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What determines if an MMO is successful is its population.

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  • ConsuetudoConsuetudo Member UncommonPosts: 191

    This isn't about what some individual does, or what some individual wants, or about how things should be, but how things actually are. The MMO that is successful is the one with the highest population, and which continues to generate more players. The MMO that should be successful, or which you view to be the most successful, isn't the same as the MMO that is successful. 

    Everyone speaks about WoW, because everyone knows that WoW is successful. The factor which causes WoW to be successful is the factor of its having the most population. If WoW didn't have the most population, then, proportional to the percentage of the MMO community that would be absent from WoW, the amount of attention it would receive on forums and your own thoughts would decrease the same amount, and the amount of attention you would give to other MMOs would fill up the gap. 

    When WoW loses more players, and another MMO gains more players than WoW, then no longer will we count WoW to be successful, but that game. 

    If Age of Conan, not altogether gripping as it is, had the most players, then regardless of whatever factors disatisfy some of us, we would neither doubt that it is successful, nor count WoW as being successful any longer. WoW was successful, yet now Age of Conan is successful. 

    The success is an objective quality inherently present about the game, and not a subjective description being supplied by you. 

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403
    Originally posted by Consuetudo

    The MMO that is successful is the one with the highest population, and which continues to generate more players.

    In case no one ever explained it to you, "successful" is a word with multiple definitions.

    I am sorry that it appears to be objective to you. 

    Bieber is really the only music you'll listen to?

     

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Consuetudo

    This isn't about what some individual does, or what some individual wants, or about how things should be, but how things actually are

    In that case, you're objectively wrong, rather than merely having a wacky opinion.

    Ask any investor whether he'd rather have a game that cost $10 million to make and brings in $100 million in revenue, or one that cost $300 million to make and brings in $200 million revenue.  Or ask whether he'd rather have a game that gets $100 million in revenue from 10 million players, or $50 million in revenue from 20 million players.

    Indeed, high revenue per player is especially valuable, as marketing can basically "buy" more players.  Whether that's profitable depends very heavily on how much revenue you get from those players that you "buy".

    If number of players is the sole measure of success, then why don't games go completely free with no monetization whatsoever.  Wouldn't that make them more "successful"?

  • VendettaDFAVendettaDFA Member Posts: 72
    Originally posted by Consuetudo

    This isn't about what some individual does, or what some individual wants, or about how things should be, but how things actually are. The MMO that is successful is the one with the highest population, and which continues to generate more players. The MMO that should be successful, or which you view to be the most successful, isn't the same as the MMO that is successful. 

    Everyone speaks about WoW, because everyone knows that WoW is successful. The factor which causes WoW to be successful is the factor of its having the most population. If WoW didn't have the most population, then, proportional to the percentage of the MMO community that would be absent from WoW, the amount of attention it would receive on forums and your own thoughts would decrease the same amount, and the amount of attention you would give to other MMOs would fill up the gap. 

    When WoW loses more players, and another MMO gains more players than WoW, then no longer will we count WoW to be successful, but that game. 

    If Age of Conan, not altogether gripping as it is, had the most players, then regardless of whatever factors disatisfy some of us, we would neither doubt that it is successful, nor count WoW as being successful any longer. WoW was successful, yet now Age of Conan is successful. 

    The success is an objective quality inherently present about the game, and not a subjective description being supplied by you. 

    Population is YOUR opinion of the measure of success. Financial stability is someone elses opinion, Innovation is someone elses, etc,,,, ad nuaseum. This is a regurgitation of your original post and if you were TRULY correct only WoW would be available on the market to play,because no business can unsuccessfully remain in business. Since that statement is not true, then neither is your statement the only true answer exclusive of any other. That is how things ACTUALLY are.

  • ConsuetudoConsuetudo Member UncommonPosts: 191
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by Consuetudo

    This isn't about what some individual does, or what some individual wants, or about how things should be, but how things actually are

    In that case, you're objectively wrong, rather than merely having a wacky opinion.

    Ask any investor whether he'd rather have a game that cost $10 million to make and brings in $100 million in revenue, or one that cost $300 million to make and brings in $200 million revenue.  Or ask whether he'd rather have a game that gets $100 million in revenue from 10 million players, or $50 million in revenue from 20 million players.

    Indeed, high revenue per player is especially valuable, as marketing can basically "buy" more players.  Whether that's profitable depends very heavily on how much revenue you get from those players that you "buy".

    If number of players is the sole measure of success, then why don't games go completely free with no monetization whatsoever.  Wouldn't that make them more "successful"?

    Perhaps, but it's still necessary to maintain the servers, and perhaps without any improvements, employers to make those improvements, etc, players could begin to drop out of the game, therefore necessarily causing it to no longer be a success. 

    If the game is actually able to keep generating more players, then, necessarily, the people responsible for the game are not only delivering those things which will cause this to be the case, but they are also able to keep financially supporting it. 

    If they weren't able to keep financially supporting it, then there would be no more game, and it wouldn't even have the chance to be qualified as a success. 

