TheMittani: You’ve mentioned a desire for more sandbox MMOs in your Reddit AMA, and sandboxes are obviously a major draw for EVE players. Do you have plans for adding sandbox elements to PS2, and if so, would you like to discuss them? If there really is an untapped market for sandbox MMOs, why haven’t we seen more of them, besides Eve and SWG?
Smedley: Sandbox elements - SOE is redefining itself as a creator of emergent gameplay experiences. That's our future. You can call it sandbox but it's so much more than that. A good example is Player owned bases in Planetside 2. That's coming. We're going to make huge continents that are empty and have vast resources on them and players can fight it out and put down their own bases there and other players can come and obliterate them. Sound familiar EVE Players? Actually we had something like this in Star Wars Galaxies too. THAT is content. At some point as an industry we need to realize that we have already lost the race to outpace players in making content. I personally thought SWTOR was a great game. I loved Diablo III. The problem is you get to the endgame and as game makers it's not just expensive. it's impossible to stay ahead of the curve.
Think about this statement - If WoW had come out yesterday.. at what point would people be "done" with the content. We need to focus on game systems that are perpetual and give players a lot more control over what they can do rather than JUST putting yet another dragon in front of them with scripted content. We need to be doing both in order to be successful. And that's our plan.
WoW in its current state would be steam rolled through very quickly. However, today's wow and the vanilla version from years ago are two very different beasts. So its not really a good comparison. I play MMO's the same now as I did then, and the current MMO's I go through quickly. I am not even remotely a hardcore gamer either! Also, not sure why Diablo 3 was brought up, it doesn't relate to the subject at hand at all.
Either way, what is being proposed here is old and been done before. With that in mind, hopefully they can build something really great out of it! They have the experience. Though I have no faith in Smedley sadly.
No there is no untapped market for Sandbox games. sometimes companies make the big mistake of listening too much to what players say they want. Bioware totally fell into this trap. Everyone said hey we don't want endgame grinding and progression like other MMOs have we want a MMO based around story. Well they really got exactly what they asked for and then 3 months in huge drops in subs and game in spinning downwards.
Same thing with Sandbox games, everyone likes the CONCEPT of a sandbox game but most players really don't like the actual reality of playing a sandbox game. Lets face it, there are not as many hardcore MMO players anymore, people are starting to prioritize and lots of the old MMO players are moving into a more casual role. Sandbox games do not work for casual players, it is not that they are harder then themepark games it is just that it takes a lot more time to advance and do things. Now you may not agree with themepark style but the truth is the only Sandbox game that could ever hold over 1M players would be a hybrid sandbox/themepark.
Um maybe you didn't play SWTOR, but the endgame is grinding and progression. Thats all the game has other than a story, and people didn't enjoy their grind and progession in the game so they left in droves.
Really it boils down to a few things to make a sandbox favorable.
SOCIAL ASPECTS. Yes, that is all caps. SWG had dancer, musician, buffs needed by doctors, cantinas, etc. Things to make the game social. You had to be involved with the community to make the best things and to recieve the best. Most sandbox games I've played lack so much in this department its comical. I want to live in the world, not just fight in it.
Eve is an amazing game, not for me though, but many things can be incorporated and if they incorporate the additional areas in PS2 with controlling territories for additional bonuses, by mining etc such as how Shadowbane did it could prove to be useful. Perpetuum on the other hand stopped appealing to me about 2 months in as I didn't enjoy the rinse repeat, get blow up, wait 3 days to be back in action.
And lastly why does a sandbox and a themepark have to no coexist. Give a main storyline bingo you got themepark. You can have mission terminals with random mission/spawns that are very plain, add in some user made quest, There is so much you can do as long as you keep the majority of items, buildings, etc crafted by players to create a living world. All it takes is one company to not screw it up royally by going full blown pvp all the time.
Many players will not be able look past the fact you're talking about SOE and The Mittani. Two of our favorite super villians.
The difference is that Smedley is...
Drat. Sorry, dont want to get banned.
Lets put it this way. Both Smedley and The Mittani have a history of wreaking havok on their choosen MMOs
Super villains? SoE may not be great, but the super villains of the genre are either Blizzard or EA. No other company has had as negative an impact on the genre as those two companies.
Maybe not a pure sandbox but a hybrid of themepark and sandbox features would do great if done right. In the end what matters is that gameplay is fun and interesting. Sandbox or no sandbox.
Originally posted by MindTrigger In my opinion, this is one of the smartest things I've ever seen Smed say. I have to laugh/cry though to see him refer to Star Wars Galaxies after they *destroyed* the emergent gameplay in that game.
My thoughts exactly. However, I still have to wonder how much of a role LA had in that.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
Many players will not be able look past the fact you're talking about SOE and The Mittani. Two of our favorite super villians.
The difference is that Smedley is...
Drat. Sorry, dont want to get banned.
