Biggest Growth of MMO Titles Still To Come?

ShannonA writes "Dave Rickey examines the growth of the online RPG industry in his newest Engines of Creation article, 'Age of Discouragement?'. Based on his own analysis, and SirBruce's MMOG subscription chart, he projects that the best growth for MMORPGs is still ahead: 'In truth, we are solidly in the growth phase of our market, and our largest related markets have yet to really open up.'"

Comments

Well....duh...

[FileNotFound]

Of course the growth is still to come.

The growth will come when there are MMO games that do not involve HOURS of doing nothing. Because the devs will finally realize that doing nothing is neither intresting nor excieting.

The growth will come when there are MMO games that have fun things to do that don't get repetative after 2 days, or after 2 months or after 2 years.

The growth will come when there are MMO games that have a strong community of players supporting each other.

The growth will come when there are meaningful interactions between the players. Not "I OWNZ JOO!", not "Lets group up and XP", something deeper.

The growth will come when there are MMO with massive worlds, meaningful means of transportation and player property.

The growth will come when the PVP is meaningful and fun. Not something put in just so that highlevels could do "something".

There is currently no MMO that does this.

Everquest fails on the player property and has plenty of time sinks. Still the the most "perfect" MMORPG out there. I played it for over 2 years.

DAOC fails in the same areas as Everquest plus it lacks anything fun to do after 2 months.

Anarchy Online fails because it's more repetative than tick tack toe and lacks any purpose in high levels.

UO is dead. Lacks any real purpose other than chat once GM level is achieved.

SWG is horrid. There is NO reason what so ever to advance your char in the game. The game lacks purpose. Nothing that you do in SWG is fun for longer than 2 months. Took me 1 month to get bored of stockpiling money and buying the BEST gear out there.

PlanetSide is repetative and in no way persistant. The world needs to be far far larger. The base you capture is lost in an hour and you'll just capture it again, rinse and repeat.

I'm a MMORPG addict, well used to be. Been clean for months. It's all dull. Even Everquest can get repetative after a few years when your character has better gear than you ever thought possible and withstood challanges that seemed impossible. Once the challanges aren't so challanging, it's not fun anymore. It becomes a huge waste of time. If EQ didn't require so much time to be wasted, I'd still play.

Re:Well....duh...

[FileNotFound]

Of course everyone expects growth to come with each MMORPG release.

Each clames to be the next generation ground breaking release and each fails in some area.

There are so many MMORGPs lined up for release it's hard to keep track of them all.

Final Fantasy XI, Dragon Empires, EQ 2, WoW, Horizons, Gems of something or other...bah

I have long ago given up waiting for MMORPGs, the first months of release never tell you much about the game anyway.

Oh and to the mod who rated my original post "Troll", I suggest you go back to www.aol.com where brainless jerks like you belong.

Re:Well....duh...

[FileNotFound]

First, why would I have to use IMO? Ever? It's retarded. No shit it's my opinion, everything is an opinion, and facts are very very popular opinions.

I played DAOC the same way I played EQ. 70~ hours a week and quickly found that at high levels there was NOTHING fun to do other than PVP and that the world was TINY compared to EQ. There were other things that pissed me off, like that level is the ultimate factor. In EQ a lvl 30 could take a lvl 40 if the 30 had better gear, in DAOC gear made nowhere as much of a difference as level. To me that was absurd. Yes there were nice things, certainly the combat is very well done, but still dull in the long run.

SWG I played far more, proably in the 100 - 120 hours a week range as I played it during the summer when I go to college (Drexel = summer class winter work). I had a Bounty Hunter and found him to be totaly pointless. Sure I could do a TON of things but none were any fun. The community was nothing like EQ, the combat was horrid, the quests pathetic. Pvp was a joke. Nice things? Well the crafting system was by far the best in mainstream MMORPGS but the economy was a joke and the experience curve was enough to make ME groan. Keep in mind I'm an EQ vet so hell levels, XP Hell, level loss, time sinks etc is nothing new to me, but SWG was just horrid.

