People definitely left for other games, but a lot can be learned by when they left. When numbers start to drop and nothing new released, or nothing in direct competition, it should tell people something.
Another thing to consider is just how many more people were able to play MMOs with each passing year at the turn of the century. In the 90's very few people even had internet. Five years later, practically everyone had internet.
People definitely left for other games, but a lot can be learned by when they left. When numbers start to drop and nothing new released, or nothing in direct competition, it should tell people something.
Another thing to consider is just how many more people were able to play MMOs with each passing year at the turn of the century. In the 90's very few people even had internet. Five years later, practically everyone had internet.
Hmm, on mmogcharts.com, at the Everquest active subscriptions, I see it took its first major hit at the August 9 2001 data point. So what happened?
What SHOULD the population have been if the data points continued as they had for several months? By October 11, I'm guessing it should have been maybe ~435,133. So what's expected and what occurred is -22,971.
These're not precise values, but might have meaning.
Luclin didn't happen until December 4 2001.
DAOC's active subscriber base was close to 150,000 at end 2001. In fact, I read over 50,000 copies were sold in the first 4 days, greatly exceeding forecasts. Given the subscriber base of Anarchy Online was as high as 60,000 and settled at 22,000+ at end 2001, I think it's possible this is why EQ's growth stuttered at this time. However, regardless, it never regained its prior rate of growth, EXCEPT briefly between July 1 2004 and Sept 8 2004. Maybe it had something to do with renewed interest in Omens of War, released on Sept 14. It ended fast.
The accuracy rating for Anarchy Online is B. DAOC was B, but was reduced to C since the release of WoW. The rating for Everquest is B:
B –
This indicates that while some of the data points shown may be official,
a substantial number come from press articles, unproven inside sources,
or other indirect means. The numbers may not be exact for the MMOG in
question, but are certainly in the ballpark.
EQs main hit during Velious was before DAOC. Looks more like around June. That's when it started the decline. I seriously doubt AO had a lot to do with it, because it was pretty much just a blip on the radar. When DAOC actually came out, it didn't really seem to have much impact. Probably the fact that the new expansion offset the loss.
I don't think any game had a real direct impact on EQ until EQ2/WoW. DAoC appealed to a very different type of player. It did hurt the EQ pvp servers though.
I still maintain that the real damage was self-inflicted.
Its much easier to get a growing userbase in an emergent and growing market compared to a mature market since in an growing market you can grow without taking people from your competitors. That was the sort of market everyone played on before 2004 and its never going to return on the western PC market.
WoW expanded the market and as long as they could find new markets to sell the game on the playerbase kept growing, there was an explosion in the playerbase once they launched the game in china. When they couldn't find new markets to sell their game on it stopped growing.
Pantheon, crowfall and camelot unchained aims for a segment of players. When you can't compete with the giants, aim for the crowds they don't satisfy.
The problem is that if you go for an extremely specific crowd it might not be enough to keep the game afloat. While there is a crowd of people that enjoy group content and also a crowd that enjoy old school mechanism, going for the crowd of old school players that want it to mostly be like everquest during a specific era isn't that big.
(edited to make post shorter).
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
I'm a casual gamer, I read your op and I get tweaking the games to suit your needs better. As I read the op though, I thought about my casual experience amongst all of the hardcore I had associated with, the majority of my best moments in gaming came when I was in the right place at the right time. The randomness, unplanned, surprise of the moment was the reward that pushed me to keep playing. I was envious of the hardcore player, but I also had many many reasons to celebrate things that the hardcore player would take for granted. When wow added raidfinder and dungeon finder, I really lost interest, the game lost it's spontaneity for me. I say this because you've got to be careful what you wish for.
Oh my god thank you. I thought I was losing my mind when I read the original poster. Holy hell, he wants to turn Pantheon into every other worthless theme-park trash MMORPG on the market.
If Pantheon has instances, I WILL not be playing it. Instances are the single greatest reason for the downfall of MMORPG's.
My history with EQ was on Tallon Zek, a race war PvP server. Being able to PvP, control zones, attack people and guilds anywhere any time, was one of the best times I've ever had in gaming. I'll be playing on the Pantheon PvP server. Those of you that want to live in a little safe bubble need to get lost.
The ONLY thing I agree with is to limit boxing.
I want:
1. Non-trivial travel. Classes that can port you and boats, running, etc to take time and force you to explore and socialize.
2. No maps. Let the communities do them and revive cartography.
3. A real death penalty. I am in favor of the original EQ mechanics. Loss exp, corpse runs.
4. Loot in EQ1 Velious to vanilla was the best. There should be time, risk, and grouping necessary to get decent gear.
I want to chop the hands off anyone who mentions pathetic instancing.
EQ grew as a game for over 4 years. Something no other game outside of WoW did. Nuff said.
EVE would like to have a word with you...
Fair enough. Two games.
Point stands.
Of course it does. They actually didn't realize they gave you an easy assist, as EVE is an Old School game. And since what you were trying to prove is that Old School MMOs can be popular, they involuntary made your point even stronger.
I didn't say anything about Old School games not being able to become popular. I just didn't think EQ did as well as Dullahan was suggesting. That's the only point I was making.
AS for EVE, I think a lot of factors have played into it's success, most notably of which is it's status as a space game in a sea of fantasy titles. It's only real competition has been Vendetta more or less. You have to consider that between it's release until just a few years ago the space sim genre was in a dire state (EVE and titles like X, were the only real competitors in that genre for quite a while). Especially where multiplayer titles are concerned in EVE's case...