Lets put it this way. Both Smedley and The Mittani have a history of wreaking havok on their choosen MMOs
Super villains? SoE may not be great, but the super villains of the genre are either Blizzard or EA. No other company has had as negative an impact on the genre as those two companies.
Why Blizzard? EA is the spawn of Satan, but whats wrong with Blizzard?
Also, Mittani is a scum - a human turd. Despise him? -Yes. Feel sorry for him? -Yes. Hate him? -No.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Originally posted by Nikkita Maybe not a pure sandbox but a hybrid of themepark and sandbox features would do great if done right. In the end what matters is that gameplay is fun and interesting. Sandbox or no sandbox.
It is simple business. The themepark market is oversaturated with filth, too many games.
The hardcore MMORPG market, a market of millions, the millions that launched this genre... is totally untapped. A game hasn't been targeted at the core market for a very long time. If anyone with even a slight budget were to make a game aimed at these folks, it'd get massive amounts of hype and cash regardless of how it turns out (that's what happened with Vanguard).
I'm surprised it took someone this long to wake up. Thankfully the death of SWTOR seems to have been the wakeup call that I was hoping it'd be.
Many players will not be able look past the fact you're talking about SOE and The Mittani. Two of our favorite super villians.
The difference is that Smedley is...
Drat. Sorry, dont want to get banned.
Lets put it this way. Both Smedley and The Mittani have a history of wreaking havok on their choosen MMOs
Super villains? SoE may not be great, but the super villains of the genre are either Blizzard or EA. No other company has had as negative an impact on the genre as those two companies.
Why Blizzard? EA is the spawn of Satan, but whats wrong with Blizzard?
Also, Mittani is a scum - a human turd. Despise him? -Yes. Feel sorry for him? -Yes. Hate him? -No.
By showing other companies that you can make a substantial profit by never innovating and half assing old ideas without understanding how they work. They're something all lazy devs can aspire to be.
They've never pushed the genre, never tried anything new, never done anything with the vast amount of money. And, they're partners with Activision.. D3 and the CoD games are just plain bad for the genre.
Originally posted by NikkitaMaybe not a pure sandbox but a hybrid of themepark and sandbox features would do great if done right. In the end what matters is that gameplay is fun and interesting. Sandbox or no sandbox.
It is simple business. The themepark market is oversaturated with filth, too many games.
The hardcore MMORPG market, a market of millions, the millions that launched this genre... is totally untapped. A game hasn't been targeted at the core market for a very long time. If anyone with even a slight budget were to make a game aimed at these folks, it'd get massive amounts of hype and cash regardless of how it turns out (that's what happened with Vanguard).
I'm surprised it took someone this long to wake up. Thankfully the death of SWTOR seems to have been the wakeup call that I was hoping it'd be.
Where is the market of millions for sandbox MMORPG? There are possibly millions playing Minecraft, but not in an MMORPG type setting, and that's it. Where are the rest of the millions? China? South Korea? How does that help anyone in the U.S. or Europe?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by MindTrigger In my opinion, this is one of the smartest things I've ever seen Smed say. I have to laugh/cry though to see him refer to Star Wars Galaxies after they *destroyed* the emergent gameplay in that game.
My thoughts exactly. However, I still have to wonder how much of a role LA had in that.
He has apologized numerous times for the NGE and openly admitted it was a massive mistake, one that he regrets. He said it at least 5 times in that reddit thread. He also answered my question and told me EQnext would be a return to group based community driven gameplay.
The reason almost all WoW clones fail is because they sell content, not worlds, and content runs out. Especially when that content is 95% similar to all the other content in the other WOW clones.
It's a no brainer that a major part of the issue with longevity these days in mmos is due to the fact it is all scripted content and next to no actual longer term style community/player driven content.
When you churn out mmos akin to single player games, it's no wonder people lose interest in the rapidly.
It makes me laugh to think of how many tens of millions of dollars I could have saved several game companies over the last few years had they sat me down for a chat about MMOs. ROFL.
See, some of you like to sit back and talk about how this website is full of people who complain about everything. I see it differently. I think a lot of the people here are more on the bleeding-edge of MMO gaming, and some of us have seen the writing on the wall for Themepark games for years.
It's true that complainers tend to spend more time on boards, but it's also true that hardcore players and mmo enthusiasts who have been playing for a very long time do as well. If I had a game company, I would have regular online focus groups to discuss mmo gaming in general with the community. It's not hard to weed out people who are just eternally depressed about everything.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Originally posted by NikkitaMaybe not a pure sandbox but a hybrid of themepark and sandbox features would do great if done right. In the end what matters is that gameplay is fun and interesting. Sandbox or no sandbox.
It is simple business. The themepark market is oversaturated with filth, too many games.
The hardcore MMORPG market, a market of millions, the millions that launched this genre... is totally untapped. A game hasn't been targeted at the core market for a very long time. If anyone with even a slight budget were to make a game aimed at these folks, it'd get massive amounts of hype and cash regardless of how it turns out (that's what happened with Vanguard).
