Two games die on the same day?

squeee · February 2004

I wana just throw this out there for discussion. Is the golden age of MMORPG's over? If you look at the game list it seems every development company is making a MMORPG, if not two, and sooner or later they are all bound to fail, but what I don't get is Mythica. The game had a new design idea where groups could get together and quest in their own little world and not to mention being produced by Microsoft($$). Is it possible that the market has become just too saturated with MMORPG titles? Are old MMORPG's simply so much better than all the useless rush out the door games we are getting now a days? Are investors so worried about the time it takes to make a MMORPG and the chance that one design flaw will ruin the game? Or is the Golden Age of MMORPG's development over?

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"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."
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"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents."
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ianubisi · February 2004

Is the Golden Age of MMOGs over?

It hasn't even begun. This is the nascence, not the apex.

Umbrood · February 2004

It is a valid question i think.

My fear is that the genre is killing itself, everyone wants in so there is not enough room for anyone. Companys are trying to cash in on the trend and in the end they are suffocating themself by providing many more products then the market can handle at this time. This will all equal out in the end of course are mmorpgs are here to stay, but none the less I think this massive influx will prolong the mainstream implementation of these games to the masses by a long time. Obviously if 50% of the games go bankrupt then there is going to be problem getting funding for your new idea, no matter how good, we have a saying in sweden that roughly translates to "Burnt children fear fire".

I think maybe that we are going to see a lot of games go dead and only the big boys can afford to ride it out and it is going to be some time before the market recovers to a healthy state.

just my precognition of dooom

Umbrood

ianubisi · February 2004

Funding just isn't going to be a problem. MMOGs with a good market share are always going to net 100,000+ accounts. At a monthly rate of $10 (which is now low) you are netting $1 million per month. Plenty of corporations in this would drool like a retarded stepchild to have an annuity revenue stream like that.

If you're going to suggest that saturation is an issue, then you are going to have to suggest why anyone should believe that the user base for these games will not grow in the future. All indications are the opposite. Not only is the user base NOT shrinking, but it grows with every release. Think of most of the gamers you know personally. How many of them play MMOGs? Of those that do not, why do they not and what would bring them into the market?

Companies that find more ways to bring your reluctant friends into the market will capitalize big time, especially if they can find a way to reach large segements of that population at the same time. That's what market innovation and competition is about. There's a ton of room for growth out there.

The market will continue to expand. What this will mean in many cases is less games that try to overreach and underproduce. It means that you will see less and less games come to the market with every feature you could possibly want. Specialization will rise, generalization will fall. There will still be games that will attempt to redefine the genre with a broad brush stroke, but the risk there is higher and thus the exposure most corporations will risk will be lower.

Annuity revenue makes the bean-counters very, very happy. They like automatic payments hitting their accounts every month...and since the clients still sell for $50 a pop there is that lovely retail bonus up front. Why would any company want to settle for just the retail when they can continue billing you for the game? This is going to continue to draw more and more attention into the industry.

Umbrood · February 2004

I just dont think that many games will reach 100k+ players at this point, some will of course but i think that as of right now there are more games then players. Not only that, but in the coming year with so many releases we will see fierce marketing campaings, nothing can dull peoples interest as much as haing the same statement told to them a million times.

Yes the player base grows fast, i just think the numbers of games grows faster, much faster. Hence i think that if you spread the current player base, or the current base times two, amont the games that is and the ones to come I dount there is going to be enough to sustain any of them.

Now some will work out great but we are allready seeing some crumble, MS just dropped mythica for this reason alone, "the competitive situatoin in the MMORPG market" i think they said, and more are sure to follow. Now that money is wasted, no one wants to loose money so i am certain we will see less risk taking in the genre in the future. And really, the greatest risks often end up being the greatest succeses if they make it.

I suppose only time will tell of course, if I knew for sure I could become a rich man, or anyone for that matter.

Umbrood

ianubisi · February 2004

Originally posted by Umbrood

Now some will work out great but we are allready seeing some crumble, MS just dropped mythica for this reason alone, "the competitive situatoin in the MMORPG market" i think they said, and more are sure to follow.