That's the best thing going for pantheon actually in that it is one of the only old school PVE titles coming up. Most are focused on PVP the rest that are available are mainstream quest grinders like ESO. When you have a niche like that which EVE has had, you have a lot better chance at being successful.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
One of the problems when creating a game to cater to the old school niche, is that old school gamers can't seem to agree on just exactly how old school they want, and what modern features/design they want. From my experiences, old school niche do not compromise much. People are mostly either/or, like do A or I won't play, do B and this game sucks kind of playerbase. This makes it extremely difficult for any company attempting to create a game for this niche. And it likely is a big factor why companies/investors haven't been so willing dump money into creating new MMO's for the old school crowd. It's just a huge risk.
Any companies that have done market research, or any gamers who have played MMO's since the early days know what I'm talking about. I mean I remember when SOE actually entertained the idea of creating new EQ player character models after being beat down by WoW and other games launched post-2004. The amount of backlash they got when they tried to design some new player models scared them away and they dropped the whole idea. This is why to this day, in year 2017, we still see character models created from back in 2001 during Luclin. And old character models come with old clunky animations (if you can even call them animations). Pretty much nothing got upgraded because players were unwilling to compromise or try new changes.
Just using that as one of many examples of how the old school niche are very difficult to cater to. And even when Daybreak launched progression servers, people couldn't agree on whether they want instanced zones to alleviate crowding and raid lockdown issues. I already see people talk about how if there's any instancing at all they won't play Pantheon. I guess I don't blame companies for not wanting to risk spending money and years & years of time catering to the old picky uncompromising crowd.
Played: EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-LOTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO-BDO Waiting For: CU & Vanilla WoW
One of the problems when creating a game to cater to the old school niche, is that old school gamers can't seem to agree on just exactly how old school they want, and what modern features/design they want. From my experiences, old school niche do not compromise much. People are mostly either/or, like do A or I won't play, do B and this game sucks kind of playerbase. This makes it extremely difficult for any company attempting to create a game for this niche. And it likely is a big factor why companies/investors haven't been so willing dump money into creating new MMO's for the old school crowd. It's just a huge risk.
Any companies that have done market research, or any gamers who have played MMO's since the early days know what I'm talking about. I mean I remember when SOE actually entertained the idea of creating new EQ player character models after being beat down by WoW and other games launched post-2004. The amount of backlash they got when they tried to design some new player models scared them away and they dropped the whole idea. This is why to this day, in year 2017, we still see character models created from back in 2001 during Luclin. And old character models come with old clunky animations (if you can even call them animations). Pretty much nothing got upgraded because players were unwilling to compromise or try new changes.
Just using that as one of many examples of how the old school niche are very difficult to cater to. And even when Daybreak launched progression servers, people couldn't agree on whether they want instanced zones to alleviate crowding and raid lockdown issues. I already see people talk about how if there's any instancing at all they won't play Pantheon. I guess I don't blame companies for not wanting to risk spending money and years & years of time catering to the old picky uncompromising crowd.
All good points, it all really boils down to which old school game a player came from, that typically dictates their likes/dislikes. A DAOC player isn't looking for what EQ offered, a SWG player isn't looking for what AO offered, so on and so forth.
AT least with Pantheon they're rather upfront about their desire to please the EQ crowd the best they can. Yet even then you're going to get a lot of people who want things from different variations of EQ's lifespan, or want more of what Vanguard tried to do. There's no real clear consensus on what the majority wants.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
We can all agree that hardcore guilds will be way ahead in terms of progression, gear, level and everything in general when compared to the other guilds on the server. Levelling will take months, this will create a nice big gap between the content hardcore guilds do and the content more casual players do, this gap in progression will stay about the same because no hard caps will prevent any guild of player from progressing. So casual guilds will almost never be on par with the progression of an Hardcore guild. I'm assuming that raids will range from 30-70 players so guilds will be huge but there will also be fewer of them. So for example "harcore guild 1" 3 months into the game reachs max level and starts clearing "raid tier 1" , 3-4 months after this "casual guild 2" Reach max level and starts clearing "raid tier 1" by this time "hardcore guild 1" will already be in "raid tier 3 or 4" and nothing from the first raid tier holds any value to them.
Have you actually played a popular open world MMO with no instancing? Nothing you said addresses the issue of 1 guild ruling them all. In an open world raid environment, it's in their best interest to make sure others DO NOT progress at all. This means without instances a power guild will clear all raids around the clock, not just higher tiers. Allowing any other guild to succeed brings them one step closer to competing with you. This is a "bury our heads in the sand" suggestion, not a solution.
Remember that his is not EQ, were dungeons are trivial if you have a full group, the good items will come from the difficult places and multiboxing to get them will certainly be near to impossible. Also, multiboxing software will not be allowed, if you wanna multibox you'll have to control 2.3.4,5 characters by yourself, so again remember this is not EQ and gameplay will be alot harder, not the spam 1-2, med heal, taunt and you're good. If a player can multibox 3 characters efficiently in a hard zone ill be impressed.
Be impressed then because most multiboxers are extremely committed players that can perform better on multiple characters than your average person can on one. Multiboxers can also min max to the extreme, always having the perfect group, able to farm the best items at will with zero rolls involved. Banning box programs mean nothing in the age of virtualization and given VR's response to boxing, I doubt they'll even go through with it. You have VASTLY underestimated multiboxers, much to the detriment of Pantheon.
