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How do MMORPGs go defunct?
neeela
Member Posts: 12
I'm somewhat relatively new to the MMO world and was wondering specifically - what happens to MMOs when they die? Does anyone have a list of "failed" MMOs? (And by "failed" I mean "officially launched and then went kaput" not "promised but never released/launched")
Thanks1
Comments
If your character dies in a MMORPG you get penilized and start back at town... and for the list, I think the list would be huge! There's tons that came out and flopped...
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E.T. is alive...
MMORPG.com - Gramp Staff
What will he do next?
Well, thanks! I didn't mean what happens when you die....
but I'd love to see a list of failed MMORPGs.
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My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.
Why doesn't DOS ever say "EXCELLENT command or filename!"
Customer: "How fast will my COM ports go?"
Tech Support: "How hard can you throw your computer?"
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My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.
Why doesn't DOS ever say "EXCELLENT command or filename!"
Customer: "How fast will my COM ports go?"
Tech Support: "How hard can you throw your computer?"
Gotcha. Thanks!
It would seem, with the flood to market in the last few years, that there'd be more of them.
http://www.facebook.com/murtb
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My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.
Why doesn't DOS ever say "EXCELLENT command or filename!"
Customer: "How fast will my COM ports go?"
Tech Support: "How hard can you throw your computer?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man´s character give him power"
-Abraham Lincoln
Coder, Webmaster and Modeler
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"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man?s character give him power"
-Abraham Lincoln
Coder, Webmaster and Modeler
http://www.facebook.com/murtb
SWG will fail. Too nasty of a game, it sucks.
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"If a mother can kill her own child, what is left before I kill you and you kill me?" -Mother Teresa when talking about abortion after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979
Well there have been a lot of very small (mainly few individuals running server from home) so called MMRPG that have flopped.
The big names still seems to have survived even earth and beyond.
However one of the first commerical MMRPG- meridan 59 did close shop and the character simply stopped to exist period.
It started up again recently after the rights was bought by some company but i think it was a fresh start.
SWG sucks but still it will not fail quite simply because it has the SWG logo and still commands a few hundred thousands subscribers(more then any other mmrpg apart from EQ) and this is even a north american release wait till it hits asia and europe.
Never underestimate a brand name and the game has it .
It's interesting that no major MMRPG has failed yet. At some point the market should become saturated and the only to yours alive is to steal players from another... that's when things will get interesting.
How many users does it take to keep a MMRPG afloat?
If you charge 12 bucks a month, and have 5000 users you make
12 * 5000 * 12 = 720,000 a year in revenue.
Or course you have bills and people to pay. So they don't this much in profit, but it doesn't take many users to cover your costs. As a added bonus selling the box for 30 bucks generally covers your dev expensives.
It seems even the lamest MMRPG's can keep 5K people paying... and you could probably go lower than that and still keep the servers turned on. I would supect a dying MMRPG would just not add new content, until it fell under 1K users.
It's surprised to me how much each MMRPG is able to find it's own user base, without stealing from another game.
In general MMRPG's are cash cows, and hard to fail at. Even the most horrid, bug ridden betaware releases has proven to be profitable. People seems to tolerate the bugs and poor quality for a long period of time, while it's made better.
I hope this changes, but for now expect many sub-par MMRPG's to come along until market saturation.
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Achievers realise that killers as a concept are necessary in order to make achievement meaningful and worthwhile (there being no way to "lose" the game if any fool can "win" just by plodding slowly unchallenged). -bartle
Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.
Agreed clever.
Already many games are feeling the fact that the number of subscribers are limited and the games are pumping out much faster then people converting to the MMO genre.
Only game that seems to have brought a sizeable new converts recently was SWG because of the star wars name,most others are just trying to steal from each other.
WoW would probabaly provide the next large group of new converts to MMO again based on its name.
I read somewhere that a MMO needs about 5-7k subscribers to remain viable so your estimate of 5000 seems dead on target.
Even when games are doing horribly like AC2 is now for instance they still go on .All the do is merge servers and that not only cuts cost it still leaves the world in a MMO state.
Only reason any major MMRPG will shutdown is because the owners feel it is getting too old and might be trying to push a newer title forward.
Although i hate shadowbane personally i think it will still have enough people to keep going for a looong time.