I'm surprised it took someone this long to wake up. Thankfully the death of SWTOR seems to have been the wakeup call that I was hoping it'd be.
Where is the market of millions for sandbox MMORPG? There are possibly millions playing Minecraft, but not in an MMORPG type setting, and that's it. Where are the rest of the millions? China? South Korea? How does that help anyone in the U.S. or Europe?
Hardcore MMORPGs, not necessarily sandboxes. Though, by comparison, oldschool MMOs are more sandbox than themepark in today's eyes.
They've never pushed the genre, never tried anything new
I wish this was the case as I am sick of people complaining that XXX MMORPG has no group finder feature.
That said, no MMO company has done so little with so much revenue, so i will agree with that. EQ and EQ2 have pushed out so much content over the years, yet Blizzard thinks its okay for one expansion every two years.
I'm really sick of the whole "There's a massive fanbase for X", or "Y would be a WoW-killer if it just had a chance".
There is no massive conspiracy waiting in the MMO playerbase.
There are no "sleeper-agent fans" waiting to convert once the X or Y is unleashed on the world.
There may be a growing portion of players who prefer sandbox ELEMENTS in games. But players have, and always will want SOME form of direction or given purpose in their games. It's why tutorials exist, its why LEVELLING exists, its why experience and crafting skills exist, and its why WoW is number one in the market even with millions lost.
There is a clear bias towards some form of given direction in MMO gaming. Just setting your average player on a wide open sandbox world with no instructions and a million things to do and see would not appeal to them. To the experienced sandbox players, yes, but not to the casuals, not to the seasoned WoW-style game veterans.
There is no untapped gold mine of players. But there is growing diversity. Praise that, instead of hoping for a game that will convert everyone to your beliefs.
I'm really sick of the whole "There's a massive fanbase for X", or "Y would be a WoW-killer if it just had a chance".
There is no massive conspiracy waiting in the MMO playerbase.
There are no "sleeper-agent fans" waiting to convert once the X or Y is unleashed on the world.
Many players will not be able look past the fact you're talking about SOE and The Mittani. Two of our favorite super villians.
The difference is that Smedley is...
Drat. Sorry, dont want to get banned.
Lets put it this way. Both Smedley and The Mittani have a history of wreaking havok on their choosen MMOs
Super villains? SoE may not be great, but the super villains of the genre are either Blizzard or EA. No other company has had as negative an impact on the genre as those two companies.
Why Blizzard? EA is the spawn of Satan, but whats wrong with Blizzard?
Also, Mittani is a scum - a human turd. Despise him? -Yes. Feel sorry for him? -Yes. Hate him? -No.
LOL, in this modern society people like the Mittani are the subject of intense facination and scrutiny, the plethoria of trash reality shows, cable tv shows about drug addicts/dealers/serial killers, pseudo celebrities and the like prove that.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Originally posted by Nikkita Maybe not a pure sandbox but a hybrid of themepark and sandbox features would do great if done right. In the end what matters is that gameplay is fun and interesting. Sandbox or no sandbox.
It is simple business. The themepark market is oversaturated with filth, too many games.
The hardcore MMORPG market, a market of millions, the millions that launched this genre... is totally untapped. A game hasn't been targeted at the core market for a very long time. If anyone with even a slight budget were to make a game aimed at these folks, it'd get massive amounts of hype and cash regardless of how it turns out (that's what happened with Vanguard).
I'm surprised it took someone this long to wake up. Thankfully the death of SWTOR seems to have been the wakeup call that I was hoping it'd be.
I really doubt that there are so many hardcore MMO players that they would constitue a market of untapped millions. If it was true a lot of sandbox MMOS wouldn't be fighting for survival. Some of those very well made too. For example Darkfall and Ryzom.
Why didn't all the millions support these MMOS? we even had a very nice hybrid called Fallen Earth, even that sandpark MMO struggled to stay alive and now just doing 'good enough' with F2P model.
Originally posted by Nikkita Maybe not a pure sandbox but a hybrid of themepark and sandbox features would do great if done right. In the end what matters is that gameplay is fun and interesting. Sandbox or no sandbox.
It is simple business. The themepark market is oversaturated with filth, too many games.
The hardcore MMORPG market, a market of millions, the millions that launched this genre... is totally untapped. A game hasn't been targeted at the core market for a very long time. If anyone with even a slight budget were to make a game aimed at these folks, it'd get massive amounts of hype and cash regardless of how it turns out (that's what happened with Vanguard).
I'm surprised it took someone this long to wake up. Thankfully the death of SWTOR seems to have been the wakeup call that I was hoping it'd be.
I really doubt that there are so many hardcore MMO players that they would constitue a market of untapped millions. If it was true a lot of sandbox MMOS wouldn't be fighting for survival. Some of those very well made too. For example Darkfall and Ryzom.