I'm assuming that that's what they said publicly. Would you want to wager a bet that their lawsuit with Mythic might also have had something to do with it? It's hard to say, you aren't in the boardroom. Branding, market timing, user response, management, marketing, and many other things figure into the mix that aren't always publicly exposed as cause.

EA dropped UO2. But UXO is coming to market. Why the shift? They stated they didn't want to compete internall with the UO product. But then why UXO? Was it a matter of timing? Perhaps different management? Did they feel UXO was enough of a variant on the brand? Why did Sony feel that EQ vs. EQ2 wouldn't suffer similar fates? When you start looking a little closer at these issues you might find there are more questions than answers.

This market isn't even close to being saturated right now. If it was saturated, why would EQ still boast over 400K accounts, with numbers in AC, UO, AO, DAoC and other games still at their near-peak levels or rising? If there is a trend of contraction across the spectrum of MMOG a month or so then I might start to believe that there is a saturation point that has been reached, but until that time I still see forecastable growth based on previous trend analysis.

Dekron · February 2004

I think that these companies are finding out that they actually need to release a good solid product instead of a thrown together piece of crap. Since one mmorpg is successful they think they can make a clone of it, change a few things around and then say "Hey we have a new original mmorpg that's going to knock your socks off!". Think of the mmorpg genre as the ecommerce I era. All of the .com businesses that jumped on thinking of easy money. It's the same with the mmorpg market, But FINALLY companies are realizing that they must put an actual thought and effort into developing a successful mmorpg and releasing it without it being full of bugs. As for Microsoft cancelling Mythic, I saw that one coming. It was obvious that they wanted out of the mmorpg market when they turned AC over to Turbine. The mmorpg market is not dead. It is still coming strong. And sorry to say to all the people that were looking forward to Mythic, it would not hold a shadow to the ones coming out in the near future. IMO this is going to be the top 5 mmorpgs for the next few years:

EQ2
WoW
CoH
Lineage II
Pirates of the Burning Sea

I know these are new and not even out yet. But they will take the cake. And I am not saying that other mmogs will not be popular, I just think these will be the top 5. The mmorpg age is not over, it will go on and on until eventually we will be imursed in a virtual reality mmog

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33.333333333333336% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

Dash · February 2004

There are several trends the MMMORPG could follow. I think the most likly trend is that the branch will keep growing because it is believed to be good bussiness. More and more titles come out which will split up the players and there won't be enough income for alot of smaller companies to continue with mmorpg since there arent enough players to go around. the bigger companies will survive but have suffered. after this slum, there will be a more steady and slower increase mainly if vavor of the bigest mmorpg companies. This will carry on till the next big revolution in computers/gaming. virtual reality. New games will be created. a new type of gaming industry comes to being. and the cycle repeats itself. the basic concepts of type of games wont change. its just when somthing is hot alot of people want a piece of the pie. thats why these slums accor whenever somthing hot/new is created. Its the same princible as in nature. survuval of the fittest.

Dash The Ryu

Grubar · February 2004

In the case of Microsoft, I believe it has whittled down and streamlined its MMORPG porfolio to three viable investments: True Fantasy Live Online and an unannounced MMP from the developer of Citizen Zero, both for the XBox; Sigil Online from Brad "Everquest" McQaid and company for the PCs. Also Microsoft has offloaded AC, AC2, and Turbine Entertainment from its portfolio. Microsoft is getting tough with its bankroll.

Dekron · February 2004

actually the news story posted here yesterday had a statement from MS saying they are pulling out of the MMORPG market to focus on other areas. That may mean what you're saying, it may mean something else.

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33.333333333333336% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

mrwigglz07 · February 2004

yes i believe those are the correct top 5...good job

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The anticipation of death is far worse than death itself...

hercules · February 2004

Not so long ago I got an email from turbine saying they have bought over the rights of AC2.

Now I found that strange since turbine is mostly owned by M$.

