Slashdot Mirror
Ultima X Odyssey - Wisdom In Cancellation?
Thanks to Corpnews.com for its discussion of the history of the Ultima MMO franchise in the content of the recent cancellation of MMO title Ultima X: Odyssey. The author argues of the cancellation: "This isn't a surprise. No, really. More fundamentally, all this points to the fact that somebody in EA's headcheese department is scared stiff of potentially sapping subscribers from the only truly successful title [Ultima Online] to come out of the company's development sweatshops." He claims: "Furthermore, all this comes at a time when the amount of 'surefire bets' in the industry seems to be dropping exponentially. Miniscule subscription bases for former hot-ticket games like Horizons and Shadowbane, coupled with disappointing numbers for Star Wars Galaxies - at last count, the game widely predicted to crack the MMO industry open and bring in a new rush of players... make it easier than ever for suits to pull the plug on projects which require millions of dollars to even hit the shallow waters of beta." Where does EA go from here with the online Ultima franchise, given that this is the second cancelled online Ultima title?
Being an old Ultima Online Vet I have to say it was cancelled for good reasons. Ultima Online was once a Great Game that turned into Diablo II with the Age of Shadows Expansion Pack. What it apears to me is that the developers are trying to revive this once great game. The new publich coming out even prooves the effort by balancing the Player vs Player system.
Founder of http://www.b-realm.com trey@b-realm.com
What about EA's sports franchise? Isn't that still a profit center for EA? Or is that losing money as well?
Hell, give up on online play completely. Throw some cash at a few promising single player games! They still exist, after all. All of these project cancellations have really hurt my already shaky opinion of EA -- to the point where I might just make a concious effort to avoid their titles. But if some of the developers under their wing can cook up something really outstanding with their full support (and negligable meddling), it'd go a long way towards turning that opinion around.
I'm sure there's a Madden Online joke in there somewhere...
Are the companys finally realizing that there aren't enought hardcore gamers to sustain all MMORPG titles?
Half of the MMORPG currently in development are doomed to vanish after six months of relative success.
They still can have new games and they should before the old stuff gets "real old". But what they need is a new game that enhances the "network effects"- more and more players playing the "same game".
:).
So it has to be compatible with the existing game. e.g. even if it's a new world with different rules etc, the players can be migrated between them, (and probably communicate with each other between worlds - pick the right cost- heck link the "Ether resistance" to the CPU/bandwidth usage if you want) e.g. wormhole/teleport or whatever. Let them retain their attributes and some of their stuff (you could force them to leave behind some items- can't take everything back in the old world).
If you want you could even force them to spend X gp/credits/USD/items etc to travel between the worlds. Or make it a quest or something. Come up with a story.
Maybe some things become transformed into other things during the transfer (greater risk/chance of arbitrage opportunities if you do that).
If lots of players move to the new world, then you can retask/reassign the resources for the old world for the new world.
It is better for you to risk cannibalizing your old game than for SOMEONE ELSE to cannibalize yours.
Perhaps I totally don't get it coz I'm not an MMORPG player or designer. But I don't see why my idea is any worse than frustrating their _developers_. Good developers/artists want to see their work become reality, bad ones are relieved if it never does
Cancel stuff enough times and they'll make a new game - for a competitor.
I've never really liked them, but I got to play Horizons in beta testing, and I hated every second of it. There's absolutely nothing engaging about it, nor is there a desire to progress forward. A lot of us have what you call "jobs" and are unable to dedicate 5+ hours a day to an online world.
I also beta tested for Planetside, and while it was more enjoyable than Horzions, it still didn't catch my interest.
I guess I'll never understand how people can tolerate EverQuest. Ugh.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
The execs are learning the differences between single player games and MMOs are similar to those of movies and TV shows.
Single player games are 1-time experiences similar to movies, you play the game, you enjoy it, then the next game with better graphics and physics comes along and you play that. You can have tons of titles co-exist. Far Cry isn't killing the customer base for Doom 3 or half life 2, in fact people look forward to see how can they one-up what far cry did.
