A Look At the Growth of MMOs In 2008 122
Zonk writes with news of a collaboration between Massively and GamerDNA to analyze the state of MMO player bases for 2008. Sifting through the data brought out several interesting trends. For example, Age of Conan took a substantial hit when Warhammer arrived on the scene, but none of the other major MMOs were significantly affected. Also, it seems Lord of the Rings: Online got a big shot in the arm from its Mines of Moria expansion — even moreso than World of Warcraft from Wrath of the Lich King, relatively speaking. The article also asserts the following about the recently-canceled Tabula Rasa: "... until the cancellation announcement in November, numbers were trending in the right direction, however slightly. Players were growing more interested in the sci fi MMO shooter, and logins were on the rise. If its development had not been so long, so expensive, and so vastly overhyped and mismarketed, this title could have been left alone to find its legs and found some small measure of success in a long tail environment akin to the Sony Station Pass."
Unrepresentative sample (Score:5, Insightful)
The sample of players used for this article (only GamerDNA members with profiles) is so skewed that the second biggest MMO of all (Runescape) doesn't feature in the article at all.
This is probably an excellent article if you are interested in what GamerDNA members are up to, but it's not very relevant outside that.
Tabula Rasa failed ... but why? (Score:5, Insightful)
TR was a very interesting experiment. It offered a completely different and new gameplay (in terms of MMOs), it offered a kinda-sorta-FPS experience which created, at least in my opinion, a much better immersion experience than the various other MMOs. It had a good storyline that offered the player a little more freedom in his choices than the average MMO out there when it comes to quests. The quests themselves were usually a touch more interesting than the usual "kill X of Y" treadmill. It had a lot of new and exciting features that appealed to some people, so the question why it failed regardless should be asked.
Is it that people don't want any other gameplay than the usuall point-n-click style the usual MMOs offer? Now, I doubt that. I did a few interviews with people who played (some of which quitted), and usually the interface was either the feature that kept them playing for as long as they did, or at least they thought it was interesting. It never was the reason why people quitted.
It was the usual, people. It was the same reason why all the other failed MMO projects sunk.
1. Being barely beta quality. Frequent crashes, buggy quests, buggy skills, buggy everything. Until well into mid-2008, the game was barely playable.
2. Broken balance. Actually a subset of the first reason, but you can see long time successful MMOs fail when balance goes out the window. And for the longest time, balance was a huge problem for TR. Some classes could solo base attacks (something that should be "hard" in this game, akind to boss battles in normal MMOs), some classes could barely do equal level quests. Some classes would get fantastic rich without trying, some could barely afford their standard ammo. And so on.
3. Quick leveling and no endgame content. This straw actually broke the camel's back. It's trivially fast to get to top level in TR. An experienced player needs less than two weeks of more or less dedicated playing (faster even when he can start from a clone, a feature of the game that allows you to start at mid level under certain circumstances). And there isn't anything to be done when you're 50. No item harvesting, no boss runs, no nothing. You can just shelf your top level character and start over.
In my opinion, and from what I gather I'm not alone with this feeling, TR failed not because it dared to be different. If anything, this difference allowed the game to stay alive for as long as it did. The slow but steady increase in subscribers (until the announcement of its demise) showed that people did come back when the devs started to iron out the problems and add "stuff to do" for the top level players.
It's sad to see this game go. It's one of those things where you know it could've been great if they just hadn't committed the cardinal sins of MMO design.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Did they count.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MMOs are Hobbies and a great value. (Score:1, Insightful)
MMOs are only cheap if your time has no value.
Re:With all the failing MMOs on this chart (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I'll give FFXI kudos for staying alive all this time, but personally I found that requiring players to party in groups of 6 to level up was a bad idea. When you can log in, and want to be leveling dragoon, then sit at the zone entrance with your looking for party tag up for 30-60 minutes before you get a message for a party invite, then travel out to the party only to have it disband after 1 kill. Yeah that's pretty dumb.
FFXI major flaw, in my humble opinion, was the inability to do anything on your own if you wanted to. There is no progressing your character if you can't find a group.
Maybe it's because of DRM full me-too games (Score:4, Insightful)
I think part of the reason why MMORPGs continue to increase in popularity in the PC gaming space is that latest crop of non MMO games is composed mostly of "me-too" titles (games based on previously successful games) and ultra-extreme-DRM filled games (which often won't run because of the DRM or even make your PC unstable because the install buggy drivers).