Why didn't all the millions support these MMOS? we even had a very nice hybrid called Fallen Earth, even that sandpark MMO struggled to stay alive and now just doing 'good enough' with F2P model.
Darkfall is FFA PVP. That's reason enough for it to be an uphill battle. But I do expect it to have a much larger player base once 2.0 releases.
Ryzom never got much publicity and went through development hell, getting wiped and redone several times. But mainly the no publicity thing.
Fallen Earth, I'm not sure what happened there. I only played it briefly, it wasn't totally my style of game/setting, but I could tell it was something special. One of the best post WoW MMOs to be sure. But there isn't a huge audience for post apoc games I guess.
But here's the thing, all 3 of these games were made by underfunded indie dev studios with little to no experience.
Even in the MMO golden age, the people making those early MMOs had TONS of experience. Ultima Online had 8 Ultima games to work off of. Dark Age of Camelot had the backbone of about 4 different MUDS that Mythic had developed. EverQuest was backed by MUDs as well.
Now imagine if a bigger more experienced studio made a game for the hardcore market. It wouldn't have to have a budget nearly as big as a themepark MMO because a) most of the content is player generated and b) the market is UNCONTESTED. You're not struggling to outpace all the other games already in the genre, because there are none. Vanguard is the closest game to trying this approach, but it was mismanaged on 3 different levels. First, by Microsoft, who dropped it after they got a new CEO that didn't want to deal with MMOs, by Sigil itself because the man in charge was a better designer than he was a company manager, and struggled to keep all the massive talent and egos behind the game in line, and by SoE who forced the game out 8 months early, within the same week as Burning Crusade.
And despite all this, Vanguard sold insanely well for the first few weeks and had hundreds of thousands of people clamoring about it.
If someone were to make a hardcore MMO like Vanguard, on a realistic budget, they'd have a clear path to the millions of MMO gamers who haven't had anywhere to go since the collapse of the MMO genre in 2004.
And yes, millions. There were dozens and dozens of MMOs before WoW came out. 300k in DAoC, 500k in EQ, 400k in SWG, 250k in UO, 200k in AC. Many of those folks are still here, waiting for a game that hearkens back to what they liked about the genre. And there's plenty of new blood looking for something a bit different. You see a lot of converts in Vanguard who only ever played WoW but thought it was too easy. You see in in games like Dark Souls, where Skyrim and CoD fans try it, an insanely hard oldschool game, and fall in love with it.
What makes better business sense, sinking 300 million into a game model that is proven to not work, EVER (themepark/WoW clone) or make a much smaller risk into a genre that might net insane profits?
Originally posted by Loktofeit ... At some point as an industry we need to realize that we have already lost the race to outpace players in making content. I personally thought SWTOR was a great game. I loved Diablo III. The problem is you get to the endgame and as game makers it's not just expensive. it's impossible to stay ahead of the curve. ...
Not sure whether he thinks there's an untapped market - but I think he says it all in the quoted part: it's just too expensive, it's impossible qua time and budget to create scripted content as fast as themepark players consume it. Throwing millions of dollars at the problem doesn't solve anything.
And that's his problem from a business point-of-view, themeparks getting ever more expensive to produce (thousands of cutscenes, voice actors, CGI trailers and scripted dungeons don't come for free), thus the games need a large playerbase, and need the playerbase for more than a month or two to be profitable.
Cue in games that cost less to produce and have more longevity. Fine for me, suits my tastes well.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
Originally posted by Nikkita Maybe not a pure sandbox but a hybrid of themepark and sandbox features would do great if done right. In the end what matters is that gameplay is fun and interesting. Sandbox or no sandbox.
It is simple business. The themepark market is oversaturated with filth, too many games.
The hardcore MMORPG market, a market of millions, the millions that launched this genre... is totally untapped. A game hasn't been targeted at the core market for a very long time. If anyone with even a slight budget were to make a game aimed at these folks, it'd get massive amounts of hype and cash regardless of how it turns out (that's what happened with Vanguard).
I'm surprised it took someone this long to wake up. Thankfully the death of SWTOR seems to have been the wakeup call that I was hoping it'd be.
I really doubt that there are so many hardcore MMO players that they would constitue a market of untapped millions. If it was true a lot of sandbox MMOS wouldn't be fighting for survival. Some of those very well made too. For example Darkfall and Ryzom.
Why didn't all the millions support these MMOS? we even had a very nice hybrid called Fallen Earth, even that sandpark MMO struggled to stay alive and now just doing 'good enough' with F2P model.
There is now a major differance with sandbox Mo's before they were at the mercy of people like Smedley who are only a figurehead for a company and of course they need to make money,with SWG he made the biggest mistake in Mo history and brought down a stigma on his company which many users still will not touch SOE with a bargepole just because he is in charge and well because it's SOE.
Now we have Kickstarter and smaller teams now create their own destiny and as a result are much more in tune with their customers as they don't have mega millions to waste and can not afford to lose half thier player base as they would be bankrupt pretty quick,come circa mid 2013 it should be pretty interesting for smaller Mo's as there will be a lot of competition in the market.