    And yet you wouldn't consider a game that is a financial success to be successful, if it doesn't have the most players presently, since clearly most of the players don't agree with you. 

    If then a game was able to exist completely freely, and generate the most number of players, and actually continue to sustain that in compariosn to other games, then we would not only consider it a success, but very frugal as well. 

  • Sumo79Sumo79 Member UncommonPosts: 21
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by Consuetudo

    It is for these reasons that Mortal Online is not flooding the main page; the Chronicles of Spellborn; Asheron's Call; Ultima Online. All of these games are able to be played, and some were previously successful. Now, all of them have low populations, and we no longer conceive of them as presently successful.

    I thought they pulled the plug on The Chronicles of Spellborn.  Is it back up now?

    -----

    As for the substance of your argument, the population is really only relevant if it is enough to support the game.  Spiral Knights, for example, would be playable even if it only had 50 people online at a time.  Aion, on the other hand, would need a huge number of players in order to make it practical to get enough players for endgame raiding.

    And furthermore, what matters is whether there are enough players online that you have access to, not merely the total number online.  If you need 1000 players per server for a game to be viable, and the game has 10000 players online, but split between 100 servers, it might not be playable on any of them.  See the problems that SWTOR had before the server merges, for example.

    But no, what really determines whether a game is successful is how much revenue it brings in, as compared to how much it cost to build.  A game that cost $100 million to make but only brings in $10 million in revenue is a spectacular failure.  A game that costs $1 million to make but brings in the same $10 million in revenue is a runaway success.  The primary reason SWTOR is probably a commercial failure is nothing about game mechanics, but rather merely that it cost far too much to make.

    And yet, I don'tconsider Spiral Knights successful, not only because I've never heard of it, but also because it clearly doesn't have a grand enough population to seem appealing. If it did seem appealing, it would have a high initial population, and it would be continuing to gain more players over time. 

    I played Aion in beta, and didn't find it appealing enough to continue playing: its actual potential to become the most successful game appeared to me to be low in such a way that it increased my disillusionment from it to a level so high that it exceeded my desire to play the game. 

    Your argument about revenue is inherently connected to population. Considering that it costs money to play SWTOR, it follows that if the game retrospectively existed with enough potential to become the most popular, not only would it have a high initial population, but it would continue gaining players due to the excessive good reviews made by the ones already playing it. Since more people are stopping to play SWTOR than they are joining, it follows that the game did not have the potential to become the most popular, and it is not successful. If SWTOR did continue gaining players, then it follows that if it costs less money to maintain the game than the amount of profits Bioware is taking in to an extent greater than the net amount of profit coming from playersBioware deemed necessary in order for a profit in this area to be gained, then, still, the high population is what caused the net profit, and is the only factor in the end that could do so. 

    Thus, ultimately, the game that is successful is the one with the highest population. 

     

    I suppose you're right about Spellborn. I wasn't aware it'd closed, but played it once, and even came back for a day once. 

    I disagree with this.  I don't think it matters if YOU think a game is successful if you don't even play the game.  I think it only matters to those playing it.  If the population is steady, and content it continually pushed out at a rate that satifies their customer base, then it doesn't matter how high the population numbers are -- maybe it's a niche game that isn't designed to appeal to a million people.  I'd argue that by these stats, how long an MMO has been able to support itself is a far better measure of success than how many poeple it caters to.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Quizzical

    If number of players is the sole measure of success, then why don't games go completely free with no monetization whatsoever.  Wouldn't that make them more "successful"?

    And yet you wouldn't consider a game that is a financial success to be successful, if it doesn't have the most players presently, since clearly most of the players don't agree with you. 

    By that definition, there can only be one successful game at a time.  That's ridiculous.

    And why do you claim to tell me my opinion on what is successful?  I've already told you my opinion on such matters in this very thread, and you claim that I'm lying and my real opinion is quite contrary to what I've said it was?  Maybe it was a mistake to take this thread seriously in the first place.

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403
    Originally posted by Consuetudo

    And yet you wouldn't consider a game that is a financial success to be successful, if it doesn't have the most players presently, since clearly most of the players don't agree with you. 

    Reification, sometimes Hypostatization.

    Carry on ya'll.  Equivocation does hook a lot of fish on this forum, week after week.

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

  • ConsuetudoConsuetudo Member UncommonPosts: 191
    Originally posted by Sumo79
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by Consuetudo

     

    I disagree with this.  I don't think it matters if YOU think a game is successful if you don't even play the game.  I think it only matters to those playing it.  If the population is steady, and content it continually pushed out at a rate that satifies their customer base, then it doesn't matter how high the population numbers are -- maybe it's a niche game that isn't designed to appeal to a million people.  I'd argue that by these stats, how long an MMO has been able to support itself is a far better measure of success than how many poeple it caters to.

    It can be a fun thing to those few people, and perhaps they would consider it a success, but seeing as most people do not, then the thing which is considered not to be a success more than it is considered to be a success is not a success. 

    If the most people considered it to be a success and their disillusionment towards playing MMOs was inferior to their desire to play them, then they would actually be playing the game considered successful, instead of any other, and that game would have the greatest population.

