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The Cannibalism of MMORPGs
gargantroo
Member Posts: 1,477
Why is every MMORPG having issues with population ever since WOW came out? I used to play Ultima Online and the population was always steady. When WOW came out, everyone left. Everquest 2 is having server merges and every game is beginning to lose population quickly. The only ones that dont have issues are the Korean ones (even though Lineage lost a huge chunk of it's population since WOW's release).
Final Fantasy XI and Lineage 2 both took big chunks of other games populations too when they came out. Why is it that if one big title comes out, all other titles suffer within the MMORPG genre?
i play on australian servers because racism is acceptable there
Comments
I don't play World of Warcraft or Lineage 2; but it's highly obvious. Lineage was the largest MMORPG in the world at a time; and when Lineage 2 came out people jumped on it. Yet the game wasn't a huge success as the first one. But in World of Warcraft's case, it is the highest rating MMORPG on the market right now. The critics such as XPlay, 1UP, IGN, and Gamespot all gave WoW excellent scores. Not to mention the MMORPG was highly anticipated. Good games(considered by videogame critics) that are highly anticipated will eat up people's money.
But I think World of Warcraft's success surpassed Blizzard's expectation. From what I hear, they basically streamlined the system and removed/corrected some of the more annoying aspects of MMORPGs(muling and death for example). It's at game that just caught on to many. When this happens it affects other games beacause people leave to play something which gamers claim to be better. But when you have some of the biggest critics in the videogame industry saying WoW is best MMORPG at the time; that influences people to buy it even more.
At the risk of being accused of being a Fanboi, EVE has been increasing in population. Its been a slow increase but it there nonetheless.
One reason may be the demise of SWG. Another that I think is the main one is the devs at EVE are sticking to their guns and not changing the game to appease the masses. They are not falling into the one size fits all trap.
Just my opinion.
Support Bacteria, its the only culture some people have.
I think that statement right there rings very true in that alot of games are turning into moneymakers. The publishers see huge amounts of profit to be had and they push devs to "go with the flow" of the industry because they think they will get more players that way when in reality the only way to get more players and KEEP your old ones is to make a solid, and consistent game. I think the latter there is also very important. Nerfing and patching the hell out of games change them and then people aren't familiar with their own games and quit. So if the game isn't that great then they just naturally hop over to a new one hoping it will be as good as their first mmo, like UO, EQ, DAoC etc etc, and they will keep searching until they find a game that will keep them for a while.
~Dunadurium
"Silly rabbit, WoW's for kids"
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