What is The Cost of an Early Release?

Everguide writes "Sony Online Entertainment recently announced that they would be releasing EverQuest 2 on November 8th, ahead of their main competition World of Warcraft (last predicted release date: Week of November 22). SOE is notorious for launching games with content that is not finished or buggy, and Blizzard is known for at times delaying a game just to work out minor bugs. Is it worth launching a game early, yet buggy, to grab market share from the competition? I know the Themis group thinks a poor launch can cost a company millions of dollars but will the benefit of launching early exceed the costs?"

Comments

I can't remember the author...

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

but I found a quote several years back that went something like this...

A late game is only late until the moment it launches
A bad game is bad forever.

Games like Anarchy Online that ended up being decent games, suffered drastically at launch and word got around that the game had issues, wasn't worth trying, etc. and they no doubt lost a lot of potential customers over this.

Get the game right and then launch. You're always going to have isssues with someone who is using a 4 MB video card or only 64 MB of RAM on their mobo, or some other issue - that's going to happen - don't let the people who bothered to read the minimum requirements and have met them suffer because you wanted to get the game out first.

I worked for a very wise man once

[MerlynEmrys67]

He said.
A year from now no one will remember that it was a year late.

A year from now they will remember that it was completely useless - and never buy from you again.

This was business software so it had a slightly longer lifetime - but the principle still applies - if you have a reputation for bad software - it will follow you forever.

i'm in the beta

[Naikrovek]

along with the other tens of thousands of folks that are in beta.

it seems that the consensus among the beta testers is that the game is ready. there are no major known bugs that i've ever come across, and there are very few glitches to speak of. there are a few lag issues in key zones, but they've taken care of that in a way that i'm happy with.

the bad rep that SOE got was from SWG, and it was deserved in that case. that game still isn't ready for production, mainly because they're still altering the game design on a monthly basis. if they would just stop changing things they'd be doing okay.

Everquest 2 is a very good game, imho. I never played Everquest but I know that I like and enjoy EQ2 a lot.

in my opinion it is ready now. in 10 days when it is released, it will even be more ready. they're literally working 24/7 to get everything fixed before the release that they can, and i'm certain that you can expect a not-insignificant patch the first time you launch the client.

this is my honest opinion. I play it every day and I enjoy it every day. There are no showstopping bugs that I've come across and very few that I know about. Those are higher-level things and they'll have those fixed by the time anyone gets up to that level i'm sure.

so yeah i'm cool with the game as it is now.

and fyi, the game is huuuge. the lands are huge. the vocally active (read: speaking, as in you hear them) NPCs really add a lot more than I thought they would. the scenery is grand. on my pc (which is kinda wimpy -athlon 3000 @ 2.1ghz, 1.5gb ram, ati radeon 9800 pro 128mb) it runs at about 30fps, at 1600x1200, running at the setting just above "balanced." I forget what that setting is called now, but that's where I'm running. I have also turned on a few things like specular highlighting that aren't turned on in that performance profile.

the heroic opportunities are fun, and there are somewhat subtle visual clues, telling you what you need to do to continue the chain. the end of the chain is usually a "devastating blow" to your opponent, or sometimes it is a buff or a heal to yourself. so its not just a "double-click the enemy and wait until one of you dies" which is how I find a lot of mmorpg games. Meaning that if you want to fight anything above your own level you have to think about what you're doing before you even begin to engage the enemy. that's a kind of challenge that i enjoy in a game like this.

Everquest 2 is fun. I'll be buying it on release day and I'll be playing it that night. And I'll have a lot of fun doing it.

YOUR mileage may vary.

Re:i'm in the beta

[Lowtekium]

the bad rep that SOE got was from SWG

No the bad rep that SOE was from Everquest, back when they were known as Verant. Remember if you claimed that your account was hacked, they just deleted your account? They had a bad reputation to begin with, SWG just added to that weight.