    Though they are playing WoW, because what determines if an MMO is successful is its population. 

    And that applies again to those MMOs which retrospectively inherently existed with a potential population superior to the one we presently consider successful: it was always going to have the greatest population, at least for some point of time, and therefore the fact of its going to become a success was always true about it. If a new game existed for which this is the case, then it would quickly attract more players until it fulfills the potential that it always had, and it would be the most populous i.e. most successful game. 

     

    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Quizzical

    If number of players is the sole measure of success, then why don't games go completely free with no monetization whatsoever.  Wouldn't that make them more "successful"?

    And yet you wouldn't consider a game that is a financial success to be successful, if it doesn't have the most players presently, since clearly most of the players don't agree with you. 

    By that definition, there can only be one successful game at a time.  That's ridiculous.

    Yes, and when another game becomes more popular, the first is no longer considered successful. It was, but isn't.

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Maybe it was a mistake to take this thread seriously in the first place.

    Generally, accepting a gambit of this nature always is.

    Human language is fascinating.  Humans can argue about it eternally.

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

  • shozikushoziku Member UncommonPosts: 95
    Originally posted by Consuetudo

    The first factor either consciously or subconsciously weighed when deciding what MMORPG to play is which one features the most players. The inherent attraction to the genre, as specified in the very name of it, is the fact of a vast amount of players in a virtual world: a feature fundamentally desired by people playing these games. Whether as a solo, more casual player, or as a grouped, more party-oriented player, it follows that the game which appears the most fundamentally attractive is the MMORPG that is the most massively multiplayer. 

    I think this is more opinion than fact.  My first factor is whether I find it fun to play.  I prefer low populations.  I like the feel of desolation in a game where I could be the only one there.  Seeing people then becomes interesting to me.

  • ConsuetudoConsuetudo Member UncommonPosts: 191
    Originally posted by shoziku
    Originally posted by Consuetudo

    The first factor either consciously or subconsciously weighed when deciding what MMORPG to play is which one features the most players. The inherent attraction to the genre, as specified in the very name of it, is the fact of a vast amount of players in a virtual world: a feature fundamentally desired by people playing these games. Whether as a solo, more casual player, or as a grouped, more party-oriented player, it follows that the game which appears the most fundamentally attractive is the MMORPG that is the most massively multiplayer. 

    I think this is more opinion than fact.  My first factor is whether I find it fun to play.  I prefer low populations.  I like the feel of desolation in a game where I could be the only one there.  Seeing people then becomes interesting to me.

    Deciding whether it is fun to play happens after you've decided to play it; when deciding what to play, you will consider "what is the hot game right now," because what determines if an MMO is successful is its population, and if your disillusionment from that MMO is superior to your desire to actually play it, then you'll move onto another. But you cannot be disillusioned from something you haven't first experienced. 

    I suppose a person could be sufficiently edgy enough to the extent of having a desire not to play the most popular game because it is the most popular that is superior to their desire to play it, but, again, the first thing they took into account was the fact that this MMO was indeed the most popular, and then decided from there to play something else. 

    And if you do want to play in a game with a low population, why play a massively multiplayer game? 

  • SuraknarSuraknar Member UncommonPosts: 852
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Loktofeit
    Originally posted by Quizzical

    As for the substance of your argument, the population is really only relevant if it is enough to support the game.  Spiral Knights, for example, would be playable even if it only had 50 people online at a time.  Aion, on the other hand, would need a huge number of players in order to make it practical to get enough players for endgame raiding.

    And furthermore, what matters is whether there are enough players online that you have access to, not merely the total number online.  If you need 1000 players per server for a game to be viable, and the game has 10000 players online, but split between 100 servers, it might not be playable on any of them.  See the problems that SWTOR had before the server merges, for example.

    But no, what really determines whether a game is successful is how much revenue it brings in, as compared to how much it cost to build.  A game that cost $100 million to make but only brings in $10 million in revenue is a spectacular failure.  A game that costs $1 million to make but brings in the same $10 million in revenue is a runaway success.  The primary reason SWTOR is probably a commercial failure is nothing about game mechanics, but rather merely that it cost far too much to make.

    This---^

    Population doesn't determine success - revenue vs cost and target profit margin does. Puzzle Pirates was built for a couple thousand and got 34k players. ATITD was built for about 1,000 and was at about 2.5k at one point. Both saw healthy, active in-game populations and exceeded subscriber numbers needed to be profitable. 400k would be troubled waters for SWTOR, a profitable number for EVE and a year of swimming in hookers and blow for the Asheron's Call team.

    What you've really done that is add a new factor of subgenre: provided that this MMO inherently is designed not to become the most populated one by design, then the need of its population depends alone on those players to whom the love of a certain game mechanic rather than a massively multiplayer experience. After all, if WoW is a game that is massively multiplayer, a game that barely dents a fraction of its population by design of it can't be called massive. 

    The desire of the players in choosing a game that inherently cannot have a massive population are therefore looking for a game for different reasons.

