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MMORPG: Money, Money, Money
JTacomis writes "There's an
interesting
article up at Business 2.0 magazine about Sony Online and EverQuest.
It says that EverQuest makes Sony over $5 million a month. Star Wars
Galaxies is expected to make even more than that. It's a long and in-depth
articles that takes us through the whole back-story to EverQuest. One
interesting fact: EverQuest almost didn't get made. According to the
article, the idea was originally turned down inside of Sony."
Since everyone hates him, I can see a long queue forming just to kill him off in the game...
I'm just not sure whether 5 million a month is a lot ... it doesn't seem like it would be a lot for a company the size of Sony. And if the Star Wars game gets popular, you have to expect that a lot of it will come at the expense of cannibalizing the Everquest ranks. MMORPGs, like MUDs, after all, require a very particular type of person to pay to play.
With all the MMORPGs in development, I think people are going to play more diverse games. And since, playing a MMORPG takes a lot of time, people aren't going to play more than 1 or 2 at a time. So either all those new MMORPGs aren't going to be popular or the current big ones are going to lose a lot of customers.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
Or, more likely, you will be able to play as a Gungan (or whatever he is) Imagine it - hordes of little kids with their parents credit cards, swarming you with their characters, blocking the only way out with their dead bodies. I'd pay a lot of money to see loads of dead Jar-Jars.
In Ultima Online, you can now change your character name, which was previously fixed. But, quess what, it costs $29.99. Can you believe it!! A simple DB query, I believe. Sheesh.
Yeah, a lot of projects are initially turned down for business investment ONLY because they suck.
You see, a business project needs to be shown to be profitable (in the short or long term), and if the original business plan didn't drive that point home, well, it'd be rejected by management. Plus the original business plan would have had to fit into Sony's core business model. If not (and this plan did not!), the plan would have to be much more detailed and robust.
It isn't that management is always stupid - most executives get dozens of business plans thrown in front of them every week. They have to pick and choose the most likely to succeed.
After all, it doesn't make anyone look good if $10 million was "lost" in a business plan that most senior executives would laugh at.
It's kind of like FedEx. We all know that business plan only got a "C" at Harvard Business School. But the fact is, it should have gotten an "F". As a business plan, it sucked. Sure, in the end it turned out to be a wildly successful and profitable business... but the initial business plan could be summed up as "likely to be a failure".
Would you rather pay $150-$200 for a game and not have monthly charges, or pay $40 for a game and $12.95 a month to play it? I think MMORPG's would be more successful, in the terms of user numbers, if they would stop charging by the month. Maybe that's why some people are still playing MUD's and MUCKing around....
-Tolerate my intolerance
Ideas that have "almost" been turned down by Sony are legend, the point about Sony has always been that they tend to take a punt on this "possible" cases rather than doing the standard corporate drone concept of "doesn't look like something we've done before".
As the recently departed (as in dead) chairman said of the Walkman "if we'd asked focus groups we'd never have made it". They've also almost not invented CDs almost didn't get into the console market etc etc etc.
Sony are the company that doesn't kick itself years later saying "damn we though of that why didn't we try it".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I think what is interesting is that the flat-fee model rewards playing a lot -- I guess these companies have balanced out server loads with making sure the game is popular. More people playing for long periods of time = better word of mouth, happier players, more $10-15/m in the future.
For the record, I only ever played Ultima Online and I think I got to be a Noble Master Warrior, all on a friend's account and PC. I played so much I made him fail freshman comp sci and drop out of school. So beware! Don't let me play Star Wars, say, at your work, or you'll be fired!
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Sony didn't invent the CD, Phillips did.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103443/
Well, where I work we had this crazy idea to translate everything to Klingon to try to make it to the slashdot front page (free advertisement). We never did it though :)
True warriors use the Klingon Google
Blizzard is on the other side of the spectrum in terms of how they make profit. They initially charged $60 for Warcraft III.
It reportedly sold one million copies, which means roughly $60 million - about as much as Verant makes in a year with Everquest.
If Blizzard plans to sell Worlds of Warcraft, their massively multiplayer version of Warcraft for about the same retail price, they've got a huge cash cow waiting for them, especially with the current trends of higher monthly pricing for MMORPGS - from $10 to $12.95.
(Assuming they can get it out before the market becomes stuffed with major contenders such as Star Wars, Everquest 2, and Asheron's Call 2)
It gets worst then that, according to various studies I have seen hard-core players tend to just focus on a single game. When they are done with that one they move on, and only rarly go back.
So for most of theses new games they are going to have to focus on the non-hardcore gamer. This will make it interesting to watch just to see how many of them will be willing to pay a monthly fee, and how long they will be willing to pay it.
989 Studios actually started in 1995, working on a project called 'Turret Syndrome' - a tank-combat RPG. In 1996 they shifted to work on a MMORPG concept - Everquest.
They completed Everyquest in just 3 years time, at double the initial budget. $7 million dollars.
About a year after releasing Everquest, 989 was asked to provide copies of marketing research they did before deciding to go ahead with the project. They admitted that they didn't do any research, because if they had, they would not have been able to justify even making the game.
This is just natural selection at work.
If he did not play everquest he would have died for another 'cause' and probably still not because he was just mentally sick
Sorry.
This becomes much more of an issue as the market becomes riddled with next-generation MMO-Games (I believe we're at the 3rd or 4th gen. right now).
The big three used to be Asheron's Call, Everquest, and Ultima Online. More recently there are challengers such as Anarchy Online, Dark Ages of Camelot and that one space-age MMORTS game. While all have acheived a significant user base due to its hype, they don't seem to have the stability that the "big 3" still manage to maintain.
I've played all three of the big 3, and it is truly difficult to balance between even two of them, playing 8-10 hours daily.
Getting back to the original point - the upcoming MMOers will need to rely on more than hype, as can be seen by the current offerings. Hopefully they've learned the lesson by the launch of Anarchy Online.
As for the current big ones - it's slowly getting to the point where the only players are the dedicated ones, so there shouldn't be much of an "mass exodus" when new ones appear - probably more of a gradual one.
No, I have no idea why I wrote this much at 5am.
First of all, 21 is not a 'kid'.
Secondly: When one person out of hundreds of thousands commits suicide over a *game*, it's pretty apparent that this one person had other issues.
We've heard this all a hundred times before: "Dungeons and Dragons makes kids go nuts!", "Laser Tag makes kids go shoot people!", etc, etc.
If *I* were an epileptic who quit my job and move back in with my parents, I don't think there's any chance in hell they would pay for (or let) me to sit on my ass 12 hours a day in front of a device guaranteed to give me seizures. If his parents did that, what other values might they have reinforced in this guy for 21 years prior?
That assumes a static consumer base. By all accounts the number of game players are increasing and 'public acceptability' (whatever that may be) of gamers is also on the increase.
