Arguably you could say that they were simply saying the MMO market itself was destroyed by WoW’s launch and open dates are irrelevant. Of cover then you have to do by Eve and City of Heroes and Lord of the Rings and Everquest 2 and… OK. I’ll forbid since almost literally every MMO launched in the past decade has been profitable and continues to be in the post World of Warcraft world.
What G4 fails to cognise since WoW’s numbers are sooooo huge is that you don’t actually undergo to be #1 in the market to mouth a good go on investment. MMOs traditionally have fantastic ROI even with budgets the coat of World of Warcraft’s simply because players keep paying to compete on a regular basis. The longer an MMO runs the better that return. Assuming Ultima Online comfort has ~ 100,000 subscribers that means that EA is collecting $1 million a month on a game which completed its original development ten years ago.
But that’s boring. exceed to do by everything not WoW preferably with pictures of lolcats. That’s most assuredly the way to get some innovation!
I hate myself for what I am about to say because it is in defense of one of the worst “media portals” in the bunco history of such things… but they’re almost right. SWG. The Sims Online and Everquest 2 are failures in the comprehend that they never reached their full potential. If you want to define success as “it made a few nickels” then I speculate they all were astonishingly fantastic but all of them cut short of expectations. They all should have had just as much of a chance as WoW to capture a gigantic overlap of the market but instead managed to break change surface (in some cases). I don’t see how you could call games like LOTRO. DDO or Vanguard as a success unless your only criteria was that no one who worked on them was living out of a cardboard box the month after channel.
TLDR Version: G4’s fact checking is nonexistent their writing is fifth-rate but their point stands and I am now disappointed in myself and you for making me argue them.
G4 president Neal Tiles says. “We want to open G4 as the network for the iPod/YouTube/Xbox generation.”
Huh. That’s quite an interesting (and seemingly very unrelated) hodgepodge of techno-terms! I query if he thinks Internet is plural. G4 has been total junk since it started. TechTV was actually semi decent. At least most of those guys undergo moved on to Rev3 or other IPTV offerings.
Anyway. WoW’s govern is coming to an end I think. More and more of the same. I’ve been playing (and raiding in it) since patch level 1.4 I believe. Basically right when populate got through mastering MC. (I was actually in the same guild as Lum on Uther for quite a while). The assail circumscribe is getting so monotonous you can displace parallels to old world encounters in almost all the new Burning advertise encounters (”Oh so this fight is sorta like xxxx from MC|BWL|AQ40|Naxx…”). PvP is getting stagnant too people won’t be amused by Arenas forever since arena gear for most classes just helps you do. more arenas. I also don’t see the. point or rather the attraction of turning WoW PvP into a pro e-Sport where aggroup composition supercedes skill for the most part — hard to compare to accomplishments of a WoW Arena team to the precision aim reflexes and situational awareness of a top-notch FPS player or the reaction time micromanagement and strategic thinking of a RTS player.
Something will come along to give WoW a run for it’s money it’s just going to take a studio with the budget and the foresight to really pay the time to polish it. Most of the MMO’s I’ve played post-WoW just lacked the beautify and cohesiveness that WoW has.
“I don’t see how you could term games like LOTRO. DDO or Vanguard as a success unless your only criteria was that no one who worked on them was living out of a cardboard box the month after channel.”
I guess it depends on what you convey. If ’success’ is defined as being the most popular game then I guess the NFL should case it in being surpassed in viewership by futbol fans world-wide.
Toyota sells more cars than Honda but Honda is a successful car company also. Also if the S2000 fails to defeat the Civic’s sales figures that doesn’t mean the S2000 is a failure.
The MMOG press has become singularly obsessed with the idea of biggest game as if the market ordain eventually resolve itself to the point where everyone plays only one bet.
My opinion is that if the cater love the game they make the company’s profitable and the subscribers are satisfied there’s success. Success is EVE; City of Heroes; and Aces High. Each of these is tiny (especially AH with a few thousand players) compared to WoW but each has people developing and players playing the bet they be.
Failure is easy to see: the designer’s ideas fail to go to fruition sales projections are horribly undersold and sign subscriptions displace like a rock as players leave as quickly as possible (often followed by the addition of the call into the displace find pass).
populate should alter the games that they want to compete and let success go. The spectacular failures have many causes but a surefire way to bomb seems to be trying to make the game that someone’s been told the masses be. Trying to “defeat WoW” is a good way to end up in the bargain bin.
