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.
I obviously can't speak to the reasons why the "blogosphere" still discusses SWG, but the blogosphere discusses lots and lots of things. Those things are not successful by merit of those discussions; I'm sure there's plenty of negative discussions taking place about SWG on the blogosphere, as much as there may be positive discussions. Using the blogosphere as a "primary source" to demonstrate a point really isn't a good idea; for every positive opinion you can find, I'm sure I can find a negative opinion. Tis a futile endeavour.
As to why people would discuss an MMO notorious for its many and varied mistakes (and, as I stated, contributions)... on an MMO forum? SWG is perhaps one of the most notorious MMOs that has ever been released, a true pariah in the same terms as SWTOR (which is widely discussed), AoC (which is discussed infrequently), and WAR (which is also discussed frequently).
As for Lineage 2: Again, it is frequently discussed on these boards, and in this blogosphere you speak of. I have many Asian friends who talk about it often, and use it as a reference point for the progress (or lack thereof) that has been made in the genre as a whole. In Asia - specifically countries like South Korea - it is oft discussed, widely lauded and frequently mentioned in the same terms that we mention World of Warcraft in here.
TERA was a hugely hyped game in Asia based solely off its loose connection to the Lineage franchise. ArcheAge is also enjoying huge amounts of hype thanks to its connection to Lineage. And the next Lineage game - Lineage Eternal - is also hotly anticipated. If it closed tomorrow, I assure you there would be a dramatic display on sites like MMORPG.com, Massively, IGN, Kotaku, etc. Western audiences may not appreciate the title as much as our Asian cousins have (and do), but we would certainly take note of the closure if it were to happen.
If one examines MMO success from an investor standpoint total player base is not really all that important. What really matters is price to earnings ratios and the return of investment.
Example:
Game A makes $100 million in sales but cost $100 million to produce. Financially this game was a wash.
Game B makes $20 million in sales but cost $10 million to produce. Financially this was a real success as the investor doubled his money.
Cances are game A is well known and game B is hardly a blip on the radar. The MMO dark age is bit of a myth because people are ignoring the under rated games that actually are successful.
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.
Yes I'm advocating we need new labels for these games. A game that cannot at the start of it field the same population as bigger games can't logically be called a massively MORPG.
I haven't really articulated specific things that need to be done to make another good MMORPG, just that, naturally, it has to retrospectively inherently exist with enough potential to actually become the most popular game. Logically, the method to go about doing this is to initially attract a large player base and generate enough positive publicity, including from that initial player base, as well as attractive and cost-efficient enough opportunities, that will not only continue to attract more players, but which will sustain them over a long period of time. The game that is able to do this and which does become most popular was always going to have been the most popular from the very ideas and features present in it.
Originally posted by Novusod
If one examines MMO success from an investor standpoint total player base is not really all that important. What really matters is price to earnings ratios and the return of investment.
Example:
Game A makes $100 million in sales but cost $100 million to produce. Financially this game was a wash.
Game B makes $20 million in sales but cost $10 million to produce. Financially this was a real success as the investor doubled his money.
Cances are game A is well known and game B is hardly a blip on the radar. The MMO dark age is bit of a myth because people are ignoring the under rated games that actually are successful.
And yet most people aren't investors, so this success is something subjective. If there is a small game that is a financial success, yet most players aren't playing it, it means that most people don't consider that game to be a success. If something is considered to be a success with a force inferior to the amount of people who don't consider it to be a success, then it isn't a success.
What determines if it is successful is its population: if most people are actually playing it, then it is actually what is succeeding.
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.
Because we live in the West, of course.
Lineage was a threat to the Forum Supremacy of EQ-I, for a time. So EQ players devoted a great deal of their time convincing the rest of the games that "overseas subs don't matter"...because, at the time, Lineage's player base absolutely crushed EQ's...or didn't (reliability of reporting was always suspect)... Still, eastern subs can't count; our fanboys will cry.