With consoles sporting internet connections and network ports, MMORPGs I'm sure will become inceasingly popular.
I'll agree that people aren't going to be playing more than 1 or 2 at a time, but with more people playing, more MMORPGs doesn't neccesarily mean less popularity per game.
50 Million potential users for SWG ? That's great, but I don't believe the Online worlds will scale well for this kind of load. What will happen is that the providers will have to make loads of different server-worlds available.
In Asheron's Call (which I've played since 1998) there are 7+1 worlds. On a great day, I don't think you'll see more than 2500-3000 players per server-world.
As for revenue, if you take the 5Million and divide it by $10 per month per user, your 50 million Star Warriors suddenly become half a million players. And say you can host 10000 players per server-world, this will still require 100 servers excluding the database servers, authentication servers and the billing servers. Your worse nigthmare with these environments is having to make database roll-backs if a large bug is discovered ingame and players took advantage of it.
CD standard was developed by Sony and Philips together.
Specs are in the Red Book. Read it and be wiser.
Blizzard won't make $60 million out of it - remember that if it costs $60 retail, it probably costs something like $40 wholesale. Once you've taken off shipping, production costs etc you're probably talking about $20/box - $20 million. subtract from that the cost of development, advertising etc and suddely that $60 million is looking a lot more like $6 million.
If Sony is raing in about $5 million/month and as the article says, only spends about 40% of that on maintainance, upkeep, development etc..., then they're putting away $36 million/year.
I'm looking forward to seeing what World of Warcraft is like though...!
And if a company wants additional over the monthly income, you can always make an Expansion Pack for $20 that is mandatory for new quests, housing and lands to explorer... ;-)
Nobody normal kills themselves just because of a computer game. That kid must have had some serious problems to start with, and it's just as likely that Everquest was a symptom, not the cause.
Next you'll be telling me GTA3 is responsible for a large portion of car theft. Jeez.
I played Anarchy Online, and I did and said stuff I could have done in a Christian chat room for free, but without the graphics.
Where is the 3DMMORPG for Leisure Suit Larry? I want something to tide me over until I get my holodeck (Thanks Scott Adams)
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
When the whole concept of MMORPGs was explained to me, I thought "Wow, this is pretty cool!" But when I was told that I would have to pony up $10 a month after paying $50 for the game, as long as CS and Battlenet are still out there, I think I'll pass.
Don't get me wrong, more power to these guys, but really, we're talking about the same mentality behind selling heroin, except that the first hit isn't free. Now if the game was a free downloadable, I might consider it. Hats off to these guys for the scam of the century, but my money is going towards something without ongoing expenses.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
Thanks for the link! That was the funniest damn thing I've seen online in a while (other than The Onion, of course). Some stupid fat fuck computer geek loser offs himself because of some damn game! That's pretty damn hilarious!
Any death is tragic, any death. Are we to now limit our lives because of some that are irresponsible and undisciplined? Look at automobile fatalaties, should we all walk (it would do us fatties some good :)
I don't think that saying anything related to your statement is fair or accurate, as it implies that the existence of the game killed that kid. While sickenly enough it might testify to the power of interactive gaming, the reality is that it did not _cause_ any harm (the game that is). Plus, we are not talking about anything that is inherantly dangerous in and of itself. You take motorcrossing, that is rather dangerous but many do it (it's loads of fun). You have your skydiving, skateboarding, baseball, softball, swimming, diving, hiking, camping, etc.
I think you are making the same mistake many of the gray haired gentlemen on the hill make, that of confusing something new with being a totally new idea instead of a new implementation. Even once we get full immersion (VR and the like) with full sensory i/o, that will be just a new implementation.
The real problem with ideas as yours are that it also implies that humans are incapable of thinking for themselves and acting in their best interest. Perhaps what we should all focus on is teaching our youth the lost art of responsibility and accountability that the baby boomers sold out for orgies and drugs. When a society trully cherishes the individual above all else, then as a consequence it will fight harder to protect the individual. The individual will be stronger (sort of a learned social darwinism) and synergistically add to the strength of the whole society. However if we sell our individuality for rhetoric, sound bites and temporary convenience then we become like the sheep who is stalked by the wolf. The sheep better hope that shepard can be all places at all times.
I seem to remember a case where a mother sued MTV over Beavis and Butthead because of Beavis's constant infatuation with fire (more often the word than anything he himself did). one of her kids set fire to the house and died along with a brother and the remaining brother had severe inhalation and burn damage. Sadly for the kids (and this sets a precedence), the children were left unsupervised OFTEN like this while the mother was either trolling for that week's latest boyfriend, or was busy testing the mattresses with said boyfriend in another room. An avid smoker and drinker, there was not a place in the house that lighters, cigarettes and highly flamable spirits were not easily accessable. The children, whom never should have been allowed to watch the show in the first place, had a short history of near arson accidents before. However that stopped not the flagrant negligence of the gold digging demon that was their mother. Some day she will wake up in her cozy bed, in her well equiped bedroom which overlooks her swimming pool in the lush neighborhood all bought for by the MTV winnings. She will wake up and scream until someone stops her. She will scream because it will dawn on her what a terrible monster she is.
However, back to earth now. The point is self reliance and responsibility. The game is no more at fault for anything like this, than is the drugs at fault for the addict.
Someone buys Everquest, and at first they love it to death. They play and play until they get sick and tired of it. They spent $40 on the game and bought maybe 3 months of play time. That's a total of close to $80. Now, $150-$200 is, I admit a high number, so lets take the bar down to $100 for a game. You pay $20 more than you would for a "regular" MMORPG but if you decide you really like it and play it for a long time, it's really worth the money. Plus if it is a great game the company is going to make a profit off retail sales.
CBNobi writes,
Blizzard is on the other side of the spectrum in terms of how they make profit. They initially charged $60 for Warcraft III.
It reportedly sold one million copies, which means roughly $60 million - about as much as Verant makes in a year with Everquest.
Even without having monthly fees Worlds of Warcraft could be hugely successful if Blizzard only charged $80-$100 for the game.
