MMO Report Tips World Of Warcraft As Leader

Thanks to VE3D for reprinting details of a new online gaming report discussing MMO trends and estimated game popularity. According to the excerpts from the Themis Group's report, online gaming will grow from $960 million revenues in 2003 to $4.10 billion in 2008, and the chart estimating "expected popularity of new persistent worlds... in descending order by projected subscriber base twelve months after launch" is headed by Blizzard's World of Warcraft, followed by Sony's EverQuest 2 and Turbine's Middle Earth Online. The report also suggests: "Success with a license challenges developers to find a way to implement the license's core appeal into an MMG-style game - a challenge which Final Fantasy Online met, but Star Wars Galaxies did not."

Comments

Virtual Property &Real World

[leoaugust]

FAST FORWARD TO 2014: ..... Virtual property will emerge as a major driver for gamers and game companies.

Reminds me of a discussion recently held at /. Will Virtual Economies Affect Real-World Economics? Maybe the author of the article discussed there, Edward Castronova, could use some numbers from the report mentioned in the current discussion to give more concrete shape to his ideas. Would love to continue the discussion then ....

Powerleveling

[deanj]

"Offerings such as combination accounts, power leveling, and character transfers could potentially increase revenue for MMGs by as much as 25% of subscription fees, or $100m annually."

I think they may be over reaching here, since the fees for character transfers have only been $1 million since the game started.

I also have to disagree with the "power leveling" part... if a game offers "power leveling" for a fee, that game is sure to not have a long term appeal, since it'll be dominated with folks that just spend more money being the more powerful people in the game.

Besides, usually "power leveling" (at least in EQ) doesn't do the character that much good long term. You end up with a player that doesn't know various tactics and/or spells work in the game, and hasn't maxed out capabilities that progress as you use them throughout the lifetime of the character. Example: Defense. As you progress, your defense rating gets higher and higher. This only happens ever so often during battle. Defense ends up adding into your overall armor class. Powerleveled characters usually end up having very low defense scores. Same goes with weapons, spell casting capabilities, and the like.

Re:Powerleveling

[decapentaplegic]

it'll be dominated with folks that just spend more money being the more powerful people in the game.

This didn't seem to hurt Wizards of the Coast's "Magic: The Gathering". When I was playing a lot five years ago, that game was entirely dominated by people who could aford to buy the powerful rare cards. None the less it was the most popular game around, in both the hard core and casual circles.

Re:Powerleveling

[gauauu]

That's because Magic is inherently a fun, well-designed competitive game. It's a competitive game where you compete against another person. As long as you have invested about the same amount of money as the person you are playing with, you will generally have fun playing the game.

This isn't true of MMORPGS. Here, the entire appeal to is to amass more power, more levels. There is not very much appeal in sitting around playing the game as one of the "little-guys," as there really isn't that much fun stuff to DO in these games. All of the DOING involves routine tasks with the goal of becoming tougher, where as in Magic, the DOING is playing an interesting game. There is an actual GAME in magic that people enjoy, other than just collecting the most powerful cards.

On the contrary...

[*weasel]

quite to the contrary.

the happy math for corporations is that the costs of a massmog fall as it becomes more popular.

consider bandwidth:
an OC-24 can handle 8 times more players than an OC-3, and yet it costs far less than 8 times more per month. (more like 3-4 times as much.) as the game becomes popular, and bandwidth usage increases -- bandwidth cost per player drops.

consider bugs:
using the 'shard' model (several 'copies' of the world that each serve a subset of the total playerbase) - the number of bugs to fix holds steady as the number of shards is increased. You don't have to make twice as much content to appease twice as many players - you just plug in another shard.

Also, as the game ages and becomes more popular, the bugs decline. (bugs such as anything that isn't a GM-request like harassment and such) the number of calls to customer support (eg. hardware compatibility problems, crashing problems) decline. the growth of the 'known bugs' means average call time itself drops. the cost of customer support per player drops.

consider hardware:
hardware costs decline as time goes on (and it takes time to become popular). what was a very expensive server farm for Sony when Everquest started in 1996 is now slower than the much cheaper server farm they last added around 4 years later. Hardware cost per player drops. Assuming the worst case, the cost of hardware doesn't measureably fall, still only means that hardware costs would hold steady as the game becomes more popular.

consider staff:
you need a certain number of people to ensure 24x7 service at a constant level of quality for a single server farm. yet you do not need twice as many people to cover twice as many servers. furthermore, over time, utilities and procedures will make the most commonn problems easier to deal with, and the bug fixes will make exceptions less frequent. server-maintenance staffing costs fall as the game becomes more popular and the game ages.

customer support for bugs also decreases as outlined above.

the only staff that need to increase in proportion to the growth in playerbase are in-game customer service staff (GMs). this at worst is another cost that holds steady as the game becomes more popular.

consider content:
also using the shard model (purely a business decision, not a technical one, i assure you) the same number of designers/artists that supply an expansion that will keep 1 shard of 2000 players happy, will keep an infinite number of shards of 2000 players happy.
average cost of content per player decreases.

also keep in mind that Sony had a 60% profit margin on monthly fees for Everquest when it cost $10/mo. now it costs 30% more (at the least), and do you honestly think they're spending a dime more on service and support?

