I think you have to keep in mind that WoW did not only draw subscribers from other MMOs, but also introduced a hell of a lot of new players to MMOs. Part of it because Internet connections have become much cheaper since the start of EQ etc, and part of it because simply a new generation has grown into it and starts their MMO expirience with WoW.
Before WoW, 1 Mill subscribers was an utopic thought. So just because WoW is so immensely popular doesn't mean it is the best MMO out there, or that MMOs with less than 500k subscribtions are crap. It's just that WoW, for western standards, is a fucking freak wave in terms of numbers. It dwarfs all other MMOs.
Apart from that, even Vanguard is kept alive and I think that has something like 30k subscribers. EvE online, wich is widely regarded as very successful has something around 200k last i heard.
MMOs definately are still a growing market, people that played EQ, UO etc are somewhat pioneers in this genre, but we are in the minority now.
Thankfully there will be niche products that cater to special tastes.
Swg was the best bugged flawed game with the most potential i have ever played. Knowing that its failure and subs are inaccurate. The box sold a tad over 1 million..They pubilcally stated after a month they had 500k active players..Then silence.. Reason it failed to attract more that the 250k of us that stuck it out was the total lack of fixing crap. fixing to SoE an La was change everything nerf what you cant fix. Then break 10 more things with the next patch. The game had no stable road map, it was all over the place.
This game changed so much an pissed off players left an right. So subs bled an continue to bleed to this day. It turned it too a poor wow clone that tried to be battlefront. Most of us settled for the bugged mess cause we loved the original concept sandbox world. We stuck around in hope of them actually doing what Bs was fed to us weekly by the devs. The original CURB sounded solid an what most of us would have settled for...Sadly we got the Cu an more bugs more Wowness less SWG...Dont get me started on the NGE no need to tell that to anyone the current player base or lack of says it all..
So knowing all we have experienced with SWG what do we know about bioware? We know they want to tell you a story...Um...Well i want to make my own story..Telling me one is a single player RPG with linear gameplay ala Wow an the rest of the crap. Im sure it will be a polished copy but come on. same ole crap different Ip's an skins..
Eve has stuck to its original concept. Sandbox world with skills anyone can learn. Its player base has grown over 4 years not fell like most MMO's..Their subs went up after the release of both the Cu an massively since the NGE.. What does this say to you? Is Eve that good? Is it the open ended world? Is it perfect?( no) It doesnt force you into any set path..Nice breath of fresh air.. The mmo market is suffering form metooitis an as we all see its faulting..Bioware may get it right who knows. If they do ill be there..If its another wow clone just like Lotro an the rest i think most will pass it by..
SWG pre-CU was a great game. It just didn't pander to the masses. There is no way you can have 32 professions and have a sense of 'balance'... some ended up being better than others, so what? And as for the jedi grind... yeah it sucked but at least when you got jedi it was something special, not some FOTM event like all the wanna-be's that went Feral Druid when BC came out. Players may not get pre-CU back, but let's not second guess what once WAS a great game. What made it greatest of all, is that all the whiney little 12 year olds were unable intellectually to play it. So you didn't have any of that immature B-S that pollutes every Blizzard game out there. And the non-linear style to it was amazing. It was possible for every player to come up with a unique build based on their own interests. Just because a game doesn't have a tight raiding structure and offer the same predictible features that other MMORPG's have, doesn't mean it's not great, it is just different .
Started EQ in 01...have no problem working for what I get in a MMO.
Pre NGE...load up game and land in ME on Bria. Right off the bat got folks trying to scam me for my barc....hmmm
So I set about lvling. Well what do ya know. I cant even move up in lvls unless I farm my rear off cause I cant afford to train. That or find someone, but already run across bad folks so trying to keep to myself.
After a good 8 hrs of play...over couple of play sessions...get fed up with listening to the ent spam about "come see me blah blah...click on me for highest tippers". Obviously a macro program...which is no less a legal play style. Bot games = cheese.
After waiting all the time to finally buy SWG cause of the bad rep, only to turn around and see it was a poorly thought out bot game...I quit and didnt look back. I tried at NGE hoping they would make it like EQ which I loved...but heh still garbage.
