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Too all those longing for EQ + modern
Horusra
Member EpicPosts: 4,411
So...you can pull maybe 200k with just ok EQ...doubt most of those would sub....another 50k with modern graphics and nothing else. So what kind of budget could a game with say 250K subs support as initial investment to create. That to me would determine what kind of game you could realistically get. This is what I see holding back an "old school" mmo.
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250k sub? I highly doubt it. In this land of F2P MMOs everywhere, i would doubt you will even get 50k sub for a game based on EQ1 type ancient mechanics.
Of course, it is up to you to prove to investors that there may be money in this thing. Good luck!
LOL man if they made a game that was as difficult as EQ originally was.......they would pull an easy 3 million subs, and those subs would pay 20/mo for it. Im low income and I would.
What held back old school MMO's is the lure of making a potential WoW type success. Its not a coincidence post 2004 almost every AAA game is some sort of themepark quest hub game and games released prior were made to be more like it.
There is no "good" or "bad" concepts .. only those the market likes, and those they don't.
And i would call "interdependency" a popular concept. I don't like it. And most MMOs moved away from it.
Freedom is good .. but you don't need a EQ to have it ... D3 has BETTER freedom of what to kill, and where to kill .. by just clicking a button. More convenient than how it is done in EQ .. heck .. you don't even need a MMO for that.
Don't forget that a lot of people playing eq1 back in the day only played it because there were not many mmorpgs to choose from so even 200 000 will be an optimistic number.While I don't agree with nariusseldon on what types of game worlds are best for mmo, I agree that interdepency is not a fun concept especially in today games where most players are not even interested in a polite chat and consequences in mmorpgs means boring sink times and letting guilds control entire servers.
Edited : Sorry, I should have said "favourite type of world" in a mmo setting instead of best.
Good point.
I would never bother with a game like EQ in today's abundance of choices.
(BTW, when did i say what is "best" for MMOs? "Best" is subjective. I did sometimes comment on what is POPULAR but that is very different from "best").
Whenever I hear people talk about MMORPG players I picture storm troopers. There are 10s of millions of MMORPG players now. They're all just lock in step? All those who have never tried anything but WoW like games would never like anything different? Seems very far fetched to me. Though I've realized there is a lot of dogma when it comes to this genre.
i loved my magician / enchanter back then was so easy to navigate everywhere ...invis ftw XD
I couldn't disagree with this more.
EQ's combat was one of its great strengths. Slow? Sure. Did it still require quick reactions when things hit the fan? You bet. The best group mechanics in MMO history? By an enormous margin.
The genre desperately needs another game where you aren't clicking a button ever 1.5 seconds or less. It needs a game where groups could actually talk to each other. it needs a game when mobs were actually fearsome, not something you round up and AoE dozen at a time. It needs a game where resource management is very, very important and agro management isn't something that only the tank needs to worry about. It needs a game where 'holy trinity' doesn't include DPS, and where in reality you could utilize a ton of different combinations.
Crappy graphics? Maybe, but graphics are mostly unimportant. Aesthetics, however, are. And Norrath had a charm missing from most modern worlds, especially the game you singled out (Rift). Also, the lower tech graphics allowed for truly huge expansions.
A spiritual successor to EQ (which Vanguard was not) would not appeal to the solo friendly crowd. But those people have tons of games already, including EQ2. An EQ style game could pull from the old generation games player bases (FFXI as well as EQ)as well as people looking for something different. If done well somewhere around 300k is likely, with some upside. the done well is the tough part. It needs to launch with an asston of content, and take the average person at least 6 months to cap, with an AA system in place when they get there.
MMO's NEED downtime during group fights to create the opportunity for social interaction that creates the glue that keeps people subscribed for years on end. EQ1 had the formula perfect.
Another aspect that needs to be looked at is raising the subscription price from the $15/mo that has been the norm for the past 10+ years to something like $20 to $30/month. In real terms the cost of subs had declined immensely since EQ1 launched. That would also allow a game to be profitable with about half the players that are currently required.