Blizzard, of course, telling us that overseas subs do matter, just a few years later...popular opinion changes, but we've already declared Lineage DOA. That's okay Blizzard, gamers say, as long as some "korean grinder" isn't kicking your ass, we'll let you use eastern subs to pad your numbers.
Just one of the best demonstrators of just how inherently ridiculous sub-based arguments are, at their core. We can't even decide what subs "count", but we're eager to declare a winner and then argue about it endlessly.
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.
All joking aside... population is, of course, an important factor in a MMO's success. The more people playing, the more money the developer is making (for certain with P2P or potentially with F2P), the healthier the game is, the more work can be done to expand and improve it, etc
The thing is, the point at which it can be considered successful isn't as lofty as the OP makes it seem.
Objectively speaking, a MMORPG whose playerbase generates enough revenue to keep the game healthy, running and stable over time is a successful MMORPG. Beyond that it's just varying degrees of success (barely successful, very successful, overwhelmingly successful, etc).
Using WoW as a measure of success compared to MMOs with lower subs is like using McDonald's as a measure of success compared to a smaller, local burger chain. Each is successful, just at different levels. If it's profitable, it's successful. Plain and simple. No mental gymnastics required.
For example... FFXI needed 200k active subscribers in order for the game to "break even" and begin becoming profitable. They reached that point in a couple years after the game launched. Not only did they meet their "break even" number, they more than doubled it with the game going on to support ~500,000 active players for several years after that. It became the most profitable game in SE's history.
By the OP's definition.. XI still could not be a success because it didn't achieve Blizzard's level of population with WoW. That is simply and demonstrably false.
The OP's view would only hold true to someone who chooses a MMO to play based on how popular it is. Others have stated it, and I agree, that this kind of mentality is best described as a bandwagon, sheep or lemming mentality. I never choose a game based on its population. I choose it based on whether or not it looks fun to me.
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.
You stated in the first paragraph of your OP that the first factor a player thinks about when choosing a game is population.You may have intended this thread to be about the success of a game.However you suggested that population is the first factor when an individual chooses a game.I doubt that's true for a majority of players and it's definately not true for me.There were a number of reasons I started playing WoW population wasn't one of them.If they brought back SWG and it had only 10k players I'd subcribe and play.If darkfall had 20 million players I wouldn't play if they payed me.
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.
You stated in the first paragraph of your OP that the first factor a player thinks about when choosing a game is population.You may have intended this thread to be about the success of a game.However you suggested that population is the first factor when an individual chooses a game.I doubt that's true for a majority of players and it's definately not true for me.There were a number of reasons I started playing WoW population wasn't one of them.If they brought back SWG and it had only 10k players I'd subcribe and play.If darkfall had 20 million players I wouldn't play if they payed me.
I'd disagree with you. If that isn't the first factor you consider then it means you're already aware of what the most successful game is and are already in the afterwords process of considering other factors. If you were new to the genre naturally you would want to experience it in its best and where most of the people are flocking to -- we can easily see this happening with people complaining that WoW invites to itself increasingly younger and newer crowds, which people the game is catering to.
You would play SWG because it plausibly exists with an inherent capability to become the most populated MMO>
You wouldn't play Darkfall because it lacks this plausibility. You know about Darkfall, as do many others, and they felt it; sensed it. It was doomed to be a failure since the start. You presently consider it a failure because it's not the most popular.
SWG is failing right now; perhaps it was succeeding before.
Depending on how you define successful. I do not consider WoW successful at capturing my interest... because it did not, therefore it is not successful to me. But it is a very succesful in many other ways.
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.
I agree, the OP seems to think that sheep like behaviour and following the crowds is the only legitimate path to follow, I have had more fun in games with low thousands of players than I have in "successful" games.
As far as measurable success, as opposed to enjoyment for an individual, the only measure is Return on Investment and that is not dependant solely on the absolute numbers of players.
