popularity is the fact that its FACEBOOK.
Anyone who truly believes that this is some kind of revolutionary paradigm shifting event must be hit in the head, millions of people play games not dissimilar to TETRIS on websites and social networking sites when they're bored. All kinds of simple shit is insanely popular among the non-gamers on the web.
It's an INSULT to the mmo to even start a thread like this.
Also everything Robsolf and Wizardry said...
- Shijeer
It's not the game that even matters but the implementation of it into an environment that alot of people are interested in. Anybody that has been playing MMO for the past 10-15 years knows that today's *WOW* format is a dead one. I'm a hardcore gamer 34+ years gaming experience all genre', and their isn't a single game thats been released in the past 5 years worth the money they want for the title. The survival element of any modern day game or older games was the social element/community. These were cyber communities. Imagine if that community is based off of real life friends to begin with. That is the premise of Farmville regardless of how silly a game it actually is. If you think that future MMO's are going to follow the current path of MMO's and be successful then you are sadly mistaken. Just look at Warhammer or any recent title as an example. All flops. Back up till you remember when EQ2 was pay by the hour and get back to me. As for me i play FV and many facebook games just to kill time and from a future perspective unless a game is designed that promotes gaming based off social networking then my gamer career may like many others be permanently over.
But how much profit does it provide compared to a moderately successful commercial MMORPG?
I find your question interesting.
In my opinion they probably make a hell of a lot more than a MMO.
Think about it a minute.
You know paid advertisement that hits the eye of the beholder is know advertisement. They know it was seen, you see. Now every page has a banner add or two which is paid advertisement. Most of those spots are nickel and dime a shot, Talk about nickel and dimming to death, paid so if for instance 10% of the player base hits that site every day they make about a quarter a hit. that is 7,000,000 x $.25 and it isn't chicken feed.
To further the thought of how much money they make to your statement, which is completely true. They make mucho dinero through paid "sub-programs" that work with Farmville in order to turn a profit. For instance, you can get free farmville dollars(I think that's the currency) for subscribing to Netflix, Blockbuster Rentals, and so on. They have to turn a decent profit from that. In addition, people do spend money on this game in it's basic form. I couldn't tell you how many people I know on facebook have these massive farms and unique items you can only get through real money. And yes, the big kahuna is advertising. Not to mention Zynga has TONS of games doing this exact thing, including Mafia Wars. This company is quite impressive and has to make an obscene amount of money annually.
With that said, if a facebook mmo was done right, it could be the biggest thing ever to hit the mmo genre. Playing an mmo in which the general public thought was cool and girls, moms, dads, sisters, daughters, and so on played...that would be quite interesting and disturbing.
I still don't know if it's truely possible though, since I think farmville is a joke. I mean c'mon, it's more work then fun from word go.
The survival element of any modern day game or older games was the social element/community. These were cyber communities. Imagine if that community is based off of real life friends to begin with. That is the premise of Farmville regardless of how silly a game it actually is. .
Whoever in the mmo community don’t believe this are in self denial. Let’s take a look at mmorpg like Runescape. This social and causal game is enormously successful with millions of active unique players plus head turning amount of traffic from brand name main stream businesses. What keeps it going and going and going like the Eveready Bunny is not the grind in farming herbs or chopping trees for 15 years. Players go there to hang out with their friends and families. You don’t need to argue about sand box or theme park, instance or open world, or whatnot. As long as the players enjoy the company of the social and causal community even throwing snowballs at each other can be fun and enough to keep them in the game.
But how much profit does it provide compared to a moderately successful commercial MMORPG?
I find your question interesting.
In my opinion they probably make a hell of a lot more than a MMO.
Think about it a minute.
You know paid advertisement that hits the eye of the beholder is know advertisement. They know it was seen, you see. Now every page has a banner add or two which is paid advertisement. Most of those spots are nickel and dime a shot, Talk about nickel and dimming to death, paid so if for instance 10% of the player base hits that site every day they make about a quarter a hit. that is 7,000,000 x $.25 and it isn't chicken feed.
