2008 - Year of the MMO?

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

And none of those games failed because they tried to 'be WoW'.

The only 2 games that you could even debate drew heavily from WoW are LotRO (the 2nd most popular western MMO according to reports) and the revamped EQ2 (which most people who play it would argue it's much better now than it was prior).

Other than that there have been no major MMO releases.

You're correct on LOTRO. It was a WOW clone. Except the excelled at a lot of things. Chapter quests, dungeon and environment design, graphics. But where they failed was loot, stats, character progression, end game, pvp.

Though I think failed is the wrong word, more like succeeded to a certain degree.

[Chrisb3]

I've played Final Fantasy 11 for one month and World of Warcraft for over three years with a couple of breaks.

Why have I only ever played 2 MMO's? The companies making them and the setting. Square had 10+ mostly good RPG's behind them to provide the setting and mechanics. Blizzard had 2 good RPG's and a RPG/RTS for the mechanics, and 3 warcraft games for the setting.
I bought FF11 knowing next to nothing about it, Square was a giant of a company that I trusted at the time and so automatically bought their games if they where a sequel to FF6, 7, 8 or 10.
I bought WoW because I followed the battle net community and got linked over to the new set of forums: the WoW open beta forums. I may have bought it anyway, it being the sequel to Diablo 2 AND Warcraft 3. But the whole good beta thing really got rid of the bad impression of MMO's FF11 gave me.

See a pattern? Companies with a string of hit games behind them, making a MMO sequel to those hit games. Good community helps.

Another major point is accessability.
To play FF11 I had to convince my mother to use her credit card to get me into the game. I then had to spend a day downloading patches on a 56k modem. Then I had to create several accounts for playonline, FF11 and whatever the fuck else they wanted... probally signed over my soul at some point. Every time I wanted to play I had to input several usernames and complex passwords, every time my crappy modem disconnected me I had to input several usernames and complex passwords...
As much as I didn't like the endless grinding of goblins in some sand dunes for 20 levels, exp penalties, mob trains, long boring travel thought almost identical zones and ultra expensive EVERYTHING... I still sometimes want to try FF11 out again because the class system was great. I can't because I lost my 3 sets of passwords and still don't have a credit card because of various bank screwups and my own laziness.
To play WoW I buy a gamecard and type in my password once.


As a player new to the genre because of mostly WoW I'm probally the type of person they are aiming their games at. What do I see with these new games?

Age of Conan: Wasn't this some generic fantasy film with Arnold Schwarzenegger? (that's all I know and I'm probally slightly older than their target audience)
It's being made by Funcom? I don't really know who they are other than that they made a MMO in the past.
At the moment they have failed to interest me. I know almost nothing significant about this game.

Warhammer Online: I haven't really played any Warhammer stuff yet I still know a little about the setting. There are tons of computer games plus the hyper expensive tabletop game although those are made by other people. Made by Mythic? I know as much about them as I do about Funcom, exept that they have a crazy bald english guy promoting it.
I'm interested, they just need everything to work properly and have some good word of mouth.

Conan is going to fail I think. Warhammer has a chance, they just need make sure that the community doesn't start bashing WoW and I hope they stop giving special names to every aspect of PvP and pretending that they are brand new concepts (although I haven't heard them do this in a while).


When I upgrade my computer I may be trying Lotro as I continue to hear good things about it, hopefully I can add Warhammer to that list. However 2008 is the year of WoW:Wotlk, I can 100% guarentee that it's going to be better that the last expansion and a great place to spend a few months at least. I have security with this game, I know they will continue to put out the highest quality of content for some time and won't let me down. The other games need to earn that, and this is their biggest challenge.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Chrisb3

Another major point is accessability.
To play FF11 I had to convince my mother to use her credit card to get me into the game. I then had to spend a day downloading patches on a 56k modem. Then I had to create several accounts for playonline, FF11 and whatever the fuck else they wanted... probally signed over my soul at some point. Every time I wanted to play I had to input several usernames and complex passwords, every time my crappy modem disconnected me I had to input several usernames and complex passwords...
As much as I didn't like the endless grinding of goblins in some sand dunes for 20 levels, exp penalties, mob trains, long boring travel thought almost identical zones and ultra expensive EVERYTHING... I still sometimes want to try FF11 out again because the class system was great. I can't because I lost my 3 sets of passwords and still don't have a credit card because of various bank screwups and my own laziness.
To play WoW I buy a gamecard and type in my password once.

I think people overlook the importance of this. Not just accessiblity hardware wise, but intuitive wise. Logging into WoW is quick and simple. You click the icon, type your pw, click your character and go. To quit the game you click back/quit. The button is right there, don't even have to move your mouse. Sounds silly and meaningless, but it's that philosophy that pervades WoW. Everything is responsive and simple at the basic level. No jumping through hoops, minimal annoyance. If something looks like it will do something, it does it, and doing it is as easy as a click. That's why those who some call 'non-gamers' can get into WoW. There are no stupid slash command necessary to play the game at any level except the highest end. You don't really NEED to make a macro for anything but arena/raiding. It's just stuff like that that makes the game 'fun' to play for most people who otherwise wouldn't put up with something like say EQ or VG. /flush

[Draegan]

Good points. Logging in to some games is an incredible hassle. FFXI and all the SOE games suck. Especially the SOE games. Login does a system check, then you play then it loads the game. Too many steps.

[Inconsiderable]

I actually played a couple of those clones, before I got tired of fooling around with all the everquest stuff I dont like anyway. I think you just dont remember those games anymore, because they dont deserve to be remembered.