I think the OP is misguided.
"It's a sandbox, if you are not willing to create a castle then all you have is sand" - jtcgs
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.
Thanks for trying to be a smart ass lol, SWG had around 5k players it was a success to me because I enjoyed it. It sounds like to me your in a game company paying attention to numbers of people playing to make the most money possible, are u not a player?
Population is minor to determine an MMO's success, shit SWG is a success in terms of popularity if your close minded and only look at that shit and its been shut down for a while. Its all perspective, if your looking at only numbers I'm going to assume your in the video game industry and not thinking as a "player" of a game.
Looking at: The Repopulation Preordering: None Playing: Random Games
I agree, the OP seems to think that sheep like behaviour and following the crowds is the only legitimate path to follow, I have had more fun in games with low thousands of players than I have in "successful" games.
As far as measurable success, as opposed to enjoyment for an individual, the only measure is Return on Investment and that is not dependant solely on the absolute numbers of players.
I think the OP is misguided.
A reminder to all sophists: I have never once advocated what anyone should do. I have merely articulated how things actually are.
Originally posted by Jonoku
Originally posted by Consuetudo
Originally posted by Jonoku
Thanks for trying to be a smart ass lol, SWG had around 5k players it was a success to me because I enjoyed it. It sounds like to me your in a game company paying attention to numbers of people playing to make the most money possible, are u not a player?
Population is minor to determine an MMO's success, shit SWG is a success in terms of popularity if your close minded and only look at that shit and its been shut down for a while. Its all perspective, if your looking at only numbers I'm going to assume your in the video game industry and not thinking as a "player" of a game.
SWG is not a success not only becuase it has no population but because it is no game; it had a population and was a game, but it is not a game and it has no population.
What determines if an MMO is successful is its population because if it has the ability to pull the most players to it, sustain those players, and keep generating more, it means that it has all the features and other factors necessary in order to actually do this. Other MMOs do not, or else they would have the greatest population. When a new MMO suprasses the present popular one's population, it means that it now has the better features and factors necessary in order to actually do this.
Ultimately, what determines if an MMO is successful is its population.
Thanks for trying to be a smart ass lol, SWG had around 5k players it was a success to me because I enjoyed it. It sounds like to me your in a game company paying attention to numbers of people playing to make the most money possible, are u not a player?
Population is minor to determine an MMO's success, shit SWG is a success in terms of popularity if your close minded and only look at that shit and its been shut down for a while. Its all perspective, if your looking at only numbers I'm going to assume your in the video game industry and not thinking as a "player" of a game.
SWG is a success
What determines if an MMO is successful is its population because if it has the ability to pull the most players to it, sustain those players, and keep generating more, it means that it has all the features and other factors necessary in order to actually do this. Other MMOs do not, or else they would have the greatest population. When a new MMO suprasses the present popular one's population, it means that it now has the better features and factors necessary in order to actually do this.
Ultimately, what determines if an MMO is successful is its population.
Your argument is extremely flawed.......success and failure are opinionated words.....so you think just because WoW has a population its a success to everyone? Your making me laugh so hard, like I said a million times its all perspective. Answer my question, are you in the game industry or just a gamer?
Fixed for ya'
Looking at: The Repopulation Preordering: None Playing: Random Games
Your argument is extremely flawed.......success and failure are opinionated words.....so you think just because WoW has a population its a success to everyone? Your making me laugh so hard, like I said a million times its all perspective. Answer my question, are you in the game industry or just a gamer?
Fixed for ya'
No one can rationally doubt that WoW is a success.
No one can rationally doubt that WoW is a success.
Again, are you a gamer or one in the video game industry/business?
I resolutely refuse to answer, for I have no bearing or impact upon the objective quality of something.
If your one in the video game industry thats a reasonable perspective
if your a gamer with that perspective its very followerish and odd.......