To further the thought of how much money they make to your statement, which is completely true. They make mucho dinero through paid "sub-programs" that work with Farmville in order to turn a profit. For instance, you can get free farmville dollars(I think that's the currency) for subscribing to Netflix, Blockbuster Rentals, and so on. They have to turn a decent profit from that. In addition, people do spend money on this game in it's basic form. I couldn't tell you how many people I know on facebook have these massive farms and unique items you can only get through real money. And yes, the big kahuna is advertising. Not to mention Zynga has TONS of games doing this exact thing, including Mafia Wars. This company is quite impressive and has to make an obscene amount of money annually.
With that said, if a facebook mmo was done right, it could be the biggest thing ever to hit the mmo genre. Playing an mmo in which the general public thought was cool and girls, moms, dads, sisters, daughters, and so on played...that would be quite interesting and disturbing.
I still don't know if it's truely possible though, since I think farmville is a joke. I mean c'mon, it's more work then fun from word go.
Farmville alone may be a joke. What about we add Mineville, Chopville, Fishville, Slayville and add more activites like events and minigames to Facebook, Twitter et al? You get a proven successful mmo business model going strong since 10 years ago.
Don't underestimate those nickles and dimes. Chewing gums may be nickles and dimes a pack but they made Wrightley a multi-billion dollar bussiness. Nobody will buy billions of dollars worth of chewing gums at a time but if you put them at the check-out counters of all those stores they add up to billions.
You do know that Farmville is a rip off of the most succesful game in China, Happy Farms, right?
And it's estimated that Happy Farms has 100 million players. I have no idea why, but everyone here seems to play it, even my wife who has only been using a PC for just over a month now is in on the act.
It too allows you to play only with the friends you want to play with from the outset, it's geared into a local Facebook style networking site, which actually offers more functionality than Facebook from the little I understand (it includes a VOIP client with integrated video for example).
My point? Really there are 170 million people playing Farmville, and I still don't want to play.
These are games for the non-gamer who just wants an excuse to interact with their mates, not MMORPG's. I find it hard to believe that anyone role-plays a Farmer Giles voice to play this game (not including the Chinese who in part love this game because of their deep ties with farming communities and their own farming pasts (my wife grew up on a farm for example)) it just gives them something to talk to each other on Facebook about when they've run out of interesting stories about taking the hamster to the vet, or little James' first day at school...
You do know that Farmville is a rip off of the most succesful game in China, Happy Farms, right? And it's estimated that Happy Farms has 100 million players. I have no idea why, but everyone here seems to play it, even my wife who has only been using a PC for just over a month now is in on the act. It too allows you to play only with the friends you want to play with from the outset, it's geared into a local Facebook style networking site, which actually offers more functionality than Facebook from the little I understand (it includes a VOIP client with integrated video for example). My point? Really there are 170 million people playing Farmville, and I still don't want to play. These are games for the non-gamer who just wants an excuse to interact with their mates, not MMORPG's. I find it hard to believe that anyone role-plays a Farmer Giles voice to play this game (not including the Chinese who in part love this game because of their deep ties with farming communities and their own farming pasts (my wife grew up on a farm for example)) it just gives them something to talk to each other on Facebook about when they've run out of interesting stories about taking the hamster to the vet, or little James' first day at school...
The point is: mmo, particulary mmorpg players are slowly migrating to Facebook and such. You may be one of those in self denial but it is happening. Nobody believed online games would kill Atari and Acclaim before it happened but it did happen and happened swiftly. Same thing is happening now. MMO is in its twilight.
People don't go to Facebook to 'play' Farmville. They go there to social while they find themselves an excuse of doing some dummy farming. Why do they give up playing in mmorpg? Because they no longer find themselves really 'playing' mmorpg. Things are repetitive and they don't find the adventures and immersion they hope to find in mmorpg, and they find they are paying for them for not much fun. In Facebook, they do whatever they do normally plus interact with more candid people. That's what draw them over.