-Tolerate my intolerance
However, I have noticed that IMHO, persistent world games are released half (or less) baked. This can be a QA issue and/or content. It seems the working strategy is to release a partially completed product so that you can recoup some costs while building up a following (this is the hope at least), while further development is touted as 'additional content' and modifications. Sure it is nearly impossible to balance a game until it really goes live, so I am not really referring to that. (although like many other software products, it is better to produce a well designed and robust system that can better adapt internally and externally (meaning programming changes) as well as design the SYSTEM to be more 'realistic' in its modelling of real world adaptations and balancing) Visiting the many forums of these games, you find that while you have the assortment of fanboys and trolls the normal folk have issues with the system as a whole. I believe it falls under the catagory of 'better to spend more now and save later.' It seems to me at least that often, the designers take short cuts in the name of expediency and cost cutting, that ends up costing much more when the very innevitable changes are required. (DAOC is a perfect example of this, they seemed to forget all knowledge of what has been learned to date about MMOG's and made many poor design decisions). Think about car manufacturing. If the designers made a less standard (if only by their internal definition) car that was less modular and adjustable and merely hacked it together, then that would indeed save a lot of initial cost. However, how much more will that design cost in the mid to long term when you factor in things like customizations, retoolings required for various packages (perhaps they want to make a 4x4 model), fixes to the design and then ultimately quality for the customer. If the customer pays for a vehicle that does not work reliably, then they will loose business. If the vehicle is so unreliable as to cause accidents, then they will now have more bills to pay from the litigation... and more bad publicity. Then what about next years model. Can they reuse this years design as a starting point? Probably not if it is poorly designed (except as a lessons learned).
Other costly factors could be the growing trend of dead weight inside the companies. Management that absorbs tremendous resources while producing very little except frustration, inconsistency, and a destruction of team work and collaboration. Much like a cancer in the body, these management tumors seem to always take more blood and internal nutrients (resources) that since are not finite, must be starved from working areas of the body, like brain, muscle, GI, bone, etc. The result is a body that functions less than it should and could possibly die. However, this model is inaccurate becuase the brain (parts of it) and endocrine system are the bodies decision makers and they probably did not create (hire) the cancer. So that means it is even stupider when these organizations willingly hire those, and create a fostering culture, that only destroys itself from the inside.
Imagine if your body wanted to get some more oxygen to a particular area. Well through the magic of biology it increases blood flow in the area and perhaps changes the chemistry a bit to be more conducive to 02 exchange in that region. What about signatories though. What if the body used the mindless bureacracy of many organizations. We would never live past birth (which creates an intersting paradox I suppose). Sure many bureacrats will get angry and defend their policies, yet when they do so they themselves create a paradox. They claim to have those policies for a particular reason (the spirit behind the rules if you will) yet if confronted on the gross negligence those policies produce _FOR_ said reason, they ignore it and say 'nothing is perfect.' (reminds me of many voters) Nothing is perfect, that is true... but are we to always make excuses for processes simply because we are too lazy to change them. What if the airports said, 'nothigns perfect' and never tried to improve security. They would just sit by while armed terrorists boarded the planes, all because it would be too much trouble to change the policy.
Anyway, to end my rant, I will just say that if I was a major stock holder of a company that produced these games I would be very intersted in an internal audit of the company to find out where the innefficiency was. While often it is the lower end workers that are let go, the irony is that the decision makers that often caused the problems the company has (and are the cause of the layoffs of course) are kept. Isn't that unwise? Government and large corporations have become a haven for stupidity, waste, and inefficiency in a way that totally reverses social darwinism. The higher up in the chain you go, the more your stupidity will effect. It would be better to prune from the top as that will have the effect of setting a good example to follow. As it is, you learn from the bottom that it is not hard work or competence that is cherished as much as BS'ing skills and the ability to confuse and hide your stupidity with an array of buzzwords and paperwork.
Would you deprive hundreds of thousands of people of years of safe entertainment, and thousands of people of employment, and millions of investors of a good return (for providing the entertainment and the jobs) just on the off-chance that this incident could have been prevented?
I wouldn't.
If too many people make _your_ choice, life's going to be a lot less worth living for the rest of us who don't have Shawn Wooley's problems.
The article notes that the consumer electronics market profit margin is around 1% and the online game profit margin is around 40%. That means to match the profit from 5 million in profit from online games, you have to sell 200 million in personal electronics, a month. 200 million in electronics sales in a month is a lot.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
I've played all three of the big 3, and it is truly difficult to balance between even two of them, playing 8-10 hours daily.
What?! You play a game for 10 hours a day? As a habit?! Good god, man.
I can't believe you ponder the difficulty of "balancing between two games" like pondering the difficulty between balancing work and family.
I remember years ago when the very first Sim City came out. I thought it was great game. I wasted too much time on it. I realized once that had spent 7 hours in one sitting playing that game. I deleted the game from my system and haven't been a game player since.
But, holy shit, to repeatedly play any game, or any number of games for 8-10 hours a day, strikes me as dysfunctional. Is this typical for gamers? How do you get anything else done?
This post sounds like a flame or a troll, but it's not. That post just threw me for a loop.
Software Wars
The kid who died because of playing EverQuest? Link [jsonline.com] Shawn Wooley, we miss you! RIP!
He died because he had massive psychological and physical problems. The article you linked to also explains that his mother basically just wanted to find out what his last moments (he spent them on EQ) where like, and whether other players (whose screen names she found in his notes) might have driven him into suicide. A game cannot make you commit suicide and it cannot make you mentally ill. The poor guy has had a lifelong history of brain chemistry problems. Given his mental state he could very likely not distinguish between EQ/chat and the real world (at least at times). People like that should not be interacting with others over the internet AT ALL, or at least only when supervised.
I think people are getting sick of paying monthly fees and many poeple won't play a game just because the fact of a monthly fee. It seems to be a mindset.
I do see you point though. As much as we would like companies not to charge a monthly fee they will keep doing it just because of the money involved. I guess I will just have to keep dreaming of a day when MMORPG's will be a one time buy sorta thing....
-Tolerate my intolerance
We gamers usually just get bad sleep. I usually play for at least 3 hours a day, every day. I'll play till 1am and get up at 5:30am for work. Then I work a full 8 hours, go spend some time with my girlfriend (OMGROFL a nerd with a girlfriend), then I go home and play games.
One of the reasons software companies like subscriptions (besides the huge profit margin), is that it's a regular monthly income. With the traditional release cycle, there's a massive influx of money when a game is released that slowly trickles off -- making it hard for the accountants to budget, and putting pressure on the development team to speed up the next release.
Income from a monthly subscription isn't going to change drastically -- barring technical problems and expansion packs. The accountants and game designers can make long-term plans with more security: they have a "guaranteed" revenue stream. It's a win-win scenario: accountants get a regular revenue stream (and profit!), and game designers can take their time on a game and make it as excellent (and addictive) as possible. The only people who lose are the customers stuck paying over $120/year for a game.
It's not typical, but it's not unusual either.
:)
I played EverQuest, and then moved onto Dark Age of Camelot. I don't play anything these days, because they're too addicting, and I love my wife and life more than MMO gaming.
But I knew people who played EverQuest for years. On weekdays they typically spent 4-8 hours playing (the minute they got home from work until they passed out from exhaustion, probably), and weekends were sometimes 12-14 hours. One guy had 300 days of play time into one of his EQ characters (he had many). Think about that... seven thousand two hundred HOURS played on that single character!
