You state this as a truth, but it is unknowable. We have no way of knowing whether or not forms are relatively accurate, because we have little to know demographic data on those posting. You don't know enough about your overall population or the sample posting at a gaming site to be able to make that claim valid. In your opinion this may be true, but in reality it is impossible to prove, and (at least from a research perspective) what you can't prove is assumed to be false.
Most people think alike, they will think identically if given the same set of data, demographics be damned.
Most people think alike, demographics be damned. Wow, I generally assume that most people make ignorant comments to just bait other people, but I think you genuinely believe this. Which is stunning.
The only reason there is a difference in opinion in certain demographic groups is because they are given different data as part of a propaganda campaign.
Guess what, in gaming there is no propaganda and politics, so there are no demographics.
I'd go as far as to say that statistically, the amount of discrete posts on most game forums are made by such a ridiculously small group of people that they are almost entirely irrelevant.
Even the rare "treadnoughts" that run to 100 pages plus (assuming 10 posts per page) only translates to 1000 opinions, and that's assuming that each post is made by a different player, which is rarely the case.
1000 opinions on a given topic is hardly a significant sample of a playerbase that may well be numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
if a large % of WoW's players were actively posting on their forums, the post you are replying to would be on page 7 before you clicked "reply".
High negative post counts by 1 person are usually countered by high positive post counts by a fanboi, so that evens itself out.
Indeed, and if you remove the "hater and fanboi" duels from the equation, then the remaining posts reflect the opinion of an even smaller sample of the playerbase...
so the question is why create forums in the 1st place? everyother mmorpg has forums , ppl want to share experiences , build, or just talk about the game , while forums are a minority , no all the players bother to waste time posting about a game , they just want to play it .....
hell my gf that usually plays with me , NEVER touched a forum , and sometimes even ignored patch notes.....
after every patch.......why this skill isnt working as before?????? why XXXX ?
lazynes , dont care blablab , lots of players dont give a damn about how the game changes , more items? cool , more dungeons? cool , nerfed? oh didnt notice, im having fun? yes
For those who don't want to read all of it, Battlefield Heroes, a free to play FPS, decided to add powerful weapons that could be purchased for real cash. The forums exploded in rage with thousands of threats to quit the game, boycotts, etc. The devs decided to go for it anyways and got some interesting results.
Only 20% of players visited the forums and only 2% posted (whether it was once or with a great deal of frequency). After the cash weapons went live, that 2% group of forum posters spent more than 10 times the average user despite all of their threats.
While I realize this cannot be cleanly extrapolated to all MMOs, I think it's safe to say that for a vast majority of them not only are forum posters a vocal minority, but they're a minority that's doesn't even provide good data for developers. There's a reason many developers tend to rely more on metrics over forum feedback (although forum community management clearly has its place in the business model).
If anyone wants to sit through the entire PowerPoint presentation that this article refers to, you can watch it here:
We may be the vocal minority, but that doesn't mean the masses don't share our views.
Ummm yes that is exactly what vocal minority means lol
The masses do NOT share your views. The masses happily enjoy games like WoW and RIFT and upcoming titles like TOR and GW2.
This website is a very small slice of the MMORPG universe and the general bias on this website is very, very heavily skewed away from the views of the masses.
The sad truth is that MMORPG.com is not a random sample of MMO players. It is the vocal minority and we do not reflect the mainstream opinion, as much as we each love to beleive our views are correct.
You are correct. If it was not a vocal minority there would be a high budget quality sandbox game out there right now with millions of players. There is not.
I believe the reason is more likely that sandbox is harder to develop and less established as a genre. Both make a high-budget sandbox game a significantly more risky venture due to unknowns in the market place and developmental paths.
It is about supply and demand. A studio would have invested in a sandbox MMO if there had been another success like UO in modern times but there wasn't. So i don't buy that sandbox are harder to develop is the only reason which is holding it back.
It is about supply and demand. A studio would have invested in a sandbox MMO if there had been another success like UO in modern times but there wasn't. So i don't buy that sandbox are harder to develop is the only reason which is holding it back.
Do you realize that it's been 8 years since Star Wars Galaxies and Eve Online were released? Both were successful titles. How many other sandboxes have there been made by major studios since? *Crickets* They have all been from small studios without major budgets. So considering that 14 years ago UO was a big hit, and 8 years ago SWG and Eve Online were both successful titles (and Eve was from a small studio), you would think there would be other attempts.