You do know that Farmville is a rip off of the most succesful game in China, Happy Farms, right? And it's estimated that Happy Farms has 100 million players. I have no idea why, but everyone here seems to play it, even my wife who has only been using a PC for just over a month now is in on the act. It too allows you to play only with the friends you want to play with from the outset, it's geared into a local Facebook style networking site, which actually offers more functionality than Facebook from the little I understand (it includes a VOIP client with integrated video for example). My point? Really there are 170 million people playing Farmville, and I still don't want to play. These are games for the non-gamer who just wants an excuse to interact with their mates, not MMORPG's. I find it hard to believe that anyone role-plays a Farmer Giles voice to play this game (not including the Chinese who in part love this game because of their deep ties with farming communities and their own farming pasts (my wife grew up on a farm for example)) it just gives them something to talk to each other on Facebook about when they've run out of interesting stories about taking the hamster to the vet, or little James' first day at school...
The point is: mmo, particulary mmorpg players are slowly migrating to Facebook and such. You may be one of those in self denial but it is happening. Nobody believed online games would kill Atari and Acclaim before it happened but it did happen and happened swiftly. Same thing is happening now. MMO is in its twilight.
People don't go to Facebook to 'play' Farmville. They go there to social while they find themselves an excuse of doing some dummy farming. Why do they give up playing in mmorpg? Because they no longer find themselves really 'playing' mmorpg. Things are repetitive and they don't find the adventures and immersion they hope to find in mmorpg, and they find they are paying for them for not much fun. In Facebook, they do whatever they do normally plus interact with more candid people. That's what draw them over.
But gaming's not dead because a couple of games companies bit the dust over the years, in fact gaming is more and more popular everyday.
I'm not in denial, there's two markets out there, one utterly happy with Facebook gaming, one who needs more, sometimes these aren't exclusive of each other (I have friends who play farmville and mmo's) but they are truly separate anyway.
Facebook in it's current format will not give you a satisfying MMO experience, and I love Facebook and have made some wonderful friends on there who are now real life friends too (though even my VPN access is blocked from China so I don't use it much at the moment) but it's not a substitute for gaming, all the games I have tried on Facebook were deeply unsatisfying and some of those using micro-payments to speed up game play would work out more expensive than subscribing to three or four premium products in their own right.
The computer game is not dead, it is evolving. The same is true for MMO's but Facebook is not a genre killer, the Asian market barely touches Facebook, they use other social networking sites, and are you going to say the Asian MMO market is dead too? Agreed the grind-fest of Asian games may not be for everyone, but they are amazingly popular.
The worst part for a long time mmo gamer, is that you can get sucked in with good intentions. Here is what happened to me:
My soon to be wife is not a gamer, but plays all the facebook games I think. She is particularly fond of Zoo World. She was having a hard time getting a number of the free animals that have to be gifted by other players, so she asked me to help her by making an account and seeing if I could send her some animals. 24 hours later I had 300+ friends in Zoo World and had managed to acquire the animals she needed and send them to her. And here is the bad part, I find myself still checking in on the stupid zoo from time to time. The games are generally simple, and mildly entertaining, usally free and distract you very easily. I don't know that they will ever pull the average mmo player away, but they certainly have tons of their own players/customers.
First of all, I want to talk about social networks, Asian ones included, not just Facebook.
Now they don’t have many interesting games to offer but certainly can add more. They probably can’t do it overnight but there is no reason to believe Farmvile won’t evolve into Runeville with all the Runescape features. When it happens then Runescape will lose players. They can add a World of FaceCraft with emphasis on endgame raids. Then WoW may bite the dust. I think this is going to happen. I am not sure if the social network will give birth to their own Runeville or WoF or just adopt our Runescape and WoW.
Remember one important thing, social networks have the ability to draw money from main stream businesses while mmorpg in general have problem finding their sugar daddies. Money makes the world goes round, social networks certainly have more muscles in making better games than mmorpg. This mean mmorpg players will shift to their sides if they haven’t already.