Sony even had a profit on retail box sales, for the game and expansions, over their costs to develop the software and install the hardware. (the reason everyone charges for the box on the shelf - even if subscriptions flop they break even if they can sucker a couple hundred thousand people into trying it).

the way these games are designed, the bigger the game gets - the more they profit.

only when the player population starts to dwindle do the profit margins fall again. when you have too many underutilized servers. when you have too much staff. many companies will slowly consolidate and layoff to maintain their profit margins for awhile - but eventually running the game just won't be worth their time. They could put those resources on the Next Big Thing and go back to their old profit margin.

Expected and undeserved

[theefer]

I really don't expect much from WoW. Blizzard is a great game company, and I'm still a big Starcraft lover. They make nifty, well polished games, but WoW sounds just so unoriginal. Yes, the design is quite cool, and so are the races, and the spells ... But does it really sound an RPG ? No. Can you expect to have a really interesting roleplay with orcs and humans and the other races available ? I don't think so, and it does not seem to be the point. Does it bring MMORPG to new grounds ? No. Is it gonna be a hit ? Probably.

Reading the latest big report on the games seems to bring two main conclusions : (1) the gameplay is still open and under discussion, (2) the gameplay is plain unoriginal. They are building a well thought game upon the existing basis, but there is really no risk taken whatsoever, nothing that could really make it the next generation MMORPG.

As an amateur MMORPG game designer myself, I have found that there are an incredibly large amount of possibilities in that genre, but as always most commercial products stay in the same area, ever perfecting one type of game without risking to discover new ones. Too bad Blizzard did not dare to try though, they'd probably have done it the right way.

For my part, I'm waiting for Ryzom, not because it has a much more original gameplay than WoW, not because of its gorgeous graphical design (probably the best out there for an MMORPG), but becauses it dared to leave the traditional fantasy field to explore a new, fresh and tribal universe that is simply fascinating. The objective is more to carry the player into a dream-like original place than put him in front of monsters to fight.

Re:Expected and undeserved

[Stray7Xi]

RP isn't determined by the game so much as it's determined by the community. The only successful RP communities I've seen were formed because the twinks would get ostrasized. The problem is getting a large enough RP community that it has the ABILITY to ostrasize twinks and not let them be overwhelmed.

Anyone ever play a consent based mu*? No one can drag you into an RP scene without your permission. So if someone wanted to be ass they could go into the plaza and shout out how the government is all evil but refuse to RP with any of the feds that want to beat/imprison the guy. Sounds like it'd be pretty awful, but it works on smallscale since no one else has to RP with that twink either, he gets ignored and leaves. RP breaks on largescale because you don't deal with the same people day to day, reputations mean nothing.

Why's this matter? No one wants to play the oppressed character. You can't get together a hundred friends and oppress a single person.. cuz that person can just leave, log off, etc. You can only hinder their fun. Not that I'd want to play a game where I can be oppressed. What kind of society can you build with only predators and no prey. Few players want to play a weak character, but in real RP games they're some of the best fun. All of my favorite characters were the ones with serious flaws.. a junkie, a mute and a character with a crippled arm were my most memorable.

These games are all based on the reward is power... thats what makes the players act that way.

Re:Next!

[llefler]

imo, the only truly interesting thing that will occur in the next generation of massmog launches - is seeing how EQ2 cannibalizes EQ's playerbase

I'm curious to see what happens here as well. When Turbine released Asheron's Call 2 it pulled quite a few people from AC1. And if AC2 had been worth playing it could have meant the death of AC1. It seem like "getting it right" in regards to a MMOG sequel includes shooting yourself in the foot on your current game.

Recently, I've started to wonder if building sequels for MMOGs is misguided. AC adds new content to the game every month. I think EQ has proven that selling expansion packs can be profitable, and that it supports your current game rather than detracting from it. With new content monthly, expansion packs, and player involvement, MMOGs don't get stale.

The conclusion I keep coming up with is that MMOG marketing is going to have to diverge from normal game marketing. How many Final Fantasy games are there now? With normal PC and console games, releasing a sequel every year or so revitalizes the franchise. But how many gamers are continuously playing 4+ year old games? The big difference between the normal games and MMOGs is persistence. I'm not sure the developers understand the value of that.

Re:Next!

[*weasel]

MMOGs do get stale. people leave. eventually the publisher decides that it isn't worth the resources to continue to operate on the lower profit margin than what they previously enjoyed when it was more popular.

what they want to do, instead of closing shop, is to try to pull back in all those people who tried their last game, and start the profit cycle over again.

i think the people making business decisions want to cannibalize the old player base. new games mean new purchases, higher fees, and a brand new level treadmill. but doing a sequel gives them a built-in market that reduces the risk in developing a new game.