Originally posted by Nikkita Maybe not a pure sandbox but a hybrid of themepark and sandbox features would do great if done right. In the end what matters is that gameplay is fun and interesting. Sandbox or no sandbox.
It is simple business. The themepark market is oversaturated with filth, too many games.
The hardcore MMORPG market, a market of millions, the millions that launched this genre... is totally untapped. A game hasn't been targeted at the core market for a very long time. If anyone with even a slight budget were to make a game aimed at these folks, it'd get massive amounts of hype and cash regardless of how it turns out (that's what happened with Vanguard).
I'm surprised it took someone this long to wake up. Thankfully the death of SWTOR seems to have been the wakeup call that I was hoping it'd be.
I really doubt that there are so many hardcore MMO players that they would constitue a market of untapped millions. If it was true a lot of sandbox MMOS wouldn't be fighting for survival. Some of those very well made too. For example Darkfall and Ryzom.
Why didn't all the millions support these MMOS? we even had a very nice hybrid called Fallen Earth, even that sandpark MMO struggled to stay alive and now just doing 'good enough' with F2P model.
Darkfall is FFA PVP. That's reason enough for it to be an uphill battle. But I do expect it to have a much larger player base once 2.0 releases.
Ryzom never got much publicity and went through development hell, getting wiped and redone several times. But mainly the no publicity thing.
Fallen Earth, I'm not sure what happened there. I only played it briefly, it wasn't totally my style of game/setting, but I could tell it was something special. One of the best post WoW MMOs to be sure. But there isn't a huge audience for post apoc games I guess.
But here's the thing, all 3 of these games were made by underfunded indie dev studios with little to no experience.
Even in the MMO golden age, the people making those early MMOs had TONS of experience. Ultima Online had 8 Ultima games to work off of. Dark Age of Camelot had the backbone of about 4 different MUDS that Mythic had developed. EverQuest was backed by MUDs as well.
Now imagine if a bigger more experienced studio made a game for the hardcore market. It wouldn't have to have a budget nearly as big as a themepark MMO because a) most of the content is player generated and b) the market is UNCONTESTED. You're not struggling to outpace all the other games already in the genre, because there are none. Vanguard is the closest game to trying this approach, but it was mismanaged on 3 different levels. First, by Microsoft, who dropped it after they got a new CEO that didn't want to deal with MMOs, by Sigil itself because the man in charge was a better designer than he was a company manager, and struggled to keep all the massive talent and egos behind the game in line, and by SoE who forced the game out 8 months early, within the same week as Burning Crusade.
And despite all this, Vanguard sold insanely well for the first few weeks and had hundreds of thousands of people clamoring about it.
If someone were to make a hardcore MMO like Vanguard, on a realistic budget, they'd have a clear path to the millions of MMO gamers who haven't had anywhere to go since the collapse of the MMO genre in 2004.
And yes, millions. There were dozens and dozens of MMOs before WoW came out. 300k in DAoC, 500k in EQ, 400k in SWG, 250k in UO, 200k in AC. Many of those folks are still here, waiting for a game that hearkens back to what they liked about the genre. And there's plenty of new blood looking for something a bit different. You see a lot of converts in Vanguard who only ever played WoW but thought it was too easy. You see in in games like Dark Souls, where Skyrim and CoD fans try it, an insanely hard oldschool game, and fall in love with it.
What makes better business sense, sinking 300 million into a game model that is proven to not work, EVER (themepark/WoW clone) or make a much smaller risk into a genre that might net insane profits?
Yes it might. The problem is not the budget or indie devs. Eve started with 20K susbcribers and have been grewing in numbers since. CCP were also unexperinced but they still pulled it off.
Problem is that one success story alone isn't enough to encourage investors to sink millions into a project which 'might' make them insane profit when all other sanbox are falling like flies left and right.What we need is more successful MMOS like EVE started on decent budget before expecting some poor investor to blow his million on a AAA sandbox.
Now only thing left to see is response to Archage and Repopulation, if indeed there are millions of these players hiding in the woods waiting for a sandbox MMO now would be the time to come out and support these titles. And if these sink too well...these millions can only blame themselves.
Originally posted by Nikkita Maybe not a pure sandbox but a hybrid of themepark and sandbox features would do great if done right. In the end what matters is that gameplay is fun and interesting. Sandbox or no sandbox.
It is simple business. The themepark market is oversaturated with filth, too many games.
The hardcore MMORPG market, a market of millions, the millions that launched this genre... is totally untapped. A game hasn't been targeted at the core market for a very long time. If anyone with even a slight budget were to make a game aimed at these folks, it'd get massive amounts of hype and cash regardless of how it turns out (that's what happened with Vanguard).
I'm surprised it took someone this long to wake up. Thankfully the death of SWTOR seems to have been the wakeup call that I was hoping it'd be.