Contrast this with the persistant experience of MMOs. Its more like a TV series like Friends or the Simpsons. People invest lots of time, they form relationships with the characters, they even alter their life to accomadate the schedule. In this scenario there are limited titles that can co-exist. By their nature you can't have a bunch of "hit" MMOs. Once an MMO has claimed a consumer base, its very difficult to convert them.
Even followups to popular MMOs can fail (much like TV spinoffs) AC2 wasn't able to fully capitalize on the popularity of AC1. I have a number of friends who will quit MMOs altogether, or take a break, when EQ1 gets shutdown. They don't consider EQ2 to be a continuation of their EQ1 experiences.
Just like every TV exec came up with their own version of Survivor, most of which have been cancelled, most of the MMOs that will come out are doomed to cancellation.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
EA has been dangling its toes in the online market for too long. They've taken a few strange steps in that way, and have not supported sure fire winners (Hello, EA Sports on XBOX LIVE? Cmon, even I'd buy an XBox to play that).
UO was published by Origin in the right place at the right time, and that sort of success is very hard to mirror. EQ has done it, as has DAoC to some degree. There is also Ragnarok and Lineage (1, not 2) to remember, so don't even begin to suggest that there isnt money out there to support these games. a subscription of about 20,000 is the magic number that these companies are aiming for to break a profit, and with a bit of imagination and a bit of risk, thats not a problem.
Why does each and every publisher need to have some grandiose MMORPG in their line-up? It makes no sense - the market is small, the maintenance costs are high, and with the treadmill setup everyone's using there really isn't room for more than one MMORPG (sometimes not even one, since most of them want you to put in at least an hour or two a day) per potential user. Totally senseless, it's been like that since the start, and I can't help but chuckle condescendingly every time a new UO/EQ clone goes down the toilet. Love seeing that herd mentality get punished, even if it probably means tighter budgets and less risk from the EA mooks in the future.
Now, if you really have to make a massively multiplayer game, why not try some new ideas? Raph Koster's word is far from law, games like Puzzle Pirates have shown that level grind isn't the only way of doing things and that it's possible to have a vibrant online community without levels, without requiring you to be unemployed and/or a college student to be successful, and without beards and dwarves. The MMORPG scene consists 99% of me-too games and we really don't need any more of those. So, I'm not crying over Ultima X. Its predecessor was revolutionary in many ways and deserved its success, but honestly - what would this game bring to the table that wasn't already there? Creativity, please!
It should be pretty obvious that UO is not going to become a better game any time soon. If EA had any truly ambitious plans, they would have photoshopped some screenshots for us by now. The whole "work on UO" think is FUD, I just can't figure out how they've justified not firing people.
The sapping subscribers argument in this article is pretty dumb though. It should be clear by now that anyone who is playing Ultima Online is either not interested in 3D MMOs or has the cash to be willing to pay for multiple MMO accounts. You don't skip four major fantasy 3D-MMOs if you are a 3D-MMO player. UO-X was clearly in competition with EQ/DAOC/WOW/FF11 and had no relation to the play experience of UO-X.
It's clear that EA thought that UO-X would be a money loser. How do you lose money on an MMO? You spend $X on development, you spend $Y a year on your live team (since MMO dev is continual), and you make $Z in subscription fees over the first two years. If $Z $X + 2*$Y, you lose money. So, I'm guessing EA probably did some market projections. They decided, we can be ready to enter this market in about 3 years, and it will be so fragmented by then, and we're sufficiently unconfident in our ability to produce a competitive title, we'd better kill this thing.
---
I support spreading santorum
I disagree that MMO is necessary "a bad bad bad business idea". I do think the approach is still wrong.