     

    Originally posted by Suraknar
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Quizzical

    My point was not that Aion or Spiral Knights were successful or not.  Rather, it's that the threshold at which a game has enough players to be viable varies wildly from one game to the next.  Maybe you don't want to play in an empty game world.  But should you really care about the difference between a game that has enough players to fill at least two instances (or servers or whatever the game server model is) of everything as opposed to one that has enough to fill 20 instances of everything?

    Yes, having more players is pretty strongly correlated with having more revenue.  But my point is that expenses matter just as much as revenue for determining whether a game is commercially successful.  Besides, if I'm picking a game to play, I want to know if I like the game, not whether it's a commercial success.

    I'm not arguing as to whether or not someone should care whether there are more people, but that we actually do. 

    Many people do, not all people do.

    I do not look at the popularity of a game when I make a decision to play it I look at the quality of entertainment it has to offer according to the combination of elements which form Fun Value.

    Choosing to play an MMO just based on the Fact of it being popular and having a large population, in my book is Sheep Mentality.... and if this statement implies that WoW is filled by a bunch of Sheep, then so be it.

    As I've said, both your fun value will be impacted in its longevity by the success of the game in terms of the population factors argued for, and the game wouldn't be considered a success unless if it is. 

    And as in the previous reply of mine, I maintain that if a game inherently is incapable of even denting a fraction of the population of a true MMO like WoW, it really can't be considered massive. 

    Yes it can. even Wow has a few thousand people per server. So if an MMO has but one server with a few thousand people it is as Massive as WoW.

    It means nothing to me that there are millions of people playing in other servers....All that matters is if the game has a healthy population depending on its design in the server that I play.

    The logic of your argument is flawed.

    - Duke Suraknar -
    Order of the Silver Star, OSS

    ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
  • Scott23Scott23 Member UncommonPosts: 293

    I haven't read the replies, but for me population has very little to do with a games appeal.

    I have never played WoW - the graphics just didn't appeal to me.  I am attracted to decent graphics, decent story, and decent game mechanics.  The number of players means absolutely nothing to me.

  • AxiosImmortalAxiosImmortal Member UncommonPosts: 645

    MMO is determined successful by a player's view and opinion

    /endofdiscussion

    Looking at: The Repopulation
    Preordering: None
    Playing: Random Games

  • ConsuetudoConsuetudo Member UncommonPosts: 191
    Originally posted by Suraknar
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Loktofeit
    Originally posted by Quizzical

    Yes it can. even Wow has a few thousand people per server. So if an MMO has but one server with a few thousand people it is as Massive as WoW.

    It means nothing to me that there are millions of people playing in other servers....All that matters is if the game has a healthy population depending on its design in the server that I play.

    The logic of your argument is flawed.

    The massiveness of WoW cannot be removed from the total number of players that are playing it . . . there's a substantial difference between the amount of population wielded there in compariosn to another game with a population that is substantially lesser. To equate in a sense of being massive the thing with millions of players to the thing with thousands of players doesn't follow, provided that the one is overwhelmingly more populous than the other. 

    The servers, with one game having 1 server with 30,000 people, and the other game having 17 servers each of which has 30,000 people, can in that sense be equated, but when we speak about the massiveness of WoW, we aren't speaking about the massiveness of the server Kul'Tiras, but of the entire game. 

     

    Originally posted by Scott23

    I haven't read the replies, but for me population has very little to do with a games appeal.

    I have never played WoW - the graphics just didn't appeal to me.  I am attracted to decent graphics, decent story, and decent game mechanics.  The number of players means absolutely nothing to me.

    And yet you wouldn't doubt that the game is successful, even if your desire to play it is inferior to your desire not to. 

    The success of the game is an objective quality it inherently has by means of its superior population, not a subjective qualification. 

     

    Originally posted by Jonoku

    MMO is determined successful by a player's view and opinion

    /endofdiscussion

    And yet if only 10 MMO players consider game x to be successful by means of their playing it, whereas 10,000,000 others don't by means of their not playing it, it follows that the thing which is considered to be not successful more than it is considered to be successful is not successful. 

  • SuraknarSuraknar Member UncommonPosts: 852
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Suraknar
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Loktofeit
    Originally posted by Quizzical

    Yes it can. even Wow has a few thousand people per server. So if an MMO has but one server with a few thousand people it is as Massive as WoW.

    It means nothing to me that there are millions of people playing in other servers....All that matters is if the game has a healthy population depending on its design in the server that I play.

    The logic of your argument is flawed.

    The massiveness of WoW cannot be removed from the total number of players that are playing it . . . there's a substantial difference between the amount of population wielded there in compariosn to another game with a population that is substantially lesser. To equate in a sense of being massive the thing with millions of players to the thing with thousands of players doesn't follow, provided that the one is overwhelmingly more populous than the other. 

    The servers, with one game having 1 server with 30,000 people, and the other game having 17 servers each of which has 30,000 people, can in that sense be equated, but when we speak about the massiveness of WoW, we aren't speaking about the massiveness of the server Kul'Tiras, but of the entire game. 

     

    Then that is the Crux of the mistake in logic.

    What you are describing is that WoW is a popular game. But what determines if an MMO is massive is its design by definition.

