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?

Comments

Was cancelled for good reasons

[TreyBastian]

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.

MMOs more like TV shows than movies

[servognome]

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.

Re:MMOs more like TV shows than movies

[MikShapi]

Excelent point, too bad I don't have any mod points today :-(

I'd like to take your insight a few steps further though. Specifically the bit about us being able to invest our time&money (and hence pay for) multiple single-experience titles (like movies or single-player games) but no more than a select few ongoing experiences like TV-series or MMO's, and even that we take a break from or completely quit once we don't have the time to shell out.

What that amounts to is that the MMO industry is significantly smaller, market-cap-wise, than the single-player industry. Given the market forces have time to do their thing, the MMO industry will find itself with budgets that compared to single-player games is much like a TV-series budget compared to a hollywood movie budget.

But can games we'd want to play be made for significantly smaller budgets? I guess we'd be able to answer that in a couple of years, by simply checking if anyone is still making these titles or not.

My personal opinion though is that any kind of product that requires:
A. A huge public to use it in order to break even and start generating profit
and
B. Immense investment in time from its subscribers
(Much more than the weekly 45 minutes we need to watch a TV series) - something people, especially the kinds with obligations, or families and kids, or ways of using that time to make money will not reluctantly give away.

and an optional:
C. Applies to a very limited public (which is computer-literate enough to actually get as far as finding out that MMOs exist and what they are)
and
D. Is in an industry with immense competition and huge corporations that can afford to lose tens if not hundreds of millions on the entire project.

Making an MMO thus has slim chances if any of generating money and is a bad bad bad business idea.

If EA had any financial brains (which they do but seem to be all clustered around the sports-game table, whereas their mothers-in-law seem to be running the CRPG/Adventure side of things), they'd re-hire Richard Gariott, give him a stash of money to buy a 3D engine that can handle a huge continuous map like Morrowind and tell him to go make a game with it. And not interfere or ax it until it's in retail. But hey, what do YOU expect from a mother-in-law?

But hey, that's just my 2 worn-out cents of frustrated rant.

Horizons

[Kyrthira]

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.

EA Needs a Good Idea

[gamerdave]

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.

why start development in the first place?

[startled]

"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.