3 - How does the loot system punish the group, to my knowledge there will be no loot system, it will be Free for all, and the group decides who gets the loot.
It punishes groups based on inclusivity. Xp isn't the only reason people solo and box, loot is equally as important. For years loot systems reward players for not filling the group. Why camp an item with 6 people when you can double your chances with 3? They can claim difficulty all they want but the AI is not being handled by top tier devs and it has to be easy enough for your average player anyways. Groups need to add some sort of bonus as the group gets bigger or you're left with an even greater incentive to box and/or leave out the weaker classes.
4 - They're limiting travel to make the world feel like a world, if you wanna go from 1 end to another it will take time and effort, or cash and a player to port you, this also encourages healthy socialisation. Another reason for limited travel is their local auction house system, you can choose to carry an item from one end of the world to another and get extra profit, because the item will be rare around those parts, or you can sell it near the town you found it for less money.
UI/maps, so many people don't understand the bad effect gps maps and minimaps have on the game experience. I can guarantee you that 99% of players constantly look to their minimaps/worldmaps/zonemaps to see where they're going or want to go, it's the most effective way of doing it so why not? But if there's no easily accessible map or minimap, you'll look to the actual game, to your environment and surroundings, maybe you'll stop a ominous looking ruins or castle and decide to explore it. There's not easy way to explain this but if you've played without a minimap or a gps map you'll understand, the huge difference it makes, I can guarantee you that you will pay a lot more attention to the game, to where you're going and to the surrounding environment, it's a try it to believe it type of situation.
A world filled with magic would take advantage of teleports anyways. Forcing people to row a boat themselves instead of getting on the airship is stupid, not immerive. If every wizard can teleport than every major city would have teleportation available, that's just common sense. 1 or 2 classes being the only way to save hours worth of travel time is simply too great an advantage for any one person to have. The fact that they can haul items to various auction houses makes it even more so.
I played Original EQ and p99, I know what it's like with no maps. The problem is the auto radar and beacons for each group member, not the maps themselves. Maps that force you to explore first and show only major landmarks are perfectly fine and even realistic. To argue maps shouldn't exist at all in a fantasy world is ridiculous.
We can all agree that hardcore guilds will be way ahead in terms of progression, gear, level and everything in general when compared to the other guilds on the server. Levelling will take months, this will create a nice big gap between the content hardcore guilds do and the content more casual players do, this gap in progression will stay about the same because no hard caps will prevent any guild of player from progressing. So casual guilds will almost never be on par with the progression of an Hardcore guild. I'm assuming that raids will range from 30-70 players so guilds will be huge but there will also be fewer of them. So for example "harcore guild 1" 3 months into the game reachs max level and starts clearing "raid tier 1" , 3-4 months after this "casual guild 2" Reach max level and starts clearing "raid tier 1" by this time "hardcore guild 1" will already be in "raid tier 3 or 4" and nothing from the first raid tier holds any value to them.
Have you actually played a popular open world MMO with no instancing? Nothing you said addresses the issue of 1 guild ruling them all. In an open world raid environment, it's in their best interest to make sure others DO NOT progress at all. This means without instances a power guild will clear all raids around the clock, not just higher tiers. Allowing any other guild to succeed brings them one step closer to competing with you. This is a "bury our heads in the sand" suggestion, not a solution.
Remember that his is not EQ, were dungeons are trivial if you have a full group, the good items will come from the difficult places and multiboxing to get them will certainly be near to impossible. Also, multiboxing software will not be allowed, if you wanna multibox you'll have to control 2.3.4,5 characters by yourself, so again remember this is not EQ and gameplay will be alot harder, not the spam 1-2, med heal, taunt and you're good. If a player can multibox 3 characters efficiently in a hard zone ill be impressed.
Be impressed then because most multiboxers are extremely committed players that can perform better on multiple characters than your average person can on one. Multiboxers can also min max to the extreme, always having the perfect group, able to farm the best items at will with zero rolls involved. Banning box programs mean nothing in the age of virtualization and given VR's response to boxing, I doubt they'll even go through with it. You have VASTLY underestimated multiboxers, much to the detriment of Pantheon.
3 - How does the loot system punish the group, to my knowledge there will be no loot system, it will be Free for all, and the group decides who gets the loot.
It punishes groups based on inclusivity. Xp isn't the only reason people solo and box, loot is equally as important. For years loot systems reward players for not filling the group. Why camp an item with 6 people when you can double your chances with 3? They can claim difficulty all they want but the AI is not being handled by top tier devs and it has to be easy enough for your average player anyways. Groups need to add some sort of bonus as the group gets bigger or you're left with an even greater incentive to box and/or leave out the weaker classes.
4 - They're limiting travel to make the world feel like a world, if you wanna go from 1 end to another it will take time and effort, or cash and a player to port you, this also encourages healthy socialisation. Another reason for limited travel is their local auction house system, you can choose to carry an item from one end of the world to another and get extra profit, because the item will be rare around those parts, or you can sell it near the town you found it for less money.
UI/maps, so many people don't understand the bad effect gps maps and minimaps have on the game experience. I can guarantee you that 99% of players constantly look to their minimaps/worldmaps/zonemaps to see where they're going or want to go, it's the most effective way of doing it so why not? But if there's no easily accessible map or minimap, you'll look to the actual game, to your environment and surroundings, maybe you'll stop a ominous looking ruins or castle and decide to explore it. There's not easy way to explain this but if you've played without a minimap or a gps map you'll understand, the huge difference it makes, I can guarantee you that you will pay a lot more attention to the game, to where you're going and to the surrounding environment, it's a try it to believe it type of situation.