    If the game has a persistent world that is shared by thousands of people then it falls, by definition under the qualification of Massive.

    In the same logic, a game such as World of Tanks, is not massive, it is an MOG, Multiplayer online Game, it is multiplayer as each batle requires two teams of people to be played, and it can only be played Online. But it is not by definition Massive, it has no persistent world that players share.

    Back to WoW, it is an MMOG, Massivelly Multiplayer Online Game, because it has a Persistent World per server shared by Thousands of people per server and it can only be played online.

    Same quality applies to all other games which fit the definition. Whether they are popular or not is entirelly another matter, but they are Massive they are MMOO's if their defign and functionality fits the definition.

    Again, I repeat, if the decision of a player to play one MMOG versus another is based on the Popularity of a game, then we simply have a case of Speepish mentality, or Mob Mentality, "wherever people go I shall too" without any other consideration.

    Unfortunatelly that mentality is quite normal within certain age groups, it is a behavior we all had or will have in one or another point in our Lives.

    WoW started with an already big Fan Based, there were about 7 million people that were fans of the Warcraft series when it launched. Many of them got in to WoW, many of them quit it 1-3 months later, but Blizzard used well the numbers in their marketing and advenrtisement in combination to the word of mouth comming from those 7 million fans, who incited some of their friends who may not have even been Warcraft series players to play it...now add the Mob mentality factor in to it and voila, millions of people ended up playing WoW, and Blizz is doing a good job maintaining a high popularity of their game.

    But it does not mean that the game is actually better or more fun than others. It just benefits of all these factors which work to its advantage.

    if you want to make the point that the popularity of an MMO contributes to its Success, then yes I would agree with that statement. Or if you make the p[oint that many people unfortunatelly will based their decision to play a given game based on its popularity, then I would agree as well. It is still Sheepish and Mob mentality but it is a fact.

    And if that is the case, then this implies that in order to match WoW's Success one has to make an MMO that would be equally Popular.

    And personally I do not think that this can be accomplished by making a Game that is Similar to WoW.

    I think ArchAge may actually become another Popular MMO like WoW, given the fact that there are many people who will make a decision based on Mob mentality what do you think that they will do when it launches in NA with already millions of Subscribers (in Asia?)..it will not matter to the people here where these other players are...it will give the illusion that it is a very Popular game nevertheless.

    - Duke Suraknar -
    Order of the Silver Star, OSS

    ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
  • dotdotdashdotdotdash Member UncommonPosts: 488

    I agree with the OP. Population is a very clear indicator of whether an MMO is successful or not.

    Even the worst games have core groups that play them. The fact that there are people who, for example, play the Game of Thrones RPG (and claim that it is good) does not change the fact that it is a bad game. The fact that there are people playing Mortal Online does not make Moral Online a good game. And so on and so forth.

    However just because a game has 40,000 people playing it does not mean it is a failure. There are niches in the market that only hold interest for a relatively small number of people. Eve Online is a great example of a niche game that has really dominated the segment of the market it chooses to target. It may not have the 12,000,000 subscriptions that World of Warcraft boasts, but I'd argue that it is relatively as successful as World of Warcraft (even if that isn't true overall).

    Why is Eve as successful as World of Warcraft?

    Eve operates in a niche that is vastly smaller than the area of the market that World of Warcraft operates in. Eve is designed for a particular type of player, where World of Warcraft is a catch-all. Eve boasts 600,000+ active players, and surrounding it - in the same sort of niche - are games like Mortal Online, Darkfall, and that silly mech game that exists somewhere on the Internet, who all suffer significantly smaller populations. World of Warcraft operates with 12,000,000 subscribers against other MMOs that again operate with significantly smaller populations. And let's not forget that Eve is one of the only MMOs to show year-on-year subscription increases since the time of its release; until recently, World of Warcraft managed that boast as well.

    So there is a case to be made for context here. Obviously World of Warcraft is significantly more successful overall than Eve Online could ever hope to be, but within its niche Eve is the World of Warcraft game that other developers are trying to beat.

    Don't read too much into what I just said; I was merely trying to make a point.

  • ConsuetudoConsuetudo Member UncommonPosts: 191
    Originally posted by Suraknar
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Suraknar
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Loktofeit
    Originally posted by Quizzical

     

     

    Then that is the Crux of the mistake in logic.

    What you are describing is that WoW is a popular game. But what determines if an MMO is massive is its design by definition.

    If the game has a persistent world that is shared by thousands of people then it falls, by definition under the qualification of Massive.

    In the same logic, a game such as World of Tanks, is not massive, it is an MOG, Multiplayer online Game, it is multiplayer as each batle requires two teams of people to be played, and it can only be played Online. But it is not by definition Massive, it has no persistent world that players share.

    Back to WoW, it is an MMOG, Massivelly Multiplayer Online Game, because it has a Persistent World per server shared by Thousands of people per server and it can only be played online.

    Same quality applies to all other games which fit the definition. Whether they are popular or not is entirelly another matter, but they are Massive they are MMOO's if their defign and functionality fits the definition.