First of all, I want to talk about social networks, Asian ones included, not just Facebook. Now they don’t have many interesting games to offer but certainly can add more. They probably can’t do it overnight but there is no reason to believe Farmvile won’t evolve into Runeville with all the Runescape features. When it happens then Runescape will lose players. They can add a World of FaceCraft with emphasis on endgame raids. Then WoW may bite the dust. I think this is going to happen. I am not sure if the social network will give birth to their own Runeville or WoF or just adopt our Runescape and WoW. Remember one important thing, social networks have the ability to draw money from main stream businesses while mmorpg in general have problem finding their sugar daddies. Money makes the world goes round, social networks certainly have more muscles in making better games than mmorpg. This mean mmorpg players will shift to their sides if they haven’t already.
If and when Facebook (or insert social networking site here) can fully integrate a gaming platform (not the updates from WoW for example, but the whole game) that would be great, but you'd still need to find a way to pay for it (development of WoW style games costs quite a bit more than Farmville for example) and the MMORPG wouldn't be dead, it would be enhanced by being able to draw your actual friends in, as well as playing with other random folks.
That's a win-win, I'd actually like to see games (WoW excluded) draw in more of a broad based audience, with less emphasis on noob-bashing and more on community and fun. That's a development I would happily support in MMORPG's but I'm willing to bet that many developers, even given this kind of integrated opportunity, won't want to pay Facebook (or insert social networking site here) a slice of their revenue stream and will continue to develop stand alone titles.
I think social networking sites can enhance gaming in MMO's anyway, they make a good place to collate all dev news for example, so I don't have to visit the WoW, EVE, WAR, Lotro, etc. websites but can just pick up all the news I want in one easy synopsis. That would be great, and is certainly starting to come as an emerging trend on these sites.
Only reason any of those Facebook games have a lot of people is they pretty much force you to Spam your contact list in order to advance. You cannot move beyond a certain point unless you have X number of neighbours, posse, clan, etc so you invite everyone you know. Add to the fact it asks you to send out invites each time you play. And the fact it Spams your "accomplishments" to everyone's walls. I hated Facebook before this trend started, but it was the straw that pushed me off completely.
Only reason any of those Facebook games have a lot of people is they pretty much force you to Spam your contact list in order to advance. You cannot move beyond a certain point unless you have X number of neighbours, posse, clan, etc so you invite everyone you know. Add to the fact it asks you to send out invites each time you play. And the fact it Spams your "accomplishments" to everyone's walls. I hated Facebook before this trend started, but it was the straw that pushed me off completely.
It's actually a personal choice. All my friends and neighbors are real life friends that i've known well before the name Facebook was ever even thought of. What separates it is the ability to do many thing at once. If you get bored farmvilling you go play poker or you go play Castle Age etc, etc. I remember when the concept of MMO games was incredibly fun. Once they made games no longer require friends to advance the defining element of MMO's died.
First gen MMOs flourished with socialization. It was great benefit to group unlike today. WoW was just a crack in the spine that evolved into a game like Warhammer where folks logged in and never seen a word in general chat for several weeks. I lasted a month in that game before quitting. I dream of a single breath of the old school MMO experience but its gone forever. It cant be recreated well it could but i don't see it ever happening.
Grind, level and gear are a dead gaming concept. We want no more of that. It's old and boring. Current MMO's only encompass a very small market potential. 10 million subscribers like WOW claims is a measly number compared to future prospects via social network based games that can touch the entire globe not through advertising but through word of mouth from family and friends.
Comments
You don't have to like it but social and causal is the key for the next generation online gaming.
The online community has discovered themselves in a live online socail environment after getting lost in virtual worlds with writers/actors/bots packed with costly but worthless virtual items. Yes, I believe most farmville players don't really spend in or even play the game but free social entertainment is a lot better than $1,000 a month credit card bills a month on 'games'.
http://www.cityofeternals.com/
Oh snap! =/
erepublik.com
Oh snap !
- Shijeer
I find your question interesting.
In my opinion they probably make a hell of a lot more than a MMO.
Think about it a minute.
