TESO, Wildstar, EQN: The Last of the 'Big Budget' MMO's?

Xssiv

It's starting to seem like a reasonable possibility at this point.   My guess is that both TESO and Wildstar will achieve moderate success when they release but just like almost every other MMO, they will lose most of their playerbase within a couple of months.

SOE appears to at least be trying to implement some outside the box ideas which may give EQN some longevity.

 

Other than that, it seems like EA and Blizz don't have much interest in making new MMO's.   Blizz scrapped Titan and shifted a lot of those resources back to WoW or over their new MOBA.

After SWTOR, I honestly don't see EA sinking much money into another MMO, especially after they and every other major developer has failed to come close to competing with WoW. 

Trion, the up and coming MMO focused studio, is doing terrible these days and it wouldn't surprise anyone if they shut their doors in the next year or two. 

 

Considering that most MMO's are being forced to go F2P just to survive, why would any big companies invest significant money and resources in a genre with such a poor track record?

 

The new wave of low budget MMO's are going to be very hit or miss, mainly because we (the players) have grown accustomed to a certain level of quality and polish that will be very difficult to achieve on the shoestring budgets that most of crowd funded and indie MMO's have. 

 

 

 

 

 

Ender4

Maybe the last of the PC big budget MMORPG but they are moving more and more towards console play and once they catch on for that you will see a bunch more. They will probably continue to dumb them down like WoW and GW2 have done though.

zwei2

If any low budget mmo managed to win millions of players, then yes perhaps it will be the end of Big Budget MMOs. If, there is one low budget mmo that can does that.

Sovrath

Originally posted by Xssiv

 

Other than that, it seems like EA and Blizz don't have much interest in making new MMO's.   Blizz scrapped Titan and shifted a lot of those resources back to WoW or over their new MOBA.

 

 

 

 

 

They did?

ok so they are starting over. It's not permanently off the table.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/28/blizzard-delays-unannounced-mmo-until-2016-resets-whole-project-exclusive/

 

Venture:
Blizzard Entertainment makes a mint from its World of Warcraft franchise, and the gaming giant has had an unannounced massively multiplayer online (MMO) role-playing game in the works for some time. But GamesBeat has learned that Blizzard has decided to push the reset button, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The team of 100 developers working on the MMO, codenamed "Titan," has been reduced by 70 positions, and Blizzard is reassigning those people to other work. Meanwhile, the core of the team will start over on Titan. The title is now not expected to be published until 2016 at the earliest.

 

Kilrain

This was mentioned with Rift as well. No.

SpottyGekko

If we accept your premise that "we (the players) have grown accustomed to a certain level of quality and polish" and that "(it) will be very difficult to achieve on shoestring budgets", then you're really predicting the death of the MMO industry here in a roundabout way...

 

Because if players won't accept "lesser quality and polish" than that which is supposedly offered by the "big budget" AAA MMO's, and these will stop being made, then the only option is to stop playing MMO's, or else play WoW for the next 30 years !

 

gotha

There will always be big budget MMOs.  We might see ups and downs in the trends but trust me they will always be there.

nariusseldon

Originally posted by Sovrath

 

They did?

ok so they are starting over. It's not permanently off the table.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/28/blizzard-delays-unannounced-mmo-until-2016-resets-whole-project-exclusive/

sure .. but if blizz is not put serious resource into the game, and said they are having major re-design, it is likely that they are losing faith in the core concept of the game. You know how polish their game is. Without the resource, it is practically dead until they are happy with a major re-design.

I would bet that titan would be moving away from the classical MMO design.

rafalex007

i don't think so, its always like that : a big game is interduced, whither the game successds or fail, another big budget mmo is interduced

wow was like that then another game then another and another, and now eso.wildstar,EQN, tommoro or next month or even next year, another game will be interduced.

that is bisclly how the industry is.

But the question is : the quality of those big budgets

Nadia

Originally posted by Xssiv
After SWTOR, I honestly don't see EA sinking much money into another MMO, especially after they and every other major developer has failed to come close to competing with WoW.

EA co-published TSW

 

I expect EA to create more mmos

Gruug

As long as MMO's make any kind of profit, they will be made.

 

 

goldtoof

Depends what you call big budget and what you call a mmo.

You could add star citizen, elite dangerous, world of darkness & destiny to your list.

The trend seems to be towards games you can play either as a mmo, or solo or on your own group server - star citizen, starbound & elite. And towards games that arent "wow type mmos", Wildstar probably being the last (well ESO could turn out wowish I guess too)

GrumpyMel2

Well, I certainly don't see it as the end of MMO's, nor even the end of AAA MMO's.....but yes we probably won't see any MMO's with ABSURDLY large budgets for awhile.....and frankly for those of us who actualy place a value on game-play that's probably a good thing.

Foomerang

Just wait til Rockstar and Ubisoft make their first mmos. 300 million will look like chump change.

Phry

Originally posted by Foomerang

Just wait til Rockstar and Ubisoft make their first mmos. 300 million will look like chump change.

Rockstar can keep on turning out GTA's, making an MMO would probably be too annoying for them, and after the last Billion dollars or so they made for their last game, why would they even bother with all the headaches associated with MMO development. As for Ubisoft ? im not even sure their in the running to try and make one, nor have the resources to do so anyway?

There will be more MMO's there is just too much demand, but their probably going to have to be PS4 friendly, not that PC only MMO's arent profitable, as has already been demonstrated, PC MMO's are very profitable, but with the PS4 on the 'event horizon' with spec's that will probably support a half decent MMO, im pretty sure that any developer will want a shot at those numbers. As for the Xbone, that will probably just be an 'also ran' unless of course MS becomes a bit more MMO friendly, but given their history with the 360, i wouldnt hold my breath on that one.

deveilblad

Ubisoft should make a deus ex MMO. I'd play that.