I am a disgruntled vet...one that wonders why they didnt follow the EQ path. Could be at 1M subs right now with a good 8 expansions behind em. Stupid move SOE/LA for making a sim.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Shut up talking to me. I dont agree with your idea of "fun". Yet because I dont, you have tried to discredit not only my posts, but my educational back ground.
I am on disability Hubert cause of Crohns disease. What is your excuse for patroling the msg brds at 4am? A person that had the educational back ground I do sure wouldnt be up at this time....they would be in bed for work. Working a security desk there skippy?
You sure talk a lot of "yang" for being highly "enlightened".
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Shut up talking to me. I dont agree with your idea of "fun". Yet because I dont, you have tried to discredit not only my posts, but my educational back ground.
I am on disability Hubert cause of Crohns disease. What is your excuse for patroling the msg brds at 4am? A person that had the educational back ground I do sure wouldnt be up at this time....they would be in bed for work. Working a security desk there skippy? You sure talk a lot of "yang" for being highly "enlightened".
I live, like many other people in the world, outside Missouri. You see, when it's 4 am in your town, it's not necessarily 4 am everywhere else. Good luck to you.
Your Stereotypes are quite sad Hubie....a lot like yourself. The only fallback you have is attempting to attack someone with a different viewpoint on immaterial things and projections, vs what the person is actually stating or believes in.
For a FYI though....I live in the Flint area....that means Michigan. Got my degree from Mott, and another 60ish Cred hrs from University of Michigan Flint. Just to dispell the illusions you seek to project on my educational background.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Your Stereotypes are quite sad Hubie....a lot like yourself. The only fallback you have is attempting to attack someone with a different viewpoint on immaterial things and projections, vs what the person is actually stating or believes in. For a FYI though....I live in the Flint area....that means Michigan. Got my degree from Mott, and another 60ish Cred hrs from University of Michigan Flint. Just to dispell the illusions you seek to project on my educational background.
Please may I urge you to stop giving out personal information about yourself? Firstly, it may be used by unscrupulous people for identity theft; secondly, it's depressing, like a rejected draft for 'Death of A Salesman'.
When you get forclosed on your credit rating goes splat.
Tired of your pompous arse trying to belittle my background. If you are in Britain like I stated earlier, you are nothing at all like the 2 who trained me in Canada in 98....they had class. All you have done is throw cheap shots my way since the first time I run across ya.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
When you get forclosed on your credit rating goes splat.
Tired of your pompous arse trying to belittle my background. If you are in Britain like I stated earlier, you are nothing at all like the 2 who trained me in Canada in 98....they had class. All you have done is throw cheap shots my way since the first time I run across ya.
Hubert did the same kind of nonsensical attacks toward me earlier in another thread. It's the only tactic he knows apparently, and it's gotten repetitious.
He reported me last night...but I had beaten him to the punch this time. As soon as I showed up he started attacking me on forums. I dont understand how having different ideas makes one an idiot /shrug
I am a vet, and I am not happy with how SOE handled SWG. Have as much right here as anyone else.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
I've been meeting lots and lots and lots of ex-SWG vets from the pre-CU days in several different games from City of Heroes/Villains, Tabula Rasa, Day of Defeat, Call of Duty 2, and WoW and almost all of them says the same thing including me- they do NOT like the NGE, most has said to have come back to check out the NGE and still not satisfied. I even accepted the combat upgrade and grew to like it. This doesn't mean we're bad people, it just that we prefer the pre-CU gameplay and sandbox that it offered regardless of how "crappy" it was according to those that currently play in the NGE, I've only encountered one bug pre-CU which was disappearing items in my house and was easily fixed by relogging, but after the CU and NGE I've been stuck in places more than 5 times (under the Avatar platform for example) and had to wait days for the CSR to rescue me. One of the biggest downsides of the NGE is lack of animations and lack of a competent economy.