You know paid advertisement that hits the eye of the beholder is know advertisement. They know it was seen, you see. Now every page has a banner add or two which is paid advertisement. Most of those spots are nickel and dime a shot, Talk about nickel and dimming to death, paid so if for instance 10% of the player base hits that site every day they make about a quarter a hit. that is 7,000,000 x $.25 and it isn't chicken feed.
It's not the game that even matters but the implementation of it into an environment that alot of people are interested in. Anybody that has been playing MMO for the past 10-15 years knows that today's *WOW* format is a dead one. I'm a hardcore gamer 34+ years gaming experience all genre', and their isn't a single game thats been released in the past 5 years worth the money they want for the title. The survival element of any modern day game or older games was the social element/community. These were cyber communities. Imagine if that community is based off of real life friends to begin with. That is the premise of Farmville regardless of how silly a game it actually is. If you think that future MMO's are going to follow the current path of MMO's and be successful then you are sadly mistaken. Just look at Warhammer or any recent title as an example. All flops. Back up till you remember when EQ2 was pay by the hour and get back to me. As for me i play FV and many facebook games just to kill time and from a future perspective unless a game is designed that promotes gaming based off social networking then my gamer career may like many others be permanently over.
I find your question interesting.
In my opinion they probably make a hell of a lot more than a MMO.
Think about it a minute.
You know paid advertisement that hits the eye of the beholder is know advertisement. They know it was seen, you see. Now every page has a banner add or two which is paid advertisement. Most of those spots are nickel and dime a shot, Talk about nickel and dimming to death, paid so if for instance 10% of the player base hits that site every day they make about a quarter a hit. that is 7,000,000 x $.25 and it isn't chicken feed.
To further the thought of how much money they make to your statement, which is completely true. They make mucho dinero through paid "sub-programs" that work with Farmville in order to turn a profit. For instance, you can get free farmville dollars(I think that's the currency) for subscribing to Netflix, Blockbuster Rentals, and so on. They have to turn a decent profit from that. In addition, people do spend money on this game in it's basic form. I couldn't tell you how many people I know on facebook have these massive farms and unique items you can only get through real money. And yes, the big kahuna is advertising. Not to mention Zynga has TONS of games doing this exact thing, including Mafia Wars. This company is quite impressive and has to make an obscene amount of money annually.
With that said, if a facebook mmo was done right, it could be the biggest thing ever to hit the mmo genre. Playing an mmo in which the general public thought was cool and girls, moms, dads, sisters, daughters, and so on played...that would be quite interesting and disturbing.
I still don't know if it's truely possible though, since I think farmville is a joke. I mean c'mon, it's more work then fun from word go.
Whoever in the mmo community don’t believe this are in self denial. Let’s take a look at mmorpg like Runescape. This social and causal game is enormously successful with millions of active unique players plus head turning amount of traffic from brand name main stream businesses. What keeps it going and going and going like the Eveready Bunny is not the grind in farming herbs or chopping trees for 15 years. Players go there to hang out with their friends and families. You don’t need to argue about sand box or theme park, instance or open world, or whatnot. As long as the players enjoy the company of the social and causal community even throwing snowballs at each other can be fun and enough to keep them in the game.
I find your question interesting.
In my opinion they probably make a hell of a lot more than a MMO.
Think about it a minute.
You know paid advertisement that hits the eye of the beholder is know advertisement. They know it was seen, you see. Now every page has a banner add or two which is paid advertisement. Most of those spots are nickel and dime a shot, Talk about nickel and dimming to death, paid so if for instance 10% of the player base hits that site every day they make about a quarter a hit. that is 7,000,000 x $.25 and it isn't chicken feed.
To further the thought of how much money they make to your statement, which is completely true. They make mucho dinero through paid "sub-programs" that work with Farmville in order to turn a profit. For instance, you can get free farmville dollars(I think that's the currency) for subscribing to Netflix, Blockbuster Rentals, and so on. They have to turn a decent profit from that. In addition, people do spend money on this game in it's basic form. I couldn't tell you how many people I know on facebook have these massive farms and unique items you can only get through real money. And yes, the big kahuna is advertising. Not to mention Zynga has TONS of games doing this exact thing, including Mafia Wars. This company is quite impressive and has to make an obscene amount of money annually.