Personally in the last year I went back to MMORPGs (in the past I used to play EVE-Online and WoW) with LOTRO because I felt that most newer PC games were too simple, too much alike games I had played to death already and/or too risky to install (due to their rootkit-like DRM and the instability problems that often come with it).
Successful MMORPGs like LOTRO and WoW have a huge value for money to gamers because their content is enormous (they're huge virtual worlds) they support multiple playing forms (PvP, solo PvE, cooperative PvE) and they keep getting expanded: to keep people playing and paying their monthly fees, games with a PvE side must continuously expand with new areas/items.
About LOTRO:
Before Mines of Moria, LOTRO was indeed getting a bit stale and the number of players online at any time was dwindling. This was visible both in PvE and PvP.
Immediately when MoM came out the number of players online increased a lot (doubled or tripled). At the moment most people are more or less done with exploring the new areas and are starting to do mostly group instances to acquire the necessary kit to go do the single new Raid area that came with MoM (most LOTRO players are casual players, hence the number of power-players that went trough all the new content in 2 or 3 weeks is very low).
To keep momentum going more content will have to start being released in the next month or two (Turbine, the makers of the game, usually release free expansions - "books" - about once every 2 months). As pointed above, the continued success of a MMORPG depends a lot on keeping a steady stream of new content coming out to keep players playing (and paying).
Except that's the whole purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
Newsflash, buddy: the whole purpose of gaming is to waste some time in a pleasant way. Same as virtually any other hobby.
Yes, I know, people like to pretend that _their_ hobby is some great building skills... which they are only going to use the next time they do that hobby. Whether it's mountaineering, or going camping, or going out in the woods with a compass, or whatever, guess what? You're only going to use those skills at all the next time you go mountaineering, or camping, or going out in the woods with a compass. Chance to actually ever actually need to find your way in a city with a compass and/or by seeing which side of the tree has moss... zero. Actual RL value gotten out of it... zero. They too are just killing time in a more pleasant way than staring at the walls.
Or to quote Publilius Syrus: "Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it."
The whole "if your time has no value" only applies if you were, indeed, planning to sell it. Otherwise, without a purchaser actually paying for it, it has no value whatsoever. I.e., it applies if you were otherwise going to take a second job and get paid. (Self-employed crafting does count, but, again, if you were actually going to produce stuff you sell in that time.)
The same applies to installing Linux, OSS, and god knows where else that retarded meme pops up: only if you were going to otherwise get paid for doing something else in that time.
Were you? No? Then get a brain and find something more productive to do than repeating memes. It's only intelligence if you came up with it, not if you're the 1234567'th guy who parrots it verbatim.
Re:Except you still don't have a dollar value ther (Score:1, Insightful)
1. My activities are chosen largely because they offer a variety of different forms of recreation and produce a variety of stimuli and positive results - whether physical products, improved skills, improved health, artistic stimulus, or what-not.
2. You're taking the phrase "worth nothing" in a much too narrow and literal interpretation, as though cash is the only possible metric for deciding the value of things. I've not used the term worth or the phrase value in this conversation (I'm not the AC who replied to Saysys), but if you want - and are willing to pay me for it - I could start listing off approximate values of reading, exercise, etcetera. We could have a nice, myopic debate over exact dollar amounts - which would be entirely missing the point that I and other people try to make. It's not simply about cash, although that may be a factor, it's about what is gained or lost from the activity.
3. You can't see the forest for the trees. It's not about every minute of every day, it's well over an order of magnitude larger than that. To put it in the required /. form: It's as though people are remarking on the pollution your VW Vanagon with loose engine seals spews out in its blue smoke, and you respond by trying to point out ways that they could reduce their year-old car's emissions.
If people usually played MMOs for a half hour once a week, the "time has no value" guy probably wouldn't have written that - unless he's just a dick - and we wouldn't be having this exchange. MMO players tend to let themselves play for several hours each week for weeks or months on end -- well after almost all novelty (its main benefit) has passed.
The reason why I care enough to write this is because I used to play these kinds of games quite often, doing the grinding and all that, and eventually I realized that I could get a lot more out of life if I put that time into other activities. Life is all too brief.