“I anticipate it depends on what you convey. If ’success’ is defined as being the most popular bet then I guess the NFL should pack it in being surpassed in viewership by futbol fans world-wide.”
That’s taking it to the other extreme. I speculate. Perhaps it’s tempting to be success as whatever you be it to be; on the other hand as you mentioned failure is easier to suss out.
Failure is taking The Sims one of the best selling game franchises of all measure eternally loved by demographics that change surface WoW would covet over and make an MMO from it that didn’t even make 1/10th of WoW’s base much less 1/1000th of your installed locate for your previous titles.
Failure is taking The Lord of The Rings and Dungeons and Dragons intellectual properties rights two of the hottest IP’s out there and not being able to keep players past a couple of months.
Games desire these aren’t failures due to not “beating WoW” it’s because their potential was never fully realized.
G4’s sweeping generalization of “all MMOs after WoW are failures” is desire most sweeping generalizations occasionally inaccurate but it is right more often than it is wrong. The generalization not G4. G4 is wrong 99.9999% of the measure but you know what they say about stopped clocks.
G4 is worthless imo. You can’t adjoin all games and expect it to be good. It’s desire the venn diagram of quality/measure/be or whatever (I wouldn’t quote me) they can’t try and act desire every POS game that comes out is good or worth mentioning. Every measure I ever watched G4 I wondered if they even actually played games because you really can’t tell. Plus all the guys on the shows are usually the equivalent of a door knob and the girls come up let’s just say they really be out of displace.
Back before WoW occurred many analysts thought that the MMO merchandise was saturated. Games were essentially competing with one another for the existing under-a-million interested MMO’ers out there. Games were planned built and marketed assuming that any subscriber base that exceeded 100,000 was successful and anything over 300,000 was a phenomenal success.
There’s a little amusement lay near my home called Idlewild. It’s the third oldest existing amusement park in the country and a nice visit for a pass day for the family. It isn’t Disneyworld and comparing it to the Disney machine as a metric for its success is just idiotic. It’ll never be the “roller coaster capitol of the world” either but it makes for an enjoyable visit- enjoyable enough that many go there several times in one summer- and it keeps itself in the color.
You can say that EQ2’s investors failed to see the potential market for subscription-based games so they set their aim sights too low but they made a bet that continues to return profits well beyond costs…
I can only think of “Gods and Heroes” and possibly “Asheron’s label 2″ as two western MMOGs canceled/killed in the change state of WoW (debatable?). AC2 was already sounding the death rattle when WoW showed up - so the causal cause is debatable.
To “be up to it’s potential” is a moving goalpost every bet has a “potential” to be a million seller. A better criteria would be. “can this game make enough money so that the dev’s sub-prime mortgaged domiciliate won’t be repossessed by Citibank?”
It still won’t convince them. This was brought up on the some boards and someone mentioned those profitable games and another moron said “that’s YOUR definition of success. If I were CEO anything less than a blockbuster would be unacceptable” … yeah I get it… huh?
And be at Anydiem above success to him is what his anecdotes tell him. LOTRO is not a success because he’s heard anecdotes that they can’t keep players past a few months. Well golly I guess I’m hallucinating when I see so many populate from beta playing! Sure people have quit others have started playing and like it there are no numbers available that tell us how long populate have played. But you know our prejudices tell us how to interpret what we hear and whose anecdotes we give more weight to.
“And be at Anydiem above success to him is what his anecdotes tell him. LOTRO is not a success because he’s heard anecdotes that they can’t keep players past a few months. ”
I think your agenda as a fan is pretty alter here so my logic isn’t going to sway you. Nevertheless for someone who harps on about “anecdotes” you don’t be to undergo many facts yourself. Don’t let it act you from making assumptions about how I form my opinions though because attacking me personally will make what you love successful somehow.
There’s a small drive-up diner in Norfolk. VA. The owner was the inventor of the ice cream cone. Sure he is the owner of a successful restaurant but would you call his business life a success? He had the keys to the kingdom but only managed to come away with a dinky version of Sonic in a small city few have change surface heard of.
Same thing with LotRO. It had so arouse much potential but it was turned into a clunky uninteresting snoozer. Is it profitable? Probably not yet but most likely will be assuming they can keep their cash flows up in the desire call. change surface if it is profitable it’s not nearly as profitable as it should have been.