But what happened along the way is WoW. After Wow's success you had many more companies wanting to build MMOs, and they all wanted to duplicate wow's success. By what? Making WoW Clones. It's as simple as that.
so the question is why create forums in the 1st place? everyother mmorpg has forums , ppl want to share experiences , build, or just talk about the game , while forums are a minority , no all the players bother to waste time posting about a game , they just want to play it .....
hell my gf that usually plays with me , NEVER touched a forum , and sometimes even ignored patch notes.....
after every patch.......why this skill isnt working as before?????? why XXXX ?
lazynes , dont care blablab , lots of players dont give a damn about how the game changes , more items? cool , more dungeons? cool , nerfed? oh didnt notice, im having fun? yes
ignorance is a bliss i guess ^^
Forums do serve other purposes than allowing players to vent their complaints about the game.
Some game forums have excellent guides on gameplay, and there are very interesting discussions about certain aspects of gameplay from time to time. People can ask gameplay-related questions (and often get useful replies). There are sub-sections for guild recruiting and ingame politics.
The content and volume of any game's fora usually tell me a great deal about what to expect from the game and its "community", even if it's only by the tone of the whining posts
Originally posted by JC-Smith It is about supply and demand. A studio would have invested in a sandbox MMO if there had been another success like UO in modern times but there wasn't. So i don't buy that sandbox are harder to develop is the only reason which is holding it back.
Do you realize that it's been 8 years since Star Wars Galaxies and Eve Online were released? Both were successful titles. How many other sandboxes have there been made by major studios since? *Crickets* They have all been from small studios without major budgets. So considering that 14 years ago UO was a big hit, and 8 years ago SWG and Eve Online were both successful titles (and Eve was from a small studio), you would think there would be other attempts. But what happened along the way is WoW. After Wow's success you had many more companies wanting to build MMOs, and they all wanted to duplicate wow's success. By what? Making WoW Clones. It's as simple as that.
It's not as simple as that. Developers are not that one-dimensional. Investors are not that one-dimensional either. What's been shown with sandbox games is that they can become successful, but it just takes too long, and it's not all that impressive money wise. It's better to have an initial spike in sales, get a lump sum of money, and then have residual income afterwards than it is to build up to a mediocre income over years (investment wise).
That is supply and demand, just not entirely from the customer's perspective.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
It is about supply and demand. A studio would have invested in a sandbox MMO if there had been another success like UO in modern times but there wasn't. So i don't buy that sandbox are harder to develop is the only reason which is holding it back.
Do you realize that it's been 8 years since Star Wars Galaxies and Eve Online were released? Both were successful titles. How many other sandboxes have there been made by major studios since? *Crickets* They have all been from small studios without major budgets. So considering that 14 years ago UO was a big hit, and 8 years ago SWG and Eve Online were both successful titles (and Eve was from a small studio), you would think there would be other attempts.
But what happened along the way is WoW. After Wow's success you had many more companies wanting to build MMOs, and they all wanted to duplicate wow's success. By what? Making WoW Clones. It's as simple as that.
It's not as simple as that. Developers are not that one-dimensional. Investors are not that one-dimensional either. What's been shown with sandbox games is that they can become successful, but it just takes too long, and it's not all that impressive money wise. It's better to have an initial spike in sales, get a lump sum of money, and then have residual income afterwards than it is to build up to a mediocre income over years (investment wise).
That is supply and demand, just not entirely from the customer's perspective.
@JC-Smith. You do realize that Eve when it released was a complete pile of dog poo right? It took CCP several years to make the game somewhat stable and enjoyable and then it started to grow. Eve was one of the only games to come back from a bad launch.
2nd - It takes a mega audience to justify making a mega million dollar sandbox game. And thus far, the sandbox crowd has shown that they are not interested in all playing the same sandbox game - this makes it very difficult to sell to investors. Therefore until several more sandboxes come along from Indie devs and do very well - at least Eve well, don't expect a major company to do it. If they do, great, I'll consider us lucky, until then pin your hopes that an indie does well because that is the only thing that will change the genre.
Venge
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
@JC-Smith. You do realize that Eve when it released was a complete pile of dog poo right? It took CCP several years to make the game somewhat stable and enjoyable and then it started to grow. Eve was one of the only games to come back from a bad launch.