I really doubt that there are so many hardcore MMO players that they would constitue a market of untapped millions. If it was true a lot of sandbox MMOS wouldn't be fighting for survival. Some of those very well made too. For example Darkfall and Ryzom.
Why didn't all the millions support these MMOS? we even had a very nice hybrid called Fallen Earth, even that sandpark MMO struggled to stay alive and now just doing 'good enough' with F2P model.
Darkfall is FFA PVP. That's reason enough for it to be an uphill battle. But I do expect it to have a much larger player base once 2.0 releases.
Ryzom never got much publicity and went through development hell, getting wiped and redone several times. But mainly the no publicity thing.
Fallen Earth, I'm not sure what happened there. I only played it briefly, it wasn't totally my style of game/setting, but I could tell it was something special. One of the best post WoW MMOs to be sure. But there isn't a huge audience for post apoc games I guess.
But here's the thing, all 3 of these games were made by underfunded indie dev studios with little to no experience.
Even in the MMO golden age, the people making those early MMOs had TONS of experience. Ultima Online had 8 Ultima games to work off of. Dark Age of Camelot had the backbone of about 4 different MUDS that Mythic had developed. EverQuest was backed by MUDs as well.
Now imagine if a bigger more experienced studio made a game for the hardcore market. It wouldn't have to have a budget nearly as big as a themepark MMO because a) most of the content is player generated and b) the market is UNCONTESTED. You're not struggling to outpace all the other games already in the genre, because there are none. Vanguard is the closest game to trying this approach, but it was mismanaged on 3 different levels. First, by Microsoft, who dropped it after they got a new CEO that didn't want to deal with MMOs, by Sigil itself because the man in charge was a better designer than he was a company manager, and struggled to keep all the massive talent and egos behind the game in line, and by SoE who forced the game out 8 months early, within the same week as Burning Crusade.
And despite all this, Vanguard sold insanely well for the first few weeks and had hundreds of thousands of people clamoring about it.
If someone were to make a hardcore MMO like Vanguard, on a realistic budget, they'd have a clear path to the millions of MMO gamers who haven't had anywhere to go since the collapse of the MMO genre in 2004.
And yes, millions. There were dozens and dozens of MMOs before WoW came out. 300k in DAoC, 500k in EQ, 400k in SWG, 250k in UO, 200k in AC. Many of those folks are still here, waiting for a game that hearkens back to what they liked about the genre. And there's plenty of new blood looking for something a bit different. You see a lot of converts in Vanguard who only ever played WoW but thought it was too easy. You see in in games like Dark Souls, where Skyrim and CoD fans try it, an insanely hard oldschool game, and fall in love with it.
What makes better business sense, sinking 300 million into a game model that is proven to not work, EVER (themepark/WoW clone) or make a much smaller risk into a genre that might net insane profits?
Yes it might. The problem is not the budget or indie devs. Eve started with 20K susbcribers and have been grewing in numbers since. CCP were also unexperinced but they still pulled it off.
Problem is that one success story alone isn't enough to encourage investors to sink millions into a project which 'might' make them insane profit when all other sanbox are falling like flies left and right.What we need is more successful MMOS like EVE started on decent budget before expecting some poor investor to blow his million on a AAA sandbox.
Now only thing left to see is response to Archage and Repopulation, if indeed there are millions of these players hiding in the woods waiting for a sandbox MMO now would be the time to come out and support these titles. And if these sink too well...these millions can only blame themselves.
To be honest, the only progress that'll be made is when publishers get out of the industry. They haven't been making good decisions. Despite every themepark WoW clone to date failing horribly, they keep making more, just because ONE was successful. People say "but investing in a sandbox is so risky" I'd say its far FAR riskier investing in a themepark.
I don't know that there is multi million market out there for just a sandbox game. I think it has to be more than that, it has to be a very well done sandbox game. I know EQ is not a sandbox, but I think if you had a game with that sort of grouping dynamic mixed in with lots of tools I think you could get a pretty high population. I don't think 500,000 would be out of the question. The difficulty is mixing in enough things to keep several gamer types happy without overly catering to one type.
Comments
WoW in its current state would be steam rolled through very quickly. However, today's wow and the vanilla version from years ago are two very different beasts. So its not really a good comparison. I play MMO's the same now as I did then, and the current MMO's I go through quickly. I am not even remotely a hardcore gamer either! Also, not sure why Diablo 3 was brought up, it doesn't relate to the subject at hand at all.
Either way, what is being proposed here is old and been done before. With that in mind, hopefully they can build something really great out of it! They have the experience. Though I have no faith in Smedley sadly.
Um maybe you didn't play SWTOR, but the endgame is grinding and progression. Thats all the game has other than a story, and people didn't enjoy their grind and progession in the game so they left in droves.
Really it boils down to a few things to make a sandbox favorable.