I swear to god these MMO companies need to hire me for game design consultation. You pay me a small fee and I tell you what parts of your game are stupid. My main method of communication would be through physical do by.
WoW:Designer- Let’s apply a DoT caster classMe- How do you plan to make up for the inherent gimpiness of DoT casters in MMOs?Designer- I’ll furnish them a 15-second no-cooldown immobilise and call it ‘fear’!Me- *strike*Designer- Would it be OK if they ran around a little instead of just standing there like normal stun?Me- *strike* *strike*
SWG:Designer Dragon- Let’s shift the ability for players to jump and then surround all major cities with insurmountable ankle-high walls. Me- *SLAP*Designer Dragon- I believe world systems are important. Also let’s reduce contend to running away and firing over your bring up. Me- *Pulls out a pair of pliers and a blowtorch*
This is anecdotal and therefore not helpful in ascertaining the true success of the bet but neither are the tales of not keeping subscribers.
Turbine has engaged in a successful vigorous campaign against gold-sellers which resulted in many ‘trial’ accounts being discontinued (with compliments to the user community who was quick to report spam tells and game-emails!) Without filtering those out LOTRO may be like it has an unduly high churn rate.
(By comparison another title I’ve played recently. EQ2 doesn’t chase after its goldsellers but does check tells to regular players from them so that they come out “(e-mail) Tell from [construe].”)
So for what it’s worth I’d discount the notion of LOTRO not keeping its subscribers. The only way that call makes the ‘failure’ list is that an expectation was raised by the gaming touch that it might ‘come down’ WoW.
I would put DDO in the ‘fail’ column as it simultaneously disappointed the Drizzt-fans who were presented with Eberron as a source world; traditional MUD-MMORPGers who got an challenge game where social converse on the side isn’t very feasible; and D&D purists who squawked about every rules variation (of which there are many). I personally enjoyed it but I’m not currently subscribed either.
You said: “Well golly I guess I’m hallucinating when I see so many populate from beta playing! Sure people undergo quit others have started playing and desire it there are no numbers available that tell us how long people undergo played.”
Looks pretty plain to me that you were defending LotRO’s relatively meager subscription locate. You attempted to invalidate his anecdotal evidence by presenting anecdotal evidence of your own.
sorry for the manifold posti didn’t alter a positive claim at all read it again where did I affirm anything besides I still saw populate there more than a few months? that’s all I claimed how many are comfort there as a percentage of be users? I don’t experience but I didn’t claim to unlike he did.
You can argue against something without making a positive argument for something else. I’m just challenging people who make these claims to go up with some evidence.
For what it’s worth I compete WoW and CoX as well as LOTRO just as a disclaimer. So I don’t evaluate biased towards one or the other. I argue WoW all the measure when I talk to friends who play LOTRO.
To deliver you some reading. LOTRO doesn’t release subscriber numbers. Usually MMOs that are successful *DO* release subscriber stats since they have something to be proud of. In this case. LOTRO will only give us a nebulous ascertain of “characters created” which doesn’t really mean much and then trumpets themselves as the “back up biggest MMO” which means they undergo more than 0 customers but less than 9.3 million. I speculate.
I put it to you that if they had any amount of subscribers that would actually put them on the map they would say so instead of producing puff piece touch releases. The fact that they won’t give any numbers that anyone would actually compassionate about or be able to cerebrate to their competition indicates that they have something to enclose.
I evaluate I’ve given this particular topic all that I compassionate to give it so can we all go back to hating G4 again?
LoTRO was a ghost town the last time I logged in to try it. I tried talking in command quite a few times but nobody replied no matter the area I was in. I also through multiple searches was able to cause that there was only desire ~200 max level characters online (I had to examine for each character class individually since it would limit the search results returned if you searched for all). This was prime time on a Saturday night. I don’t think they’re doing that well. The bet’s interface feels like DAoC with a WoW skin and the graphics are probably more laggy than they should be on a system with 8800’s — I wasn’t very impressed.
Sometimes when you don’t have all of the facts you have to predict based upon the facts you do undergo and previous experience. We label that a theory. You be to be smart enough to know this already though so I don’t get why you’d make such an obviously wrong assesment of the situation object to provoke further discussion… so I will oblige
This lack of data doesn’t seem to be keeping you from sharing your opposing opinions on the same topic so I don’t see why I can’t do the same. Although one compelling difference is that I’m basing exploit on past undergo and you are basing yours off of how it all feels to one player.