A world filled with magic would take advantage of teleports anyways. Forcing people to row a boat themselves instead of getting on the airship is stupid, not immerive. If every wizard can teleport than every major city would have teleportation available, that's just common sense. 1 or 2 classes being the only way to save hours worth of travel time is simply too great an advantage for any one person to have. The fact that they can haul items to various auction houses makes it even more so.
I played Original EQ and p99, I know what it's like with no maps. The problem is the auto radar and beacons for each group member, not the maps themselves. Maps that force you to explore first and show only major landmarks are perfectly fine and even realistic. To argue maps shouldn't exist at all in a fantasy world is ridiculous.
I know right? Frodo and company should have skipped all that painful overland travel and just had the eagles fly them straight to Mordor.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Oldschool niche in the context of EQ is really not that hard. Sure, we won't agree on everything, but a few things the vast majority will agree on is a highly cooperative (limited solo progression), has a steep death penalty, and that the players exist in an open world free of instancing. Really not that complicated.
Honestly I could probably enjoy almost any MMO utilizing the above premise, regardless of the other details. The problem is, they don't exist.
One of the problems when creating a game to cater to the old school niche, is that old school gamers can't seem to agree on just exactly how old school they want, and what modern features/design they want. From my experiences, old school niche do not compromise much. People are mostly either/or, like do A or I won't play, do B and this game sucks kind of playerbase. This makes it extremely difficult for any company attempting to create a game for this niche. And it likely is a big factor why companies/investors haven't been so willing dump money into creating new MMO's for the old school crowd. It's just a huge risk.
Any companies that have done market research, or any gamers who have played MMO's since the early days know what I'm talking about. I mean I remember when SOE actually entertained the idea of creating new EQ player character models after being beat down by WoW and other games launched post-2004. The amount of backlash they got when they tried to design some new player models scared them away and they dropped the whole idea. This is why to this day, in year 2017, we still see character models created from back in 2001 during Luclin. And old character models come with old clunky animations (if you can even call them animations). Pretty much nothing got upgraded because players were unwilling to compromise or try new changes.
Just using that as one of many examples of how the old school niche are very difficult to cater to. And even when Daybreak launched progression servers, people couldn't agree on whether they want instanced zones to alleviate crowding and raid lockdown issues. I already see people talk about how if there's any instancing at all they won't play Pantheon. I guess I don't blame companies for not wanting to risk spending money and years & years of time catering to the old picky uncompromising crowd.
All good points, it all really boils down to which old school game a player came from, that typically dictates their likes/dislikes. A DAOC player isn't looking for what EQ offered, a SWG player isn't looking for what AO offered, so on and so forth.
AT least with Pantheon they're rather upfront about their desire to please the EQ crowd the best they can. Yet even then you're going to get a lot of people who want things from different variations of EQ's lifespan, or want more of what Vanguard tried to do. There's no real clear consensus on what the majority wants.
I disagree. I am an old school EQ1 PvP'er and also really loved DAoC.
What they had in common is they were both more unforgiving than anything since their time.
One of the problems when creating a game to cater to the old school niche, is that old school gamers can't seem to agree on just exactly how old school they want, and what modern features/design they want. From my experiences, old school niche do not compromise much. People are mostly either/or, like do A or I won't play, do B and this game sucks kind of playerbase. This makes it extremely difficult for any company attempting to create a game for this niche. And it likely is a big factor why companies/investors haven't been so willing dump money into creating new MMO's for the old school crowd. It's just a huge risk.
Any companies that have done market research, or any gamers who have played MMO's since the early days know what I'm talking about. I mean I remember when SOE actually entertained the idea of creating new EQ player character models after being beat down by WoW and other games launched post-2004. The amount of backlash they got when they tried to design some new player models scared them away and they dropped the whole idea. This is why to this day, in year 2017, we still see character models created from back in 2001 during Luclin. And old character models come with old clunky animations (if you can even call them animations). Pretty much nothing got upgraded because players were unwilling to compromise or try new changes.
Just using that as one of many examples of how the old school niche are very difficult to cater to. And even when Daybreak launched progression servers, people couldn't agree on whether they want instanced zones to alleviate crowding and raid lockdown issues. I already see people talk about how if there's any instancing at all they won't play Pantheon. I guess I don't blame companies for not wanting to risk spending money and years & years of time catering to the old picky uncompromising crowd.
I would go further than that. I would say you would be hard up to find more than a few people who would agree on even a handful of elements to put into an MMORPG no matter who they are, old school or new. That's why my one piece of advice to devs, despite all the opinions I personally have on how to build the perfect game (and they are many), is to ultimately ignore the opinions of others and build it the way you think it works best. Take them under advisement, yes, but if you are not enthusiastic about an idea, forget about trying to please the masses and do it your way. You are the experienced developer and if you didn't have a pretty good idea about how you wanted it built in the first place, you probably should never have started it.
Again, people make it out to be something more complicated than it is. The Pantheon official forums are constant debate about the details. Despite those differences, many thousands of people have come together and are following Pantheon because it's promising certain fundamental elements that existed in many first generation MMOs.
I know right? Frodo and company should have skipped all that painful overland travel and just had the eagles fly them straight to Mordor.
Good analogy. In that case we would have no movie, or a movie that lasted 10 minutes (end game). Same can be said for modern MMORPGs which cut the leveling short (the journey) to focus exclusively on the main event (end game), resulting in games that last 2 months rather than one year. It is unfortunate that people can't see the collateral long term damage that convenience features and fast leveling can do to a MMORPGs.
I know right? Frodo and company should have skipped all that painful overland travel and just had the eagles fly them straight to Mordor.
Good analogy. In that case we would have no movie, or a movie that lasted 10 minutes (end game). Same can be said for modern MMORPGs which cut the leveling short (the journey) to focus exclusively on the main event (end game), resulting in games that last 2 months rather than one year. It is unfortunate that people can't see the collateral long term damage that convenience features and fast leveling can do to a MMORPGs.
Only true for a minority of players that can toleratate old school slow pace progression MMORPGs.
Majority will not play a game that doesnt have the convenience of fast leveling to end game.
This is the real reason why the mainstream has shifted to fast progression - to appeal to masses.
Massively Multiplayer as in - sell to as many as possible, thats the developer definition.
The detrimental effects to longterm viability of an MMORPG by ultra-streamlined content and a trivilaized in game world are as numerous as they are obvious. You're a bit behind the times now, still playing that 2013 rhetoric. ESO is the last real AAA MMO released and they have anything but a quick leveling progression. If you plan to do any kind of raiding, PVP, or trials as a newbie average player you can expect to put in a good 2-4 months in the game just to get to that point with how many champion points you need to be viable, that's just the grind not even getting into gear. The older MMOs that have streamlined their early content to the point that it's a joke are dying. Nobody is making MMO's and the newer ones that are sustainable (ESO, FF14) have pretty demanding time requirements to even think about endgame as a newbie.
So I'd be really curious the 'shift' you're talking about. The 'shift' you're talking about happened about 6-7 years ago and had it's 15 nauseating minutes and died. It's plain to see the dynamics are already moving away from that, because it doesn't work and it makes the games horribly shitty and even casuals know it now.
Some of you talk as if VR's goal is to steal the 5 mil WoW players, or that the metric for a good game is the total number of subscribers. It is utter BS.
All Pantheon needs is a handful of tens of thousands of stable player base to make it viable long term. Just like EvE did. The mouth breathing horde can stick to WoW.
I know right? Frodo and company should have skipped all that painful overland travel and just had the eagles fly them straight to Mordor.
Good analogy. In that case we would have no movie, or a movie that lasted 10 minutes (end game). Same can be said for modern MMORPGs which cut the leveling short (the journey) to focus exclusively on the main event (end game), resulting in games that last 2 months rather than one year. It is unfortunate that people can't see the collateral long term damage that convenience features and fast leveling can do to a MMORPGs.
Only true for a minority of players that can toleratate old school slow pace progression MMORPGs.
Majority will not play a game that doesnt have the convenience of fast leveling to end game.
This is the real reason why the mainstream has shifted to fast progression - to appeal to masses.
Massively Multiplayer as in - sell to as many as possible, thats the developer definition.
Good for them. I am happy they have tones of MMOs that give them what they want. I love the fact this game has set things up. You want fast travel, then be a class that has that wrapped up in it. Shaman Druid for SoW or Wizard Druid for ports. Or interact with a player and ask for them to help you get there faster. Bring people together. Make friends with a few Druid or Wizards. Join a guild that has a number of them. There are people that do like this. Or there is also the people who like to explore and love taking an a few hours to take a boat and figure out how to get from point A to B on their own. Ya this game is for that type of person.
Some of you talk as if VR's goal is to steal the 5 mil WoW players, or that the metric for a good game is the total number of subscribers. It is utter BS.
All Pantheon needs is a handful of tens of thousands of stable player base to make it viable long term. Just like EvE did. The mouth breathing horde can stick to WoW.
Sure I don't think anyone believes Pantheon is aiming to be a blockbuster mainstream success story. All Pantheon needs is to corner a niche, I think everyone understands that.
Capturing that niche shouldn't be too hard if the game is good. Considering what's coming up as far as competition goes, it has a rather good chance at that since it's PVE focused. Most are based on PVP play of some kind.
Their greatest struggle I can foresee will be keeping up with the content demand they're going to have on their hands. As well as not shooting themselves in the foot as they try to meet that demand, as so many games have in the past.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Some of you talk as if VR's goal is to steal the 5 mil WoW players, or that the metric for a good game is the total number of subscribers. It is utter BS.
All Pantheon needs is a handful of tens of thousands of stable player base to make it viable long term. Just like EvE did. The mouth breathing horde can stick to WoW.
Sure I don't think anyone believes Pantheon is aiming to be a blockbuster mainstream success story. All Pantheon needs is to corner a niche, I think everyone understands that.
Capturing that niche shouldn't be too hard if the game is good. Considering what's coming up as far as competition goes, it has a rather good chance at that since it's PVE focused. Most are based on PVP play of some kind.
Their greatest struggle I can foresee will be keeping up with the content demand they're going to have on their hands. As well as not shooting themselves in the foot as they try to meet that demand, as so many games have in the past.
A primary concern I have for any game relying on nostalgia is how well they have judged the size of that market segment. Pantheon does have the advantage over similar games in development is that they are aiming at a PvE game. I've asked (frequently) where this market segment is currently - what are they doing? It's a very difficult question to answer, but identifying the customer is vital to any business. Maybe there is a huge glut of people sitting around grousing about the lack of an EQ1-like game, but chances are very good that the people who will play Pantheon will have to be lured from other games.
A lot of the talk about Pantheon, and new games in general -- not only those with an old-school focus, seems to indicate a 'Field of Dreams' approach -- build the game and the players will come. I think that is a perilous attitude for developers and businesses to take, but it seems to be rampant among other potential customers on forums. 'They will come' only if a) they hear about the game, b) they are incentivized to try the game and c) it offers them more entertainment value than their current entertainment choice(s). That last one is most definitely subjective, and each person will evaluate that for themselves.
I think @Distopia's point about the content demand is spot on about another critical issue, but I believe that is more related to customer retention than customer acquisition. But that's a discussion for the future.
Once that niche is captured, it can be measured. Maybe not by anyone outside VR, but at least they will know finally who their customers are. Is this niche market really 25,000 strong, and will Pantheon be able to attract and retain them? Thankfully, it's not my money banking on that gamble.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I know right? Frodo and company should have skipped all that painful overland travel and just had the eagles fly them straight to Mordor.
Good analogy. In that case we would have no movie, or a movie that lasted 10 minutes (end game). Same can be said for modern MMORPGs which cut the leveling short (the journey) to focus exclusively on the main event (end game), resulting in games that last 2 months rather than one year. It is unfortunate that people can't see the collateral long term damage that convenience features and fast leveling can do to a MMORPGs.
Devs who make MMORPGs geared for the endgame are incredibly short-sighted as far as I'm concerned. That tells me they're going to gloss over the low to mid-level content and concentrate on all the high-level stuff.
There's always going to be players who see MMOs as a race and try to be the first to the top. So be it. But devs shouldn't feed their lust for the endgame. Ignore them and concentrate on the whole game.
I do enjoy the journey and there's a pretty simple way to make it fun for people like me. Make the low and mid-level content as good as the high level content.
And I'll give you a good example too from EQ. I mentioned that Old Sebilis is one of my favorite dungeons of all. That was an endgame dungeon from Kunark. However, perhaps my all-time favorite dungeon in all of EQ was the Crystal Caverns from Velious. And that was a mid-level dungeon. You could start exploring it in about the low to mid 30s and it remained challenging to about the mid 40s. I had so much fun in the CC that when my main hit about level 46, I was actually sad that it was getting time to leave that dungeon behind.
Make the whole world enjoyable and you're likely to keep people around longer. Just one man's opinion.
I know right? Frodo and company should have skipped all that painful overland travel and just had the eagles fly them straight to Mordor.
Good analogy. In that case we would have no movie, or a movie that lasted 10 minutes (end game). Same can be said for modern MMORPGs which cut the leveling short (the journey) to focus exclusively on the main event (end game), resulting in games that last 2 months rather than one year. It is unfortunate that people can't see the collateral long term damage that convenience features and fast leveling can do to a MMORPGs.
Devs who make MMORPGs geared for the endgame are incredibly short-sighted as far as I'm concerned. That tells me they're going to gloss over the low to mid-level content and concentrate on all the high-level stuff.
There's always going to be players who see MMOs as a race and try to be the first to the top. So be it. But devs shouldn't feed their lust for the endgame. Ignore them and concentrate on the whole game.
I do enjoy the journey and there's a pretty simple way to make it fun for people like me. Make the low and mid-level content as good as the high level content.
And I'll give you a good example too from EQ. I mentioned that Old Sebilis is one of my favorite dungeons of all. That was an endgame dungeon from Kunark. However, perhaps my all-time favorite dungeon in all of EQ was the Crystal Caverns from Velious. And that was a mid-level dungeon. You could start exploring it in about the low to mid 30s and it remained challenging to about the mid 40s. I had so much fun in the CC that when my main hit about level 46, I was actually sad that it was getting time to leave that dungeon behind.
Make the whole world enjoyable and you're likely to keep people around longer. Just one man's opinion.
Well said.. this is where my content concern really comes from, with a small team they really need to choose a focus, and I hope it's on the journey, I want to be enthralled by a world, not annoyed by a carrot chase that just leads to a bigger carrot to seek.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
EQs main hit during Velious was before DAOC. Looks more like around June. That's when it started the decline. I seriously doubt AO had a lot to do with it, because it was pretty much just a blip on the radar. When DAOC actually came out, it didn't really seem to have much impact. Probably the fact that the new expansion offset the loss.
I don't think any game had a real direct impact on EQ until EQ2/WoW. DAoC appealed to a very different type of player. It did hurt the EQ pvp servers though.
I still maintain that the real damage was self-inflicted.
If you average those data points, the hit happens sometime between june and august. We don't know, there're no data points between them.
I still am convinced the longterm hit started with AO and DAOC. The data points align and the growth reduction fits what I think is within a margin of plausibility. A lot of the hit came from Everquest players themselves seeing AO or DAOC and cancelling their sub for a while to try.
Final Fantasy XI And STar Wars Galaxy I tihnk also impacted. Coincidentally, if you look at the data points, a loss happens (*) right when FFXI launches in NA. YOu saying only EQ2 and WoW impacted it likely is wrong. As well, AO added the Shadowlands expansion which was a unashamed copy of Everquest. There was high levels of competition going on for EQ players. And note I'm not just referring to EQ players, but potential EQ players. Not all potential EQ players are teh same. It doesn't work that way.