LOTRO didnt fail. It has what? 500k subs? Thats like twice as many as EQ1 had as peak. Having 200k subs means your MMO is successful. Small companies requires far less to make a living.

[Ceefo]

EQ had 450k at peak. At that time, I don't think people really thought the player numbers could get much bigger. Wow certainly changed that thinking, but nobody, not even Blizzard, predicted such a response. I think I remember Pardo saying something early on that they were hoping to have 200k by end of year 1.

I think if a game is made on a realistic budget and can get 100-200k subs they should be happy.

[Inconsiderable]

EQ had 450? Uh, k.

[Rayne]

Originally Posted by Inconsiderable

EQ had 450? Uh, k.

Yes. But you're right. 200k is a good number to consider success depending upon the variables. Like initial investment, overhead, and most importantly, long-term retainage. 500k sees a much quicker return on that initial investment, but long-term retainage is where the real success gets realised.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Chrisb3

Age of Conan: Wasn't this some generic fantasy film with Arnold Schwarzenegger? (that's all I know and I'm probally slightly older than their target audience)

Blasphemy! I guess you're definitely a bit too old, I still fondly remember the conan movies back when I was a kid though. There's quite a bit of hardcore conan fans too, like of the book and original works, not the movies they made. But yeah the franchise isn't really anything big, even considering the "nerd" factor.

Warhammer on the other hands is more well known to people, mainly because of the tabletop as you said, but also, in my opinion, because of the parallel universe(that they should have taken if they weren't fucking idiots) Warhammer 40k, which produced a lot of games, and some very good ones too(yay Space Hulk, and more recently Dawn of War).

However one thing to consider. While before WoW, the fact it was from blizzard and based on a very successful game-line worked in their favor to get new people into the world of mmos, now those people have played a mmo, and they don't really need a new mmo based on something they know to actually be able to even want to try it. Say you were a Starcraft fan, and that's what got you to try WoW. Now fast forward to today, you don't really like wow because it's too carebear/casual/insert-whatever-here, you're gonna look for either a) A new RTS(see starcraft2) b) A new MMO, and it won't have to be Command&Conquer online, or Street Fighter The Adventure.

Just how I see it at least, I started playing UO because I liked the Ultima games, but when I later bought AC and played that, it was because I had friends from UO playing it and saying the pvp was good. I didn't care that turbine were a bunch of nonames and Asheron's Call was a totally made up crappy universe based on nothing.

[Aamina]

Originally Posted by Chrisb3

Another major point is accessability.
To play FF11 I had to convince my mother to use her credit card to get me into the game. I then had to spend a day downloading patches on a 56k modem. Then I had to create several accounts for playonline, FF11 and whatever the fuck else they wanted... probally signed over my soul at some point. Every time I wanted to play I had to input several usernames and complex passwords, every time my crappy modem disconnected me I had to input several usernames and complex passwords...
As much as I didn't like the endless grinding of goblins in some sand dunes for 20 levels, exp penalties, mob trains, long boring travel thought almost identical zones and ultra expensive EVERYTHING... I still sometimes want to try FF11 out again because the class system was great. I can't because I lost my 3 sets of passwords and still don't have a credit card because of various bank screwups and my own laziness.
To play WoW I buy a gamecard and type in my password once.

This really is overlooked way too much. I tried to "return to Vanadiel" or whatever the hell, but I can't remember my damn information. In WoW, I've resubbed like...at least 6 times because its easy. That's, at a minimum, 90 dollars I've ALMOST spent on FFXI but thrown my hands up in disgust and just played WoW for a month rather than try and get my account back for the umpteenth time.

I wouldn't say SOE is nearly as bad. I don't mind the launcher and password recovery is not terrible...still not as good as WoW's though.

[Rezz]

PlayOnline and the disconnect from the american userbase was bad, that point can't really be argued. The rest of FFXI however was more or less a solid game. The UI has consolitis but it's workable. Every other aspect was either unique or implemented differently but in a way that worked. Front end issues resolved, better UI, Grade A+ game. Hopefully whatever IP they're working with that's going to concern but not be directly related to FFXI will take the lessons from the first game into account. Or at least make PlayOnline about 100x less retarded.

[Chrisb3]

Originally Posted by Pyros

Blasphemy! I guess you're definitely a bit too old, I still fondly remember the conan movies back when I was a kid though.

That's the point i'm slightly too old. But... i'm 21.

They have to be aiming these games at late teens right? So i'm probally older than the target market.
I only just very vaugely remember that the film even existed. So the whole setting of the game may mean mostly nothing to anyone other than a minority.

Maybe there is a market for a more mature game but it isn't gonna attract the warcraft masses to change games.

[Rayne]

Originally Posted by Chrisb3

That's the point i'm slightly too old. But... i'm 21.

They have to be aiming these games at late teens right? So i'm probally older than the target market.
I only just very vaugely remember that the film even existed. So the whole setting of the game may mean mostly nothing to anyone other than a minority.

Maybe there is a market for a more mature game but it isn't gonna attract the warcraft masses to change games.

Actually, the games target audience are fans of the Robert E. Howard books, not the movie. So age has very little if anything to do with it.

[Twobit Whore]

21? Too old? Try too young. Conan came out before you were born. I was a kid when it came out so I remember thinking it was awesome.

[Chrisb3]

I was kinda thinking too old in the context of the wow playerbase. Assuming that they are trying to attract majority of the wow playerbase to change games and make them rich.
Of course I could be completly wrong, I'm just guessing that most people playing these games are 15-20 with too much timeon their hands.