I don't find WoW a success in my perspective because it lacks my interest, I would not buy it because everyone else has it.
I'm going to assume you follow "hype".
Also your trying to be very intelligent but you end up being a person talking about non-sense without a valid argument.
The success of something is an objective quality that it not affected by what you subjectively consider makes something successful in your eyes.
The game is a success because it has the most population; in order for its having the most population to be the case, it needs to actually offer that collection of qualities which makes it actually superior than all other MMORPGS with the exception of any that retrospectively currently exist with enough potential to someday go on to become the most populated MMORPG, which, naturally, will soon come to absorb the most population from all of the other games.
Don't focus too readily upon the fact of the population itself, but what having the most population actually implies about the game.
All of you people in general are quick to sophistically point out a flaw in argument or logic, but when you don't actually take the argument and logic into account, those criticisms are invalid.
What determines if an MMO is successful is its population, not because of the brute fact of its population, but because of what it actually requires for an MMO to have the most population.
In a close second to population is, as others like to argue for, net revenue. The brute fact of net revenue isn't what makes it a success, but the fact of what it requires for that net revenue to be positive is what makes it a success. Though that game which happens to have a net revenue at one point, being a success then, if it later on goes to lose its population entirely, such as SWG, then, presently, it is not a success, but was.
My main counterargument therefore to the revenue people is that their consideration of success fails to take into account the temporal factor: if no-one is actually playing the game, then, in comparison to WoW, which most people are playing, I find it impossible to presently consider it as being successful.
I don't find WoW a success in my perspective because it lacks my interest, I would not buy it because everyone else has it.
How is your personal opinion of WoW in any way, shape, or form relevant to the question of whether or not it has been successful?
An MMO is a product sold by a business. The success or failure of a business is measured in customers and the income they bring. By that measure WoW not only has no peer, all of its potential peers combined do not come close to matching it.
By any rational standard that is the very definition of a 'success'.
Your personal feelings concerning the game are wholly irrelevant to the question of whether or not it is a success.
Well, for what it is worth, the best MMO for me right now out there is Shores of Hazeron.
Why? Because I do not care how many people play it, I do not care who made it, I do not care what generation graphics it has and if it has TV commercials or Youtube Commercials, I do not care how much Income in brought in last quarter, I do not care how many people bought Mounts in it. I do not care how big it scores in some Graph. I do not care how many copies it sold and how many subs it has. All these are bonuses to my choice if they are there, but are not selection criteria.
All I care as a player is that it is fun for me and it provides me with entertainment.
I think many players have come to base their decision in to trivial criteria, when all they should be looking at is "Am I having fun in this or that game?".
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
I don't find WoW a success in my perspective because it lacks my interest, I would not buy it because everyone else has it.
How is your personal opinion of WoW in any way, shape, or form relevant to the question of whether or not it has been successful?
An MMO is a product sold by a business. The success or failure of a business is measured in customers and the income they bring. By that measure WoW not only has no peer, all of its potential peers combined do not come close to matching it.
By any rational standard that is the very definition of a 'success'.
Your personal feelings concerning the game are wholly irrelevant to the question of whether or not it is a success.
A business success is rated by Return on Investment not on customer numbers. If you spent 300m on an MMO and get 2m players who spend an average of 150 each then your RoI is zero. You would have been better putting the money in your current account for the 5year development cycle at 0.5% whereas if you invested 1m in a game that got 10k players who spent 150each then you have made a good Return on Investment..
By the OP's reckoning, the former game would be a success and the latter a failure.
Anything other than RoI is subjective.
"It's a sandbox, if you are not willing to create a castle then all you have is sand" - jtcgs
Comments
I obviously can't speak to the reasons why the "blogosphere" still discusses SWG, but the blogosphere discusses lots and lots of things. Those things are not successful by merit of those discussions; I'm sure there's plenty of negative discussions taking place about SWG on the blogosphere, as much as there may be positive discussions. Using the blogosphere as a "primary source" to demonstrate a point really isn't a good idea; for every positive opinion you can find, I'm sure I can find a negative opinion. Tis a futile endeavour.