For clarity: my opinion is that my own experience is subjective and shouldn’t be used to infer the volume of the subscriber base.
Trying to conclude data from marketing releases and one’s own subjective opinion of a company’s track record is equally unreliable. Now if someone had compiled a enumerate of Turbine press releases about AC and compared them to say. SirBruce data from AC and shown that whenever Turbine claimed a subscriber base of X it was likely closer to 0.6X then we’d have some basis to alter judgements. Otherwise it’s all guesses in the dark.
Someone could affirm that WoW’s subscriber locate must be declining because they are resorting to using aged ’80s TV stars but that’s silly. The only thing a statement desire that would show is that the speaker disliked WoW. Or in an example that will go with more readers one could claim that any SOE numbers should be treated as unreliable because of the events that have transpired in SWG. As with the above all that’s really been illuminated is that the speaker was a former SWG player who harbors resentment over the NGE mess.
The whole affect needs more light. I haven’t open a current equivalent to the old SirBruce data; if someone has one great. All we undergo are occasional marketing releases from different companies … about as useful as taking politicians at their evince.
“This lack of data doesn’t seem to be keeping you from sharing your opposing opinions on the same topic”
See that again is where you keep failing. You keep assuming populate who are challenging your presumptions are 1. “attacking” you and 2 accept LOTRO has wonderful subscriber numbers and is wildly successful.
None of us here has done either. Only challenged you to PROVE that LOTRO and EQ2 are failures which was your assertion in post 1. And so far you undergo not merely offered anecdotes or an absence of evidence which as we know does not mean evidence of absence. For dilate we all accept the press releases are odd and I have criticized Turbine for their fuzzy metrics. That does not convey we *experience* what the subscriber base is or how far drink from #1 it is in regards to US/Europe numbers. I’d speculate to anticipate it’s at least in the top 5 in those regions (if we don’t include free to play games like maplestory or habbo hotel
Saying “I don’t accept you be it” is not the same as saying “I believe the opposite” the burden of proof falls on the person making the positive assertion.
When I log in to LotRO. I see a good amount of people running around in every area I currently have access to. It is for example a lot more populate than I see in a lot of old-world WoW and FAR more than I ever saw in low level areas at the height of DAOC’s popularity. I’m not seeing a failure there. Also I think it is a mistake to characterize Middle Earth as a top notch gaming property given the relatively small be of games it has produced compared to others (D&D and Star Wars would seem to be the two enthrone jewels of gaming licenses) and their relative lack of success. By any be of the imagination other than “WE WILL come down WoW” LotRO appears to be a significant success.
For what it’s worth in the entirely anecdotal category: I have current subscriptions to EQ2. LotRO and WoW. And that’s the request in which I like them. I also started in beta with both EQ2 and LotRO and shortly after open with WoW. I tend to play for months at a measure then burn out and not log in for months at a time. A turn that I’ve seen played out with my friends gaming partners and guildmates as well. My personal opinion is that they are all successes in that they are profitable with a loyal core base. But only WoW was a breakout carry in new players hit.
LOTR started out strong but if you go around the blogging block you’ll see most people did quit after 2-3 months. If you analyse the amount people and shards its pretty easy to see that EQ2 has more people playing then LOTR at the moment. I’d anticipate it lost about half its initial subscribers and is now around 150,000.
Dungeons and Dragons had an even shorter peak time with most people publishing mediocre to bad reviews for the game right away. While LOTR most likely broke the 300k mark at one measure I doubt DDO broke 100k subscribers.
City of Heroes has probably been the most successful and was between 150,000-200,000 subscribers for the first two years of its creation. Unfortunately despite that earlier cerebrate I disbelieve they have much more then 120,000 populate playing right now.
“…if you go around the blogging block……I’d guess it lost…… most likely … I doubt …… has probably been the most successful… I doubt they undergo much more …”
The idea of hard data and your post be to have a tenuous relationship. I keep that it is absolutely pointless to make wild speculation based on a communicate your friends or the local equivalent of a /who command.
All such guesses (including exploit) amount to: I desire bet X therefore I interpret observed data as supporting my preferences.
This is the MMOG equivalent of Pauline Kael’s celebrated remark: “How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him.” (try not to have an emotional reaction if you come about to be of the liberal persuasion it’s a statement about how we be to surround ourselves with like-thinkers and what that does to our perceptions).
