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Dragon Empires Cancelled
Darniaq writes "Today, Codemasters announced they are discontinuing development of their massive online game Dragon Empires. They had this to say about it: 'The decision to close Dragon Empires' development does not impact on Codemasters' long-term ambitions in the massively multiplayer online gaming market and the company remains very active in evaluating future opportunities.' It appears yet another studio has realized a persistent virtual world requires more time and effort than they wish to expend. Regardless of the true reason, I applaud the move. The massive online gaming genre does not need more games from companies unwilling to focus themselves on them."
but continuing work and expenses as well, the catch of course is that if subscription based then they would get "endless amounts of cash" which must be why these are 'hot' as well.
but if you don't hit it big it can be a drain.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
What's stopping them from releasing everything they got so far under the GPL and Creative Commons?
Any legal obstacles?
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
What would you be willing to pay as a subscription per month - I'd pay up to $5.
..........FULL STOP.
The MMORPG market reached saturation point a long LONG time ago, yet the market is still being flooded by those companies who haven't heard the penny drop.
l
Parent is a troll (check out the url) but I've seen the same thing repeated by others on Slashdot. I don't see the numbers to back up this claim.
FFXI was released in 2002 with a North American release in 2003. It has around 500,000 subscribers now. Star Wars Galaxies was released in 2003 and has 300,000 subscribers. (Lower than they were expecting, I think, but hardly a failure.) City of Heroes, which was released this year now has about 200,000 subscribers.
Numbers here: http://pw1.netcom.com/~sirbruce/Subscriptions.htm
Everquest II and Worlds of Warcraft are due out in two months and there's a lot of advance excitement around them.
A few failures doesn't indicate saturation. Look at non-MMORPG videogames. What percentage of them do you suppose are successful?
The problem is the companies that want to just churn out yet another superficial multiplayer first-person Diablo clone. It's like the Reality-TV situation -- you get a hit then you get a bunch of clones.
It's a real waste of resources when everybody plays follow-the-leader, but they do it because they think it's smarter to get burned on something that was once a good idea than on something that hasn't been market tested, and this is only going to get worse with the consolidation in the game industry.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
It may just be me, but most of the people I know that play MMORPGs are the same ones who play the new games when they arrive. So, you have a nomadic tribe of people moving from EQ, to DAoC, then to Horizons, and most likely to EQ2. I've stopped playing them altogether due to the time committment of work and a new baby, however, I still only played one at a time.
So, until companies figure out how to maintain a user base and keep the game fresh, I think most MMORPGs will eventually tank due to people leaving to other games, which takes away the income necessary to making patches, updates, new content, etc.
The one where you "own your own real estate" is called Second Life.
http://www.secondlife.com
They just updated to version 1.5.
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril. -- Lurker2288
They just updated to version 1.5.
In short, don't sign up for a week or two. 1.5 hasn't stabilized yet, and you'll probably be frustrated if you try to start right now.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
They were the ones who made the Dizzy games for assorted systems (I think they were most popular on the Spectrum), as well as the classic Micro Machines games for the NES and Genesis. Nice to see them making games after all of these years (though obviously this one isn't going to be made).
Rob
Anyone know what this means exactly?
Possible explanations I can think of are:
1) Servers weren't scalable enough and had insurmountable lag problems.
2) Games like EQ2 have insanely cool gfx and models, especially on high-end hardware, and DE would have had to redo their engine AND all their models to compete, given their release date.
3) It was purely financial and blaming "technology" is just a way to save face and retreat.
"The difference between theory and practice is small in theory and large in practice..."
There are two sides to a market, supply and demand. As you have conclusively pointed out demand for MMO games is still rising. However, supply is rising also. Unfortunately there are no hard numbers on supply since game development is so secretive. However, I think most industry insiders would agree that the supply of MMO games is growing much faster than it should be. This discrepancy between growth of supply and growth of demand is causing the observed market saturation despite rising consumer interest in MMO games.
Word has it that Codemasters, creators of the Game Genie devices, simply failed to develop effective measures to prevent rampant cheating in their virtual world.