2nd - It takes a mega audience to justify making a mega million dollar sandbox game. And thus far, the sandbox crowd has shown that they are not interested in all playing the same sandbox game - this makes it very difficult to sell to investors. Therefore until several more sandboxes come along from Indie devs and do very well - at least Eve well, don't expect a major company to do it. If they do, great, I'll consider us lucky, until then pin your hopes that an indie does well because that is the only thing that will change the genre.
Venge
True, Eve was really bad in the beginning.
And the sandbox genre needs a larger and newer example then UO if they want a major studio cough up money.
But that might not be so far away, CCPs "WoDO" have a pretty good budget, and Zenimax (Bethesda) are famous for their popular single player sandboxes and have a MMO in development as well. If one of those 2 games do better than Eve it have the potential of rezzing the close to dead sandbox genre.
But I think too many people here worry too much what type a future game is instead of how fun it is. I don't care if a game is a sandbox, a themepark or something else as long as it is a great game.
We may be the vocal minority, but that doesn't mean the masses don't share our views.
Ummm yes that is exactly what vocal minority means lol
The masses do NOT share your views. The masses happily enjoy games like WoW and RIFT and upcoming titles like TOR and GW2.
This website is a very small slice of the MMORPG universe and the general bias on this website is very, very heavily skewed away from the views of the masses.
No actually the official WOW forums are the same as here.
No look in a dictionary guys, vocal minority just mean that only a minority will talk loudly about something, the majority will shut up.
Now is this minority a good enough statistical sample is an other story. I personally think that only if forums are manipulated by payed trouble makers, (and i don't see this happen really), then it wouldn't be a proper sample. But i'm not one of you guys that think most of the poster never played mmos, and are here just to piss off other, i'm pretty sure all have a very good experience in mmo, and do care about them.
This all sound ridiculous attempt to try to find some confidence in whatever you guys think is right, but since other disagree, then you put them in the vocal minority "the wrong one", naturally.
No actually the official WOW forums are the same as here.
Even World of Warcraft has a vocal minority of players.
Noooo, even WOW forums have player saying the same thing as players are saying here. "Boring, raiding sucks, blah blah". The only difference is they keep paying a subscription.
Noooo, even WOW forums have a vocal minority of players saying the same thing as players are saying here. "Boring, raiding sucks, blah blah". The only difference is they keep paying a subscription.
Just like the most vocal complainers that EA had for the cash shop in Battlefield Heroes -- those players bitched the loudest on the forums AND spent the most money in the cash shop, spending well over 10 times what non-forum goers spent.
That's the point. The forums for any game might exist as a canary in a coal mine for the more active playerbase, but it's not a reflection of the entire playerbase as a whole. For all the people online who might say that raiding sucks or whatever, those are the same people paying subs for months and years at a time and who will spend the most money on WoW merchandise.
Just like the most vocal complainers that EA had for the cash shop in Battlefield Heroes -- those players bitched the loudest on the forums AND spent the most money in the cash shop, spending well over 10 times what non-forum goers spent.
That's the point. The forums for any game might exist as a canary in a coal mine for the more active playerbase, but it's not a reflection of the entire playerbase as a whole. For all the people online who might say that raiding sucks or whatever, those are the same people paying subs for months and years at a time and who will spend the most money on WoW merchandise.
That's right, subscribers prove that these big corporations can stick em and they keep paying. Still doesn't change the fact that they dislike something, which is a reflection of the entire player non-forum posting MAJORITY.
I don't mind being in the minority. Better than being a Lemming. And looking at the current state of MMORPG gameplay and what's coming down the road, I'm glad I'm not part of that herd.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
I don't mind being in the minority. Better than being a Lemming. And looking at the current state of MMORPG gameplay and what's coming down the road, I'm glad I'm not part of that herd.
Maybe the people here are forum going lemmings....
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I don't mind being in the minority. Better than being a Lemming. And looking at the current state of MMORPG gameplay and what's coming down the road, I'm glad I'm not part of that herd.
Maybe the people here are forum going lemmings....
See, the haters and fanbois cancel each other out, making a perfect representation of the majority. This last poster is a fanboi.
I don't mind being in the minority. Better than being a Lemming. And looking at the current state of MMORPG gameplay and what's coming down the road, I'm glad I'm not part of that herd.