I don't know about EQ, but with Asheron's Call it's not pure profit, as there is staff involved in creating the monthly online content. This is also what makes the game so much more fun and addictive, it's not just getting eXperience Points and 'OnlineCurrency' (pyreals), but new quests...
This is what pissed me off about UO. It used to be 18 or older requirements. Now it's just listed as Teen.
I swear to god it drives me nuts! You get assholes at all ages but damn if I have to see another player named "AzZRapEr" I'm going to yarf!
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
The article gave a false impression of what the future holds for MMORPGs, by focusing on the success of Everquest. Yes, this genre is coming out of it's infancy and there is potential there, however you have to keep in mind that these are still games. And if it's a poor game, it will not sell well and it will not succeed. i.e. Anarchy Online from Funcom, one of the newest MMORPGs, has failed. The company had to close down their other divisions in order to keep the game running longer.
I think EQ's success has to do more with timing than anything else. They came into the scene right at it's sweet point. Nobody else had a 3D MMORPG out there and Ultima Online, The Realm, and Meridian59 had already paved the road of making the public aware for this type of game. Had EQ not snatched most of the players 6 month before Asheron's Call was released, we could be very well to this day be reading articles on how Asheron's Call is the #1 MMORPG.
SageMadHatter
Who are we kidding here? Remember when Star Wars was cool? (I mean, at least cooler than Star Trek?) There are probably about 40 people in the world who give a shit about the Jedi knight thesis paper Lucas has decided to put on the silver screen. Meanwhile, every bored housewife from Florida to Washington seems to be on Everquest. So...how the hell can you say (yet another) Star Wars game is going to be bigger than something already universally known as EVERCRACK?
Why would I want to play 1984, when I can live it for free? Just rename it to 'George Bush's 1984', it's a little more accurate.
I won't play EQ, SWG, UOL, or any other MMPORG. Don't encourage the giant corporations! The pay-to-play, listen, watch, and do mentality is going to come back to bite you in the ass.
The RIAA and MPAA are hard at work getting this subscription model to work for them. You are a dollar sign. Here is another quote from the article.
"Would you believe we've generated over $1 million in revenue simply from moving characters?" Smedley marvels.
Sure, this kind of stuff will fade as more MMPORGS appear. The $$$ required to play will become less and less thanks to competition between the companies. For now, you're going to see this:
Last April, when Sony raised the monthly subscription price 31 percent to $12.95, it hardly lost a player. In fact, Smedley says the game continues to add 12,000 players a month.
Anything I have to pay to use/see/hear AFTER I buy it, is not going to get a fscking cent from me.
A cheap bastard for over 30 years and counting. :P
I find MMPORPG's really annoying. I find the people annoying, I find the experience annoying, and I find paying for the annoyance annoying.
I loved EQ for the first 3 months of play, but realized I just don't have the time to focus on 'levelling' and after accomplishing my first big quest and getting a nift item, I realized everyone will do that quest, kill that monster, get that item. My actions don't change the world one iota.
So I gave up and waited for DAoC. It at least allowed the world to be affected through the PvP/realm vs realm option, which was a cool concept. I played, found a group of people to play with who played in character and didn't metagame -- but of course they all played 4-6 hours a day while I could only play 4-6 hours a week. Thus they quickly increased in level and I didn't, which means I couldn't join them on group adventures because I wouldn't get any xp.
Now we come to Neverwinter Nights which so far is exactly what I've always wanted. I can create the world, I can play in the world with other people, and our actions can change the world. And I don't have to be annoyed by yet another meaningless online wedding/funeral/whatever.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Finally a subject where I feel I can safely contribute. :)
;)
:)
:)
;)
I've spent a few years in the MMP (Massively Multi Player) arena so I think I know my way around. As founder and CEO of Nevrax, where I initiated the Ryzom RPG and the NeL technological platform, I've had plenty of time to reflect on the state of this industry.
First let me say that MMPs are an entirely different class of video games. The technology, the gameplay dynamics, almost everything is different. It just happened that the game industry got its hands on them first because it had the closest ties, but it could have been otherwise.
The most important thing to remember is that MMPs have a radically different business model.
In the traditional game industry you create a game, put it a box, then try to move as many boxes you can in the few month the public stays interested. It's a product oriented business.
The typical business plan for a studio is:
1- Convince publisher to finance the production of a game
2- Try to make a small profit in the process
3- Make some royalties (maybe) if the game is hugely successful
4- Start all over again
This is not very different from what goes on in the music business or in the movie business. Basically to make it simple, the author/studio gets a lousy deal from the publisher/distributor who gets to reap all the benefits.
The MMP industry could - it's not there yet, but it will eventually - be very different.
An MMP producer creates a virtual environment, then sells access to this environment. It's a service oriented business.
A simplified business plan for an MMP producer could be:
1- Create a Massively Multi Player Game
2- Make the client software as easily accessible as possible
3- Sell access to the MMP on a recurrent basis
4- Profits!
5- Keep improving your MMP over time > expand user base > more profits!
This would be the equivalent of a musician cutting the middle man and selling his music straight on the Internet. With one enormous advantage: An MMP producer has no fear of having the client software copied since all that does is expand his potential user base. Whatever you do, you *have* to pay if you want to get the experience.
Which is, IMHO, the reason why so many people are whining about the subscription fees. It's not that it's too expensive (12$/month for 20H of entertainment time in average is cheap compared to say, movies), it's just that they can't freeload anymore.
My guess is, in the coming years, there will be a real distinction appearing between traditional studios (doing regular PC and console games) and companies building MMPs.
Now back to the current game industry.
The hardest part with the model I just described is making "step 1" happen while still retaining the control of your creation. That, from my painful experience, means avoiding to be financed by either game publishers or vulture capitalists, as they will find a way to wrest control from you. The problem, as it has been said before, is that making a professional MMPs is expensive.
Sure, they are ways to get the numbers down if you know the trade secrets, but it's still going to be expensive.
That's where Free Software can help.
My initial idea for Nevrax was that Free Software and MMPs were a perfect match.
You get all the benefits of Free Software, but keep a strong business model where you can avoid having a competitor piggyback on your work as you stay in control of all the "data" (art assets mostly).
One of the big cost associated to running an MMP is due to maintenance. Also, having a robust tech on launch helps a lot. Those are things that Free Software can help alleviate tremendously. This is why we created NeL. A Free Software engine for MMPs.
As an added benefit, now that I am starting a new company out of the hands of the VCs, I can freely reuse all the tech we did at Nevrax. My software development costs just got divided by a factor of 10. Imagine that...
And the best thing is: you can do it to!