    Again, I repeat, if the decision of a player to play one MMOG versus another is based on the Popularity of a game, then we simply have a case of Speepish mentality, or Mob Mentality, "wherever people go I shall too" without any other consideration.

    Unfortunatelly that mentality is quite normal within certain age groups, it is a behavior we all had or will have in one or another point in our Lives.

    WoW started with an already big Fan Based, there were about 7 million people that were fans of the Warcraft series when it launched. Many of them got in to WoW, many of them quit it 1-3 months later, but Blizzard used well the numbers in their marketing and advenrtisement in combination to the word of mouth comming from those 7 million fans, who incited some of their friends who may not have even been Warcraft series players to play it...now add the Mob mentality factor in to it and voila, millions of people ended up playing WoW, and Blizz is doing a good job maintaining a high popularity of their game.

    But it does not mean that the game is actually better or more fun than others. It just benefits of all these factors which work to its advantage.

    if you want to make the point that the popularity of an MMO contributes to its Success, then yes I would agree with that statement. Or if you make the p[oint that many people unfortunatelly will based their decision to play a given game based on its popularity, then I would agree as well. It is still Sheepish and Mob mentality but it is a fact.

    And if that is the case, then this implies that in order to match WoW's Success one has to make an MMO that would be equally Popular.

    And personally I do not think that this can be accomplished by making a Game that is Similar to WoW.

    I think ArchAge may actually become another Popular MMO like WoW, given the fact that there are many people who will make a decision based on Mob mentality what do you think that they will do when it launches in NA with already millions of Subscribers (in Asia?)..it will not matter to the people here where these other players are...it will give the illusion that it is a very Popular game nevertheless.

    A game inherently unable to be as massive as WoW is part of a different sort. I wouldn't call it massive; it's nonsensical to call it thus when games can exist which are more massive. Again utilizing numbers: if there are 10 people playing an MMORPG and we call it massive because it is an MMORPG, whereas 10,000,000 play another game and we also call it massive, we've destroyed the meaning of the word massive. 

    The game isn't massive because it's an MMORPG, but because it has the most players multiplayer that we can conceive of being together presently. While the genre calls itself something, the realities of the games demand a subgenre of "less massive," to which these ones that are inherently incapable of fielding a population as large as games like WoW belong.

    And I'll specify here that I'm not advocating what people should do. I'm not saying you should consider an MMO successful because it is the most popular. I'm saying you do do this. 

    The only "shoulding" I have advised is upon developers: to design that game which will retrospectively inherently exist with enough potential to become the most populated. 

    Because in order for that to be the case, it means that it will actually possess those features which are amazing enough to actually become the most populated, regardless of what those features are. That players actually have flocked to this game actually should mean that it has the best features. 

     

    Originally posted by dotdotdash

    I agree with the OP. Population is a very clear indicator of whether an MMO is successful or not.

    Even the worst games have core groups that play them. The fact that there are people who, for example, play the Game of Thrones RPG (and claim that it is good) does not change the fact that it is a bad game. The fact that there are people playing Mortal Online does not make Moral Online a good game. And so on and so forth.

    However just because a game has 40,000 people playing it does not mean it is a failure. There are niches in the market that only hold interest for a relatively small number of people. Eve Online is a great example of a niche game that has really dominated the segment of the market it chooses to target. It may not have the 12,000,000 subscriptions that World of Warcraft boasts, but I'd argue that it is relatively as successful as World of Warcraft (even if that isn't true overall).

    Why is Eve as successful as World of Warcraft?

    Eve operates in a niche that is vastly smaller than the area of the market that World of Warcraft operates in. Eve is designed for a particular type of player, where World of Warcraft is a catch-all. Eve boasts 600,000+ active players, and surrounding it - in the same sort of niche - are games like Mortal Online, Darkfall, and that silly mech game that exists somewhere on the Internet, who all suffer significantly smaller populations. World of Warcraft operates with 12,000,000 subscribers against other MMOs that again operate with significantly smaller populations. And let's not forget that Eve is one of the only MMOs to show year-on-year subscription increases since the time of its release; until recently, World of Warcraft managed that boast as well.

    So there is a case to be made for context here. Obviously World of Warcraft is significantly more successful overall than Eve Online could ever hope to be, but within its niche Eve is the World of Warcraft game that other developers are trying to beat.

    Don't read too much into what I just said; I was merely trying to make a point.

    I think your addition of the variable of a niche is significant. Rather than considering something like EVE an MMO, then, it would be more relevant to classify it as a niche as its definition. I'm sure that would have different parameters for what makes it a success. 

  • Beatnik59Beatnik59 Member UncommonPosts: 2,413

    The population of Star Wars Galaxies is now zero.

    Yet it still is more popular and infuential than many games that are currently running.  Heck, it might be more popular and more important than games with even large populations.

    __________________________
    "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
    --Arcken

    "...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
    --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.

    "It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
    --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE

  • ConsuetudoConsuetudo Member UncommonPosts: 191
    Originally posted by Beatnik59

    The population of Star Wars Galaxies is now zero.

    Yet it still is more popular than many games that are currently running.  