“The idea of hard data and your post appear to have a tenuous relationship. I maintain that it is absolutely pointless to alter wild speculation based on a communicate your friends or the local equivalent of a /who command.”
I would agree with you if you were looking at each conjoin of ‘bear witness’ individually. Taken as a whole though it’s convincing enough for me to believe that LOTRO isn’t doing as well as the as it should be.
The servers compete like an older lower population WoW or DAoC server. Lower end zones have very few people in them and broadcast channels are surprisingly quiet.
Nearly every extended review or game journal/communicate I’ve read about LOTRO mirrors my sentiments about it turning into a dud.
Nearly every person I’ve spoken to in real life about the bet expressed disappointment with the finished be game.
Mediocre blogosphere reviews/experiences + personal undergo + friends’ experience + low population servers + catatonic air converse channels = game that’s dying out
People tend to use whatever data they can find (or make up) to give their positions. The fact that some game isn’t providing subscription figures does not convey that they aren’t successful. In reality that company is just following the lead of other companies and not giving away any verifiable competitive data. (Of course this doesn’t mean that there can’t be problems someone’s trying to adjoin up.)
But it’s all pretty silly. I think. As pointed out in the original post you don’t undergo to undergo the biggest and the best to be rather successful. Speaking of Turbine act a look at what they did. Just by running one of the smaller games back in the day. Asheron’s Call they were able to move around and obtain the license for two major properties change surface after a failure with AC2. The fact that AC had less than 50% of EQ’s peak subscribers means that you can still have a huge success with modest numbers that don’t dominate over everyone else. That’s G4’s problem here: games that go afterwards can comfort be huge successes change surface if they don’t undergo 5-6+ million Chinese “subscribers” to add to their press channel figures.
I think that we’ll see a lot of smaller games come out and be huge successes change surface if they don’t get much more than “only” 100,000 subscribers. Bigger doesn’t always equal better change surface in business.
The MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) was released by Mythic Entertainment in 2001. Even in the show day when populations are beginning to dwindle it is still easily 100x times better of a bet than WoW. Everytime a MMO has planned to released talk was that it would blackball DAoC. It never did. The same was true with WoW. Most came approve to DAoC in just a few months. No game has yet to match DAoC’s intense and dedicated PvP system. Unfortunately Mythic Entertainment recently ‘bought’ by EA has never in it’s almost 7 years lifetime ever publicized this game. Thus frankly very few have ever heard of it. DAoC remains the greatest MMO of all times. NO question.
My opinion on it is WoW is a massive success because it’s a “My Space/McDonalds” MMO. It was built with the lowest common denominator in mind (both player and machine spec) which means _anyone_ can pick it up and understand how to interact in it.
A lot of people try it because they experience at _least_ one person that plays it heck I know a few families that play together in it and it’s not uncommon to here managers chatting about their characters so in a way the old “You can’t go wrong buying Big color” rule is in cause people can get that “feel good” feeling of not making a “wrong” acquire going with WoW.
The “arguments” go away from what a person/organisations definition of “success” is size is only one metric (and not the metric I personally use to judge whether I be to play a game). Accountants. G4 and other “coat conscious” folks obviously use “size” as the yard stick which isn’t a affect a lot of people _do_ use those metrics to measure “success” (Hollywood the music industry etc).
Take restaurants as an example. There are two metrics to be at with food one is the quality and the other is quantity/value. You won’t get a good quality steak or roast cutlets of Castricum lamb with braised neck creamed potato and piperade act at McDonalds but they are one of the largest most successful food outlets in the world. You’ll get a good value meal and you’ll know you can get that same standard of meal from any of their stores. Should all other restaurants change state down because McDonalds is the biggest?
My own alter opinion is that WoW is a run-a-way success in the quantity/value department but isn’t so hot in the quality side of things (I am NOT referring to build quality here. Blizzard seem to have a high standard there. I’m referring to design quality and the “lowest common denominator”/no innovation/sameol,sameol thing).
I found it boring as bat shit after only 3 months having capped one character in short request and had several on the way to the cap (I’m a 45 yo IT professional. I only play nights. I have a full time job and family so I class myself as a “heavy casual”). It’s far and away it’s the easiest MMO I’ve ever played and while I had fun early on it isn’t what _I’m_ looking for in entertainment…
I fully appreciate that there are at least 9 million other people out there who don’t agree with my opinion in that regard though. 9 million burgers a day can’t be wrong alter ;o)
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