Foomerang

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Originally posted by Phry
Originally posted by Foomerang Just wait til Rockstar and Ubisoft make their first mmos. 300 million will look like chump change.

Rockstar can keep on turning out GTA's, making an MMO would probably be too annoying for them, and after the last Billion dollars or so they made for their last game, why would they even bother with all the headaches associated with MMO development. As for Ubisoft ? im not even sure their in the running to try and make one, nor have the resources to do so anyway?

There will be more MMO's there is just too much demand, but their probably going to have to be PS4 friendly, not that PC only MMO's arent profitable, as has already been demonstrated, PC MMO's are very profitable, but with the PS4 on the 'event horizon' with spec's that will probably support a half decent MMO, im pretty sure that any developer will want a shot at those numbers. As for the Xbone, that will probably just be an 'also ran' unless of course MS becomes a bit more MMO friendly, but given their history with the 360, i wouldnt hold my breath on that one.

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With the types of games that ubisoft and rockstar are making these days, they are just some server architecture away from an mmo. Its a lateral move, really. Both studios have the capital and the manpower to pull off an mmo right now. Its not like they would be stretching themselves thin. They have multiple studios and their dev cycle is 4-5 years. Fits right in there with mmo development.

At this point, I would be surprised if either one didnt announce an mmorpg in the next couple years.

goldtoof

Rockstar wouldnt make a mmo, mmos aren't cool or street enough

nariusseldon

Originally posted by deveilblad
Ubisoft should make a deus ex MMO. I'd play that.

nah .. Deus Ex is a great game, i don't see how being a MMO will make it more fun.

It is a stealth game. May be it is ok with co-op MP, but a MMO? Why does a stealth game needs to be massive?

I much prefer the next Deus Ex game has good level design, and good story writing. And i dion't play Deus Ex to craft.

 

Quizzical

Just because other, future games haven't been announced yet doesn't mean that they will never exist.

jtcgs

I would say no.

 

TESO will sell just enough to make every company scramble to bastardize famous IPs for a quick cash grab. Doesn't matter how massive the drop off in players the game will get afterwards, which it will, the cash grab will be enough for them.

Sell a good IP for quick gains, go F2P and milk the remaining players via a cash shop for as long as possible ala SWTOR afterwards. They already know they can run an existing game cheap with the current server/bandwidth costs to be able to make a profit off of few players.

Beatnik59

This may be the end of it...for awhile.  Proof of this is in the closure of several games in the past year or so from major publishers.  If the ones they have aren't viable for them, what makes them think that new ones will fare better?

 

I see the MMO in the same light as the battleship: expensive, technologically brilliant, symbols of strength, and time consuming to construct.  And when you look at competition in this consumer entertainment marketplace as a matter of MMOs, then the major publishers invest in MMOs.

But like the battleship, MMOs are vulnerable to lower cost options: online, anonymous matchmaking.  Lower cost "app grade" online games.  Single player offerings with attached multiplayer.  Stripped down MOBAs and dungeon crawlers.  All of these options can offer, and have offered, item store extras and RMT.  Plus, they aren't vulnerable to churn.

I see it increasingly more difficult to justify a lot of up-front development cost for a game and a genre that carries so much risk.

Ice-Queen

EA just needs to stay away from the Mmorpg creating. They're terrible at it, they need to stick with console games.

There will always be big budget mmorpg's because there's money to be made.

Zapzap

Certainly Teso and WS have AAA budgets but I am not sure we can say that for EQNext.  SOE has talked about having players do a lot of the developing for EQNext in EQL and keep in mind EQN is a F2P game.  There has only been one AAA budget game ever,  that has not released as P2P.  Going strongly against the trend by releasing the game F2P and well being SOE it has to make wonder what is the catch.  Yes, I would assume EQN will be a AAA big budget game but I will wait until we see the game before confirming that. 

Stimos8

Op, you complain way to much, about something that does not make any sense at all. If you would look and see you would be able to tell that the next 3 years will have as many new and exciting mmo's out as the past 10. And they do not all fail, yes they lose there player base, but considering what the game itself is generally designed for, and how long they last, they don't fail. realistically the only mmo that has "failed" in the last 5 years was SWTOR, as that really could barely be considered an MMO. So don't try to complain, in an attempt to prove a point. MMORPG's, are where the evolution of gaming is, and it doesn't take a genius to see that almost every game on line is starting to have some form or another of on line play. What is the hight of online games? that massive virtual open worlds, MMORPG's.

CazNeerg

Originally posted by Stimos8
Op, you complain way to much, about something that does not make any sense at all. If you would look and see you would be able to tell that the next 3 years will have as many new and exciting mmo's out as the past 10. And they do not all fail, yes they lose there player base, but considering what the game itself is generally designed for, and how long they last, they don't fail. realistically the only mmo that has "failed" in the last 5 years was SWTOR, as that really could barely be considered an MMO. So don't try to complain, in an attempt to prove a point. MMORPG's, are where the evolution of gaming is, and it doesn't take a genius to see that almost every game on line is starting to have some form or another of on line play. What is the hight of online games? that massive virtual open worlds, MMORPG's.

First, nice necromancy.

Second, most MMOs would kill to "fail" like TOR.   For 2013, it was the second most successful MMO that included a sub option.  Not a bad spot to aim for.