As to why people would discuss an MMO notorious for its many and varied mistakes (and, as I stated, contributions)... on an MMO forum? SWG is perhaps one of the most notorious MMOs that has ever been released, a true pariah in the same terms as SWTOR (which is widely discussed), AoC (which is discussed infrequently), and WAR (which is also discussed frequently).
As for Lineage 2: Again, it is frequently discussed on these boards, and in this blogosphere you speak of. I have many Asian friends who talk about it often, and use it as a reference point for the progress (or lack thereof) that has been made in the genre as a whole. In Asia - specifically countries like South Korea - it is oft discussed, widely lauded and frequently mentioned in the same terms that we mention World of Warcraft in here.
TERA was a hugely hyped game in Asia based solely off its loose connection to the Lineage franchise. ArcheAge is also enjoying huge amounts of hype thanks to its connection to Lineage. And the next Lineage game - Lineage Eternal - is also hotly anticipated. If it closed tomorrow, I assure you there would be a dramatic display on sites like MMORPG.com, Massively, IGN, Kotaku, etc. Western audiences may not appreciate the title as much as our Asian cousins have (and do), but we would certainly take note of the closure if it were to happen.
If one examines MMO success from an investor standpoint total player base is not really all that important. What really matters is price to earnings ratios and the return of investment.
Example:
Game A makes $100 million in sales but cost $100 million to produce. Financially this game was a wash.
Game B makes $20 million in sales but cost $10 million to produce. Financially this was a real success as the investor doubled his money.
Cances are game A is well known and game B is hardly a blip on the radar. The MMO dark age is bit of a myth because people are ignoring the under rated games that actually are successful.
Yes I'm advocating we need new labels for these games. A game that cannot at the start of it field the same population as bigger games can't logically be called a massively MORPG.
I haven't really articulated specific things that need to be done to make another good MMORPG, just that, naturally, it has to retrospectively inherently exist with enough potential to actually become the most popular game. Logically, the method to go about doing this is to initially attract a large player base and generate enough positive publicity, including from that initial player base, as well as attractive and cost-efficient enough opportunities, that will not only continue to attract more players, but which will sustain them over a long period of time. The game that is able to do this and which does become most popular was always going to have been the most popular from the very ideas and features present in it.
And yet most people aren't investors, so this success is something subjective. If there is a small game that is a financial success, yet most players aren't playing it, it means that most people don't consider that game to be a success. If something is considered to be a success with a force inferior to the amount of people who don't consider it to be a success, then it isn't a success.
What determines if it is successful is its population: if most people are actually playing it, then it is actually what is succeeding.
Because we live in the West, of course.
Lineage was a threat to the Forum Supremacy of EQ-I, for a time. So EQ players devoted a great deal of their time convincing the rest of the games that "overseas subs don't matter"...because, at the time, Lineage's player base absolutely crushed EQ's...or didn't (reliability of reporting was always suspect)... Still, eastern subs can't count; our fanboys will cry.
Blizzard, of course, telling us that overseas subs do matter, just a few years later...popular opinion changes, but we've already declared Lineage DOA. That's okay Blizzard, gamers say, as long as some "korean grinder" isn't kicking your ass, we'll let you use eastern subs to pad your numbers.
Just one of the best demonstrators of just how inherently ridiculous sub-based arguments are, at their core. We can't even decide what subs "count", but we're eager to declare a winner and then argue about it endlessly.
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.
This just in: Water makes the ocean wet.
All joking aside... population is, of course, an important factor in a MMO's success. The more people playing, the more money the developer is making (for certain with P2P or potentially with F2P), the healthier the game is, the more work can be done to expand and improve it, etc
The thing is, the point at which it can be considered successful isn't as lofty as the OP makes it seem.