(i also think these suits are very different people from the actual devs, but i digress)

And quite frankly, so long as these games are defined primarily by their underlying systems - the devs will always want to try to start over with a clean slate, to 'fix' all the things that went wrong last time. Yet they likely are still in love with the world, fiction, and genre of the old game. so i doubt they'd protest too strongly.

Not until a disaster like AC2 is duplicated elsewhere, and the players no longer fall back to its predecessor, but instead become disillusioned and quit altogether will this trend stop.

like everything else the publishers and devs do 'wrong' - it won't change until consumers stop paying for the product.

until players -don't- buy into a massmog with a terrible release, publishers won't care about a couple weeks or months of instability.
until a sequel fails to cannibalize the playerbase of its predecessor in the franchise, or until a sequel fails to secure enough purchases from the old playerbase, pubilshers will always try.

Re:Next!

[llefler]

Are there any successful MMOG sequels?

If you read some of the white papers on the site linked to in the article, one of them states that MMOGs can and have had lifespans that exceed 10 years.

Moving customers to a new MMOG is like when your cellphone contract expires. You hope they will sign up with you again, but there are no guarantees. I know that when I leave AC1 I will look at all the 'new' MMOGs. I won't just run out and buy an ACx, Middle Earth, or D&D Online simply because Turbine is producing it. Actually, I'd like to spend some time in another genre. Earth & Beyond was interesting, but lacking. Eve was a huge advancement, but rather tedious. But what will come next? It seems that if you can maintain an acceptable playerbase for 10 years, why not cross genres and limit churn?

(i also think these suits are very different people from the actual devs, but i digress)

Just a clarification, I used developers in the sense of the companies developing the games. Not the actual programmers who are doing the coding.

As far as the programmers wanting to move on, I wouldn't be surprised. Programmers want to create new things. And the only thing worse than having to fix your prior mistakes is having to fix someone elses. We never notice the corner until after we've painted the floor. Maintenance programming is almost as much fun as writing documentation.

Metaverses

[jafuser]

MMO gamess are fun for a while, but I think after you've seen 2 or 3 of them, you realize that the difference between them isn't really all that remarkable. They all have the same general framework of doing mundane tasks to increase virtual rank.

I think the next big online phenomenon is going to be metaverses.

In a metaverse, you are not given a bunch of artificial skills and abilities. You (the person behind the keyboard) are the determining factor of your online persona's skill. And it's not a twitchy kind of skill either, it's pure creativity.

The first time I logged into a network and was able to communicate with other people around the world in real time, I knew it was going to eventually catch on and spread to the point of being mainstream phenomenon.

Now I'm getting the same feeling now, as I've jumped into the "metaverse" environemnt known as Second Life. I've played a handful of MMORPGs before Second Life, and got the impression from them that all online environments would have basically the same general template.

My first day within SL was like my first time on the internet, I was overwhelmed that so much creative flexibility could be organized in a real time multiperson environement. It's sort of a feeling like walking down a very long narrow confining hallway which suddenly opens up to a wide open outdoor field.

The metaverse-like applications we have currently are nowhere near the sophistication of those dipicted in science fiction, but to be fair, we're just getting started. Before too long, I predict that they are going to be as mainstream as the internet is now.

I think MMO games are nearing their limit for flexibility. The only direction to go from here is to open up the virtual world that make up these games and let your users truly create the content. Of course, when that happens, it's hard to stay confined to a theme or license, so it seems inevitable that metaverses will be the next rung on the evolutionary ladder.

Re:Next!

[Cosmik]

Interesting that the 'Best' MMO is always the one that will be released next.

Indeed. SWG was meant to embody the be-all-and-end-all of MMORPGs; a game which many people would flock to and stay with. EQ still enjoys higher numbers than SWG, whereas a newer game, Horizons, laments lower subscribership. A game which has been out for a while in Asia, and not so long in NA, FFXI enjoys great reviews and subscribers - breaking a few records I believe.

While I agree that WoW has a good chance of being the most successful new game in terms of subscribtions, considering they are aiming towards the Korean market as well as the NA market, I'd have to disagree with the ranking of the titles after that.

Lineage 2 has a very good chance to keep both EQ2 and MEO from climbing above it - Lineage (1) currently enjoys the highest subscriber levels - and if it isn't Lineage, then it's another Asian-based (Chinese I believe) MMORPG, of which I forget the name right now. Something like ***** 2?

EQ2 and MOE will enjoy a mostly NA/European subscribership, and although those markets can give good numbers, the NA market is less likely to show support for a MMORPG, especially from a "hated" developer, than the fanatical Asian market.

Or, as usual, are we only looking at an American-centric view here?