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Elikals MMORPG 2011 predictions ^^
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
As every year before, I start the "predict the next year" thread, with my own expectations. Some are guesses, some speculative, some conclusions from what we know so far. It is only half serious, so don't go on a tantrum just because you expect different. I tried to write what I expect as realistic as I can, so this does NOT mirror what I want or how I personally like the games, it is how I think they fare.
Here goes.
1) JANUARY 2011 - DC Universe
The year starts quite good with DCU, the superhero comic adaption and action MMO. It will sell relatively well, something around 500k boxes, and most people will praise the game. Even those who will leave it since the action gameplay is not their thing, after about 2-3 months, admit how good DCU is; the MMO will run relatively succesful in the Superhero niche, nothing bad and SOE will finally to some degree have restored their name as capabale gaming company. With constant new influx, DCU will establish as popular MMO with loyal fanbase for the next 2 years, around the margin of 300-600k. It will generally be reviewed well, but as ever, Superhero is not everyone's thing. But it will likely kill CO by the end of 2011 and CoX somewhere in 2012.
2) MARCH 2011 - TERA
In March, another Asia born MMO will try to climb the throne of MMOs, while Aion and FFXIV are on the downfall (and rumors surface that FFXIV may be shut down and possibly be re-launched at some later date), TERA will sell well in the first 2 months. Being similarly beautiful as Aion and FFXIV it sure will catch droves of disappointed fans of the Asia style from Aion and FFXIV. For this audience TERA will be a very succesful and popular game. TERA will sell about 1 milion boxes or more, but as the other newer MMOs drop in, they will also lose some who are not SO thrilled with the somewhat strange looking stuff. I expect about 500k will stay in the Western market, but after about half a year (or a year) or so, many will move on for more classic western games. It will be reviewed well, and those who always love Asia style will go to TERA from Aion and FFXIV.
3) APRIL 2011 - RIFT
In late April or early May we will see the launch of Rift. Many expect it to rival even GW2, and while Rift will sell many boxes, prolly up to 1 million, it will be too much just "more of the same" for many gamers. While the changes of the landscapes via the Rifts and the nice lore will captivate players for a time, for most it will be just the bridge over the gap to GW2 and SWTOR later on. Rift will also get quite positive reviews, with the critique of being quite a bit too old fashioned and not really innovative. Rift will be a haven or niche game for fans of classic fantasy MMOs. It will suck out gamers from stuff like EQ2, LOTRO and the like and remain on a height until the end of the year brings the big titles. Due to the lack of innovation the game will possibly dwindle during the next 2 years down to some small but fiercly loyal fanbase around 200-300k.
4) MAY 2011 SWTOR announces delay
EA and Bioware announce what is already been expected through rumors surfacing in the first months of 2011, that SWTOR will be delayed for "further polish." Quote Mr. Erickson: "We want our fans to have Star Wars in the best possible shape". The real reasons of course surface via blogs and leaked sources: they don't want to launch a MMO so close after 3 other launches, and they just frigging panicked over the critique from some of the gamers. Release of SWTOR will be said to be late 2011.
5) JUNE 2011: Funcom announces "Secret World not released in 2011"
With the pressure of so many MMOs, Funcom decides to bide their time and work longer on Secret World, release is said to be in 2012.
6) JULY 2011 - SOE shuts down Vanguard
SOE announces that Vanguard will be shut down by the end of August. They promise to preserve some of it's ideas for their "Everquest Next".
7) AUGUST 2011
Brad McQuaid, Bill Roper and Richard Garriot will annouce to make a "great new MMO" together. They are bombed by El'Qaeda, everyone is suprisingly happy and as a result El'Qeade and USA make peace... (ok.. I kid... or do I? ^^)
8) SEPTEMBER 2011: Blizzard announces their new MMORPG
I have little idea what it will be tbh. My gues is, it is a new IP and a Sci-Fi shooter sort of MMO. For most MMO gamers the revelation will be mostly a letdown.
9) NOVEMBER 2011 - GW2 launches
Quite unexpected GW2 launches already in 2011, when most thought in early 2011 it will be earliest in 2012. They will sell around 8-10 million boxes in the first few months, making it a huge success. GW2 will get highest praises and a real next gen MMO. GW2 causes a substantial dent in WOW, which sinks below the 10 million subs mark within 2 months of GW2's release. GW2 will rise in accounts steep, causing also substantial losses to Rift, TERA and other, older MMOs.
10) DECEMBER 2011 SWTOR
SWTOR finally releases and sells around 5 million boxes in the first 2 months. Most will be content or thrilled, but the looming feeling that there is nothing much to do outside of the personal story will make a considerable amount of people quit after 3-4 months, after people rush through the content CONSIDERABLY quicker than Bioware expected, and run out of things to do. One year later Bioware will admit what everyone by then knows as a common lesson learned: that most MMO gamers are NOT so much interested in story as everyone presumed. SWTOR will drop to 1 million subscribers, EA will absorb the Bioware brand in 2012 or 2013 and EA will not recover from the financial difficulties for the next 5 years, only slowly crawling out if financial misery with 20 new Sims expansion packs. SWTOR will get mildly good reviews and a stable playerbase of 800k- 1 million, but far away from the roaring success everyone expected it to be. Experts also analyse that the close release date to GW2 surely didn't help either. The result will be a steep rise of Blizzard stocks.