Objectively speaking, a MMORPG whose playerbase generates enough revenue to keep the game healthy, running and stable over time is a successful MMORPG. Beyond that it's just varying degrees of success (barely successful, very successful, overwhelmingly successful, etc).
Using WoW as a measure of success compared to MMOs with lower subs is like using McDonald's as a measure of success compared to a smaller, local burger chain. Each is successful, just at different levels. If it's profitable, it's successful. Plain and simple. No mental gymnastics required.
For example... FFXI needed 200k active subscribers in order for the game to "break even" and begin becoming profitable. They reached that point in a couple years after the game launched. Not only did they meet their "break even" number, they more than doubled it with the game going on to support ~500,000 active players for several years after that. It became the most profitable game in SE's history.
By the OP's definition.. XI still could not be a success because it didn't achieve Blizzard's level of population with WoW. That is simply and demonstrably false.
The OP's view would only hold true to someone who chooses a MMO to play based on how popular it is. Others have stated it, and I agree, that this kind of mentality is best described as a bandwagon, sheep or lemming mentality. I never choose a game based on its population. I choose it based on whether or not it looks fun to me.
You stated in the first paragraph of your OP that the first factor a player thinks about when choosing a game is population.You may have intended this thread to be about the success of a game.However you suggested that population is the first factor when an individual chooses a game.I doubt that's true for a majority of players and it's definately not true for me.There were a number of reasons I started playing WoW population wasn't one of them.If they brought back SWG and it had only 10k players I'd subcribe and play.If darkfall had 20 million players I wouldn't play if they payed me.
I'd disagree with you. If that isn't the first factor you consider then it means you're already aware of what the most successful game is and are already in the afterwords process of considering other factors. If you were new to the genre naturally you would want to experience it in its best and where most of the people are flocking to -- we can easily see this happening with people complaining that WoW invites to itself increasingly younger and newer crowds, which people the game is catering to.
You would play SWG because it plausibly exists with an inherent capability to become the most populated MMO>
You wouldn't play Darkfall because it lacks this plausibility. You know about Darkfall, as do many others, and they felt it; sensed it. It was doomed to be a failure since the start. You presently consider it a failure because it's not the most popular.
SWG is failing right now; perhaps it was succeeding before.
I agree, the OP seems to think that sheep like behaviour and following the crowds is the only legitimate path to follow, I have had more fun in games with low thousands of players than I have in "successful" games.
As far as measurable success, as opposed to enjoyment for an individual, the only measure is Return on Investment and that is not dependant solely on the absolute numbers of players.
I think the OP is misguided.
"It's a sandbox, if you are not willing to create a castle then all you have is sand" - jtcgs
Thanks for trying to be a smart ass lol, SWG had around 5k players it was a success to me because I enjoyed it. It sounds like to me your in a game company paying attention to numbers of people playing to make the most money possible, are u not a player?
Population is minor to determine an MMO's success, shit SWG is a success in terms of popularity if your close minded and only look at that shit and its been shut down for a while. Its all perspective, if your looking at only numbers I'm going to assume your in the video game industry and not thinking as a "player" of a game.
Looking at: The Repopulation
Preordering: None
Playing: Random Games
A reminder to all sophists: I have never once advocated what anyone should do. I have merely articulated how things actually are.
SWG is not a success not only becuase it has no population but because it is no game; it had a population and was a game, but it is not a game and it has no population.
What determines if an MMO is successful is its population because if it has the ability to pull the most players to it, sustain those players, and keep generating more, it means that it has all the features and other factors necessary in order to actually do this. Other MMOs do not, or else they would have the greatest population. When a new MMO suprasses the present popular one's population, it means that it now has the better features and factors necessary in order to actually do this.
Ultimately, what determines if an MMO is successful is its population.