Then I found an article stating that turbine has gain more autonomy from M$ and payroll is now the total responisbility of turbine.

So it seems MS is also letting turbine go on their own way.

Now fact is there are much more mmorpg out there now then 2 years ago and much more coming out.

While the player base for this game is growing its certainly not growing fast enough to match this newer games.

Just 2 years ago a mmorpg(made by a half descent programmers) would be guaranteed 40,000 accounts which is what many agree is the number needed to keep a mmorpg marginally profitable.

Now that is certainly not so.

Even a few years ago it still considered risky buisness.

Remember verrant who made SoE?Originally they were a sub division of SoE but SoE let majority hold of the company go for free or very low price to developers/staff and private holders .Simply slowly getting rid of it because they felt it would lose bad with EQ.It was only after EQ was such a hit did they pay a lot of money to get it fully back under their belts and like an act of wraith swallowed verrant totally -eliminated the name,changed many of the staff and got rid of all the top dogs .

DAoC made by mythic.If you betaed the game early you would have met a lot of the developers and seen how nervous they were if the project did not go well.CSR rocked in beta because they were scared of failure.

I mean mythic even hired lum the mad for pete sake.Those that remember his web site it was devoted to bashing mmorpgs espically focused on UO and he even got his site banned by posting photos of known pkers from UO and making fun of them.They hired him simply for him not to take a bash on DAoC and give it a bad review.

AO had a bad start up and it resulted in lay offs and the project midgard died too.

So just trying to state that 1)it has always been a big gamble even when there were only a few mmorpgs out there

2)MMORPG was considered a gold mine and the future of online gaming(it is still the future i think).So every companyu known and unknown ran into it.But gamers are not to mmorpg as fast as this new games come out.Despite the mmorpg player base rising fast.

3)brand name counts and not sure M$ is ready to get one.By brand name i mean games coming on a popular film/story.IE SWG- more then 50 percent of SWG population have never played a mmorpg before and only came in because it was star wars.Or a popular sequel ie WoW and EQ2 .But that does not even guarantee success look at AC2.

It is a gamble and clearly M$ is not up for it and i say good riddence to them.

I for one am tired of the amount of mmorpg games and makers coming out all with one thing on them mind profit.

Sure every developers wants and needs to make a profit to survive but if they take up the challenge of making a mmorpg with only profit on their minds they will make junk and it will fail.

There was a time mmorpg were made by people who actually wanted to make a game world they would love to spent their time in it and they made classics like UO,EQ,DAoC.

So maybe someday all the greedy pencil pushers will go away and the real developers will reappear and we can get another mmorpg that we can look back at in a few years and say ah thats a classic every new mmorpger should try it as we do for UO,EQ and DAoC now.

Umbrood · February 2004

Also I think EQ AC AO Daoc SWG and whatnot, the big boys as of now is going to keep a large part of their player base.

Now add 10 more games, or 20 and the mmorpg player base has to quadrouple in a very short time, I just do not see how that is possible. To mane people is going to be needed in to short a time.

Allthough I believe that we will see the player base increase a lot in the coming years I very much doubt we see that many new players joining up this year to fill the pockets of all them companys.

Umbrood

Superpooh · February 2004

No, nothing has died.. If anything its the stupid people that accually make these games that are killing the MMORPG world. I could come up with a better idea in my sleep and i'm sure that goes for 50% of the people browsing this forum. Games have always sucked, out of every 10 games only 1 of them are average. That goes for console games as well. It just makes me wonder where they are highering these guys. A lot of these games are so hyped up and dont deserve the credit they are getting, but since people dont know any better there forced to come up with reasons as to why these games kick ass. One of these days a company will come along and show you all what a real MMORPG is suppose to be like, but until then we have to endure these crap games.

Oscillate · February 2004

>>> mis pos

Oscillate · February 2004

Originally posted by ianubisi
Is the Golden Age of MMOGs over?It hasn't even begun. This is the nascence, not the apex.

// I Agree!

-OSC-

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