SOCIAL ASPECTS. Yes, that is all caps. SWG had dancer, musician, buffs needed by doctors, cantinas, etc. Things to make the game social. You had to be involved with the community to make the best things and to recieve the best. Most sandbox games I've played lack so much in this department its comical. I want to live in the world, not just fight in it.
Eve is an amazing game, not for me though, but many things can be incorporated and if they incorporate the additional areas in PS2 with controlling territories for additional bonuses, by mining etc such as how Shadowbane did it could prove to be useful. Perpetuum on the other hand stopped appealing to me about 2 months in as I didn't enjoy the rinse repeat, get blow up, wait 3 days to be back in action.
And lastly why does a sandbox and a themepark have to no coexist. Give a main storyline bingo you got themepark. You can have mission terminals with random mission/spawns that are very plain, add in some user made quest, There is so much you can do as long as you keep the majority of items, buildings, etc crafted by players to create a living world. All it takes is one company to not screw it up royally by going full blown pvp all the time.
The difference is that Smedley is...
Drat. Sorry, dont want to get banned.
Lets put it this way. Both Smedley and The Mittani have a history of wreaking havok on their choosen MMOs
All die, so die well.
Super villains? SoE may not be great, but the super villains of the genre are either Blizzard or EA. No other company has had as negative an impact on the genre as those two companies.
Bite Me
My thoughts exactly. However, I still have to wonder how much of a role LA had in that.
Why Blizzard? EA is the spawn of Satan, but whats wrong with Blizzard?
Also, Mittani is a scum - a human turd. Despise him? -Yes. Feel sorry for him? -Yes. Hate him? -No.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
It is simple business. The themepark market is oversaturated with filth, too many games.
The hardcore MMORPG market, a market of millions, the millions that launched this genre... is totally untapped. A game hasn't been targeted at the core market for a very long time. If anyone with even a slight budget were to make a game aimed at these folks, it'd get massive amounts of hype and cash regardless of how it turns out (that's what happened with Vanguard).
I'm surprised it took someone this long to wake up. Thankfully the death of SWTOR seems to have been the wakeup call that I was hoping it'd be.
By showing other companies that you can make a substantial profit by never innovating and half assing old ideas without understanding how they work. They're something all lazy devs can aspire to be.
They've never pushed the genre, never tried anything new, never done anything with the vast amount of money. And, they're partners with Activision.. D3 and the CoD games are just plain bad for the genre.
Where is the market of millions for sandbox MMORPG? There are possibly millions playing Minecraft, but not in an MMORPG type setting, and that's it. Where are the rest of the millions? China? South Korea? How does that help anyone in the U.S. or Europe?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
He has apologized numerous times for the NGE and openly admitted it was a massive mistake, one that he regrets. He said it at least 5 times in that reddit thread. He also answered my question and told me EQnext would be a return to group based community driven gameplay.
The reason almost all WoW clones fail is because they sell content, not worlds, and content runs out. Especially when that content is 95% similar to all the other content in the other WOW clones.
It makes me laugh to think of how many tens of millions of dollars I could have saved several game companies over the last few years had they sat me down for a chat about MMOs. ROFL.
See, some of you like to sit back and talk about how this website is full of people who complain about everything. I see it differently. I think a lot of the people here are more on the bleeding-edge of MMO gaming, and some of us have seen the writing on the wall for Themepark games for years.
It's true that complainers tend to spend more time on boards, but it's also true that hardcore players and mmo enthusiasts who have been playing for a very long time do as well. If I had a game company, I would have regular online focus groups to discuss mmo gaming in general with the community. It's not hard to weed out people who are just eternally depressed about everything.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Hardcore MMORPGs, not necessarily sandboxes. Though, by comparison, oldschool MMOs are more sandbox than themepark in today's eyes.
I wish this was the case as I am sick of people complaining that XXX MMORPG has no group finder feature.
That said, no MMO company has done so little with so much revenue, so i will agree with that. EQ and EQ2 have pushed out so much content over the years, yet Blizzard thinks its okay for one expansion every two years.
I'm really sick of the whole "There's a massive fanbase for X", or "Y would be a WoW-killer if it just had a chance".
There is no massive conspiracy waiting in the MMO playerbase.
There are no "sleeper-agent fans" waiting to convert once the X or Y is unleashed on the world.
There may be a growing portion of players who prefer sandbox ELEMENTS in games. But players have, and always will want SOME form of direction or given purpose in their games. It's why tutorials exist, its why LEVELLING exists, its why experience and crafting skills exist, and its why WoW is number one in the market even with millions lost.
There is a clear bias towards some form of given direction in MMO gaming. Just setting your average player on a wide open sandbox world with no instructions and a million things to do and see would not appeal to them. To the experienced sandbox players, yes, but not to the casuals, not to the seasoned WoW-style game veterans.
There is no untapped gold mine of players. But there is growing diversity. Praise that, instead of hoping for a game that will convert everyone to your beliefs.