     

  • SuraknarSuraknar Member UncommonPosts: 852
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Suraknar
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Suraknar
    Originally posted by Consuetudo
    Originally posted by Loktofeit
    Originally posted by Quizzical

     

     

    Then that is the Crux of the mistake in logic.

    What you are describing is that WoW is a popular game. But what determines if an MMO is massive is its design by definition.

    If the game has a persistent world that is shared by thousands of people then it falls, by definition under the qualification of Massive.

    In the same logic, a game such as World of Tanks, is not massive, it is an MOG, Multiplayer online Game, it is multiplayer as each batle requires two teams of people to be played, and it can only be played Online. But it is not by definition Massive, it has no persistent world that players share.

    Back to WoW, it is an MMOG, Massivelly Multiplayer Online Game, because it has a Persistent World per server shared by Thousands of people per server and it can only be played online.

    Same quality applies to all other games which fit the definition. Whether they are popular or not is entirelly another matter, but they are Massive they are MMOO's if their defign and functionality fits the definition.

    Again, I repeat, if the decision of a player to play one MMOG versus another is based on the Popularity of a game, then we simply have a case of Speepish mentality, or Mob Mentality, "wherever people go I shall too" without any other consideration.

    Unfortunatelly that mentality is quite normal within certain age groups, it is a behavior we all had or will have in one or another point in our Lives.

    WoW started with an already big Fan Based, there were about 7 million people that were fans of the Warcraft series when it launched. Many of them got in to WoW, many of them quit it 1-3 months later, but Blizzard used well the numbers in their marketing and advenrtisement in combination to the word of mouth comming from those 7 million fans, who incited some of their friends who may not have even been Warcraft series players to play it...now add the Mob mentality factor in to it and voila, millions of people ended up playing WoW, and Blizz is doing a good job maintaining a high popularity of their game.

    But it does not mean that the game is actually better or more fun than others. It just benefits of all these factors which work to its advantage.

    if you want to make the point that the popularity of an MMO contributes to its Success, then yes I would agree with that statement. Or if you make the p[oint that many people unfortunatelly will based their decision to play a given game based on its popularity, then I would agree as well. It is still Sheepish and Mob mentality but it is a fact.

    And if that is the case, then this implies that in order to match WoW's Success one has to make an MMO that would be equally Popular.

    And personally I do not think that this can be accomplished by making a Game that is Similar to WoW.

    I think ArchAge may actually become another Popular MMO like WoW, given the fact that there are many people who will make a decision based on Mob mentality what do you think that they will do when it launches in NA with already millions of Subscribers (in Asia?)..it will not matter to the people here where these other players are...it will give the illusion that it is a very Popular game nevertheless.

    A game inherently unable to be as massive as WoW is part of a different sort. I wouldn't call it massive; it's nonsensical to call it thus when games can exist which are more massive. Again utilizing numbers: if there are 10 people playing an MMORPG and we call it massive because it is an MMORPG, whereas 10,000,000 play another game and we also call it massive, we've destroyed the meaning of the word massive. 

    The game isn't massive because it's an MMORPG, but because it has the most players multiplayer that we can conceive of being together presently. While the genre calls itself something, the realities of the games demand a subgenre of "less massive," to which these ones that are inherently incapable of fielding a population as large as games like WoW belong.

    And I'll specify here that I'm not advocating what people should do. I'm not saying you should consider an MMO successful because it is the most popular. I'm saying you do do this. 

    The only "shoulding" I have advised is upon developers: to design that game which will retrospectively inherently exist with enough potential to become the most populated. 

    Because in order for that to be the case, it means that it will actually possess those features which are amazing enough to actually become the most populated, regardless of what those features are. That players actually have flocked to this game actually should mean that it has the best features. 

     

    Well maybe "Massive" is the term used by a new generation of players to describe popular.

    But in either case what you are describing is popularity not the fact that a given game is an MMO.

    You advocate on how people should Call it, but how something is called is based on an established Defition. And the standing Definition right now of an MMO is what I have described.

    Are you suggesting that what defines an MMO should be changed? Wouldn;t that pose a problem? I mean if we should call an MMO a game that has Millions of players, then how should we call a Game that launches and has no players yet before they actually buy try and decide to stay?

    Shoudl companies just say, "Oh we are launching this game, we will see in a month if it is an MMO or not depending on sales"...

    That is what is nonsensical. And the world does nto work like that.

    "A rose is still a Rose by any other name"...an MMO is still an MMO no matter how many people play it.

    the first Law of Thought, the Law of Identity clearly states, that someothing is what it is. A is A. An MMO is an MMO, whether it makes money or not, whether it has one server or 100 servers or whether it has 100 players or 10 million players it is still an MMO if it fits the definition.

     

    As I expressed, if you are making the point that the success of an MMo is based on its popularity then I agree.

    The next question becomes, how do you make an MMO that will be popular. You said by incorporating the features that are amasing enough to players which will then make that game Popular.

    Fine that is your take to answer this questions. I think it goes a bit father than that. Implementation and Resulting gameplay of the features is what determines the Fun factor.