One last thing I would like to say to people who think that Everquest & co are boring and ugly: you are right. But real communities formed around these games, and that's what is truly fascinating about MMPs. As time goes, you will see MMPs that are more and more geared towards fostering these online communities, and less and less "games" in the sense that we understand it today. Just because you don't see the point of playing today, doesn't mean that you won't see the point of playing tomorrow...
And I know I'll be working hard to make that happen !
Don't forget to subtract the costs of battle.net from those figures. That's a huge cash drain that doesn't directly bring in any income, it's supported solely by box sales.
I think that's why Blizzard is making World of Warcraft. It'll keep battle.net funded.
But, holy shit, to repeatedly play any game, or any number of games for 8-10 hours a day, strikes me as dysfunctional. Is this typical for gamers? How do you get anything else done?
Let's see, on my average day I wake up between 6 and 7 AM, have a cigarette and a glass of juice while I scan CNN to make sure the world didn't blow up today (or that something isn't happening that would mean I don't have to go to work). I then drive to work where I stay until about 4PM. If I don't have to do any shopping I get home around 4:30 at the latest, open a beer and look around to see if anything needs to be done (dishes, trash, cleaning), all of which can usually be done by 5 or 5:30, which leaves 7-10 hours until I even have a chance of getting to sleep, regardless of whether or not I'm actually doing anything. Then again, this was the case when I didn't play any PC or console games (though, admittedly, that was all of maybe 3 months in high school). If I don't play games during that time, I read, watch TV/movies, write software, or just 'hang out' online in IRC/IM/etc while I surf the web and listen to music. Hell, the last woman I dated before leaving San Diego was someone I met online.
Realistically, my biggest issue is the fact that work takes up 10 hours of the day due to the commute and lunch hour (which I rarely even take for lunch, but I have to be there during business hours), and only pays for 8 of them, which is exactly why I prefer to work from home whenever I can (besides the fact that it's much easier for me to sleep during the day than at nite, and I work more efficiently in the evening/nite hours).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
oh, and let's not even talk about the weekend, which can really skew the daily average. Seriously, even if I go out and spend all day doing something in the outdoors, I can still pull a 12+ hour gaming session when I get home without much more than my normal caffeine intake.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Ok... there is much confusion in this day and age on Margin / Markup.. Let's discuss Margin first.
Gross margin is (revenue - cost ) / revenue.
With this basic formula in mind, let's examine the components. Revenue is relativitly easy to understand. Revenue = Money coming in the door.
Cost: This is where it gets tricky. Usually its the cost to provide the service, not run the entire business.
With the above definitions in mind we run into Net Margin.
Net Margin is ((revenue -cost) / revenue)-Other expenses). Other expenses can add up, although a 40% margin is nothing to sneeze at. For example, most companies pay SG&A (Sales, General, and Administration) Usually SG&A works out to 5%, or maybe more depending on the comp plans for the sales folks. Don't forget taxes, insurance, and other factors that are not in the cost (HR, internal systems, etc..) Remember cost is Servers, developers, bandwidth, hw / sw, etc.... not the cost to run the complete business.
So it's not a 40% of PURE PROFIT. After everything else they probably net 15 - 20%.. Which is AWESOME... don't get me wrong.
I'd love to own a business that netted 15% or more. Warren Buffet has said: "
"It's technical in a psychometric kind a way" -- C. Parish
normally the games come with one month of free service to get you started.
After that, they generally try and lock you into 1 month, 3 month, or 6 month contracts (giving you discounts for the longer terms).
~NullPointerException
About those names scribbled in his notes:
I know they are not the names of zones or items, and no one has to write down the names of their online friends to remember them.
Most EQ players keep a list like this. It's called an 'idiot list'.
I will almost guarantee that the names are of people he considered to be jerks (muscling in on his camps, or had ripped him off on trades, etc.). He probably wrote down their names so that he could either warn his friends to avoid them, or bash them on a discussion board later.
They probably didn't know him from Adam. So, I don't see what would be learned by talking them them short of "It was *our* pull, he was KSing *us*". They might not have anything to do with his final hours. Indeed - why make notes to remember someone if they've just driven you to suicide?
Your figures are wrong. Sony, EA and every other MMORPG vendor have had terrible trouble turning interest into profits.
About six months ago, Sony On-line Entertainment *laid-off* almost half its staff. Hardly the act of a company making too much money from on-line gaming. At EA, Ultima Online 2 has been canned.
Video game vendors have no experience in running server centers with guaranteed up-times. They need to constantly patch offerings to prevent cheating (Sega's PSO has reputedly been spoilt by hacks which allow players to crash other players' boxes.)
--- My dad's political betting
What I would add is this: first, there are different mixtures if community and game that should be recognized, IMHO. This is an aspect of not just the game but the type of gamer. Many really do play for the community. There are many online chat communities that have an almost occult following, yet there is no interactive gaming. Look at the old BBS's. They added some games as afterthoughts, and when they did good it was usually because of a well designed (or just luck) integration and use of said community into the game itself.
Which leads to my second comment. I feel that many of these games are a horribly made collage instead of a well engineered system of parts. While it is not new for this (movies and single player games) method of plugging in something as an afterthought in the hopes of attracting more people, the aspect of community is just now beginning to dawn on many designers' minds. Again... my opinion. (I feel I have to say that because of lurking trolls and other over sensitive folk :)
To date, I have felt like these games are basically a graphical click fest game, overlaid with a chat room. That is great for many, but what about a true immersive world? Instead of a lame situation of "Hey, lets go raid Dungeon X" to which thousands of raids have already happened, along with current raids yet the environment never seems to acknowledge this, how about raiding a group of orcs that are players (most of them maybe)? They will definitely react to continual raids by dying, leaving or changing tactics like fortifying and having patrols.
Basically, the problem I see is that the MMG's created to date are entirely too inflexible, limited and predictable so as to not work with the community aspect. It seems all the focus has been placed on things like shield symbols, colors of clothes and little cute floaty name things that tell what 'Guild' you are in. However, what about making a real community? I think that making it more natural and cutting back on the 'safety net' of unrealistic protections for players and their property is the main problem. Imagine if you will a mountain that is found to have rich veins of gold and high quality iron. Soon, many miners will settle there. However, where will they keep their stuff when selling unless a trade and logistics system is setup. Those trade carts sure are easy picking for evil characters/npc's! So they will need guards, or even better clear the surrounding areas. Soon, depending on choices and the environment an entire town will emerge that could become a kingdom based on its control of arms and trade in the region.
Now compare this situation to what has been presented mostly to date. You have a very fake system of housing to where once you plop that house down, it invulnerable to harm, intrusion, etc. You just eliminated some naturally occurring quests and fun because of that. Sure you might have some static NPC that besides never leaving the same spot EVER and repeating their dialog/mantra endlessly without change will give a fake quest to find the 'orcish burgler' and return his magic gem of village shielding. Yet when you perform this mission, you are given a coin or two and NOTHING CHANGES. You will come across that orc later, as will someone else.