I'm really sick of the whole "There's a massive fanbase for X", or "Y would be a WoW-killer if it just had a chance".
There is no massive conspiracy waiting in the MMO playerbase.
There are no "sleeper-agent fans" waiting to convert once the X or Y is unleashed on the world.
LOL, in this modern society people like the Mittani are the subject of intense facination and scrutiny, the plethoria of trash reality shows, cable tv shows about drug addicts/dealers/serial killers, pseudo celebrities and the like prove that.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I really doubt that there are so many hardcore MMO players that they would constitue a market of untapped millions. If it was true a lot of sandbox MMOS wouldn't be fighting for survival. Some of those very well made too. For example Darkfall and Ryzom.
Why didn't all the millions support these MMOS? we even had a very nice hybrid called Fallen Earth, even that sandpark MMO struggled to stay alive and now just doing 'good enough' with F2P model.
Bite Me
Darkfall is FFA PVP. That's reason enough for it to be an uphill battle. But I do expect it to have a much larger player base once 2.0 releases.
Ryzom never got much publicity and went through development hell, getting wiped and redone several times. But mainly the no publicity thing.
Fallen Earth, I'm not sure what happened there. I only played it briefly, it wasn't totally my style of game/setting, but I could tell it was something special. One of the best post WoW MMOs to be sure. But there isn't a huge audience for post apoc games I guess.
But here's the thing, all 3 of these games were made by underfunded indie dev studios with little to no experience.
Even in the MMO golden age, the people making those early MMOs had TONS of experience. Ultima Online had 8 Ultima games to work off of. Dark Age of Camelot had the backbone of about 4 different MUDS that Mythic had developed. EverQuest was backed by MUDs as well.
Now imagine if a bigger more experienced studio made a game for the hardcore market. It wouldn't have to have a budget nearly as big as a themepark MMO because a) most of the content is player generated and b) the market is UNCONTESTED. You're not struggling to outpace all the other games already in the genre, because there are none. Vanguard is the closest game to trying this approach, but it was mismanaged on 3 different levels. First, by Microsoft, who dropped it after they got a new CEO that didn't want to deal with MMOs, by Sigil itself because the man in charge was a better designer than he was a company manager, and struggled to keep all the massive talent and egos behind the game in line, and by SoE who forced the game out 8 months early, within the same week as Burning Crusade.
And despite all this, Vanguard sold insanely well for the first few weeks and had hundreds of thousands of people clamoring about it.
If someone were to make a hardcore MMO like Vanguard, on a realistic budget, they'd have a clear path to the millions of MMO gamers who haven't had anywhere to go since the collapse of the MMO genre in 2004.
And yes, millions. There were dozens and dozens of MMOs before WoW came out. 300k in DAoC, 500k in EQ, 400k in SWG, 250k in UO, 200k in AC. Many of those folks are still here, waiting for a game that hearkens back to what they liked about the genre. And there's plenty of new blood looking for something a bit different. You see a lot of converts in Vanguard who only ever played WoW but thought it was too easy. You see in in games like Dark Souls, where Skyrim and CoD fans try it, an insanely hard oldschool game, and fall in love with it.
What makes better business sense, sinking 300 million into a game model that is proven to not work, EVER (themepark/WoW clone) or make a much smaller risk into a genre that might net insane profits?
Not sure whether he thinks there's an untapped market - but I think he says it all in the quoted part: it's just too expensive, it's impossible qua time and budget to create scripted content as fast as themepark players consume it. Throwing millions of dollars at the problem doesn't solve anything.
And that's his problem from a business point-of-view, themeparks getting ever more expensive to produce (thousands of cutscenes, voice actors, CGI trailers and scripted dungeons don't come for free), thus the games need a large playerbase, and need the playerbase for more than a month or two to be profitable.
Cue in games that cost less to produce and have more longevity. Fine for me, suits my tastes well.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
Yes it might. The problem is not the budget or indie devs. Eve started with 20K susbcribers and have been grewing in numbers since. CCP were also unexperinced but they still pulled it off.
Problem is that one success story alone isn't enough to encourage investors to sink millions into a project which 'might' make them insane profit when all other sanbox are falling like flies left and right.What we need is more successful MMOS like EVE started on decent budget before expecting some poor investor to blow his million on a AAA sandbox.
Now only thing left to see is response to Archage and Repopulation, if indeed there are millions of these players hiding in the woods waiting for a sandbox MMO now would be the time to come out and support these titles. And if these sink too well...these millions can only blame themselves.
Bite Me
OMG!! I just had a thought!
What if there making PS2 the sandbox replacement for SWG!!!
OMG i figured it out!!!!!!!
!
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington
To be honest, the only progress that'll be made is when publishers get out of the industry. They haven't been making good decisions. Despite every themepark WoW clone to date failing horribly, they keep making more, just because ONE was successful. People say "but investing in a sandbox is so risky" I'd say its far FAR riskier investing in a themepark.