Your argument is extremely flawed.......success and failure are opinionated words.....so you think just because WoW has a population its a success to everyone? Your making me laugh so hard, like I said a million times its all perspective. Answer my question, are you in the game industry or just a gamer?
Fixed for ya'
Looking at: The Repopulation
Preordering: None
Playing: Random Games
No one can rationally doubt that WoW is a success.
Again, are you a gamer or one in the video game industry/business?
Looking at: The Repopulation
Preordering: None
Playing: Random Games
I resolutely refuse to answer, for I have no bearing or impact upon the objective quality of something.
If your one in the video game industry thats a reasonable perspective
if your a gamer with that perspective its very followerish and odd.......
I don't find WoW a success in my perspective because it lacks my interest, I would not buy it because everyone else has it.
I'm going to assume you follow "hype".
Also your trying to be very intelligent but you end up being a person talking about non-sense without a valid argument.
Looking at: The Repopulation
Preordering: None
Playing: Random Games
now i really think hes just trolling you guys :P
at least I'm not wasting my time right now
Looking at: The Repopulation
Preordering: None
Playing: Random Games
Well, for what it is worth, the best MMO for me right now out there is Shores of Hazeron.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
The success of something is an objective quality that it not affected by what you subjectively consider makes something successful in your eyes.
The game is a success because it has the most population; in order for its having the most population to be the case, it needs to actually offer that collection of qualities which makes it actually superior than all other MMORPGS with the exception of any that retrospectively currently exist with enough potential to someday go on to become the most populated MMORPG, which, naturally, will soon come to absorb the most population from all of the other games.
Don't focus too readily upon the fact of the population itself, but what having the most population actually implies about the game.
All of you people in general are quick to sophistically point out a flaw in argument or logic, but when you don't actually take the argument and logic into account, those criticisms are invalid.
What determines if an MMO is successful is its population, not because of the brute fact of its population, but because of what it actually requires for an MMO to have the most population.
In a close second to population is, as others like to argue for, net revenue. The brute fact of net revenue isn't what makes it a success, but the fact of what it requires for that net revenue to be positive is what makes it a success. Though that game which happens to have a net revenue at one point, being a success then, if it later on goes to lose its population entirely, such as SWG, then, presently, it is not a success, but was.
My main counterargument therefore to the revenue people is that their consideration of success fails to take into account the temporal factor: if no-one is actually playing the game, then, in comparison to WoW, which most people are playing, I find it impossible to presently consider it as being successful.
How is your personal opinion of WoW in any way, shape, or form relevant to the question of whether or not it has been successful?
An MMO is a product sold by a business. The success or failure of a business is measured in customers and the income they bring. By that measure WoW not only has no peer, all of its potential peers combined do not come close to matching it.
By any rational standard that is the very definition of a 'success'.
Your personal feelings concerning the game are wholly irrelevant to the question of whether or not it is a success.
Why? Because I do not care how many people play it, I do not care who made it, I do not care what generation graphics it has and if it has TV commercials or Youtube Commercials, I do not care how much Income in brought in last quarter, I do not care how many people bought Mounts in it. I do not care how big it scores in some Graph. I do not care how many copies it sold and how many subs it has. All these are bonuses to my choice if they are there, but are not selection criteria.
All I care as a player is that it is fun for me and it provides me with entertainment.
I think many players have come to base their decision in to trivial criteria, when all they should be looking at is "Am I having fun in this or that game?".
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
A business success is rated by Return on Investment not on customer numbers. If you spent 300m on an MMO and get 2m players who spend an average of 150 each then your RoI is zero. You would have been better putting the money in your current account for the 5year development cycle at 0.5% whereas if you invested 1m in a game that got 10k players who spent 150each then you have made a good Return on Investment..
By the OP's reckoning, the former game would be a success and the latter a failure.
Anything other than RoI is subjective.
"It's a sandbox, if you are not willing to create a castle then all you have is sand" - jtcgs