Maybe the people here are forum going lemmings....
See, the haters and fanbois cancel each other out, making a perfect representation of the majority. This last poster is a fanboi.
I now see this topic and the op posts for what they are. Performance art. Well played.
That's right, subscribers prove that these big corporations can stick em and they keep paying. Still doesn't change the fact that they dislike something, which is a reflection of the entire player non-forum posting MAJORITY.
Once again -- if the masses agreed with the vocal minority that post on the forums, then the forum posters wouldn't be a minority. This is very basic stuff. English Vocabulary 101. Either you're in the majority or you're in the minority.
Forum posters are typically in the minority. They're the Comic Book Guys of [insert game here], nitpicking, complaining and posting at length, and still spending outrageous sums of cash on everything they whine about. You can sit there and fool yourself into thinking that the masses secretly agree with you even though they don't post, but that's not the case. If they cared enough to agree or disagree, they'd post on the fourms. Most of them would rather just play the games.
Only 20% of players visited the forums and only 2% posted (whether it was once or with a great deal of frequency). After the cash weapons went live, that 2% group of forum posters spent more than 10 times the average user despite all of their threats.
LIke i said, they complain about X,Y,Z, but keep shelling out money like an idiot with no principles. But it still doesn't change the fact that it's a good reflection of the entire community.
How can you look at concrete evidence of forum posts being useless (and in this case, players saying the opposite of their true feelings) and say it "doesn't change the fact"?
Seems like no matter how much concrete evidence is presented you're going to keep religiously defending forums as if players are a consistent barometer of game populations (which they aren't.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
The only reason there is a difference in opinion in certain demographic groups is because they are given different data as part of a propaganda campaign.
Guess what, in gaming there is no propaganda and politics, so there are no demographics.
Indeed, and if you remove the "hater and fanboi" duels from the equation, then the remaining posts reflect the opinion of an even smaller sample of the playerbase...
so the question is why create forums in the 1st place? everyother mmorpg has forums , ppl want to share experiences , build, or just talk about the game , while forums are a minority , no all the players bother to waste time posting about a game , they just want to play it .....
hell my gf that usually plays with me , NEVER touched a forum , and sometimes even ignored patch notes.....
after every patch.......why this skill isnt working as before?????? why XXXX ?
lazynes , dont care blablab , lots of players dont give a damn about how the game changes , more items? cool , more dungeons? cool , nerfed? oh didnt notice, im having fun? yes
ignorance is a bliss i guess ^^
If anyone wants to sit through the entire PowerPoint presentation that this article refers to, you can watch it here:
http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/paying-to-win
It's 42 minutes long, but worth it.
Ummm yes that is exactly what vocal minority means lol
The masses do NOT share your views. The masses happily enjoy games like WoW and RIFT and upcoming titles like TOR and GW2.
This website is a very small slice of the MMORPG universe and the general bias on this website is very, very heavily skewed away from the views of the masses.
If they shared your views, you'd be in the majority.
It is about supply and demand. A studio would have invested in a sandbox MMO if there had been another success like UO in modern times but there wasn't. So i don't buy that sandbox are harder to develop is the only reason which is holding it back.
Do you realize that it's been 8 years since Star Wars Galaxies and Eve Online were released? Both were successful titles. How many other sandboxes have there been made by major studios since? *Crickets* They have all been from small studios without major budgets. So considering that 14 years ago UO was a big hit, and 8 years ago SWG and Eve Online were both successful titles (and Eve was from a small studio), you would think there would be other attempts.
But what happened along the way is WoW. After Wow's success you had many more companies wanting to build MMOs, and they all wanted to duplicate wow's success. By what? Making WoW Clones. It's as simple as that.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
Forums do serve other purposes than allowing players to vent their complaints about the game.
Some game forums have excellent guides on gameplay, and there are very interesting discussions about certain aspects of gameplay from time to time. People can ask gameplay-related questions (and often get useful replies). There are sub-sections for guild recruiting and ingame politics.
The content and volume of any game's fora usually tell me a great deal about what to expect from the game and its "community", even if it's only by the tone of the whining posts
But what happened along the way is WoW. After Wow's success you had many more companies wanting to build MMOs, and they all wanted to duplicate wow's success. By what? Making WoW Clones. It's as simple as that.