SIDENOTES:
- Due to the many good titles, WOW will see a loss of subscribers for the first time and fall below 10 million during 2012. It will remain king of the hill, however, for the next 5 years. Blizzard will milk the product with at least 3 new expansions over these 5 years, until Blizzard itself will just shut it down in some bizzare event, to replace it with it's new MMO.
- Somewhere in 2011-2012 many veteran MMOs will be shut down or only one server with mere maintenance, among them old timers like UO and EQ1.
- FFXIV will shut down somewhere in spring or early summer 2011 to be "relaunched sometimes later", but with uncertain fate.
Enjoy. XD
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
If SE go through the PS3 FF14 launch, add +1 mill to FF14's figures..
hmmmm...
I dont' know Elikal, it's not that far fetched.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
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Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Not bad but i think you are short changing Rift and SWTOR and overestimating the impact of GW2.
QFT
What?
Ummmm... no. Console gamers aren't MMO gamers periode. It might add 100 or 200k( ok maybe 300k, but thats stretching it) for a while max imo. Especially when you consider what the game has to offer.
You know Elikal I do't always agree with you but most of what you say is quite possible, even the prediction on that "super mmorpg" especially with those guys involved anything is possible.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Compare:
Predictions 2008 http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/156935/page/1
2009 http://www.morpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/218474/page/1
Somehow I didn't find 2010. Maybe I lost that year.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
For the most part the predictions weren't so bad, but sub numbers have always been way off in each of them. I think your 2011 predictions will be more off than the past few.
They'll all be shit but SWTOR which the WoW crowd will love but the hardcore will hate and the hardcore people will go another year without anything good.
1. Plausible
2. Plausible
3. Plausible
4. I think the game will either release within their target date or no later than September. The game will sell roughly 3 million boxes. The fans (both Star Wars fans and Bioware fans), who really expect nothing more than a fun and playable Star Wars mmo, will enjoy it and stick with the game. Where expectations are too high, those fans will indeed be disappointed. Non-fans will tend to play for 2 or 3 months then leave. The game will settle into a stable sub population of about one million which will grow slowly over time, ultimately to become one of the most successful subscription based games of all time; but never reaching WoW like success.
5. Not enough info to make an informed opinion
6. Instead I believe the game will move to a f2p model and will find a niche audience that will keep it in business.
7. Nothing to see here, move along.
8. Just dunno
9. The game will indeed have very healthy box sells, and since it only depends on box sells will be very successful. However, the fans seeing that it doesn't live up to expectations will be disappointed overall. This will not be because the game is bad in any way, but rather that the expectations are simply too high. Also due to the fact that there is no subscription for this game, it will have little impact on subscription numbers of other games.
10. See #4
I disagree, the game will not be all that appealing to the WoW crowd. It probably will appeal to a casual player, but not to the same type of player that plays WoW.
Who exactly do you mean by hardcore? Hardcore Star Wars fans? Hardcore MMO players? Who?
Sounds like pretty realistic predictions IMO.
+1
I'm actually on board with your predictions for the most part. I'm thinking that GW2 will only sell about 5 million by the end of next year, but it will be a game that gains more traction as word of mouth gets around and more box sales result in the following year.
I also believe that SWTOR will be more successful than you suspect only because Star Wars fans and Bioware fans are some of the most loyal fans out there and while I agree that the end game content will be light there will be a greater desire to make more alts and experience the unique story content for each class. I predict 4 million subs if they can do it right and release in spring 2011 (May-June) as they said they would, these subs would fall off a bit at the very end of the year when people start playing GW2 and realize it's worth dropping their sub based game for. Alternatively if they can't release until after GW2 then I think they will be closer to your predictions for sub sales, maybe a stable player base of 2.5 million.
I don't dissagree a hell of a lot, it's quite easy to be negative here and be on safe ground, it's like preaching to the converted. But I do think the delayed release of swtor to after gw2 is not going to happen, I do foresee a delay of sorts to July at latest but they will deffinately get out before gw2. If gw2 do release before them it will be rushed and take a dent in reviews but I don't think they'll take the chance and they don't need to as it's not a subbed game.
I like this from your 2008 reviews though
BIOWARE MMO: Both Bioware and Lucasarts will confirm there will be no Star Wars MMO besides SWG anytime soon. I know, MUCH evidence hints to a possiblr KOTOR MMO, but my gut feeling says no. Lucasart is just too dumb to really realize the potential in Star Wars. They NEVER understood. My guess is the Bioware MMO will be an IP, but neither D&D nor Mass Effect. I guess its something else, or really something new. As I said, this is pure instinct, no logic.
-----
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
I give you credit for putting yourself out there with your predictions.
Is that last bit an old quote from somebody?
Oh, I see now, I somehow missed that sentence inbetween the two paragraphs.
1 highly unlikely cause januari is not a good month to launch , past holidays sell outs .
