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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Biggest Growth of MMO Titles Still To Come? 37

Posted by simoniker from the sky-is-the-limit dept.
ShannonA writes "Dave Rickey examines the growth of the online RPG industry in his newest Engines of Creation article, 'Age of Discouragement?'. Based on his own analysis, and SirBruce's MMOG subscription chart, he projects that the best growth for MMORPGs is still ahead: 'In truth, we are solidly in the growth phase of our market, and our largest related markets have yet to really open up.'"
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Biggest Growth of MMO Titles Still To Come? More

Biggest Growth of MMO Titles Still To Come?

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  • As capabilities of computers and software increase MMO games are, of course, getting better and faster and blah blah blah. I truly believe that nearly all games in the future will have online play, as it becomes easy enough to implement that it doesn't have to take away from single player modes of the same game. Also with MMORPGs as things get more advanced options will continue to increase to the point where you can play them as an Action/Adventure game, have impromptu vehicle races, focus on buildin homes

    • Re:I know why... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by PD ( 9577 ) *
      I disagree. I think there will always be games that do not require online play for a number of reasons:

      1) Play at your own level. I am not a game whiz. I used to play America's Army online, but I am sick of getting sniped in the first 30 seconds. There will always be enough people out there who are so much better than I am, that it's just no fun to play.

      2) Play your own game. If I want to camp, I don't need a pack of 12 year olds with foul mouths cursing at me. It's my game and I'll camp if I want to.

      3)
      • all games in the future will have online play, as it becomes easy enough to implement that it doesn't have to take away from single player modes of the same game

        I disagree. I think there will always be games that do not require online play for a number of reasons

        I didn't say the games would require online play only that it would be an option. Also I didn't really mean to say "all" so much as most.

      • Don't forget 5) Story. No MMORPG has been able to produce a coherent, interesting storyline the way offline RPGs such as (for example) Xenogears, Final Fantasy, or the .hack series have done. And due to the very nature of the beast, it's doubtful that they ever will.
    • Yes, but in addition to mimicking aspects of reality for people to explore ideas and concepts (and perhaps apply them to their own life if they deem it beneficial, and other purposes as well. MMORPGs can be used as research for future living standards)...I don't know what I was going to say
      • MMORPGs can be used as research for future living standards

        You make me curious. Are you saying that a person would do this research by theirself for theirself or that you could somehow get people to use an MMORPG in such a boring fashion as to gleam anything worth researching from it?

        I'm not tryin to put down your thought or anything, I'm geniunely interested.

  • Well....duh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FileNotFound ( 85933 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @11:29AM (#7044363) Homepage Journal
    Of course the growth is still to come.

    The growth will come when there are MMO games that do not involve HOURS of doing nothing. Because the devs will finally realize that doing nothing is neither intresting nor excieting.

    The growth will come when there are MMO games that have fun things to do that don't get repetative after 2 days, or after 2 months or after 2 years.

    The growth will come when there are MMO games that have a strong community of players supporting each other.

    The growth will come when there are meaningful interactions between the players. Not "I OWNZ JOO!", not "Lets group up and XP", something deeper.

    The growth will come when there are MMO with massive worlds, meaningful means of transportation and player property.

    The growth will come when the PVP is meaningful and fun. Not something put in just so that highlevels could do "something".

    There is currently no MMO that does this.

    Everquest fails on the player property and has plenty of time sinks. Still the the most "perfect" MMORPG out there. I played it for over 2 years.

    DAOC fails in the same areas as Everquest plus it lacks anything fun to do after 2 months.

    Anarchy Online fails because it's more repetative than tick tack toe and lacks any purpose in high levels.

    UO is dead. Lacks any real purpose other than chat once GM level is achieved.

    SWG is horrid. There is NO reason what so ever to advance your char in the game. The game lacks purpose. Nothing that you do in SWG is fun for longer than 2 months. Took me 1 month to get bored of stockpiling money and buying the BEST gear out there.

    PlanetSide is repetative and in no way persistant. The world needs to be far far larger. The base you capture is lost in an hour and you'll just capture it again, rinse and repeat.

    I'm a MMORPG addict, well used to be. Been clean for months. It's all dull. Even Everquest can get repetative after a few years when your character has better gear than you ever thought possible and withstood challanges that seemed impossible. Once the challanges aren't so challanging, it's not fun anymore. It becomes a huge waste of time. If EQ didn't require so much time to be wasted, I'd still play.
    • The growth will come when Middle Earth Online [middle-earthonline.com] is released. I hope...

      • Re:Well....duh... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by FileNotFound ( 85933 )
        Of course everyone expects growth to come with each MMORPG release.

        Each clames to be the next generation ground breaking release and each fails in some area.

        There are so many MMORGPs lined up for release it's hard to keep track of them all.

        Final Fantasy XI, Dragon Empires, EQ 2, WoW, Horizons, Gems of something or other...bah

        I have long ago given up waiting for MMORPGs, the first months of release never tell you much about the game anyway.

        Oh and to the mod who rated my original post "Troll", I suggest
    • It pretty much says everything I was going to say. It might look troll-ish, but it's the truth. For a lot of people, these MMORPGs don't hold a lot of appeal. I've tried playing Anarchy Online twice and Ultima Online twice. Each time I ended up cancelling due to lack of interest after a month. Who wants to spend 3 hours fishing?

