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[Column] General: Some Intriguing 2015 Questions
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
What a difference 12 months can make. Although the MMOG category did see some notable occurrences in 2014, I don't know many people who felt it lived up to the potential it seemed to have at this time a year ago. I wouldn't call it a disaster by any means, but neither did it knock my socks off. Entering 2015, I'm quietly optimistic. That said, I have questions about the what lies ahead, involving Landmark, The Elder Scrolls Online, EverQuest Next and more.
Read more of Richard Aihoshi's The Free Zone: Some Intriguing 2015 Questions.
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(re: ESO console launch) "Either way, I'll continue to wonder why the decision came about to have separate release dates."
My own personal theory is that they realized the game still needed a lot of work and wasn't ready for release to consoles where the player base is not as tolerant about weird bugs.
Cynics have said (and I don't necessarily disagree) that we have been playing a prolonged beta for the past 10 months.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Richard,
I am surprised that you have contemplated the launch of ESO on consoles, and mused about if it will work.... but did not comment on another console launch in the near future. PlanetSide 2 is starting its PS4 beta soon, and will be launching on that console in 2015. This is another game that has had a PC and Console launch, separate by much time.
I agree. Management decision based on feedback from the PC launch.
Clearly they are going to hype the game as TESO 2.0 and put as much distance as they can between the console and the PC launch. "Interesting" question for 2015: will they stick with the subscription model and go for higher sales? Not sure. It would feed the hype - and they never got Sony or Microsoft to allow them to use their (i.e. Sony and MS's) front end infrastructure and security for free.
Polish and bug squashing is beta, completely revamping major systems is alpha imo.
To many other titles out there to put any more money into this albatross, waiting for b2p. You rolled the dice Zenimax and pushed it out way to early, now you pay.
I do not feel EQ Next nor Landmark will change anything.It is imo a NEW home for Minecraft type players,however SOE having tied important aspects directly into their cash shop means many will snub their games off.
Console versions of a game?I doubt that changes anything either,the ONLY reason a dev does it is to gain more profit,no other reason.
There lies the underwhelming problem,we need to start seeing developers make a game with passion and not 99% business 1% game development.It is liek they come up with ONE ideea..ok let's make a game ,make some maps,mobs,textures,quests ok gg,let's sell it.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Fair point. Although the line between the two has been getting so cloudy over the past few years I actually prefer Steam's catch-all phrase, "Early Release" now.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
As above: will Zenimax stick with the subscription model.
Will EQN even see alpha in 2015 or is it all just morphing into Landmark.
Will Wildstar close?
Will WoW retain their new players or fall back below 7M say by mid year? Will Blizzard release any new content late 2015 or embark on another holiday? Changing business model - can't see it (don't believe their Timeless Isles experiment worked); would also impact their China arrangement - although TenCent are a "shareholder"
Can't see an import making a big impact; difficult to see anything making a major impact unless TESO manages to put the PC launch behind it and sells 10M+ on console.
Other thoughts? Will a PC port of Destiny be announced? What is planned after DLC 2?
It boils down to consoles having oversight over their platform when it comes to things like this. STeam has it to a lesser degree , so they will from time to time step in and remove games that have highly reported problems (which wouldn't surprise me if that had a hand in it's delayed Steam release as well) Pc in general though is more or less an open platform, you can release whatever you feel like on.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Reworking an unpopular system is not the same thing as a game being in alpha status. Live games (been around for years) do it as well. It's just rare for a company to do it so early in it's life-cycle. OR so late in it's Beta, if you consider what the problem stemmed from in the first place. SOE made that same mistake with SWG (major changes due to beta feedback) prior to it's 2003 release, the difference being they waited years to really go back and attempt to fix the problems brought on by it. FOr many those fixes made the game much worse... Hopefully Zen has better luck.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
In terms of Wildstar, an even better question is; will Carbine survive this year? With all of the layoffs and important people departing, not to mention having NCsoft as a publisher, the future doesn't look very bright for them.
NCsoft has a nasty reputation for having little patience for western games that don't match up to its spreadsheet expectations. I wish Carbine all the best of luck. From the looks of it, they will need it.
NCSoft own Carbine. Even if WS survives you would have to envisage operations being progressively "consolidated" to reduce costs - probably leading to the studio being closed at some point. I wouldn't call NCSoft nasty though just hard headed.
No, WoW wont go F2P 2015. It still have far too many players and earn too much money for Blizzard to try to change the payment model.
If the game would go under a million they might but right now don't they have much reasons to change what made them one of the richest companies in computer gaming.
ESO seems to be doing it, or at least that is what rumors say and Wildstar might as well but with WoW you can't be sure what the millions of players would think about it.
Right now each player (at least western but there are several millions of them still) generate $15 + any new player will buy all the boxes as well.
I am not sure exactly how much an average F2P player buys in the itemshop each month, lets guess on $5 which mean that the game would need at least 3 times as many player for it to be worth it. If you have a fine game with a few hundered thousand players that works fine but we are talking about millions here and I don't think there are that many interested that would start if it went F2P.
I might be wrong and there is a lot of assumption in that math but Blizzard would still be folish to risk killing the goose that lays golden eggs.
Maybe 2017 though, the player numbers are getting smaller with time and other games have already shown us that smaller and medium population games earn more money as F2P but we never seen anything similar on WoWs scale. Besides, WoW already sell some stuff for cash.
Right now are the first 20 levels more or less F2P and they might increase that to cover 50 levels or so though, nothing I would bet on but more likely then changing the entire payment model.