With that said, if a facebook mmo was done right, it could be the biggest thing ever to hit the mmo genre. Playing an mmo in which the general public thought was cool and girls, moms, dads, sisters, daughters, and so on played...that would be quite interesting and disturbing.
I still don't know if it's truely possible though, since I think farmville is a joke. I mean c'mon, it's more work then fun from word go.
Farmville alone may be a joke. What about we add Mineville, Chopville, Fishville, Slayville and add more activites like events and minigames to Facebook, Twitter et al? You get a proven successful mmo business model going strong since 10 years ago.
Don't underestimate those nickles and dimes. Chewing gums may be nickles and dimes a pack but they made Wrightley a multi-billion dollar bussiness. Nobody will buy billions of dollars worth of chewing gums at a time but if you put them at the check-out counters of all those stores they add up to billions.
You do know that Farmville is a rip off of the most succesful game in China, Happy Farms, right?
And it's estimated that Happy Farms has 100 million players. I have no idea why, but everyone here seems to play it, even my wife who has only been using a PC for just over a month now is in on the act.
It too allows you to play only with the friends you want to play with from the outset, it's geared into a local Facebook style networking site, which actually offers more functionality than Facebook from the little I understand (it includes a VOIP client with integrated video for example).
My point? Really there are 170 million people playing Farmville, and I still don't want to play.
These are games for the non-gamer who just wants an excuse to interact with their mates, not MMORPG's. I find it hard to believe that anyone role-plays a Farmer Giles voice to play this game (not including the Chinese who in part love this game because of their deep ties with farming communities and their own farming pasts (my wife grew up on a farm for example)) it just gives them something to talk to each other on Facebook about when they've run out of interesting stories about taking the hamster to the vet, or little James' first day at school...
The point is: mmo, particulary mmorpg players are slowly migrating to Facebook and such. You may be one of those in self denial but it is happening. Nobody believed online games would kill Atari and Acclaim before it happened but it did happen and happened swiftly. Same thing is happening now. MMO is in its twilight.
People don't go to Facebook to 'play' Farmville. They go there to social while they find themselves an excuse of doing some dummy farming. Why do they give up playing in mmorpg? Because they no longer find themselves really 'playing' mmorpg. Things are repetitive and they don't find the adventures and immersion they hope to find in mmorpg, and they find they are paying for them for not much fun. In Facebook, they do whatever they do normally plus interact with more candid people. That's what draw them over.
The point is: mmo, particulary mmorpg players are slowly migrating to Facebook and such. You may be one of those in self denial but it is happening. Nobody believed online games would kill Atari and Acclaim before it happened but it did happen and happened swiftly. Same thing is happening now. MMO is in its twilight.
People don't go to Facebook to 'play' Farmville. They go there to social while they find themselves an excuse of doing some dummy farming. Why do they give up playing in mmorpg? Because they no longer find themselves really 'playing' mmorpg. Things are repetitive and they don't find the adventures and immersion they hope to find in mmorpg, and they find they are paying for them for not much fun. In Facebook, they do whatever they do normally plus interact with more candid people. That's what draw them over.
But gaming's not dead because a couple of games companies bit the dust over the years, in fact gaming is more and more popular everyday.
I'm not in denial, there's two markets out there, one utterly happy with Facebook gaming, one who needs more, sometimes these aren't exclusive of each other (I have friends who play farmville and mmo's) but they are truly separate anyway.
Facebook in it's current format will not give you a satisfying MMO experience, and I love Facebook and have made some wonderful friends on there who are now real life friends too (though even my VPN access is blocked from China so I don't use it much at the moment) but it's not a substitute for gaming, all the games I have tried on Facebook were deeply unsatisfying and some of those using micro-payments to speed up game play would work out more expensive than subscribing to three or four premium products in their own right.