It's not as simple as that. Developers are not that one-dimensional. Investors are not that one-dimensional either. What's been shown with sandbox games is that they can become successful, but it just takes too long, and it's not all that impressive money wise. It's better to have an initial spike in sales, get a lump sum of money, and then have residual income afterwards than it is to build up to a mediocre income over years (investment wise).
That is supply and demand, just not entirely from the customer's perspective.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
@JC-Smith. You do realize that Eve when it released was a complete pile of dog poo right? It took CCP several years to make the game somewhat stable and enjoyable and then it started to grow. Eve was one of the only games to come back from a bad launch.
2nd - It takes a mega audience to justify making a mega million dollar sandbox game. And thus far, the sandbox crowd has shown that they are not interested in all playing the same sandbox game - this makes it very difficult to sell to investors. Therefore until several more sandboxes come along from Indie devs and do very well - at least Eve well, don't expect a major company to do it. If they do, great, I'll consider us lucky, until then pin your hopes that an indie does well because that is the only thing that will change the genre.
Venge
True, Eve was really bad in the beginning.
And the sandbox genre needs a larger and newer example then UO if they want a major studio cough up money.
But that might not be so far away, CCPs "WoDO" have a pretty good budget, and Zenimax (Bethesda) are famous for their popular single player sandboxes and have a MMO in development as well. If one of those 2 games do better than Eve it have the potential of rezzing the close to dead sandbox genre.
But I think too many people here worry too much what type a future game is instead of how fun it is. I don't care if a game is a sandbox, a themepark or something else as long as it is a great game.
No actually the official WOW forums are the same as here.
Even World of Warcraft has a vocal minority of players.
So vocal minority mean its the "bad" minority?
No look in a dictionary guys, vocal minority just mean that only a minority will talk loudly about something, the majority will shut up.
Now is this minority a good enough statistical sample is an other story. I personally think that only if forums are manipulated by payed trouble makers, (and i don't see this happen really), then it wouldn't be a proper sample. But i'm not one of you guys that think most of the poster never played mmos, and are here just to piss off other, i'm pretty sure all have a very good experience in mmo, and do care about them.
This all sound ridiculous attempt to try to find some confidence in whatever you guys think is right, but since other disagree, then you put them in the vocal minority "the wrong one", naturally.
Noooo, even WOW forums have player saying the same thing as players are saying here. "Boring, raiding sucks, blah blah". The only difference is they keep paying a subscription.
Just like the most vocal complainers that EA had for the cash shop in Battlefield Heroes -- those players bitched the loudest on the forums AND spent the most money in the cash shop, spending well over 10 times what non-forum goers spent.
That's the point. The forums for any game might exist as a canary in a coal mine for the more active playerbase, but it's not a reflection of the entire playerbase as a whole. For all the people online who might say that raiding sucks or whatever, those are the same people paying subs for months and years at a time and who will spend the most money on WoW merchandise.
That's right, subscribers prove that these big corporations can stick em and they keep paying. Still doesn't change the fact that they dislike something, which is a reflection of the entire player non-forum posting MAJORITY.
I don't mind being in the minority. Better than being a Lemming. And looking at the current state of MMORPG gameplay and what's coming down the road, I'm glad I'm not part of that herd.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Maybe the people here are forum going lemmings....
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
See, the haters and fanbois cancel each other out, making a perfect representation of the majority. This last poster is a fanboi.
I now see this topic and the op posts for what they are. Performance art. Well played.
Once again -- if the masses agreed with the vocal minority that post on the forums, then the forum posters wouldn't be a minority. This is very basic stuff. English Vocabulary 101. Either you're in the majority or you're in the minority.
Forum posters are typically in the minority. They're the Comic Book Guys of [insert game here], nitpicking, complaining and posting at length, and still spending outrageous sums of cash on everything they whine about. You can sit there and fool yourself into thinking that the masses secretly agree with you even though they don't post, but that's not the case. If they cared enough to agree or disagree, they'd post on the fourms. Most of them would rather just play the games.
How can you look at concrete evidence of forum posts being useless (and in this case, players saying the opposite of their true feelings) and say it "doesn't change the fact"?
Seems like no matter how much concrete evidence is presented you're going to keep religiously defending forums as if players are a consistent barometer of game populations (which they aren't.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Seems to me that the OP doesn't want to change his mind no matter how many explanations are given to him.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky