Believe it or not the mmo market was already booming before wow came along. There were tons of companies already lining up to make mmos after the success of UO and EQ, so yes the 100's of games were coming.
Wow just gave gamers what they wanted. Previous games didn't and that is why they never tapped into the market that was just waiting to give money to a good game. It has always been there, growing each year as online gaming becomes more accepted as a past time.
MMOs booming PreWOW is debateable
Boston Globe article, early 2004 --- pre WOW
Flood of games, too few players cause change in online realm
Mythica was to have been Microsoft's major entry into the market for persistent online role-playing games -- the kind where a player joins an extended online community in which life goes on even when the player has logged off. There's certainly a market for games like these. EverQuest and the new Star Wars Galaxies, both run by Japan's Sony, each boast hundreds of thousands of avid players.
But other companies are finding it surprisingly hard to duplicate Sony's success.
Microsoft abandoned Mythica last week, even before the game was officially launched. "We were looking at the . . . market and really determined that we couldn't be competitive," said Microsoft spokeswoman Genevieve Waldman.
My sony phone does everything a IPOD does and how many kids have phones yet how many do you see with IPODS why get a IPOD when you already have something that has the same function but makes telephone calls etc quite simply because they are fad loving sheep and thats all WoW is a fad.
Believe it or not the mmo market was already booming before wow came along. There were tons of companies already lining up to make mmos after the success of UO and EQ, so yes the 100's of games were coming.
Wow just gave gamers what they wanted. Previous games didn't and that is why they never tapped into the market that was just waiting to give money to a good game. It has always been there, growing each year as online gaming becomes more accepted as a past time.
As for wow being a fad, how can that be when other games are selling 1 million boxes at release? People want to play mmos. They just don't want to play poorly managed lack luster mmos. If wow didn't crack the market open, then some other game would have. Eventually other companies will get their collective heads out of their asses and start delivering decent games. Then we should start seeing the market even out.
It isn't like people playing wow are incapable of enjoying another online game. When people who get bored of their current shooter game, they move to the next one. Ask yourself why that doesn't happen in the mmo genre and then take a serious look at the competition. At a 3% churn rate, wow losses 360,000 players a month. What is preventing those people from trying the mmo that is right next to the wow boxes at best buy or amazon?
As a poster put it in a nother poster sorry can't remeber your name off the top of my head but this was a response to a discussion on TOR and its probably eventual numbers.
The reason why MMOs are in the "doldroms" is because WoW success gives a false perception of the actual number of MMO players. The actual MMO gaming population is smaller than the WoW population. In other words these companies are chasing customers that are not actually there.
I can imagine that 70% of WoW players are not MMO gamers....they are WoW players and never will touch another MMO.
Thats a large reason these 360,000 may not head elsewhere.
The sheep tries the sheep game doesnt like it so leaves the flock but is always replaced by fresh lambs, such is WOWs marketing machine they can pull people in who have never played a MMO before but then don;t like the genre and never will play a MMO again.
We all know WOW can run on a Casio calculator and a elastic band, moms machine she uses to log onto jackpotjoy may well not be capable of running another MMO theres a myriad of reasons many will not try a MMO but I stnd with the fact a large percentage of WOW gamers will never play another MMO but WOW.
Theres always something entices people to try something how often do you see AOC, AION or any other MMO etc outside of a dedicated MMO or gaming site. Gaming publications are dieing o the PC so that is no longer a direct avenue to a large part of the market WOW has large television campaigns that gets in everyones face.
My first MMO was SWG at launch this wasnt on the back of a advert but rather a rare form of vertigo had stopped me playing FPS so I picked up KOTOR loved it and wanted a similar SW expereince and whilst googling stumbled upon SWG whilst still in beta and SWG led to the MMO genre.
True test of this theory will come with TOR and a brand that has the EA marketing machine in full flow behind it its the only title that can and likeley will market itself better than WOW on top of its already won over SW and Bioware fanbois
Mythica was to have been Microsoft's major entry into the market for persistent online role-playing games -- the kind where a player joins an extended online community in which life goes on even when the player has logged off. There's certainly a market for games like these. EverQuest and the new Star Wars Galaxies, both run by Japan's Sony, each boast hundreds of thousands of avid players.
But other companies are finding it surprisingly hard to duplicate Sony's success.
Microsoft abandoned Mythica last week, even before the game was officially launched. "We were looking at the . . . market and really determined that we couldn't be competitive," said Microsoft spokeswoman Genevieve Waldman.
MMOs back then were investing single digits million and reaping 10-50 million dollars in subscription fees alone each year. That kind of success is going to attract lots of businesses and it did.
That doesn't mean there was tons of success, but many companies were heading to the mmo market after seeing how much money there was to be made and that was long before wow found the untapped market.
Microsoft dropped Mythica, because they decided to invest in Vanguard instead. The two were connected.
As a poster put it in a nother poster sorry can't remeber your name off the top of my head but this was a response to a discussion on TOR and its probably eventual numbers.[2
[2] The reason why MMOs are in the "doldroms" is because WoW success gives a false perception of the actual number of MMO players. The actual MMO gaming population is smaller than the WoW population. In other words these companies are chasing customers that are not actually there.
I can imagine that 70% of WoW players are not MMO gamers....they are WoW players and never will touch another MMO.
Thats a large reason these 360,000 may not head elsewhere.
[3] The sheep tries the sheep game doesnt like it so leaves the flock but is always replaced by fresh lambs, such is WOWs marketing machine they can pull people in who have never played a MMO before but then don;t like the genre and never will play a MMO again.
We all know WOW can run on a Casio calculator and a elastic band, moms machine she uses to log onto jackpotjoy may well not be capable of running another MMO theres a myriad of reasons many will not try a MMO but I stnd with the fact a large percentage of WOW gamers will never play another MMO but WOW.
Theres always something entices people to try something how often do you see AOC, AION or any other MMO etc outside of a dedicated MMO or gaming site. Gaming publications are dieing o the PC so that is no longer a direct avenue to a large part of the market WOW has large television campaigns that gets in everyones face.
My first MMO was SWG at launch this wasnt on the back of a advert but rather a rare form of vertigo had stopped me playing FPS so I picked up KOTOR loved it and wanted a similar SW expereince and whilst googling stumbled upon SWG whilst still in beta and SWG led to the MMO genre.
[1] True test of this theory will come with TOR and a brand that has the EA marketing machine in full flow behind it its the only title that can and likeley will market itself better than WOW on top of its already won over SW and Bioware fanbois
[1]
EA has already put their full might behind a few mmos. They had the Sims Online which was the first game out of the new studio with hundreds of millions in revenue. Warhammer online also had EA behind it.
I think we will only see change in the market when a companies start releasing decent games. Regardless of how they market or who makes it. A great game will sell itself on word of mouth alone.
[2]
So you speculate that 70% of wow players are not gamers. Ok, that still leaves 3.6 million gamers in wow and at a 3% churn rate that burns 108,000 players leaving wow each month. Again, why are other games not capitalizing on such a huge base of players that are looking for a new mmo to play?
[3]
This is the real question. Why have other mmos not gained more players as the overall market has grown?
Option 1 is that wow players are sheep like you claim. 12 million players are simply incapable of anything but playing wow. They are somehow predisposed to only play wow and regardless of what other mmos do, they will never ever play them. Nothing can entice millions of players away from wow, nothing.
This option put the blame on players for being defective. Other mmos have not grown, because there is something wrong with players and not the other mmos.
Option 2 is that the total number of mmo players has been increasing on a steady and rather predictable curve since the glory days of UO/EQ. Most of those people went to Wow, because it is a better PRODUCT than the rest of the market was offering and continues to offer.
When looking at the release condition of games like EQ2, Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, Warhammer online, Age of Conan, Star Trek online, Champions online, Dungeons and Dragons online, Final Fantasy 14, Aion, etc etc etc I think it becomes clear that most games just do not release ready to compete with the current market. They are not giving players a reason to switch games, regardless of what game they were playing already.
This option puts the blame on games and not players. Other mmos have not grown, because they offer little reason for players to make the switch full time.
I remember prior to wow that people were saying the mmo market was saturated and games could only exist by canabalizing from each other. That EQ was king of the hill and wouldn't be dethroned.
I tend to agree that the average WoW player's only MMO has been WoW, and they are not interested in trying any other MMO until the next Blizzard one. Everybody trying to clone WoW seems to think that there is this huge MMO market that they can tap into when really they dont stand a chance with most of it. I still enjoy EQ2 more than most everything else out there, but I have been disappointed by a lot of the decisions that they have made with changes to the game.
I tend to agree that the average WoW player's only MMO has been WoW, and they are not interested in trying any other MMO until the next Blizzard one. Everybody trying to clone WoW seems to think that there is this huge MMO market that they can tap into when really they dont stand a chance with most of it. I still enjoy EQ2 more than most everything else out there, but I have been disappointed by a lot of the decisions that they have made with changes to the game.
Warhammer online and Age of Conan both sold over 1 million copies in the first few months after their release. Star trek online had over 1 million register on their website during development. Star Wars the Old Republic is off the charts. Final Fantasy 14 sold over 500,000 copies in the first month. DDO and Lotro online have together seen millions of players since the switch to free to play. Those are just some examples of the markets potential for a game to capture a playerbase.
Go to any games free trial area and ask in general chat channel who is a wow player. That should myth bust any illusions that players will not leave wow.
We are trying to conclude that since most games are not gaining in userbase as a result of millions of people not wanting to try another video game.
How many more games need to get the attention of 1 million plus players only to fall off from that before we factor in the condition of the games as major factor of why more people do not switch away from the more popular games?
I tend to agree that the average WoW player's only MMO has been WoW, and they are not interested in trying any other MMO until the next Blizzard one. Everybody trying to clone WoW seems to think that there is this huge MMO market that they can tap into when really they dont stand a chance with most of it. I still enjoy EQ2 more than most everything else out there, but I have been disappointed by a lot of the decisions that they have made with changes to the game.
Warhammer online and Age of Conan both sold over 1 million copies in the first few months after their release. Star trek online had over 1 million register on their website during development. Star Wars the Old Republic is off the charts. Final Fantasy 14 sold over 500,000 copies in the first month. DDO and Lotro online have together seen millions of players since the switch to free to play. Those are just some examples of the markets potential for a game to capture a playerbase.
Go to any games free trial area and ask in general chat channel who is a wow player. That should myth bust any illusions that players will not leave wow.
We are trying to conclude that since most games are not gaining in userbase as a result of millions of people not wanting to try another video game.
How many more games need to get the attention of 1 million plus players only to fall off from that before we factor in the condition of the games as major factor of why more people do not switch away from the more popular games?
Obviously some WoW players try other MMOs, but I believe the majority does not. Even 1 million players is less than 10% of the WoW playerbase.
I have about a dozen real life friends who have played MMOs at some point in time. Only 3 of those did not start with WoW. Of the ones who started with WoW, none have ever tried another MMO that I know of.
I cannot disagree though that everything that has come out since WoW has been pretty much garbage. Vanguard could have been good, had it been remotely playable at release, though even if it worked perfectly, it never would have touched the majority of WoW's playerbase. A lot of these people dont follow MMOs, they only follow WoW. They dont know or care what other MMOs exist.
Obviously some WoW players try other MMOs, but I believe the majority does not. Even 1 million players is less than 10% of the WoW playerbase.
I have about a dozen real life friends who have played MMOs at some point in time. Only 3 of those did not start with WoW. Of the ones who started with WoW, none have ever tried another MMO that I know of.
I cannot disagree though that everything that has come out since WoW has been pretty much garbage. Vanguard could have been good, had it been remotely playable at release, though even if it worked perfectly, it never would have touched the majority of WoW's playerbase. A lot of these people dont follow MMOs, they only follow WoW. They dont know or care what other MMOs exist.
Keep in mind that these games seeing million(s) of players paying attention are coming from the westerm market. Wows total western market size is somewhere around roughly 5 million. Give or take that 1 million figure is somewhere around 20% of wows playerbase size, which is pretty massive for a new release. Not saying all new players to an mmo are former wow players, but obviously a large percentage are.
That is pretty massive initial interst for new games and even overshadows wows popularity when it released, but these games have consistently failed to keep the momentum going. They lose the players almost as quickly as they gain them. That alone is the smoking gun of where the problem is at.
Comments
MMOs booming PreWOW is debateable
Boston Globe article, early 2004 --- pre WOW
Flood of games, too few players cause change in online realm
http://otherworlds31279.yuku.com/topic/1167/t/Online-games-failure-success-Boston-Globe-article.html
Mythica was to have been Microsoft's major entry into the market for persistent online role-playing games -- the kind where a player joins an extended online community in which life goes on even when the player has logged off. There's certainly a market for games like these. EverQuest and the new Star Wars Galaxies, both run by Japan's Sony, each boast hundreds of thousands of avid players.
But other companies are finding it surprisingly hard to duplicate Sony's success.
Microsoft abandoned Mythica last week, even before the game was officially launched. "We were looking at the . . . market and really determined that we couldn't be competitive," said Microsoft spokeswoman Genevieve Waldman.
EQ2 fan sites
As a poster put it in a nother poster sorry can't remeber your name off the top of my head but this was a response to a discussion on TOR and its probably eventual numbers.
The reason why MMOs are in the "doldroms" is because WoW success gives a false perception of the actual number of MMO players. The actual MMO gaming population is smaller than the WoW population. In other words these companies are chasing customers that are not actually there.
I can imagine that 70% of WoW players are not MMO gamers....they are WoW players and never will touch another MMO.
Thats a large reason these 360,000 may not head elsewhere.
The sheep tries the sheep game doesnt like it so leaves the flock but is always replaced by fresh lambs, such is WOWs marketing machine they can pull people in who have never played a MMO before but then don;t like the genre and never will play a MMO again.
We all know WOW can run on a Casio calculator and a elastic band, moms machine she uses to log onto jackpotjoy may well not be capable of running another MMO theres a myriad of reasons many will not try a MMO but I stnd with the fact a large percentage of WOW gamers will never play another MMO but WOW.
Theres always something entices people to try something how often do you see AOC, AION or any other MMO etc outside of a dedicated MMO or gaming site. Gaming publications are dieing o the PC so that is no longer a direct avenue to a large part of the market WOW has large television campaigns that gets in everyones face.
My first MMO was SWG at launch this wasnt on the back of a advert but rather a rare form of vertigo had stopped me playing FPS so I picked up KOTOR loved it and wanted a similar SW expereince and whilst googling stumbled upon SWG whilst still in beta and SWG led to the MMO genre.
True test of this theory will come with TOR and a brand that has the EA marketing machine in full flow behind it its the only title that can and likeley will market itself better than WOW on top of its already won over SW and Bioware fanbois
MMOs back then were investing single digits million and reaping 10-50 million dollars in subscription fees alone each year. That kind of success is going to attract lots of businesses and it did.
That doesn't mean there was tons of success, but many companies were heading to the mmo market after seeing how much money there was to be made and that was long before wow found the untapped market.
Microsoft dropped Mythica, because they decided to invest in Vanguard instead. The two were connected.
[1]
EA has already put their full might behind a few mmos. They had the Sims Online which was the first game out of the new studio with hundreds of millions in revenue. Warhammer online also had EA behind it.
I think we will only see change in the market when a companies start releasing decent games. Regardless of how they market or who makes it. A great game will sell itself on word of mouth alone.
[2]
So you speculate that 70% of wow players are not gamers. Ok, that still leaves 3.6 million gamers in wow and at a 3% churn rate that burns 108,000 players leaving wow each month. Again, why are other games not capitalizing on such a huge base of players that are looking for a new mmo to play?
[3]
This is the real question. Why have other mmos not gained more players as the overall market has grown?
Option 1 is that wow players are sheep like you claim. 12 million players are simply incapable of anything but playing wow. They are somehow predisposed to only play wow and regardless of what other mmos do, they will never ever play them. Nothing can entice millions of players away from wow, nothing.
This option put the blame on players for being defective. Other mmos have not grown, because there is something wrong with players and not the other mmos.
Option 2 is that the total number of mmo players has been increasing on a steady and rather predictable curve since the glory days of UO/EQ. Most of those people went to Wow, because it is a better PRODUCT than the rest of the market was offering and continues to offer.
When looking at the release condition of games like EQ2, Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, Warhammer online, Age of Conan, Star Trek online, Champions online, Dungeons and Dragons online, Final Fantasy 14, Aion, etc etc etc I think it becomes clear that most games just do not release ready to compete with the current market. They are not giving players a reason to switch games, regardless of what game they were playing already.
This option puts the blame on games and not players. Other mmos have not grown, because they offer little reason for players to make the switch full time.
I remember prior to wow that people were saying the mmo market was saturated and games could only exist by canabalizing from each other. That EQ was king of the hill and wouldn't be dethroned.
I tend to agree that the average WoW player's only MMO has been WoW, and they are not interested in trying any other MMO until the next Blizzard one. Everybody trying to clone WoW seems to think that there is this huge MMO market that they can tap into when really they dont stand a chance with most of it. I still enjoy EQ2 more than most everything else out there, but I have been disappointed by a lot of the decisions that they have made with changes to the game.
Warhammer online and Age of Conan both sold over 1 million copies in the first few months after their release. Star trek online had over 1 million register on their website during development. Star Wars the Old Republic is off the charts. Final Fantasy 14 sold over 500,000 copies in the first month. DDO and Lotro online have together seen millions of players since the switch to free to play. Those are just some examples of the markets potential for a game to capture a playerbase.
Go to any games free trial area and ask in general chat channel who is a wow player. That should myth bust any illusions that players will not leave wow.
We are trying to conclude that since most games are not gaining in userbase as a result of millions of people not wanting to try another video game.
How many more games need to get the attention of 1 million plus players only to fall off from that before we factor in the condition of the games as major factor of why more people do not switch away from the more popular games?
Obviously some WoW players try other MMOs, but I believe the majority does not. Even 1 million players is less than 10% of the WoW playerbase.
I have about a dozen real life friends who have played MMOs at some point in time. Only 3 of those did not start with WoW. Of the ones who started with WoW, none have ever tried another MMO that I know of.
I cannot disagree though that everything that has come out since WoW has been pretty much garbage. Vanguard could have been good, had it been remotely playable at release, though even if it worked perfectly, it never would have touched the majority of WoW's playerbase. A lot of these people dont follow MMOs, they only follow WoW. They dont know or care what other MMOs exist.
Keep in mind that these games seeing million(s) of players paying attention are coming from the westerm market. Wows total western market size is somewhere around roughly 5 million. Give or take that 1 million figure is somewhere around 20% of wows playerbase size, which is pretty massive for a new release. Not saying all new players to an mmo are former wow players, but obviously a large percentage are.
That is pretty massive initial interst for new games and even overshadows wows popularity when it released, but these games have consistently failed to keep the momentum going. They lose the players almost as quickly as they gain them. That alone is the smoking gun of where the problem is at.