* - This occurred at the midway point between LDON and Gates of Discord. Who knows, but I think ti's interesting. The subscriber base for FFXI jumped something like 156,000 at the time of this data point.
SOE’s last official
statement regarding EQ’s subscribers in 2004 only claimed “over
420,000″. The latter data points on the graph come not from press
releases, but from inside sources, and they show a somewhat different
picture, with a high of some 550,000 subscribers in September 2004. It
is important to note that the more recent data points represent not just
total monthly subscribers, but also subscribers with active accounts on
free time, eligible accounts on game time cards, etc. SOE station pass
subscriptions are not counted unless they actually have registered an EQ
account. It is possible that the earlier figures from the SOE press
releases were deliberately conservative, and/or did not count such
accounts, thus accounting for this apparent discrepancy.
Comments
Another thing to consider is just how many more people were able to play MMOs with each passing year at the turn of the century. In the 90's very few people even had internet. Five years later, practically everyone had internet.
Here's the link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110209022511/http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html
Here're 3 prior data points (and 1 post) at same time intervals, to give context for the August 9 2001 data point (I included a 4th prior point too):
294,594 (Sep 21 2000)
328,947 (Feb 1 2001)
364,864 (April 5 2001)
400,000 (June 7 2001)
---> June 27 2001 (Anarchy Online launches)
405,405 (August 9 2001)
---> October 10 2001 (Dark Ages of Camelot launches)
412,162 (October 11 2001)
What SHOULD the population have been if the data points continued as they had for several months? By October 11, I'm guessing it should have been maybe ~435,133. So what's expected and what occurred is -22,971.
These're not precise values, but might have meaning.
Luclin didn't happen until December 4 2001.
DAOC's active subscriber base was close to 150,000 at end 2001. In fact, I read over 50,000 copies were sold in the first 4 days, greatly exceeding forecasts. Given the subscriber base of Anarchy Online was as high as 60,000 and settled at 22,000+ at end 2001, I think it's possible this is why EQ's growth stuttered at this time. However, regardless, it never regained its prior rate of growth, EXCEPT briefly between July 1 2004 and Sept 8 2004. Maybe it had something to do with renewed interest in Omens of War, released on Sept 14. It ended fast.
I'll end this by linking something about the source data:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110122032756/http://www.mmogchart.com:80/analysis-and-conclusions/
The accuracy rating for Anarchy Online is B. DAOC was B, but was reduced to C since the release of WoW. The rating for Everquest is B:
I don't think any game had a real direct impact on EQ until EQ2/WoW. DAoC appealed to a very different type of player. It did hurt the EQ pvp servers though.
I still maintain that the real damage was self-inflicted.
WoW expanded the market and as long as they could find new markets to sell the game on the playerbase kept growing, there was an explosion in the playerbase once they launched the game in china. When they couldn't find new markets to sell their game on it stopped growing.
Pantheon, crowfall and camelot unchained aims for a segment of players. When you can't compete with the giants, aim for the crowds they don't satisfy.
The problem is that if you go for an extremely specific crowd it might not be enough to keep the game afloat. While there is a crowd of people that enjoy group content and also a crowd that enjoy old school mechanism, going for the crowd of old school players that want it to mostly be like everquest during a specific era isn't that big.
(edited to make post shorter).
If Pantheon has instances, I WILL not be playing it. Instances are the single greatest reason for the downfall of MMORPG's.
My history with EQ was on Tallon Zek, a race war PvP server. Being able to PvP, control zones, attack people and guilds anywhere any time, was one of the best times I've ever had in gaming. I'll be playing on the Pantheon PvP server. Those of you that want to live in a little safe bubble need to get lost.
The ONLY thing I agree with is to limit boxing.
I want:
1. Non-trivial travel. Classes that can port you and boats, running, etc to take time and force you to explore and socialize.
2. No maps. Let the communities do them and revive cartography.
3. A real death penalty. I am in favor of the original EQ mechanics. Loss exp, corpse runs.
4. Loot in EQ1 Velious to vanilla was the best. There should be time, risk, and grouping necessary to get decent gear.
I want to chop the hands off anyone who mentions pathetic instancing.
AS for EVE, I think a lot of factors have played into it's success, most notably of which is it's status as a space game in a sea of fantasy titles. It's only real competition has been Vendetta more or less. You have to consider that between it's release until just a few years ago the space sim genre was in a dire state (EVE and titles like X, were the only real competitors in that genre for quite a while). Especially where multiplayer titles are concerned in EVE's case...
That's the best thing going for pantheon actually in that it is one of the only old school PVE titles coming up. Most are focused on PVP the rest that are available are mainstream quest grinders like ESO. When you have a niche like that which EVE has had, you have a lot better chance at being successful.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Any companies that have done market research, or any gamers who have played MMO's since the early days know what I'm talking about. I mean I remember when SOE actually entertained the idea of creating new EQ player character models after being beat down by WoW and other games launched post-2004. The amount of backlash they got when they tried to design some new player models scared them away and they dropped the whole idea. This is why to this day, in year 2017, we still see character models created from back in 2001 during Luclin. And old character models come with old clunky animations (if you can even call them animations). Pretty much nothing got upgraded because players were unwilling to compromise or try new changes.
Just using that as one of many examples of how the old school niche are very difficult to cater to. And even when Daybreak launched progression servers, people couldn't agree on whether they want instanced zones to alleviate crowding and raid lockdown issues. I already see people talk about how if there's any instancing at all they won't play Pantheon. I guess I don't blame companies for not wanting to risk spending money and years & years of time catering to the old picky uncompromising crowd.
Played: EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-LOTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO-BDO
Waiting For: CU & Vanilla WoW
AT least with Pantheon they're rather upfront about their desire to please the EQ crowd the best they can. Yet even then you're going to get a lot of people who want things from different variations of EQ's lifespan, or want more of what Vanguard tried to do. There's no real clear consensus on what the majority wants.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Honestly I could probably enjoy almost any MMO utilizing the above premise, regardless of the other details. The problem is, they don't exist.
What they had in common is they were both more unforgiving than anything since their time.
I would go further than that. I would say you would be hard up to find more than a few people who would agree on even a handful of elements to put into an MMORPG no matter who they are, old school or new. That's why my one piece of advice to devs, despite all the opinions I personally have on how to build the perfect game (and they are many), is to ultimately ignore the opinions of others and build it the way you think it works best. Take them under advisement, yes, but if you are not enthusiastic about an idea, forget about trying to please the masses and do it your way. You are the experienced developer and if you didn't have a pretty good idea about how you wanted it built in the first place, you probably should never have started it.
In that case we would have no movie, or a movie that lasted 10 minutes (end game).
Same can be said for modern MMORPGs which cut the leveling short (the journey) to focus exclusively on the main event (end game), resulting in games that last 2 months rather than one year.
It is unfortunate that people can't see the collateral long term damage that convenience features and fast leveling can do to a MMORPGs.
So I'd be really curious the 'shift' you're talking about. The 'shift' you're talking about happened about 6-7 years ago and had it's 15 nauseating minutes and died. It's plain to see the dynamics are already moving away from that, because it doesn't work and it makes the games horribly shitty and even casuals know it now.
All Pantheon needs is a handful of tens of thousands of stable player base to make it viable long term. Just like EvE did. The mouth breathing horde can stick to WoW.
Capturing that niche shouldn't be too hard if the game is good. Considering what's coming up as far as competition goes, it has a rather good chance at that since it's PVE focused. Most are based on PVP play of some kind.
Their greatest struggle I can foresee will be keeping up with the content demand they're going to have on their hands. As well as not shooting themselves in the foot as they try to meet that demand, as so many games have in the past.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
A lot of the talk about Pantheon, and new games in general -- not only those with an old-school focus, seems to indicate a 'Field of Dreams' approach -- build the game and the players will come. I think that is a perilous attitude for developers and businesses to take, but it seems to be rampant among other potential customers on forums. 'They will come' only if a) they hear about the game, b) they are incentivized to try the game and c) it offers them more entertainment value than their current entertainment choice(s). That last one is most definitely subjective, and each person will evaluate that for themselves.
I think @Distopia's point about the content demand is spot on about another critical issue, but I believe that is more related to customer retention than customer acquisition. But that's a discussion for the future.
Once that niche is captured, it can be measured. Maybe not by anyone outside VR, but at least they will know finally who their customers are. Is this niche market really 25,000 strong, and will Pantheon be able to attract and retain them? Thankfully, it's not my money banking on that gamble.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Devs who make MMORPGs geared for the endgame are incredibly short-sighted as far as I'm concerned. That tells me they're going to gloss over the low to mid-level content and concentrate on all the high-level stuff.
There's always going to be players who see MMOs as a race and try to be the first to the top. So be it. But devs shouldn't feed their lust for the endgame. Ignore them and concentrate on the whole game.
I do enjoy the journey and there's a pretty simple way to make it fun for people like me. Make the low and mid-level content as good as the high level content.
And I'll give you a good example too from EQ. I mentioned that Old Sebilis is one of my favorite dungeons of all. That was an endgame dungeon from Kunark. However, perhaps my all-time favorite dungeon in all of EQ was the Crystal Caverns from Velious. And that was a mid-level dungeon. You could start exploring it in about the low to mid 30s and it remained challenging to about the mid 40s. I had so much fun in the CC that when my main hit about level 46, I was actually sad that it was getting time to leave that dungeon behind.
Make the whole world enjoyable and you're likely to keep people around longer. Just one man's opinion.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I still am convinced the longterm hit started with AO and DAOC. The data points align and the growth reduction fits what I think is within a margin of plausibility. A lot of the hit came from Everquest players themselves seeing AO or DAOC and cancelling their sub for a while to try.
The only thing to do is convince myself DAOC was competing with Everquest. I know AO was. After reading this, I've no reason to doubt it. At the very least, they were competing for some of the customer base:
Original DAOC review from gamespot:
http://web.archive.org/web/20011102031514/http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/reviews/0,10867,2820565,00.html
Final Fantasy XI And STar Wars Galaxy I tihnk also impacted. Coincidentally, if you look at the data points, a loss happens (*) right when FFXI launches in NA. YOu saying only EQ2 and WoW impacted it likely is wrong. As well, AO added the Shadowlands expansion which was a unashamed copy of Everquest. There was high levels of competition going on for EQ players. And note I'm not just referring to EQ players, but potential EQ players. Not all potential EQ players are teh same. It doesn't work that way.
* - This occurred at the midway point between LDON and Gates of Discord. Who knows, but I think ti's interesting. The subscriber base for FFXI jumped something like 156,000 at the time of this data point.
I'll add a note about the jump in EQ's subscritions in 2004 post GOD. In my prior post I gave a link to the specific portion. Here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110122032756/http://www.mmogchart.com:80/analysis-and-conclusions/