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.
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!
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 just can't figure out how they've justified not firing people.
Easy, they hired other companies (like Liquid Development) to do the work and just told them their contract is over. The company stopped working on UXO and worked on another of the numerous projects they were hired to work on. There's noone who could be fired over this.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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.
I think we've seen it: City of Heroes.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
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.