Making a truly dynamic questing system is hard, but they make it harder because they hard code it all. Instead of just feeling for the game environment, the quests should integrate with it and be a part of the change. Quests should be based perhaps on economy, or security, or such, not hard coded to one particular 'named critter.'
Well that is my rant and raving on this, forgive me if it is too odd or too long.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
You're right about EQ being terribly unfun to anybody not hooked to it and how it's like crack to most of the regular players.
My personal addiction to EQ lasted 2.5 years - from launch in March of '99 to 9/11 of last year. Yes 9/11 was the event that made me realize what EQ really is: a banal, empty escape from reality.
I played on Mithaniel Marr, which is home to 'Afterlife', one of the most powerful guilds in the game. I wasn't in AL, but I used to visit Afterlife's website just to check out their accomplishments.
Afterlife is for hardcore addicts only, the degree of their addiction must be mind boggling considering most of them play every single day 6 to 8 hours a day(or more). They literally have thousands of hours 'invested' in addiction, and it wouldn't surprise me if some of their characters had a 'played' time of 300 real world days or more.
True to form they held a raid on the evening of 9/11, as nothing was going to keep them from their addiction, not evening the most horrifying attack on this country since Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on 12/7/41.
Something about that really disgusted me, as it made it painfully clear for once and for all that EQ is an addiction that's just as harmful as an addiction to alcohol or drugs.
I never mentioned this to anyone on the discussion boards. I just quietly came to the conclusion that for the sake of my own health and welfare I needed to leave the game.
Initially I considered just taking a break for a couple of weeks, but I never played EQ again after 9/11. In early October I logged on for the last time and gave all of my items and wealth to a couple of my closest in game friends. Once my characters were stripped I said my goodbyes and bid the world of Norrath farewell. I immediately camped out and deleted my characters(56 War, 56 Shm, 46 Mnk) to make sure I wouldn't be tempted to come back.
It wasn't easy, but it turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made.
Its been nearly a year since I left behind the world of Norrath. I don't have too many regrets since I always had a love/hate relationship with the game. In the end I decided the negative aspects outweighed the positive and that it just wasn't worth wasting my time.
Since then I still occasionally play computer games, like Civ III, Medal of Honor, or RTCW, but they don't take over my life like the way EQ did. I started riding my bike again in March for fun/exercise, which helped my lose about 30 lbs of mush that I put on while playing EQ. I'm generally much more social with my friends in the real world, and I've even started dating again. I read a lot more and find it much easier to think clearly now that my mind isn't in a constant EQ induced haze.
Being away from EQ has made me realize that reality is infinitely much more interesting and bizarre than anything I ever did in Norrath. Addictive MMORPGS such as EQ are ultiamtely a poor substitute for 'reality', 'community' or 'relationships'.
This more than anything is the reason why I think MMORPGS will always be a niche category. Americans are already overworked and suffering from a society fraying at the seams. The last thing we need is a mass escape from reality that encourages people to once and for all drop out from society.
Will most people will realize that it just isn't worth it?
I'm not so sure..
Hmmmm, but you are posting to slashdot. This implies that you have a computer (yes, you could be posting from a public machine, but if you read /. enough to post, you probably do own one). Computers require electricity. *GASP* You're paying to use something after you bought it!
And, while I'm at it... how did you get your computer? Did you happen to drive somewhere in a car? Did you have to put gasoline in it? OMG! You had to pay for something after you bought it!!!!
Sorry, you probably also have an internet connection of some sort... which you need to make use of your modem, which is yet again, paying to use something you already own.
Yeah, it's called a "service". If you don't want services that interact with other humans (and thus usually cost money for their time), you need to be Self-Sufficient (TM). For examples of this, you could check out http://www.amish.net/ -- although that is itself a rather amusing contradiction and example of yet more interdependant services.
Hmmm, perhaps being a lone trapper in the Canadian wilderness would get you away from those pesky "services"? Let's look at http://www.ranger1.ca/CNTA/issues.html AHHHH! They have a comitte, which means human interaction.. and... NOOOOO! $5/year membership fees.
There is, at least ONE thing you can buy which will not entail any ongoing service contracts or other fees. A cemetary plot. Or is it????
Ok so basically your calling me a lier, well fuck you.
2 0t h_Feb.htm (this is actually the player implemtation of the bug(/corpse doesnt fix it as they say, you just loose your body))
check:
http://www.magecompendium.com/News/Week_Ending_
or try seaching google for everquest wall bug , I meet alot of people EQ who have had problems with the wall bug.
On the close-to-level-up "feature", I cant find any documentation on this issue. But, I know alot of people who still plays EQ. Which all agree with me that mobs frenzies more when you are 1-2 blue bubbs from leveling up.
The idea of sieging is great, I think many will have tons of fun with Shadowbane. I also think that number of realms having impact on the realm is great (and especially the artifacts), but it was poorley implemented here. Due to the problems the dev's have with fixing or adding 'small' elements, it is obvious that the entire technical and non-technial (gameplay) design is flawed.
I remember about 15 years ago, I saw a tape player deck that did this neato trick to reverse directions. See the front of the deck there was a cylindar in the middle so that you could see through its plastic the tape you were jamming too. When you hit the reverse, after a bit of an audible pop and a noticable wait, it jumped out and flipped around. Very cool. However, this trinket costs entirely too much to justify its purchase so it died out soon thereafter.
The lesson was that while an eye catcher initially, people (often subconsciously) remembered that it was a TAPE DECK they were after. Had that feature been secondary to good sound, quality interface, etc, then it might have done better. As it was, the flippy thingy was the entire purpose of this deck, the sound was crappy, the price was hefty, there were limited i/o ports and connection types, plus it was heavy and big as a hog.
DAOC... how the hell can it make sense to say "we are immersive and you have a real impact on the world with RvR" yet your char is a pale cookie cutter that is limited by the uber-level system they have. You have no real impact on the world. What I wanted to see was a marauding band of trolls to loose upon Hibernia and slaughter the stupid NPC's that just stand there day in and out. Wipe clean the map and then setup camp.... oh wait, you cant do that! There is no incentive for real conquest.
Here.
Nobody normal kills themselves just because of a computer game.
Yes, Woolley had some problems. The question, and the reason behind the lawsuit, is whether any of the players Woolley interacted with encouraged or drove him to suicide.
No, GTA3 probably isn't responsible for an increased number of carjackings. However, it does NOT tell you, the player, to go out and rip off cars. It encourages the "game character" to do so. GTA3 and other games rely on the ability of the player to distinguish between the "player" and the "game character".
In EQ there is no clear distinction. It is RPG, so the "player" and the "game character". Some people really role-play. But many do not. Their "game character" becomes an ideal version of themselves. The player basically becomes the character, and there is no distinction between the two.