I wouldn't bet on any game getting 10M players again. At least for a very very long time in the MMO genre.
MOBAs and some other more or less persistent online games, maybe... but as far as MMOs go I think we had one unique game that did that, and that hopefully is the last one to do that. I think it was bad for the genre.
High fantasy is not a niche, that is true. But there are a lot of high fantasy PVE experiences out there - of which WoW is definitely part of. And just because your game is high fantasy or old school doesn't mean it will be an instant success - there are a lot out there in both flavors that are horrible.
I might be at the point where, if EQ:N doesn't turn out to be game changing for the industry, I will stop playing MMO's all together. The genre has changed so much from what it was that I can hardly recognize it anymore. I have gone from one game to the next since 2004 looking for the next great game but not one has come out that captured the same spirit as old UO/AC/EQ.
I don't know, maybe I'm just getting too old.
You are not alone
The prime danger in creating a game targeted at former EQ players should already be fairly obvious. We now live in an age of made-to-order entertainment and that has just as strong an effect on the hardcore crowd. Anyone who creates a game like this to buck the trend had better create a picture-perfect product. Because it's inevitable that some portion of the target crowd will find some reason not to play it.
We've already seen the old-school crowd turn their noses up at the two most prominent attempts to revive the ancient MMO masters via Pantheon and Shards Online. Vanguard is getting shut down after being virtually DOA since release, despite the raves about how many gameplay aspects the game got right. Just with the finicky playerbase that haunts these forums I'd say anybody's best bet at making a return on their hefty investment is to stick mostly with what works and find places to iterate to make their game distinct. A far better plan than seeking to revive a school of gaming with nothing but anecdotal evidence at present to suggest it will be successful.
Disagree strongly, it's the modern mechanics of group finder that have lead to that. In a world where you're randomly paired with people form other servers that you most likely will never see again what is the incentive to talk to a complete stranger you have little hope of ever continuing the conversation or learning more about after dungeon is through? Also in a world where everyone waits in the same queue to be matched with nameless faceless people form other servers there is less incentive to have strong connections like there used to be before group finder when you actually had to find people for groups.
The splash and crash narrative is demonstrably false yet that drum keeps getting beat over and over again. Even the TORtanic-- that most WoWy of clones, which bled millions of subs, and is widely used as an example of why themeparks are so terrible-- is doing quite well. Most MMOs would be happy to have "crashed" and have the playerbase they do.
Do we really want to compare the success of themeparks of the past ten years with that of sandboxes over the same period? Because I guarantee the whole narrative will change to make excuses for why sandboxes have been poorly implemented, created by bad devs, weighted down by OWPvP, and all the other devices that get trotted out. All of which points to my original thesis: people today will find ample reasons not to play a game, so you'd better either be ready to cast the net far afield or to accept having a small, niche playerbase.
I have no hope for EQN. While there are some amazing sounding concepts, it seems to be following the bad trends of MMOs...no true roles, actiony combat. It looks like GW2 from a combat perspective, which is not the way EQ should go.
If the world is awesome and especially dynamic it might be enough, but Im not holding my breath.
Don't forget that this was 1999+ and a lot of people didn't even have computers and internet access, so 200,000 would be an easy number in todays technological world. Interdependency is not a fun concept in todays games because they're all based on single player activities. Working together (or against each other) has always been the focus of multiplayer games, that's why they're multiplayer in the first place. You don't make a multiplayer game just to have a bunch of people sitting around doing their own thing... oh wait, in modern MMO's you do.
I doubt enough people wants to sit and wait for 5 - 10 minutes while mana goes back up or to be put on 'lists' just to get into a good loot/xp group, nor do i think people really want to forgo all the conveniences most of us have gotten used to by now.
What I do think a lot of people want, is a longer leveling experience where the journey becomes the main meat of the game. I just don't see that happening without ridiculous time sinks that the majority would hate
Might I suggest Wurm Online to some of you?
Look away from AAA games if you want to find interesting MMOs
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
to be fair 'most people' are morons.
A game doesnt have to appeal to 'most people' in order to make money
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me