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Originally Posted by Ngruk  I mention this because I have always believed you really only have one shot to corral that initial huge launch audience. Or grab a significant and vocal group that expands your customer base themselves.
It's not rocket science and I am not trying to overthink but as I look around the MMO space I can't think of a game that didn't do well at launch, and then grew at some point later to become a popular MMO.
That, and I also feel as if we truly are entering a period of time that sees players playing a game more for the fact that it's where their guild or friends 'hang out' every bit as much as it being a good game. True? False? Sort of? |
I think you are right in your assessment, in fact I would wager when you talk about your "one shot" to grab that audience, people make up their minds within a couple hours of playing. What WoW did brilliantly, and others since have followed is make it easy on a player right from the beginning. "Hey there is a guy with an exclamation mark, I should talk to him." I think the most amazing thing about WoW was that in most respects it lived up to its hype, no other release has really done that.
The only game I can think of that didn't really kick ass coming out of the gates and had it's subscriptions substantially increase is EVE and perhaps EQ2 (not sure where that is on subs now compared to launch)
Between EQ and WoW, there is only one game I can think of, and if I'm wrong I'm sure I'll be corrected, that released smoothly and for the first year or two gained subs, and that was DAOC. Since WoW/EQ2, I think Guild Wars and LOTRO are the only two that have been released stable and to no shock, they've kept a good deal of their subs.