The computer game is not dead, it is evolving. The same is true for MMO's but Facebook is not a genre killer, the Asian market barely touches Facebook, they use other social networking sites, and are you going to say the Asian MMO market is dead too? Agreed the grind-fest of Asian games may not be for everyone, but they are amazingly popular.
The worst part for a long time mmo gamer, is that you can get sucked in with good intentions. Here is what happened to me:
My soon to be wife is not a gamer, but plays all the facebook games I think. She is particularly fond of Zoo World. She was having a hard time getting a number of the free animals that have to be gifted by other players, so she asked me to help her by making an account and seeing if I could send her some animals. 24 hours later I had 300+ friends in Zoo World and had managed to acquire the animals she needed and send them to her. And here is the bad part, I find myself still checking in on the stupid zoo from time to time. The games are generally simple, and mildly entertaining, usally free and distract you very easily. I don't know that they will ever pull the average mmo player away, but they certainly have tons of their own players/customers.
First of all, I want to talk about social networks, Asian ones included, not just Facebook.
Now they don’t have many interesting games to offer but certainly can add more. They probably can’t do it overnight but there is no reason to believe Farmvile won’t evolve into Runeville with all the Runescape features. When it happens then Runescape will lose players. They can add a World of FaceCraft with emphasis on endgame raids. Then WoW may bite the dust. I think this is going to happen. I am not sure if the social network will give birth to their own Runeville or WoF or just adopt our Runescape and WoW.
Remember one important thing, social networks have the ability to draw money from main stream businesses while mmorpg in general have problem finding their sugar daddies. Money makes the world goes round, social networks certainly have more muscles in making better games than mmorpg. This mean mmorpg players will shift to their sides if they haven’t already.
If and when Facebook (or insert social networking site here) can fully integrate a gaming platform (not the updates from WoW for example, but the whole game) that would be great, but you'd still need to find a way to pay for it (development of WoW style games costs quite a bit more than Farmville for example) and the MMORPG wouldn't be dead, it would be enhanced by being able to draw your actual friends in, as well as playing with other random folks.
That's a win-win, I'd actually like to see games (WoW excluded) draw in more of a broad based audience, with less emphasis on noob-bashing and more on community and fun. That's a development I would happily support in MMORPG's but I'm willing to bet that many developers, even given this kind of integrated opportunity, won't want to pay Facebook (or insert social networking site here) a slice of their revenue stream and will continue to develop stand alone titles.
I think social networking sites can enhance gaming in MMO's anyway, they make a good place to collate all dev news for example, so I don't have to visit the WoW, EVE, WAR, Lotro, etc. websites but can just pick up all the news I want in one easy synopsis. That would be great, and is certainly starting to come as an emerging trend on these sites.
WoW already has.
Blizzville, blizzard's new mmo for facebook.
Only reason any of those Facebook games have a lot of people is they pretty much force you to Spam your contact list in order to advance. You cannot move beyond a certain point unless you have X number of neighbours, posse, clan, etc so you invite everyone you know. Add to the fact it asks you to send out invites each time you play. And the fact it Spams your "accomplishments" to everyone's walls. I hated Facebook before this trend started, but it was the straw that pushed me off completely.
It's actually a personal choice. All my friends and neighbors are real life friends that i've known well before the name Facebook was ever even thought of. What separates it is the ability to do many thing at once. If you get bored farmvilling you go play poker or you go play Castle Age etc, etc. I remember when the concept of MMO games was incredibly fun. Once they made games no longer require friends to advance the defining element of MMO's died.
First gen MMOs flourished with socialization. It was great benefit to group unlike today. WoW was just a crack in the spine that evolved into a game like Warhammer where folks logged in and never seen a word in general chat for several weeks. I lasted a month in that game before quitting. I dream of a single breath of the old school MMO experience but its gone forever. It cant be recreated well it could but i don't see it ever happening.
Grind, level and gear are a dead gaming concept. We want no more of that. It's old and boring. Current MMO's only encompass a very small market potential. 10 million subscribers like WOW claims is a measly number compared to future prospects via social network based games that can touch the entire globe not through advertising but through word of mouth from family and friends.