I've told countless people to "f**k off" or "go sr**w yourself", not as an role-playing from my character to another character, but directed at the other player. Did someone annoyed with Woolley tell him "Why don't you kill yourself" or something along those lines?
That's what the lawsuit is about. In this, EQ isn't the symptom, nor really the cause. Woolley's mom sued to try to find out if there were any players who encouraged or even drove Woolley to kill himself. To find out who he might have associated with online. I think it's a fruitless search, but a mom has to try.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
No. At least in the launch product, Gungans are not a playable race (although they will be present in the game as NPCs; whether you can encounter Jar-Jar is unknown -- heck, whether he's still ALIVE during the time period SWG exists in, is unknown).
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
If I buy a CD, will I pay the RIAA everytime I listen to it?
If I buy a painting, will I pay the artist everytime I look at it?
If I buy a book, will I pay Simon & Shuster everytime I read it?
The answer? A resounding, echoing NO.
As for as gasoline, electricity, and internet access, yes, they cost money, and yes, I can't use my car, computer, browser effectively without them. Of course, this is a circular argument.
I was referring to the subscription model of entertainment/content that is "hot" right now, and will become a pain in the ass when/if enough people migrate to it. But thanks for the www.amish.net tip BTW - I may have to buy a new hat.
I've been playing eq since it came out, and I've never seen that "close-to-level-up feature". nor have I heard it from anyone in my guild. We're not calling you a liar. We're just demanding some sort of proof.
The above was the response of the designers of Magic: The Gathering when I jokingly called them pushers.
They said it in unison; obviously a well-rehearsed line.
Stefan Jones
Big money:
MMORPG
Dune 2 with Multiplayer
Instant messaging
MMORTS(not made yet)
Online auctions
Online personals
Online scams
all big money makers. Too bad I tried to make the first MMORPG solo >:) DOesnt' work so well
God spoke to me
Now if I had 30,000 books, and 3,000 CDs, it may be a different story. 'Course if I had all that, I'd be reading and listening to CDs, rather than posting to /. ;)
...because that's the funniest comment from a game designer I've ever heard. I'll have to remember that one.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
well, as i said. I cant seem to find any documentation/proof.
e atures/ faq_pages/faq_7.jsp#713
In my experince, enemies frenzy you more when you are getting really close to leveling. I might just be me(and the otherpeople i know), but as i wrote in my previous post. I meet other people who agreed that enemies seems more willing to attack when you are close to leveling. But ok, lets just say im wrong.
Though i must admit you all have such a hard time beliving me, I mean look at some of the features varant has implemented EQ. Like mobs spotting you though a castle wall or something, and then just steps rigth trough it to kick your butt, THIS is a common know "problem".
quote from this chat: http://www.everlore.com/news/eq_chat.asp
Ledskof: Aradune-- Are you working on greater stability for the planes, such as makng it so monsters dont attack through walls, or did you mean just greater stabiliity in general?
Aradune: led: better stability yes, monsters attacking through some walls will never go away
this is how its supposed to work:
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/f
And I could go on and on, like it costs like 60$ to move a character from one server to another. Varant is just full of bs.
Do i hate EQ? No, not at all(I do hate varant though).
Could i play EQ again? Yes, when Varant changes its way of doing business. This may very well happen when Starwars Galaxies comes out and take a big fat marked share =D
Have you tried the Phantom Menace video game? The second level is great.. it's the Gungan city, and using Obi Wan you can cut down every single last Gungan citizen if you like, women and children too. Great stress relief.
;)
One catch: The only Gungan you CAN'T kill is Jar-Jar... the purpose of the mission is to resuce him. Well.. you CAN kill him, but then you fail the mission. Over and over and over again.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
I know a lot of people who have been playing EverQuest for a really long time now. Personally, the only MMORPG I'm interested in playing is Earth and Beyond. I've been working on the Beta and it's bloody awesome. If any of you out there are Jen'quai Defenders and want to group up and go hunting, you let me know. I'll provide the Progen beat-em-up party favours. :)
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
well, I don't think anyone will disagree that verant is a money grubbing company. However keep in mind, that verant was bought out by sony (according to the article) and that verant is pretty much sony now. or "Sony Online".
Now those links you post are from Jan 2000, but more importantly is this "mob see's through walls". I sincerely doubt that they put that feature in. They more or less didn't do the work required to fix it. However, there are quite a few additions to eq that are far worse than the info you have posted in terms of addiction.
Star wars is being produced by sony, hence they may fix the technical details, but they won't stop trying to get every single dollar from you.
I play eq, but I play eq because nothing else has sparked my interest (and I've tried almost all other mmropg's) AND eq is very addictive, it also holds social bonds. Perhaps Dragon Empires will tear me away.
One MMORPG that is in beta right now, Neocron (www.neocron.com) is considering using in-game advertisements in order to generate revenue. The setting for the game is futuristic (though based on a 21st century environment), so the idea would be to have billboards in-game advertising to the target audience of the users (e.g., hardware / software manufacturers). While I'm not too keen on having my online gaming experience intruded upon by ads from AMD or NVIDIA, I might be willing to overlook the real-world intrusion if the monthly fee is lowered (or non-existent).
They had obviously been accused of pushing addictive substances before, and had rehearsed a come-back line.
Stefan
this is a very good point.
i would mod you up if i had the points.
anyone else care to? he deserves it.
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
Substitute 'Everquest' for 'Gambling' and 'Time' for 'Money' and we get...
m l
Twenty Questions
Did you ever lose time from work or school due to Everquest?
Has playing Everquest ever made your home life unhappy?
Did playing Everquest affect your reputation in the real world?
Have you ever felt remorse after playing Everquest?
Did you ever play Everquest to farm items which you could sell on eBay to pay debts or otherwise solve financial difficulties?
Did playing Everquest cause a decrease in your ambition or efficiency?
After a particularly bad series of deaths in Everquest did you feel you must return as soon as possible and win back your XP?
After you won a rare item did you have a strong urge to return and win more?
Did you often play Everquest until your free time was gone?
Did you ever cancel social activities to obtain more time for playing?
Have you ever skipped work to play Everquest?
Were you reluctant to spend your free time doing normal, non-EQ related activities?
Did playing make you careless of the welfare of yourself or your family?
Did you ever play longer than you had planned?
Have you ever played to escape worry or trouble?
Have you ever committed, or considered lying or skipping work to obtain more play time?
Did playing Everquest cause you to have difficulty in sleeping?
Do arguments, disappointments or frustrations in the real world create within you an urge to play Everquest?
Did you ever have an urge to celebrate any good fortune by a few hours of playing Everquest?
Have you ever considered self destruction or suicide as a result of your playing Everquest?
