MMOG Giants Prepare For Battle 34
Next Generation has a look at the increasingly crowded business of running an MMOG. They talk with Jeffery Anderson, CEO of Turbine, Robert Garriott, CEO of NCSoft, and John Needham, SVP and CFO of Sony Online Entertainment about the business of worldcrafting. From the article: "MMOG companies are in the midst of a bitter fight to carve out market share, each trying new weapons ranging from classical retail, to neo-shareware, to straight-up digital distribution."
All about profit? (Score:1)
Duh? Basically, they want a way to make money from the people that are addicted enough as to pay real money for that sword or what have you.
Incidentally, they should take a look at the person who made thousands of dollars from land transactions here [slashdot.org].
Everquest for free... (Score:1)
US Consumers are freaking idiots, apparently (Score:5, Insightful)
This explains a great deal about the typical US consumer.
Re:US Consumers are freaking idiots, apparently (Score:1)
With a game like Battlefield2, I'll get my $60 out of it before it goes away. But for a game where I'm paying $60 up front just to
Re:US Consumers are freaking idiots, apparently (Score:2)
Re:US Consumers are freaking idiots, apparently (Score:3, Interesting)
I played Puzzle Pirates for over a year at around $10 per month because I could download it for free, and even try it for a week at no charge. And that's a fairly unusual MMOG, which at first glance seems rather childi
Re:US Consumers are freaking idiots, apparently (Score:2)
Consider this, if I sell someone a toy for $1 and it bores him or her, what is that person likely to do? Set it aside or even throw it away; the toy has little value to you because that person paid almost nothing for it. Now, if someone paid $50 for the same toy, he or she might spend more time with it even if it bores that person initially. The person wants to get their money's worth, and many people
Re:US Consumers are freaking idiots, apparently (Score:1)
Also known as "Cognitive Dissonance" (Score:1)
Basically, yes, the more you pay for something, the more you will like it.
Re:US Consumers are freaking idiots, apparently (Score:2)
It seems simple in principle- people want to get value for their money. $50 is enough money that the average consumer is not buying multiple games at once, or new games every day- you buy a new game and you expect to play it for a while before getting a new one. So that means you spend $50 and you have say two weeks devoted to that game before you feel like you can afford to replace it- even if there's a few thing
Re:US Consumers are freaking idiots, apparently (Score:1)
As far as the purchase over subscription, when I pay money for something I want it to be available to me at any later date. I do not always have time to get to something right away, and spending $15/month is annoying when I don't have any time to actually spend playing tha
Since When (Score:2)
Blizzard
Sony Online Entertainment
and maybe NCSoft (FFO?)
Would appear to be the giants. Turbine has so far been a one hit wonder with Asheron's Call. Their sequel was choked to death by poor management and marketing forcing it out far too soon. Many gamers have sworn off any future Turbine products and some call into question their ability to successfully market Middle Earth Online with lack of a movie out or a future one in the works as of yet.
If you want
Re:Since When (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, but they didn't try anything new or innovative either, which leaves the whole experience somewhat flat. If you're a fan of fancy graphics and a standard in them MMORPG realm , then WOW is for you. For me, I just can't stand MMORPGS in their current status, there's just not enough to
Re:Since When (Score:3, Insightful)
Low box spec requirements and cross-platform support for Mac users.
There are a lot of MMORPG's out there, but only one that lets me log in to the same account and enjoy good gameplay with an old Duron PC or an iBook, depending whether I'm at a desk or in a coffee shop somewhere.
Okay, most gamers don't have Macs, but many gamers have at least one or two friends who do, and WoW is the only MMORPG out there where they can game with those friends.
Also, WoW looks great on hi
Re:Since When (Score:2)
Re:Since When (Score:2)
City of Villains looks cool, but the only way Cryptic is ever getting me back is by releasing Mac versions of their games.
Re:Since When (Score:2)
Low requirements? You obviously don't spend any time in Ironforge. I have thrown more than 10x the system at WoW as I did with Asheron's Call, and still see severe client side lag in IF. (2.8 P4, 512m, SATA HD, 64m video) The client needs to be a lot more intelligent about limiting character rendering as system load increases. (which, BTW, AC handled in a primitive way) I can't imagine what kind of system is going to be required for those
Re:Since When (Score:2)
2. Ironforge can be perfectly fine, even on a Mac mini, even during a very busy hour on a crowded server, as long as you turn off the floating character names and dial down some of the lighting effects and what-not. I've been there many times on just such a system.
Re:Since When (Score:2)
I'll bet if you turned it down to 640x480 and set the detail to minimum it would improve too. But if you have to do that, why not play an older game. Or I suppose I could move my character to a lower population server, since I'm on one that was added the first week after rollout, but that would mean trying to convin
Re:Since When (Score:3, Interesting)
I play at 1280x720 (the native resolution of my wide-screen TV projector), and on a relatively crowded server, I can stroll through Ironforge without much more choppiness than my friend gets on his uber game PC with a GPU card that cost more than my entire mini.
Granted, he's running with all the pretty special effects at full-throttle resolution, but that's what he bought that hot-shit graphics card for. I'm simply happy that I find the g
Re:Since When (Score:2, Insightful)
They certainly polished it and refined it. They didn't necessarily remove the flab that a lot of gamers tire of, ie. travel, raiding emphasis, phat-loot, etc.
If anyone innovated and removed the "mistakes" it's NCSoft with Guild Wars. May not be everyone's cup of tea, but they ta
Re:Since When (Score:1)
Re:Since When (Score:1)
Success in financial terms is not really related to the quality of MMORPGs, actually you can probably expect more from Turbine than some others because they'll have to convince their game is actually good, unlike Blizzard who would sell millions of games regardless of the quality of their product.
Re:Since When (Score:2)
Which has NOTHING to do with the reputaion they have for making quality games...
Re:Since When (Score:2)
Re:Since When (Score:3, Insightful)
The big loser has
Re:Since When (Score:2)
One of the big problems with MMOGs is that there is very little precedence to evaluating success. How many years, how many players? How much profit- if you could make a MMOG that made back all development and marketing costs plus lots of profit in 3 months, and then players became bored and left in
Re:Since When (Score:2)
Yes,
Why not 3 months free subscription? (Score:1)
Re:Why not 3 months free subscription? (Score:1)