Pre-CU SWG maintained a fairly decent subscription number (between 250K-320K) and it wasn't a noob friendly game, it took me a while to learn the game myself. Also when I first got SWG, I never once saw an advertisement or screenshot of a Jedi, I never had Jedi in mind. Now the NGE can barely hold onto 50K subscribers according to multiple sources and you can hardly find the game in stores anymore. The game from day 1 was hardly ever advertised, I bet you if it had the advertising strategy that Blizzard has, it'd get quite a few more subscribers.
I was highly addicted to SWG from day 1 in June 2003 to November 2005 and never once quit the game, but now I haven't found another game that I've been addicted to since then but I have enjoyed City of Heroes/Villains for a good while. I used to read the SWG forums alot and never saw any posts about "I quit, this game sucks" during the pre-CU days.
I hope it will be KOTOR online but I still have yet to find an absolute confirmination of what the Bioware/LA MMO project will be.
Comments
I just love Nancy "Readin' is hard m'kay?" McIntyre...Now she helps make educational games.
No wonder kids can't read these days
I think you have to keep in mind that WoW did not only draw subscribers from other MMOs, but also introduced a hell of a lot of new players to MMOs. Part of it because Internet connections have become much cheaper since the start of EQ etc, and part of it because simply a new generation has grown into it and starts their MMO expirience with WoW.
Before WoW, 1 Mill subscribers was an utopic thought. So just because WoW is so immensely popular doesn't mean it is the best MMO out there, or that MMOs with less than 500k subscribtions are crap. It's just that WoW, for western standards, is a fucking freak wave in terms of numbers. It dwarfs all other MMOs.
Apart from that, even Vanguard is kept alive and I think that has something like 30k subscribers. EvE online, wich is widely regarded as very successful has something around 200k last i heard.
MMOs definately are still a growing market, people that played EQ, UO etc are somewhat pioneers in this genre, but we are in the minority now.
Thankfully there will be niche products that cater to special tastes.
I regard WoW as a kind of light entry drug ;P
Swg was the best bugged flawed game with the most potential i have ever played. Knowing that its failure and subs are inaccurate. The box sold a tad over 1 million..They pubilcally stated after a month they had 500k active players..Then silence.. Reason it failed to attract more that the 250k of us that stuck it out was the total lack of fixing crap. fixing to SoE an La was change everything nerf what you cant fix. Then break 10 more things with the next patch. The game had no stable road map, it was all over the place.
This game changed so much an pissed off players left an right. So subs bled an continue to bleed to this day. It turned it too a poor wow clone that tried to be battlefront. Most of us settled for the bugged mess cause we loved the original concept sandbox world. We stuck around in hope of them actually doing what Bs was fed to us weekly by the devs. The original CURB sounded solid an what most of us would have settled for...Sadly we got the Cu an more bugs more Wowness less SWG...Dont get me started on the NGE no need to tell that to anyone the current player base or lack of says it all..
So knowing all we have experienced with SWG what do we know about bioware? We know they want to tell you a story...Um...Well i want to make my own story..Telling me one is a single player RPG with linear gameplay ala Wow an the rest of the crap. Im sure it will be a polished copy but come on. same ole crap different Ip's an skins..
Eve has stuck to its original concept. Sandbox world with skills anyone can learn. Its player base has grown over 4 years not fell like most MMO's..Their subs went up after the release of both the Cu an massively since the NGE.. What does this say to you? Is Eve that good? Is it the open ended world? Is it perfect?( no) It doesnt force you into any set path..Nice breath of fresh air.. The mmo market is suffering form metooitis an as we all see its faulting..Bioware may get it right who knows. If they do ill be there..If its another wow clone just like Lotro an the rest i think most will pass it by..
Started EQ in 01...have no problem working for what I get in a MMO.
Pre NGE...load up game and land in ME on Bria. Right off the bat got folks trying to scam me for my barc....hmmm
So I set about lvling. Well what do ya know. I cant even move up in lvls unless I farm my rear off cause I cant afford to train. That or find someone, but already run across bad folks so trying to keep to myself.
After a good 8 hrs of play...over couple of play sessions...get fed up with listening to the ent spam about "come see me blah blah...click on me for highest tippers". Obviously a macro program...which is no less a legal play style. Bot games = cheese.