It's unrealistic to imagine that a large and complex online environment can be built, provided and maintained for a large player base without costing the developers big bucks. The automatic reaction is to charge players to buy the game and then latch onto them with a monthly fee. Games are pushed out the door early to try to claw back cash from the initial purchasers and suffer because players don't perceive their end of the deal as value for money. When I've paid the equivalent of a regular game just to be able to pay the monthly subscription and I need to keep an internet connection all the time I'm playing, I'm going to want to be seriously impressed. MMOs seem to me to have too much to live up to in terms of expectation (and this is compounded by hype) for them to be able to deliver. Look at SWG as a case in point. The approach is too geared towards providing a product in the form of a game and not focussed enough on providing the service to justify the monthly fee.
Where does the money come from to support a soap or a sitcom? In part advertising, in part merchandising. How does a soap or sitcom develop the following which these revenue streams depend on? Mostly because they are provided at low cost, often because they start small and low budget. Nobody paid a monthly fee just to watch Friends but the cost was bundled with a package (cable subscription, whatever) which allowed you access to the show. It grew huge. Same with Buffy. Same with most any big TV show you can think of.
These things need to be bundled together as packages which can be subscribed to with minimum front-end cost to the subscriber. They need to bring in advertising and merchandising to subsidise the cost as much as possible. They need big network names to get on board and turn them mainstream. I don't think that day is too far off and I think predictions of the imminent death of online gaming are premature. There will be plenty that fail (as with TV) but the few that are successful will eventually be huge.
Sure, Horizons has lost some of its player base. A new MMORPG -always- loses some of its player base after a few months, as some get bored and move on to other things.
Some of the recent dropoff was due to the layoffs that occurred in the staff. Now that they've consolidated, they're working a little more on communicating with the players on what they want to see. One of the biggest problems was that the dev's never listened to the players, and they're at least trying to fix that now. There's talk of server consolidation, which may help some of the problems people mention with the population being too sparse.
As for the problems some seem to have with the game? I was online earlier, trying to help one player who mentioned in a public channel that even through three ISPs and now cable internet, the game still ran slowly. After pinging and tracerouting the HZ server and finding nothing, he made the certain conclusion that it was the game. Several other players with similar hardware configurations did -not- have this problem. When I pointed this out to him, he pointedly ignored me.
Sometimes, a game doesn't work on your computer because of your hardware configuration, settings, etc. These people that yell the loudest are only aiming for attention, they don't actually want to help fix what's wrong.
~Kyrthira Phelan~
I don't think we've seen that game yet. I think it's coming this year though: World of Warcraft
When they moved from Austin to CA a few months ago, most of the UXO team did not make the move/where not offered the op to move.
They didn't fire anyone/let anyone go when they announced this because they ALREADY did it.
MMORPGs are just like horror movies: most are derivative of the first one to come out, and have gotten quite stale. Sure, each may bring a neat idea to the table or have a cool bit scene that we like, but the later ones grow stale more quickly.
Basically, game has been done before.
-Jeff
P.S. I do think there's hope: I once told someone if you took the character generation and gameplay of City of Heroes and combined it with the content, world, and economy of FFXI, you'd have a fantastic game. Most games out have some neat bits: hopefully someone (blizzard?) will combine them.
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
Since when was STG suppose to be the big thing?
Yes I was excited about it until I found out that I couldn't be a Jedi (a 0.002% chance is not good enough for me). And to add insult to injury, once a Jedi dies, it's dead FOREVER!
FAT CHANCE, buster! My dollars go to City of Heroes and DAoC now.
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.
Hmmm, I think I need to send some emails to some other people I know in the industry. :X)
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
There will always be failures in an overcrowded market, but for those that get it right, MMOGs can still be very lucrative under the subscriber model. Although people love to hate it, SWG has been very successful and reached a quarter million players much quicker than EQ did, and continues to grow. FFXI and City of Heros are also doing well, and WoW stands a chance of breaking all previous records. I still think MMORPGs have a bright future, but developers will have to think creatively to avoid becoming casualties in what is, at the moment, a sort of gold rush.