Did I get my money's worth? That depends, sure it was piss cheap entertainement. But I didn't want to play after the 2 months. EQ I still want to play today but I just don't have the time anymore. (Not to play at the level I want to anyway, as in organised guild raids every day 6pm - 1am(3am on Fri) with weekend raids Sat or Sun 1pm - 3am)

Thing is, people are looking for far more out of a MMO than a SP game. People WANT to play MMOs forever. SP they just want to finish. It's not fair to say "I paid $90 for the game and 2 months of playing. Killer deal". I'd rather say that I spent close to a $1000 (multiple accounts)on EQ and I played it for 2 years and would spend more had I the time.

Re:Well....duh...

[BarnDoorBubble]

Of course the growth is still to come.

The growth will come when there are MMO games that do not involve HOURS of doing nothing. Because the devs will finally realize that doing nothing is neither intresting nor excieting.

The growth will come when there are MMO games that have fun things to do that don't get repetative after 2 days, or after 2 months or after 2 years.

The growth will come when there are MMO games that have a strong community of players supporting each other.

The growth will come when there are meaningful interactions between the players. Not "I OWNZ JOO!", not "Lets group up and XP", something deeper.

The growth will come when there are MMO with massive worlds, meaningful means of transportation and player property. The growth will come when the PVP is meaningful and fun. Not something put in just so that highlevels could do "something".

There is currently no MMO that does this.

You got that right! I got all excited about SW:G but it turned out to be overhyped and unfinished. Even without the technical problems AO proved to be really limited. You could say exactly the same for WWII Online and a stack of other big names.

But I can think of a handful of real gems right on the horizon. A Tale in the Desert is a breath of fresh air (although no PvP which kinda sucks) and RV in particular addresses every single one of the thigns you mention. And you're starting to get real diversity instead of just the goblins'n'wands or aliens'n'lasers that we've had to put up with. I mean I'm still not even sure what There is supposed to be all about.

Basically I totally agree with the article. I think MMORPG's have gone through a teething period and are just about to experience big growth. The people that start something off always suffer from the fact that other people just keep coming along and improving on it.

Re:I know why...

[PD]

I disagree. I think there will always be games that do not require online play for a number of reasons:

1) Play at your own level. I am not a game whiz. I used to play America's Army online, but I am sick of getting sniped in the first 30 seconds. There will always be enough people out there who are so much better than I am, that it's just no fun to play.

2) Play your own game. If I want to camp, I don't need a pack of 12 year olds with foul mouths cursing at me. It's my game and I'll camp if I want to.

3) AI will get better. I know we keep hearing it, but something's got to shake loose in game AI, right? If it does, that's less reason to play against another human.

4) Cheating will always be difficult to stop.

Plenty of potential growth in other regions

[bmyers]

I found it interesting that the author's calculations were based solely on the U.S. and European market, without taking into account the Asian market.

So far, all MMO games that have been released have failed to achieve cross-over between the Western and Eastern markets. This includes MMOGs that started in the U.S and Europe, like Everquest, and MMOGs that started in Asia, like Lineage.

The true global market is probably at about 10-12% saturation with today's games, meaning we are still in the Early Adopter phase, and not yet into the Early Majority. Thus, we have 90% growth potential ahead, for any game(s) that can actually become popular in the global market.

And, of course, China is getting more wired every day. And the only profitable games in China will be online games, because console and single-player games have a 99% piracy rate there.

So, IMHO, the MMO market is still very much in it's infancy, and the best days are still far ahead of us.

One key is in creating games that appeal to both hard-core and more casual gamers (or at least casual gamers that are willing to pay for their games)
Another key is in coming up with new types of pricing models, like mini-subscriptions, group discounts, and shared subscriptions, and charging subscriptions to your phone bill.
And, of course, the games need to get better. It's time to get off the leveling treadmill!