Depends on how bad the bugs are

[MobyDisk]

Releases should be timed by the percent completion and bug status, not any fixed date. The date is a target for measuring your development processes and budgets. For example: Black and White was released late, but it had some bugs that actually made it impossible to beat the game! DOH! It should have been released even later rather than make it borderline unplayable.

No software is ever released with an empty list of bugs. There are always bugs. But will they affect major portions of the software? If no, then ship it. If so, then don't ship it. The hard part is determining what bugs are important and what bugs are not.

Re:Early release in a saturated market

[startled]

Unfortunately for SOE, the market for fantasy-based MMOGs is all but saturated currently. The companies making these games are squabbling over each others' former customers to a large degree.

This is where Blizzard's reputation for well-executed, polished games (or more to the point, their massive, dedicated fan base) is going to help a ton. SOE may be targeting their current and past customers, but Blizzard's got a whole base of MMOG virgins that'll give WoW a try because they loved Craft and Diablo.

(Add to that the free open beta as you mentioned, and it could be a killing.)

Re:The Cost is your Reputation

[Rallion]

While I think Guild Wars also looks awesome, it's not really a MMO in the same way as EQ or WoW. In practice it works the same way as Diablo II, just with more limitations on how you enter games, and with a big 3D town with stores and the like instead of the chat rooms.

Re:Rarely yes, often no

[Dirtside]

Yes in the case of the Doom 3 vs Half-Life 2 argument. Doom 3 lacked polish when it went beyond single-player which hurt it badly (deathmatch only? fun, but lacks variety). But in anyway you look at it, Doom 3 put a dent in Half-Life 2's fanfare.

This is somewhat tangential, but don't make the mistake of assuming that Doom 3 was "hurt" at all by lacking polish beyond single player. id Software isn't in the business of selling games: they're in the business of selling game engines. They make far more money doing that than they do from selling copies of a game like Doom 3. Don't get me wrong, game sales are a nice side benefit, but essentially Doom 3 (and every id game since Quake) has been released in order to demonstrate the new engine they've created. id then licenses the engine to numerous developers, who wrap their own content around it.

Sounds unpolished

[MMaestro]

I've been in beta tests before, and its very easy to tell if a person either goes around just playing in the beta for fun, of if hes trying to find bugs, break the game, and then reporting it.

there are a few lag issues in key zones, but they've taken care of that in a way that i'm happy with.

In a beta, if YOU the beta tester experience a 'few' lag issues, upon release the THOUSANDS of users will take lag issues like a bulldozer to a sand castle. Less than 20 people? Pfft, try 2000 people suddenly entering the area to see whats new.

i'm certain that you can expect a not-insignificant patch the first time you launch the client.

See, now thats a BAD thing. Betas are supposed to fix these things BEFORE the game gets released.

Those are higher-level things and they'll have those fixed by the time anyone gets up to that level i'm sure.

Most beta testers are generally hardcore gamers who will push and shove their way through a game in order to find every bug and balance issue. If you're still considered to be low level this late in the beta, chances are you haven't seenen much.

on my pc (which is kinda wimpy -athlon 3000 @ 2.1ghz, 1.5gb ram, ati radeon 9800 pro 128mb) it runs at about 30fps, at 1600x1200, running at the setting just above "balanced." I forget what that setting is called now, but that's where I'm running. I have also turned on a few things like specular highlighting that aren't turned on in that performance profile.

So its the Doom 3 of MMORPGs? I skipped Doom 3 due to its system requirements, sounds like I skipping this game too. (30 FPS with that kind of rig is horrible, especially since you're not dealing with the thousands of users who will join when the game is released.)

This is a pretty bad report from a beta tester. You've basicly said what 1 hardcore gamer could find out about a game in 1 week. You've found little/no bugs (its a MMORPG beta I doubt that), you don't seem to have seenen much in the world, and you don't seem to consider your framerate from the perspective of your gaming rig. (Athlon 3000 ~= $100. 1 gig stick of RAM ~= $150. Radeon 9800 Pro ~= $150. Total = $400, not including motherboard, hard drive, or monitor which would come out to about $600-800 not including anything non-essential.)