Dave
http://internetgames.about.com
"This isn't a surprise. No, really. More fundamentally, all this points to the fact that somebody in EA's headcheese department is scared stiff of potentially sapping subscribers from the only truly successful title [Ultima Online] to come out of the company's development sweatshops."
Sure, but unfortunately for EA, none of the higher-ups were "scared stiff" of dropping a few million dollars each on TWO separate, canceled UO sequels. Both canceled for the same reason, no less. Way to learn from your mistakes, guys.
I hate to burst your bubble, but Horizons will always be a bottom of the barrel game just scraping by on the margins. More likely, they will tank within a year or two.
Horizons runs purely off of the Everquest model. Now before you get your panties in a bundle over me calling Horizons Everquest, realize what the Everquest model is. It isn't the silly little features an experienced MMORPG player recognizes. It is the basic and fundimental game play. The fundamental gameplay of Horizons is the same as Everquest. Spend many hours killing shit to level and gain loot. Whatever else Horizons offers, it can not be argued that is at its core the game play offered.
That sort of game play is appealing only to a very small portion of the gamers market, and it is utterly without appeal outside of the gamers market. Most people can not afford to spend even a single hour a day playing video games. They sneak on when they can and that is all. MMORPGs have utterly failed to recognize this. In the current crop MMORPGs time is directly proportional to power and fun. Few working people, for who shelling out 50 dollars and then 15 or 20 more a month is no big deal are willing to play a game where they are always stuck on the bottom and deprived of the most interesting aspects of the game. It doesn't matter that some consider it 'fair' that people who blow more of their time should get a greater reward. 'Fair' isn't going to pay the bills. More importantly, this idea of fairness is shortsighted and limited to high school kids and the unemployed. Fair or not, working people can not be so wasteful with their time.
MMORPGs need to come up with a new paradigm. They need to develop a model that follows the idea of a cohesive and permanent world, yet doesn't require massive amounts of time to enjoy. How they do it, I don't care. The solution is probably as simple as eliminating leveling and making it twitched based so that any idiot who can play Quake can do a decent job in an MMORPG. Then make the game play based around something other then mindlessly slaughtering NPCs. Maybe you still slaughter NPCs, but do it in an interesting way that doesn't instantly get boring. Maybe the NPCs are inclined to attack villages and people need to defend them. Maybe there is a constant war. Who knows and who cares. I'll leave it to someone else to figure out. Whatever the case, they need to change the very nature of the game play so that it reaches a broad audience. Maybe they will never reach out and get the people who loved Sims, but they should be able to get the working person who has the time to play a little Unreal Tournament 2004 every now and then.
MMORPGs should be accessible to the average gamer, not just high school students and the unemployed. Do this and not only will numbers go through the roof, but you can charge more. I see lots of bitching and moaning about 10 dollar a month charges. Make a game available for people with jobs and credit cards for who 20 dollars a month is pocket change, and then the real money will start to roll in.
Get my panties in a bundle? What, like your comments bother me and I'm going to go run in a corner and cry? Everyone's entitled to their opinion. There's no need to be rude about it. I don't really agree that it's like everquest, but I'm sure you're thinking of different aspects than I am. I don't look at hardware and engines and such. I play to craft stuff.
Maybe the game goes under in a year. Big deal. I've played and enjoyed it, I like it, I'll be sad to see it go if and when it does. Until then, I'll talk about it as I see fit.
I won't pick apart your opinion because I see no point in it. Let's just say I don't agree, and leave it at that.
One thing. You want a game that people can just pick up and play, a little here and there, an hour at a time? City of Heroes. I'll let you do your own investigating on that.
I work at a video game store, so I hear why people don't like online RPG's. The number one problem is you have to pay a subscription fee. They won't be more likely to purchase the game if the subscription costs more!
~Kyrthira Phelan~