Most compulsive Everquest players will answer yes to at least seven of these questions.
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/20questions.ht
to bad they bever gave out his account info so I could have started with some cool shit.
Ave Molech Setting
I suspect this thing will have a huge churn rate. 90% of the users will drop out within a month. Remember the last time Lucas overestimated the fanaticism of his fans? 80 Billion Tons of Jar Jar Merchandise now 70% Off.
With a movie-inspired game, everybody wants to go to the places from the movie. That's going to be a problem for an MMORPG. Sure, you can have a huge number of instances of the universe (shards), but then, what's the point of having a big shared online universe? Either the world is mostly empty, the world doesn't let you go where you want to, or there are lines like Disneyland on a bad day.
Since sony had nothing to do with the publishing of EQ until the very end of production. EQ was produced by 989studios, and is continually "patched" by verant. The inital server infrastructure came from Sony, but I have no doubt that Brad et all could have found another buisness to get them off the ground.
I live in a giant bucket.
They've been paying attention to the good things in the games that have come out since EQ. An awful lot of people who could give a rat's ass about Star Wars will be trying out SWG (me, for example) because of the changes they've made to the EQ model. As for the housewives, I'm sure EQ-2 will be out soon enough. :)
~ Leilah
Actually, you're half-confused. I hear people complaining all the time that getting those last two blue bubs seems insanely difficult, but their's a simple reason. Even I'm guilty of this.
When you're that close, you'll go start attacking light-blue cons just to get a little xp. But light blues actually give so little you probably won't even notice a change in the bar. That's why people are like "I've killed 10 things and I'm barely a blue bub up!". If you're that close, calm down, get full mana, and go kill a dark blue or white con. The bug you mentioned, I've NEVER heard of anyone mentioning it. EVER.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
It was pretty good. 2:40 min show, I was impressed for a bunch of old geezers.
"It's technical in a psychometric kind a way" -- C. Parish
So it's absolutely not surprising that at least one everquest player would have killed himself. It makes no sense to blame this on the game. The fact that I haven't heard of any other suicides of everquest players (when there should be 50) makes me suspect that playing everquest is actually negatively correlated to suicide.
You Idiot, this proves nothing. Philips invented the CD, almost everybody know this, and if you care to do some real research, you will see this. Philips approached Sony, therefore, "they almost didn't invent the CD" is incorrect.
Step 1: Underpants. I mean, get people to come (this is hard)
Step 2: ?
Step 3: PROFIT!
It seems that theyget most of the money from commercials, but you can pay 5$ a month to get a few extra quests and spells. I don't plan to pay extra, but I still have good fun. Have a look at the fan page too.
granted, I don't *get anywhere* in the game because despite my time investment I may die 2 or 3 times in a row, grow frustrated, and not come back to the game for six or eight months. If I ever get some consistent time enjoying the game - that may be 'gaining levels' or finding some interesting equipment or something; then I might donate to the cause.
On the other hand, I never played EQ. Six months after it comes out and I decide I might like to play; I realize all of the people I know that play are already onto the expansion sets and have levelled extensively... and I'm not going to pay $200-300 for someone else's character in order to spend time with them.
I got DAoC a week or two after it came out and *still* was in this situation. If you want to **play**, not just super-level, then you fall behind very quickly. Roleplaying seems to be discouraged even on the RP-format servers.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
The bug you mentioned, I've NEVER heard of anyone mentioning it. EVER.
;)
The wall bug? did you follow the link?
(btw. no need to yell dude
First, thx for the link. Dragon Empires looks very cool =D
I really dont want to argue anymore over eq, so im just gonna say one last thing(im not trying to tell you "this is how it is", its just my oppinion). Maybe the wall bug is fixed now what i was "crapping" about wasnt really the one bug. But it just seemed like to me like Varant always was really fast at cleaning up the bugs that where "good" for the player(like when some mob dropped to much loot or was to easy for it con), whilest they where really slow at fixing the other bugs(which took xp from the player, i died about 6 times trying to get my corpse after being killed right out side the priestres's house in eastcommons. Everytime i came back for it, he runned straigth through the wall and kicked me in the mouth. This was partly a noob mistake, i could have gotten invised or something. but still unfair i think, wheres the realism in a chick being able to see/attack through a wall).
i guess i just dislike varant, plain and simple =D
Many forget that levels, as well as many other aspects now termed as defining Roleplaying, where merely implemented to simplify the gameplay while attempting to salvage as much realism as possible. That works great on paper. Look at how D&D evolved and branched. Many advanced sub-rule sets were adopted that really added a lot of depth to the game whilst keeping to the original rules. e.g. I played with a rather horendously 'accurate' and complicated critical hit/miss calculation method. It was great but required a lot more time and effort to implement than the core rules. Some people wrote detailed programs that would calculate this for you, but as they themselves became more complex it took a while simply to enter the correct input. I read on a forum however that there were some great programs out there that acted like DM assistants in which you fed in things like locations of items, players, monsters, etc. So since much of the data was there already the time and effort to input data was reduced. Of course there are MUDS, MOOS, etc, but those were more automated games I guess than assistants. (never played that many)
Personally, I wish the focus would be on gameplay and robust rulesets instead of graphics. Thing is, we have these lovely 3D graphics cards and great API's to make much of the rendering work easier and take off cycles from the CPU, yet the AI, immersion, etc has seemed to dwindle actually. I remember an advertisement for an early nVidia card that said, "Now you can free up your code and your processor for things like AI, gameplay and immersion" Well... I am still waiting :)
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
To tell the truth, I haven't completed the NWN module that came with the game. It didn't hold my interest. I started work right away in creating modules. I think that is the essence of what I like and why I didn't like EQ or DAoC. In both games I wanted the simple ability to be able to write a note and leave it for someone. Heaven forbid they give you the simple ability to create your own stories within the framework of their world without having to resort to out-of-game websites.
I'll be playing/building NWN for a long time, especially since there is no extra charge applied to playing and Bioware keeps coming out with new modules to play.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
I think that the first game that really is a framework that supports players' ability to create their own adventures within, will be a blockbuster. I dont just mean modules, although I love that concept. I refer to a very large game world where what you do matters as much as need be... if you are a murdering scumbag, then your rampage of death will cause either an outflux of NPC's and players (and trade, economy, etc) or will force people to bring in goons and gaurds to track you down. If the gameplay, rulesets and mechanics allow you to really be whoever you want to be then I think people will create a great virtual existence where you can do all the things you can't or won't do in RL. As it is now, designers are stuck in this mode where they see my statement of 'be anything you can be' and say, "Hey! he wants us to add more classes and extend level times." Just as NWN is (in theory at least) a platform for creating adventures with the toolsets, I wait for a game that is the equivelent platform for actual gaming and involvement.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.