    But even then, when you have people making a choice, by your points as well, of a game based on the Popularity of a game, no matter what features your games has, no matter how well implemented they are, people will skip your game and still go play WoW...why? Because Millions of people play it already!!

    See it has really come down to a battle of Advenrtising and Marketing...no one can beat WoW's marketing and Advertising Budged of possible Billions of Dollars...because it has made Billions already over the years.

    What companies should do in my opinion is change direction, come up with different designes, Sandbox games...WoW can never be one, it was not designed to be one. They cannot just create an expansion and change it the risk to lose all of their Customers is there plus it requires much much investement to remake everything.

    They can of course come up with Project Titan should they see that Sanbox games are what is the next big thing and oit could be a Sanbox as well. They have the money to do that.

    But still, making something different than WoW is in my opinion the way to go from now on, if companies want to have a bigger piece of the Pie.

    - Duke Suraknar -
    Order of the Silver Star, OSS

    ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
  • dotdotdashdotdotdash Member UncommonPosts: 488
    Originally posted by Beatnik59

    The population of Star Wars Galaxies is now zero.

    Yet it still is more popular and infuential than many games that are currently running.  Heck, it might be more popular and more important than games with even large populations.

    Star Wars Galaxies is a hard nut to crack, grankly.

    Its popularity wasn't too grand, and its average sub number was well under 100,000 players for most of its life span. We can infer the ambitions of the game from the actions of those building and developing it: SWG was supposed to be a mass market title, even before they "repitched" it at World of Warcraft. When it released, SOE assumed that what SWG was offering was what gamers as a whole wanted from an MMO. When World of Warcraft released - and quickly demonstrated that the designers and developers at SOE were wrong - they "rebuilt" it in an attempt to make up lost ground.

    Again, you can place the game in the appropriate context for judging it a success or failure by looking at the actions of those designing and building it: SWG was clearly intended to be a mass market title, and that is clear not only from what the developers said about the game before its release but also based on what they did after its release when it failed to see off competition from World of Warcraft. The franchise itself infers mass market ambitions.

    So ask yourself the question: Was SWG successful as a mass market MMORPG?

    The answer is quite simple: No, it was not.

    SWG became a "niche" game AFTER it failed to become a mass market game. It was broadly a science fiction sandbox game, pitched at a similar audience to Eve Online's player base. It came no where near Eve's sub numbers, and no where near Eve's ongoing success.

    So again... ask yourself a question: Was SWG successful as a niche game?

    The answer again is quite simple: No, it was not.

    SWG was, regardless of how you look at it, a failure. It may well have contributed some novel additions to the genre, but that does not make the title itself successful. SWTOR has contributed to the genre; no one thinks it is a success.

  • dotdotdashdotdotdash Member UncommonPosts: 488
    Double post due to forum bugs......... ;D
  • Beatnik59Beatnik59 Member UncommonPosts: 2,413
    Originally posted by dotdotdash
    Originally posted by Beatnik59

    The population of Star Wars Galaxies is now zero.

    Yet it still is more popular and infuential than many games that are currently running.  Heck, it might be more popular and more important than games with even large populations.

    Star Wars Galaxies is a hard nut to crack, grankly.

    Its popularity wasn't too grand, and its average sub number was well under 100,000 players for most of its life span. We can infer the ambitions of the game from the actions of those building and developing it: SWG was supposed to be a mass market title, even before they "repitched" it at World of Warcraft. When it released, SOE assumed that what SWG was offering was what gamers as a whole wanted from an MMO. When World of Warcraft released - and quickly demonstrated that the designers and developers at SOE were wrong - they "rebuilt" it in an attempt to make up lost ground.

    Again, you can place the game in the appropriate context for judging it a success or failure by looking at the actions of those designing and building it: SWG was clearly intended to be a mass market title, and that is clear not only from what the developers said about the game before its release but also based on what they did after its release when it failed to see off competition from World of Warcraft. The franchise itself infers mass market ambitions.

    So ask yourself the question: Was SWG successful as a mass market MMORPG?

    The answer is quite simple: No, it was not.

    SWG became a "niche" game AFTER it failed to become a mass market game. It was broadly a science fiction sandbox game, pitched at a similar audience to Eve Online's player base. It came no where near Eve's sub numbers, and no where near Eve's ongoing success.

    So again... ask yourself a question: Was SWG successful as a niche game?

    The answer again is quite simple: No, it was not.

    SWG was, regardless of how you look at it, a failure. It may well have contributed some novel additions to the genre, but that does not make the title itself successful. SWTOR has contributed to the genre; no one thinks it is a success.

    If it was such a failure, how come so many people--on these boards and the blogosphere--still talk about it?

    Because its power is in excess of its popularity.  Its success is not tied to its population.

    Look at Lineage II.  Very popular game, perhaps the largest MMO before WoW.  Yet the impact of the game was weak.  The game isn't really talked about, pondered, or revered.  If it would close tomorrow, nobody would ever know how popular it was, and nobody would ever care.

    __________________________
    "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
    --Arcken

    "...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
    --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.

    "It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
    --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE

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