Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Lenardo]

well he has a fantasy style author, so i bet it'll be a fantasy based game.

reading some of the more recent sci-fi stuff, there has been a few very well done "couplings" of sci-fi and fantasy elements in worlds, i know of 2 different series that could(stress the world could-its all in the presentation and how it's done) do very well translating into mmo terms.

one is a straight post apocalyptic high fantasy style set in the far future dealing with---what would happen if all the power went OUT...(this being a world where all a person has to do is think of what they want and the tech provides everything- food, shapechanging, etc.

another is a futureistic sci-fi, but layered on that was "the awakening" where some people get psionic powers- magic/demons/kobolds/vampires etc are real and "come out" of hiding...also there is tech augmentation for people, and genesplicing etc..

and those are just 2 series i have read recently that could do well, if done properly.

[Tyen]

Originally Posted by Exploit

Did you just say dont do something thats already been done, then suggest remaking fallout?

No. I suggested the Fallout MMO not remaking the singleplayer Fallout RPG. Last time I checked the Fallout MMO hasn't been done yet.

[Tyen]

Originally Posted by Kazgrim

not the same fantasy setting of elves and orcs from the last 113 mmo's to hit the market.

I agree

[Cadrid]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

OK I could be the next Joel Zumaya.... Can't take much more Guitar Hero II.

Amazing how we search the world for the right mix to make "Thee Game" and it never fails to be something so damn simple it's laughable.

I'm holding out for a drumming game on the Wii. The Rayman Raving Rabbids rhythm dance mini-game is superb.

[Ngruk]

Any predictions on VG peak subscribers in year 1? I know some numbers and am curious to see what the MMO players out there think it's going to do in the first 12 months.

[Rezz]

290k by december, though that's pretty conservative imo.

[Moontayle]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Any predictions on VG peak subscribers in year 1? I know some numbers and am curious to see what the MMO players out there think it's going to do in the first 12 months.

Given that Vanguard is pulling from the "top" of the MMO pool (meaning the average and above crowd), I can't see it doing more than what EQ2 is currently able to produce.

[Witoubo]

I think it really depends on post launch management. If they get someone who is really on the ball and can do for VG what Scott did for EQ2 they could be looking at healthy (and growing) 500k in a year. If not, I'd say they are looking at a sharp fall off 2-3 months after launch and lingering around 150k.

[Cadrid]

Depending upon how their servers hold up, whether they can keep the game fresh and interesting, and the average system of MMO players, it could range anywhere from ~100k to ~750k.

If I had to give a single estimate, though, I'd put them at around 300k subscribers at the end of one year.

[Faille]

200-250k is my guess, but its going to be hard to tell with the whole station pass. How many extra people will try it because its monthly cost is effectively free is anyone's guess.

[redjunkopera]

100K

It's like EQ2 with bugs and without the content that you need a massive computer upgrade to run well.

In 2 years if they follow through it will probably rock, but for now. /shrug

I got the pre-order anyways and will try it for a month just to mess with PvP, though.

PS: I expect a game along the line of Vanguard to have a fun and rewarding crafting system. Vanguards current incarnation is tedious and annoying.

[Gaereth]

I don't see it surpassing the numbers from EQ2.

If it was more complete or had a bit more time it might do better but it is shipping in an rough state and launch is damn near everything in these games. The genre is moving a bit from 'you MUST group to do anything' to the 'I have to have a choice' on how I want to play the game and it must be a viable choice.

You also need to hook people in the first hour or so or they won't get into your game. There is such a widely varying experience with the starting areas in the game that if you happen to pick poorly you could easily wonder why you spent money on the game let alone taking the time to install it.

[Kazgrim]

175k or so.

Brad created EQ, which is actually unfortunate for Vanguard, because as a "veteran" developer of the genre, this wisdom was cast aside like pearls amongst swine.

Though most of it applies, some specific quotes:

Elwyn forest is the first starting area we did. Northshire Valley is the 1st through 5th level area for the humans and we spent an inordinate amount of time working on that area. We would work on how the combat is going to work? How many monsters can you take at one time? What's the downtime? Does the combat feel fun? What's the first ability you're going to get? What's the pace of the quests? How much experience can you get when you get out of Northshire? Where should we put the trainers? How do we teach you to get to the trainers? We spent a ton of time. We probably spent more time on Northsire Valley by an order of magnitude than any other area because it was one of our first area. We spent a lot of time making it fun first. After we made it fun then we made it big. We didn't go out and build the entire World of Warcraft until we knew what we were building. If we just start building a huge world and haven't figured out all the little details, what's going to make your game fun? What's going to make your combat system fun? How's your quest system going to work? Then once you do figure all that out, you're going to go back through 20, 30, 40 zones and try to retrofit all those ideas back into the game? You're going to be screwed. So we spent a lot of time on making it fun before making it big. And that one of the things that when we went into our friends and family alpha test, that was a whole year before we released the game, everyone was like, "OMG, it's really fun." Like they're all surprised. "You can only play to tenth level, but it was a fun ten levels." But it was a lot easier once we knew what was fun to go from levels 10 to 20 and 20 to 30 and 30 to 40 from there - at that point is was more of an issue of production than design. The design at that point was more creative design than mechanics design.

and

The last thing. Don't ship until it's ready. I think every game has this where you ship before its ready, you're really going to cripple the chances for success of that game, but for Massively Multi-player games the stakes are much higher. It has a subscription model and you really want your game to have longevity. People generally don't take a second look at your game. There has been a whole lot of MMO games that have shipped early, admittedly so, by those companies. In a lot of those cases you hear great stories now - how much more fun that game is. But how many of you have gone back and looked at that game? No one actually goes back. If you ship before you're ready you're going to cripple yourself. You're putting at risk the next 5 years of your product. Hopefully, all you publishers in the room will make sure you give all the developers more time.

[DickTrickle]

I vote 150k. Though I'd wouldn't be terribly shocked if it was around 250k. Anymore than that, though, and I would be suprised.

[Ssinurn]

I will also be shocked if it does better than EQ2 at release. EQ2/WoW came at a prime time when the vast majority of folks were tired of EQ1.

This time there is plenty to play MMO wise, and while VG looks to have promise in the future it doesn't have it right now. Beautiful environments but character animations need work and it just needs more refinement/polish.

As far as the middleware question, I actually have been working on "normal" middleware technologies (SeeBeyond, Tibco, Weblogic, Websphere,etc) for companies for the last 7 years or so. I have been at most of the major oil/power /trading companies and I can say truly that similar to MMOs a really well done elegant solution is rare. Mediocre or poor uses of the technology are far more common. I see similar happening with the game industry for a while until the good middleware develops and best practices are established.

The pitfalls were, the companies would buy 1 or 2 of these licenses, have to pay people like me to come in and show them what to do with it, not listen and do what they want then end up with a xx million dollar a year license fee fuck up that does nothing of what they want and have to bring someone else in with different opinions and software and wash rinse repeat 3-4 times until they finally figure out how to use the tech for them.

These days things are much more mature - tons of white papers, conferences, and best practices show people what a good middleware solution can do for them. The biggest advantage of middleware is spending the time/money/effort to really have a forward thinking architecture and being able to reuse components in a seamless manner to save money in the future.