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How do you save a dying MMO?
thej6m
Member Posts: 38
Now of course as the years progress an MMO's subscription numbers will decline. That is invitable. But what about games such as The Matrix Online and, more recently, Auto Assault that failed the day they hit store shelves. In the past 2 years no game has been able to rival WOW but still companies continue to release MMOs on a regular basis. I very much enjoyed Auto Assault but everything from their message boards to the reviews are saying the game is dead. Just wondering how YOU would try to revive an MMO that is DOA as soon as it hits store shelves.
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Sell it for parts.
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AA was just crap. It had so many great ideas, but put them together so horrbly it had no chance in hell of ever making it on the market. It was just junk, pure and simple.
And the Matrix Online was just another crappy Matrix game. It doesn't make any sense if you follow the storyline of the Matrix to have so many players playing in such a small area at once. All it was, was another way to try to milk a little more money out of the Matrix Franchise.
If a game is truely good but is dying, you can simply create another. Such as SWG, they just need to go back to their roots and create SWG2 and fix where they went wrong. But, there are too many suits with their ties on too tight for that to ever happen.
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I agree with you Kyoruto. I think that games like Auto Assault may be saved by first, taking the subscription cost away. NCSoft/NetDevil can work out a deal so that NCSoft can include it with a few other mmos under one subscriptions, perhaps some more popular ones like CoH/CoV.
I see how this may be difficult because each of NCSofts games are made by various developers, but there has to be a way to combine them and split earning from the single subscription.
Just speaking from my own experience . . . I was done with The Matrix Online, never to pay a subscription again. I would have not returned to Everquest again if I had to pay a separate subscription. I sure as hell don't play SWG anymore, but before the NGE, I enjoyed playing EQ2 and SWG together under one subscription.
Now, I occasionally log into MxO. I returned to Everquest for the progression server start-up. I am eagerly anticipating Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. SOE's flagship mmorpg, and a new one that has some potential, is earning most of the subscription money for them, but they saved MxO and Everquest for me by including them in the Station Pass.
The second and important thing I think games that are failing need to do in order for them to be saved is to keep an active development team on it, trying to listen to players, and really play their game and get to know the glaring faults. The Matrix Online still gets updates. NetDevil rolls out updates. But are these updates coming out with the intention of making the game a whole lot better, or are they just minor things?
Mmorpgs that make drastic improvements are the ones that are very successful, like Everquest II. Guild Wars (not a mmorpg
) improved with it's latest chapter - Factions. Ryzom Ring is a huge expansion that will change the game a lot (not sure yet if it will be for the better or worse yet). So the second factor in improving a game is making bigger improvements to systems that are not working well (and I am NOT tallking about totally changing the game into something else, ala SWG:NGE).
In part,the already established community; i.e the ones who remained with it, have to encourage new players to join. And help out those that do.
And that means helping them out to great lengths. Why do 'seemingly generic' Eastern MMO grindfests keep cropping up? Because it's not necessarily the exciting and revolutionary game content,but they have guilds. Groups of friendly people.
You're more likely to come back to an MMO after the initial content is overcome if you're going to log on to some active and helpful friends on your buddy list who will grind with you,rather than logging on to hours of silence and unhelpful vets of the game.
But sometimes,just sheer persistence of the community will help. Shadowbane is a relatively good example of this; although it's not exactly hit the peaks of its P2P days,it still seems to draw in a few people every so often, so it must be offering something right. Helpful community maybe?
In summary: nice community aids dying MMO's,in my opinion.
Well I think first, you need a development team that's willing to give the game a real second chance, look at all options and keep an open mind.
Second, you need to speak with the key community members and really get a sense of what's going on, what is working and what's not working. This can't just be petty meaningless conversations either, this has to be true communication with your player base, with the absolute intention to craft this game around what their ideas.
Third, you need to let people in on the ideas and what's comming. Players will stay with a game, will even bring new people in if they have faith in the direction the project is going, perfect examples of development teams that have done this right would be Eve and SoR.
Fourth, you need to act on what your hearing. If players say content is whats missing, then by god, put a full team in charge of pushing new content every week. If features are the issue, same deal. Either way, get it done, no excuses. If something is going to take time, go back to the second and third rule.