But you forgot to take the console market into account , a MMO without hackers and goldbot ...
But the rest can be plausible
2 Tera not seeing it happen sorry , not in polished form explanation will come in rift .
So i dont expect a march release from them , some where around june , the rest of explanation cannot happen anymore.
3 Rift well shocked me cause of the IT knowledge they have , so big big suprise . Will be able to pick up the fall out of WoW cataclysme fans who see the same story again , end game raids , that are too hard and need to be nerfed for the casuals.
Rift will pick majority of the fall out and keep them with a polished alternative cause of the indeep class system .
4 SWTOR if delay happen we can scrap the game , EA stocks and reputation are on the ball this one .
Fiscall Release cannot be side stepped not even by BIOWARE , this cooperate enterprise we are talking about .
Not some small gaming industrie , this is highly unlikely D.E will be fired if he pull a stunt like this.
Rather have a flop then dissapointed Stock and Share holders .
Sorry thats the truth , SWTOR will launch in april or may , best is april so preparation for george lucas star wars may anniversary .
So either way its coming in that period .
I will not predict more cause it will only anger the poor people
I can see GW2 being a success, but overall, I think most people here will be disappointed. People here seem to be expecting a fully featured MMORPG with no subscription fee, but I simply do not believe that will be the case. GW2 will have expanded open world content, but it will not compare to games that charge a subscription fee.
As for RIFT, I see that game being a sleeper hit. I believe it will release relatively stable, yet because it does nothing overly innovative, is developed by an unknown company with a "smallish" budget, looks to require a beefy system to run properly, and takes place within a fantasy setting like 98% of the other MMOs on the market, I don't see this game attracting more than 100,000 subscribers once the shine wears off. Should draw away some EQ2 fans, and I can see some of the WAR and LotRO crowd at least giving the game a chance.
SW:ToR will be released and sell a crap ton of box copies because of the huge hype surrounding it. The launch will be stable, and the game will be highly polished, but many people will leave simply because SW:ToR isn't quite what they were expecting. Those who expect a traditional themepark MMORPG within the Star Wars universe with emphasis on a Bioware quality story will be more than pleased and will carry this game to great success. Outside of WoW, I estimate that SW:ToR will have a healthier subscriber base than any other subscription-based MMORPG developed in North America, but exact numbers are hard to say. Given that it's Star Wars (something people love or hate), I'm not sure if we'll see subscriptions ranging in the millions, but I could be wrong.
I cannot calculate rift , cause like you said sleeper hit .
If they make there deadline on time in March (thats the period most cata wow players get burned out)
They will pickup the fall out of those .
Beta comments so far released, its a suprised polished beter then most mmo that are live .
The shine is the indept class system , did you see how many options you have and points ?
Thats the shocker , if players can be hooked on lower levels , they will be addicted by myrid of possible combinations .
This will put Tirion name on the MMO market , they are daring enough with the persistant world idea .
This will cause a lot of frustration with people or make people enjoy, since what yesterday was known and friendly territory might be totally unknown territory and hostile .
That idea is really exciting , imagine you farm a certain area for stuff ,tommorow its not possible anymore .
Unless you close down the rift , forces players cooperation on a bigger level .
Or lose that area forever . first daring move i seen in a while from tripple AAA mmo .
So will they go back on there words on introducing this classic sandbox element and keep it with the consequences.
That players have less and less friendly territory to go too .
Edit ah am tired so had to edit some sentences that really didn´t make sense , whatever you spoke it out .
Strong divination work OP
I think GW2 and SWTOR will be more successful is only change I'd make!
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
OP: Sound all fantastic and pretty much logical, but your previous predictions are mostly wrong or really inaccurate.
and if anything is overhyped it's GW2... 8 mill? really? in your dreams
i love this. if they aren't MMO gamers explain to me how myself and 3 friends went from console to MMO gamers?
Dude, you're exagerating here... A lot. GW2 definately won't sell 10 mill copies in few months. Even Starcraft 2 stopped at 3mill. I expect them to have Aions sale numbers, which were very good. Same thing goes for SWToR, although i expect them to sell a bit more boxes than GW2 because of the famous franchise and huge marketing camapign which EA will start.
Op is under estimating SWTOR a lot (as usual) and over estimating GW2.
Who could have thought that WOW could bring super power like USA to its knees?
Originally posted by Arcken
To put it in a nutshell, our society is about to hit the fan, grades are dropping, obesity is going up,childhood the USA is going to lose its super power status before too long, but hey, as long as we have a cheap method to babysit our kids, all will be well no?
Im picking on WoW btw because its the beast that made all of this possible
Hehe, yeah back in 2008 I was dead sure there never would be another SW MMO.
If I'd be a prophet I'd earn money with it; but it is all concluding from what is there. Which is, given the gaming scene, often not much.
I think Rift is the most uncertain factor IMO. But between the huge and famous titles like GW2 and SWTOR and even DCU, Rift just has bad chances IMO. Most will stick with the big and known titles I expect, no matter how good it is. (And I say that with Rift being in the top 3 of my personal list.)
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert