Thanks for that psych-evaluation but there is nothing more complicated to it then being sick of WoW clones being churned out and wanting them to fail so that other type of MMORPGs beside WoW clones are produced.
Well, as you admit yourself I was pretty spot on with that evaluation, right? It's finding enjoyment in seeing and wishing for other MMO's that aren't to your taste to fail; even if other MMO gamers are enjoying them you'd still hope those MMO's you dislike die since there aren't any MMO's around of the type that you like to play, at least not enough and none that you love to play now. Like I said, grinching on MMO's, 'because you don't like Christmas'
No, you were dead wrong. I dont "hate" Rift or themeparks, that would indicate some emotional involvement. I simply want them to fail for pure practical purposes so that, eventually, casual themeparks are not the only type of AAA games being released.
If you fervently wish them to fail and are even gleeful about it when you perceive signs that it might be the case, then it's still hating or grinching on an MMO to me.
More over fail and die are not the same thing. I dont mind themeparks being produced but I do mind ONLY themeparks being produced. So if casual themepark MMORPGs are being produced as well as more hardcore virtual world variants that is all good. Problem is thats not the case as nine out of ten released MMORPGs are casual themeparks and those that are not are severly underfunded.
Seems to me that you are listening to what you want to hear and draw your own conclusions in a silly attempt to vilify me rather than what I am saying. So drop it as I am not personally insulting someones person here, like you are.
So far, everything you've said was a support of my former statements: you strongly wish for MMO's that other MMO gamers are enjoying to fail, for the small chance that this might stimulate the kind of MMO's that you do like.
Why on earth would the failure of themepark games make developers decide that an even less successful facet of the MMO genre would be more profitable? All we are going to see if these kinds of games die out is even more paint by numbers FTP cash shop crap games.
The only way a big company can be convinced that we sandbox game lovers matter (aside from all of us starting a company ourselves) is for one of the small indie sandbox games to be an unprecidented success. And since it seems we in the sandbox crowd are too spoiled (myself included) to put up with bugs and low budget games, and instead are waiting for this mystical messiah AAA sandbox title to appear out of thin air, we are going to be lurking in the dark without enlightenment for some time.
This.
I agree, it seems to me that - at least as it appears on this site - the average sandbox gamer has a far more limited taste range in MMO's and a far larger intolerance towards MMO's outside of that range than the average non-sandbox gamer.
Fortunately for Yamota and others like him, there are a number of upcoming AAA MMO's that aren't your typical WoW-styled themepark MMO: GW2, TSW, Planetside Next, Firefall, ArcheAge and World of Darkness. So that should mean that also the type of MMO gamers with a very narrow MMO preference or a WoW-style MMO aversion can be happy MMO gamers.
Although I'm pretty sure that there'll be a number among them that'll even find fault and reason to fail in most of those MMO's too.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I would expect WOW to drop, people have finished the expansion content and are quitting until a new major patch comes out. The next time a big content patch comes out I'm sure they'll jump again.
Originally posted by jackmcleod If 1/100 people use xfire and xfire has a 25% drop in players... there is a high chance (not guarantee) that the whole game lost 25% of its player base. Although not the perfect way to measure, if you don't have any verifiable numbers to prove that this time xfire is wrong, your thoughts and opinions don't matter. Have a nice day.
{mod edit}
A sample consisting of 1% of the player base is not very verifiable either.
True Neutral Half-Elf Ranger Mage Follower Of Silvanus
This is after 1 month mind you and also quite similar to the drops AoC and WAR experienced. After three months they were down to less than 50% of peak and where are they now?
Rift is going the same route, trust me on this.
It's got something to do with the fantastic world event: River of Lag.
This event left a pretty stale taste in my mouth. They are just going to give us all the stupid loot and not let us participate in the event? Lol, I couldn't get on for the 30-45 minutes the event lasted (as it got zerged over by hundreds of people in seconds my guild said).
The entire point of playing the game, is to play it. Not be handed out rewards because they devs suck ass at designing something that makes sense. A 30 minute event ... on free to play weekend ... that had stability issues in the first place? Some of the most idiotic decision making going on over there, and I am not sure they will be able to step it up if this is how they remain to do things. The event was obviously thrown together, not tested and just released.
What a great way to open the gates for new customers ... lol. I don't see myself playing past the 2 month mark. I could have given up before the 1st was over. But the raiding and expert dungeons are still fun with friends. But is it enough? Probably not.
Really. I would've liked to participate in the event and earned all the rewards I had to work. Now...Trion is just going to give us some rewards as paying customers because of the brevity of the event...the instability many experienced and because they were very unhappy with the event themselves. They even said they will strive for better and smoother events in the future having learned from "River of Souls" shortcomings. (paraphrased). The nerve of them. Don't know how I can keep playing.
Stop arguing the statistics of how many xFire users exist. The arguement is tired AND flawed. Opinion research polls typically poll 100 or 1000 people and can get you within +-5 points (of a nation with over 300 million). That being said, xFire users are a statistic we can measure and are quantifiable.
If you want to defend your game, pressure Trion to release numbers.
I'm certainly banking on their losing a TON of players as their ENTIRE justification for a "free trial" weekend just over a month after launch. (and the second trial weekend after last weeks call of the ascended or whatever it's called)
Games like EQ1,WoW,eve,DAoC all at least doubled their first month launch population.
I don't know if its the mmo players nowadays who have short attention span or newer mmo with nothing new to offer and weak end game content.
It's because there were fewer game back the few people who were interested in this genre were a very specific sort of people. Back then not everyone was plugged into the internet. Essentially you had some very smart somewhat geeky peopel who were completely excited about the prospect of what these games represented.
These games launched and word started to travel.
However, now that there are quite a few more people playing these games and people who are a bit different than the first pioneers of these games, you get a lot of them trying them out and then going back to there former games because these newer games either didn't offering anything that was radically new, didn't offer a type of game play that they might be interested in or were launched in such a bad state that they weren't really worth sticking to.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Drops are expected but then the devs need to have a plan to SOVLE the issues that come with it. RIght now they are closing and locking topics that point out the issues of low populated servers.
Drops are expected but then the devs need to have a plan to SOVLE the issues that come with it. RIght now they are closing and locking topics that point out the issues of low populated servers.
Great solution?
Locking threads is not in the same ballpark as populations issues. How can people even say that the devs are not doing anything when everytime I log in there is a patch/hotfix. It looks like to me they know whats going on and are working on making the game stable. I sure they know that its going on thanks to the players but hastily merging servers is not always the answer. Not only that they look at the big picture. Do you know what it takes to merge servers?
I'm enjoying Rift. The 49 other people I know who are playing Rift are enjoying it, and we'll continue to play it. Regardless of whether it has 1,000,000 subscribers or 300,000 subscribers. Amazingly an MMO is still quite profitable at that level, and even lower (Warhammer and Age of Conan are bother operating on userbases estimated to stand at around 150,000 or less), so it really doesn't matter. There are lots of MMOs out there that never peaked past the 500,000 mark and are regarded as "genre defining" titles (Eve would be a good modern representation of that).
It's not all about numbers. If Trion turns around tomorrow and says, "only 8 people are playing," then you can have your mad, "OMG THEY FAILED LOLOLOLOL" fest. That's fine. But raging about how a game is going to have less than a million subs is pathetic.
Let me put it this way: If YOU made something that had 300,000 players paying $15 a month to play it, and cost a small fraction of that to develop and maintain, you would NOT consider it a failure. You'd be laughing your way to the bank in your top of the line sports car, planning which house you're going to buy next
In other words, threads like this are the act of trolls. You may have deluded yourself into thinking you have some kind of legitimate point and purpose, but you don't. It's just a wasteful use of your time that you could spend doing something far more valuable to yourself
Drops are expected but then the devs need to have a plan to SOVLE the issues that come with it. RIght now they are closing and locking topics that point out the issues of low populated servers.
Great solution?
Do you know what it takes to merge servers?
Yes. Character data is generally stored on seperate servers from the "world servers", and the variables are either stored in databases or "xml"-like files. When a character is moved or a server is merged - depending on the variables involved - the databases are simply merged, or field within the character data are changed, or the data moved over to the appropriate area of the character data servers, or a combination. This isn't of course the ACTUAL way in which it happens for all games (and it's probably quite different for some) but the sentiment is generally the same. It's very rare that the overhead involved in moving characters from one server to another, or merging servers, is complicated to any great degree.
Anyone who claims otherwise has either worked with some really poor systems, or has no idea what they are talking about. Frankly.
Drops are expected but then the devs need to have a plan to SOVLE the issues that come with it. RIght now they are closing and locking topics that point out the issues of low populated servers.
Great solution?
Do you know what it takes to merge servers?
Yes. Character data is generally stored on seperate servers from the "world servers", and the variables are either stored in databases or "xml"-like files. When a character is moved or a server is merged - depending on the variables involved - the databases are simply merged, or field within the character data are changed, or the data moved over to the appropriate area of the character data servers, or a combination. This isn't of course the ACTUAL way in which it happens for all games (and it's probably quite different for some) but the sentiment is generally the same. It's very rare that the overhead involved in moving characters from one server to another, or merging servers, is complicated to any great degree.
Anyone who claims otherwise has either worked with some really poor systems, or has no idea what they are talking about. Frankly.
Pretty much precisely this.. there's some realigning that needs to be done to make sure properties, and property, of your character stays intact. It would be a nssty process to do by hand (as would most database--flatfile included--manipulation) but programmatically it's simple to write and is done perfectly every time.
Server mergers are just an extrapolation of this, which is why games like to make sure mailboxes, auction houses, etc are empty prior to merge. Much much less work, for the programmer, to keep the integrity.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Comments
all games drop after the launch-boom.
- Nothing lasts.. but nothing is lost. -
This.
I agree, it seems to me that - at least as it appears on this site - the average sandbox gamer has a far more limited taste range in MMO's and a far larger intolerance towards MMO's outside of that range than the average non-sandbox gamer.
Fortunately for Yamota and others like him, there are a number of upcoming AAA MMO's that aren't your typical WoW-styled themepark MMO: GW2, TSW, Planetside Next, Firefall, ArcheAge and World of Darkness. So that should mean that also the type of MMO gamers with a very narrow MMO preference or a WoW-style MMO aversion can be happy MMO gamers.
Although I'm pretty sure that there'll be a number among them that'll even find fault and reason to fail in most of those MMO's too.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I would expect WOW to drop, people have finished the expansion content and are quitting until a new major patch comes out. The next time a big content patch comes out I'm sure they'll jump again.
A sample consisting of 1% of the player base is not very verifiable either.
True Neutral Half-Elf Ranger Mage
Follower Of Silvanus
Kings of Chaos! Free to play! Great PvP!
This event left a pretty stale taste in my mouth. They are just going to give us all the stupid loot and not let us participate in the event? Lol, I couldn't get on for the 30-45 minutes the event lasted (as it got zerged over by hundreds of people in seconds my guild said).
The entire point of playing the game, is to play it. Not be handed out rewards because they devs suck ass at designing something that makes sense. A 30 minute event ... on free to play weekend ... that had stability issues in the first place? Some of the most idiotic decision making going on over there, and I am not sure they will be able to step it up if this is how they remain to do things. The event was obviously thrown together, not tested and just released.
What a great way to open the gates for new customers ... lol. I don't see myself playing past the 2 month mark. I could have given up before the 1st was over. But the raiding and expert dungeons are still fun with friends. But is it enough? Probably not.
Really. I would've liked to participate in the event and earned all the rewards I had to work. Now...Trion is just going to give us some rewards as paying customers because of the brevity of the event...the instability many experienced and because they were very unhappy with the event themselves. They even said they will strive for better and smoother events in the future having learned from "River of Souls" shortcomings. (paraphrased). The nerve of them. Don't know how I can keep playing.
Stop arguing the statistics of how many xFire users exist. The arguement is tired AND flawed. Opinion research polls typically poll 100 or 1000 people and can get you within +-5 points (of a nation with over 300 million). That being said, xFire users are a statistic we can measure and are quantifiable.
If you want to defend your game, pressure Trion to release numbers.
I'm certainly banking on their losing a TON of players as their ENTIRE justification for a "free trial" weekend just over a month after launch. (and the second trial weekend after last weeks call of the ascended or whatever it's called)
No .All more recent mmo drop after launch boom.
Games like EQ1,WoW,eve,DAoC all at least doubled their first month launch population.
I don't know if its the mmo players nowadays who have short attention span or newer mmo with nothing new to offer and weak end game content.
It's because there were fewer game back the few people who were interested in this genre were a very specific sort of people. Back then not everyone was plugged into the internet. Essentially you had some very smart somewhat geeky peopel who were completely excited about the prospect of what these games represented.
These games launched and word started to travel.
However, now that there are quite a few more people playing these games and people who are a bit different than the first pioneers of these games, you get a lot of them trying them out and then going back to there former games because these newer games either didn't offering anything that was radically new, didn't offer a type of game play that they might be interested in or were launched in such a bad state that they weren't really worth sticking to.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Drop was expected by everybody , like said they are aiming for 250k loyal fanbase .
Anything above that is a big bonus .
Anyway the drop is good , I wouldn´t expected it any other way .
The more important issue is are they getting new subscribers , if ratio is 2 lost 1 gained .
It is still a win for them , cause the community will be friendlier then wow .
Those who go back to WoW find the same tiresome community again .
But honestly we shall see what SWTOR does with the MMO market .
But for me Rift made it mark , that polishe launch is important to get subscribers.
But retaining them in these tough times is a different story .
But then again all MMO including daunted WoW are suffering from it .
A good wrap up. Can't wait to see GW2 and SWTOR numbers to necro this thread
Drops are expected but then the devs need to have a plan to SOVLE the issues that come with it. RIght now they are closing and locking topics that point out the issues of low populated servers.
Great solution?
Locking threads is not in the same ballpark as populations issues. How can people even say that the devs are not doing anything when everytime I log in there is a patch/hotfix. It looks like to me they know whats going on and are working on making the game stable. I sure they know that its going on thanks to the players but hastily merging servers is not always the answer. Not only that they look at the big picture. Do you know what it takes to merge servers?
You know what guys? Who care?
I'm enjoying Rift. The 49 other people I know who are playing Rift are enjoying it, and we'll continue to play it. Regardless of whether it has 1,000,000 subscribers or 300,000 subscribers. Amazingly an MMO is still quite profitable at that level, and even lower (Warhammer and Age of Conan are bother operating on userbases estimated to stand at around 150,000 or less), so it really doesn't matter. There are lots of MMOs out there that never peaked past the 500,000 mark and are regarded as "genre defining" titles (Eve would be a good modern representation of that).
It's not all about numbers. If Trion turns around tomorrow and says, "only 8 people are playing," then you can have your mad, "OMG THEY FAILED LOLOLOLOL" fest. That's fine. But raging about how a game is going to have less than a million subs is pathetic.
Let me put it this way: If YOU made something that had 300,000 players paying $15 a month to play it, and cost a small fraction of that to develop and maintain, you would NOT consider it a failure. You'd be laughing your way to the bank in your top of the line sports car, planning which house you're going to buy next
In other words, threads like this are the act of trolls. You may have deluded yourself into thinking you have some kind of legitimate point and purpose, but you don't. It's just a wasteful use of your time that you could spend doing something far more valuable to yourself
http://www.themmoquest.com - MMO commentary from an overly angry brit. OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED!
Yes. Character data is generally stored on seperate servers from the "world servers", and the variables are either stored in databases or "xml"-like files. When a character is moved or a server is merged - depending on the variables involved - the databases are simply merged, or field within the character data are changed, or the data moved over to the appropriate area of the character data servers, or a combination. This isn't of course the ACTUAL way in which it happens for all games (and it's probably quite different for some) but the sentiment is generally the same. It's very rare that the overhead involved in moving characters from one server to another, or merging servers, is complicated to any great degree.
Anyone who claims otherwise has either worked with some really poor systems, or has no idea what they are talking about. Frankly.
http://www.themmoquest.com - MMO commentary from an overly angry brit. OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED!
Pretty much precisely this.. there's some realigning that needs to be done to make sure properties, and property, of your character stays intact. It would be a nssty process to do by hand (as would most database--flatfile included--manipulation) but programmatically it's simple to write and is done perfectly every time.
Server mergers are just an extrapolation of this, which is why games like to make sure mailboxes, auction houses, etc are empty prior to merge. Much much less work, for the programmer, to keep the integrity.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.