After waiting all the time to finally buy SWG cause of the bad rep, only to turn around and see it was a poorly thought out bot game...I quit and didnt look back. I tried at NGE hoping they would make it like EQ which I loved...but heh still garbage.
I am a disgruntled vet...one that wonders why they didnt follow the EQ path. Could be at 1M subs right now with a good 8 expansions behind em. Stupid move SOE/LA for making a sim.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Heres one for ya Hubert...
Shut up talking to me. I dont agree with your idea of "fun". Yet because I dont, you have tried to discredit not only my posts, but my educational back ground.
I am on disability Hubert cause of Crohns disease. What is your excuse for patroling the msg brds at 4am? A person that had the educational back ground I do sure wouldnt be up at this time....they would be in bed for work. Working a security desk there skippy?
You sure talk a lot of "yang" for being highly "enlightened".
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
I live, like many other people in the world, outside Missouri. You see, when it's 4 am in your town, it's not necessarily 4 am everywhere else. Good luck to you.
Try again Skippy.
Your Stereotypes are quite sad Hubie....a lot like yourself. The only fallback you have is attempting to attack someone with a different viewpoint on immaterial things and projections, vs what the person is actually stating or believes in.
For a FYI though....I live in the Flint area....that means Michigan. Got my degree from Mott, and another 60ish Cred hrs from University of Michigan Flint. Just to dispell the illusions you seek to project on my educational background.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Please may I urge you to stop giving out personal information about yourself? Firstly, it may be used by unscrupulous people for identity theft; secondly, it's depressing, like a rejected draft for 'Death of A Salesman'.
I have nothing to hide Skippy....
When you get forclosed on your credit rating goes splat.
Tired of your pompous arse trying to belittle my background. If you are in Britain like I stated earlier, you are nothing at all like the 2 who trained me in Canada in 98....they had class. All you have done is throw cheap shots my way since the first time I run across ya.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Hubert did the same kind of nonsensical attacks toward me earlier in another thread. It's the only tactic he knows apparently, and it's gotten repetitious.
He pulled that on me a couple of weeks ago also.
He reported me last night...but I had beaten him to the punch this time. As soon as I showed up he started attacking me on forums. I dont understand how having different ideas makes one an idiot /shrug
I am a vet, and I am not happy with how SOE handled SWG. Have as much right here as anyone else.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Look around they are everywhere !
I've been meeting lots and lots and lots of ex-SWG vets from the pre-CU days in several different games from City of Heroes/Villains, Tabula Rasa, Day of Defeat, Call of Duty 2, and WoW and almost all of them says the same thing including me- they do NOT like the NGE, most has said to have come back to check out the NGE and still not satisfied. I even accepted the combat upgrade and grew to like it. This doesn't mean we're bad people, it just that we prefer the pre-CU gameplay and sandbox that it offered regardless of how "crappy" it was according to those that currently play in the NGE, I've only encountered one bug pre-CU which was disappearing items in my house and was easily fixed by relogging, but after the CU and NGE I've been stuck in places more than 5 times (under the Avatar platform for example) and had to wait days for the CSR to rescue me. One of the biggest downsides of the NGE is lack of animations and lack of a competent economy.
Pre-CU SWG maintained a fairly decent subscription number (between 250K-320K) and it wasn't a noob friendly game, it took me a while to learn the game myself. Also when I first got SWG, I never once saw an advertisement or screenshot of a Jedi, I never had Jedi in mind. Now the NGE can barely hold onto 50K subscribers according to multiple sources and you can hardly find the game in stores anymore. The game from day 1 was hardly ever advertised, I bet you if it had the advertising strategy that Blizzard has, it'd get quite a few more subscribers.
I was highly addicted to SWG from day 1 in June 2003 to November 2005 and never once quit the game, but now I haven't found another game that I've been addicted to since then but I have enjoyed City of Heroes/Villains for a good while. I used to read the SWG forums alot and never saw any posts about "I quit, this game sucks" during the pre-CU days.
I hope it will be KOTOR online but I still have yet to find an absolute confirmination of what the Bioware/LA MMO project will be.