Fifth, COMMUNICATION COMMUNICATION COMMUNICATION. It's the damned easiest thing in the world, yet it's the biggest issue with so many projects. Talke to the players, tell them what the meetings were about this morning, tell them the general feeling in the office, tell them the craziest ideas that are being tossed around the cubicles. Have developer diaries, live web cams in the office, webcasts, irc chats, forum conversations. IT's just soo sooo sooooo important.
Sixth, measure twice, cut once is something that comes to mind. Just like in construction, if you hastily jump into dumb mistakes, especially if the game is already looked on badly, it's going to hurt the game even more. When making changes, consult the players, test for bugs, pay attention to lore, make sure the community thinks it's a good idea and just make sure it makes sense overall. I've seen games take more blame for hastely made fixes then the problem that existed in the first place.
I'm sure there's much more they can do but those to me are the key points, at least that I would like to see.
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2) Have the updates that people actually want, like what the above posters have said. See Dark and Light? There are patches but I have seen posts where the patches don't fix what is most needed to be fixed.
3) Advertising. It helps.
~Greatness~
Currently Playing:
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Gaming companies need to learn and love the age-old sentiment that first impressions last. Armed with that, we'd probably see less sucky games, at least initially.
Whats wierd is alot of mmo's over 4 years old have maintained thier number base for years. Granted it wasn't the numbers from release; but still many of them have maintained the same amount of members for the last 4 years.
Old games may seem to go out of date. But they have advantages over new games. First they have players hooked, and Second they have alot more content from years of updates.
Initially I was one of the many people let down by Auto Assault. I played beta and just couldn't get into the game when it dropped. Now after having exhausted the other available MMORPGs out there and having no desire to go back to WoW I decided to try AA again, thanks in part to the free trial I saw offered on this site. That was two weeks ago and I have since bought the game, subscribed to it and I'm having more fun than I've had with an MMO in a long time.
Long story short...free trials save games.
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
No need to save them. Let them die. It's for the best.
The reason they aren't successful is, TOO many MMO are just the clones of one another. THere really isn't anything new. ALL these games are having exactly the same pattern, just with tiny differences here and there.
They will keep making the same crap until they can't make any money any more.
SO let them die. That might wake MMO industry up.
~Greatness~
Currently Playing:
Nothing
EVE had a terrible launch with an abysmal publisher. It recovered.
You save a bad launch like you maintain a good one - with quality, consistant updates and reliable servers. You need to maintain any MMOG at the cutting edge if you want to increase population - if you stagnate, you die. Giving a free trial and allowing people to download the client (removing the need to purchase a box) will bring in people who you can then keep, provided that your game has enough quality.
They hired www.themis-group.com (mmo marketing gurus) to fix the bad launch and get them up to speed.
It can be done, but boooooy is it hard.
I was just typing something up about SWG on another discussion board, but I think what more companies need to do other than offering a 7 day trial (which really on caters to the new people that have never tried the game before, which is good btw), is send out emails to users who have not used their accounts in over a month or two after they're subscription has expired offering them a 7 day reintroduction period.
And what I mean by that is SOE recently (about a month or two ago) sent me an email (the one I registered with my Everquest account) letting me know that for 7 days I could use my account for free to play and get myself refamiliarized with the game and the new additions since I last played (not on a test, or trial server but the server my characters were on).
I think companies should do this when major changes are made to a mmos, such as when new expansions come out (or chronicles for you lineage 2 players out there). Kind of a way of saying hey I know you left but we've made some changes, why don't you come check em out and if you like it stick around. It keeps the games name out there and in your brain and lets you know that the company is making an effort (no matter how small or big) to make changes or expand. It doesn't have to be 7 days of course but maybe a full weekend to allow you to get reintroduced. It's a Public Relations kind of thingy they can do to keep everyone invovled.
"...and with that cryptic comment, I'm off to bed!"
You'd probably do better asking Turbine...they seem to be experienced at producing dying MMOs...
Don't think they're much good at saving them though...so, I don't know.