    • Re:Well....duh... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Jaeph ( 710098 )
      DAoC now has housing. It's a free download.

      How many hours did you put in during your two months of either DAoC or SWG? I put in quite a long time in the first and am satisfied with the hours I spent versus the money it cost. I'm probably approaching my two months in the second, and I'm happy there as well. When I'm not, I'll leave.

      One last thing - this isn't a math equation, it's entertainment; it would help if you used "IMO" occasionally.

      -Jeff

      • Re:Well....duh... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by FileNotFound ( 85933 )
        First, why would I have to use IMO? Ever? It's retarded. No shit it's my opinion, everything is an opinion, and facts are very very popular opinions.

        I played DAOC the same way I played EQ. 70~ hours a week and quickly found that at high levels there was NOTHING fun to do other than PVP and that the world was TINY compared to EQ. There were other things that pissed me off, like that level is the ultimate factor. In EQ a lvl 30 could take a lvl 40 if the 30 had better gear, in DAOC gear made nowhere as much
        • You play a game more than most people put in hours of work a week, and you're suprised when you've plumbed the depths after a few months? Heck, you played SWG practically every waking hour (and then some), of course you're tired of these things.

          -Jeff
          • You're such a pathetic fanboy, I just don't know what to say. I'm sure had I told you that I played it 1 hour a day you'd have said "Well you just didn't get to a high enough level to enjoy it!". The time invested doesn't matter. Good MMORPGS are fun no matter how many hours a day you play them. (EQ sucks because you can't enjoy it without less than 5hours a day play time)

            I just told you that EQ remained fun no matter how long I played it, it was just too time demanding. It's one thing to play 80 hours a w
            • I'm enjoying SWG, and I enjoyed DAoC. I'm not exactly sure how that makes me a 'pathetic fanboy', just someone with a more positive and apparently less extreme viewpoint than yourself. For what its worth, I'm hardly an apologist for these games - I certainly have things I dislike about both.

              To get back on track, you suggested a number of ways to make mmorpgs appealing to you, and by extension, other people in the "MMORPG as a job" club. I question strongly whether appealing to that crowd is what it will
            • Don't be ridiculous, you don't *have* to play 80 hours a week. If your guild expected you to play that much, find another guild. You let some online people you never actually met manipulate you into spending every waking moment sitting at a keyboard?

              Particularly with the recent Lost Dungeons addon to EQ, you certainly don't have to play hours and hours. It actually has a time limit on adventures that forces you to complete them in 90 minutes. Even with the normal overhead you are talking 2, maybe 2.5 h
              • As I said. At the level I want to play...

                I WANT to be in a guild that DOES play 80 hours a week. I just no longer have that time.

                We would hit 3-5 targets a night, people got so many drops they forgot what they were wearing. I loved it, no matter how hight we set our goal we reached it. The only reason we did it was that we DID play 80 hours a week, we had scouts logged in 24/7, we had a call system for priority targets etc. I swear the army isn't as organised as we were.

                Yet that kind of dedication made E
      • DAOC is a prime example of the dev's not having a clue how to market their game. At release they made a big hoopla about RVR being the end all beat all(and attarcted alot of people with). The first 2 expansions for their game are PvE expansions and don't add any new RvR content in over 2 years. People are still taking the same keeps and relics that where put in 2 years ago and nothing really new has been added!

        Now tell me something, why would you almost completely ignore the people you attracted to your ga
    • Of course the growth is still to come.

      The growth will come when there are MMO games that do not involve HOURS of doing nothing. Because the devs will finally realize that doing nothing is neither intresting nor excieting.

      The growth will come when there are MMO games that have fun things to do that don't get repetative after 2 days, or after 2 months or after 2 years.

      The growth will come when there are MMO games that have a strong community of players supporting each other.

      The growth will come wh
  • I believe mmorpgs will continue to grow. I think as far as games go, they can provide great value per entertainment dollar out there. I know, we all spent umpteen hours playing and didn't pay anything beyond the initial price, but such games are few and far between.

    They're also a decent deal for the developers & producers: a steady stream of cash is a nice business model, and I hope strong encouragement to the industry to continue to improve their product.

    -Jeff
  • Of course MMORPGs will grow. There's sure-fire hit titles like EverQuest2 and World of Warcraft coming up soon.

  • Metaverse? (Score:4, Funny)

    by MORTAR_COMBAT! ( 589963 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @01:45PM (#7046209)
    Wake me when I can code my own badass motorcycle and park it next to The Black Sun after decapitating somebody in a katana duel.
    • You could probably do something like that in Second Life. Well, maybe not, but Second Life is the closest thing to the stuff in Idoru, if that's what you're talking about...
      • umm I think it was Snow Crash, but it's been a while since I read it.

        On the other hand, I haven't read Idoru yet, though it's on my bookshelf, waiting for me to get around to it.

  • my MMOG wish (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    would be to have a P2P universe, where each user's computer contains a "sector" (in whole or in part) to be explored and played in.

    each sector could be modified within wide parameters by the owner of the computer in which it resides.

    of course, this wish will never come true, as there would be little money to be made from it.
  • I found it interesting that the author's calculations were based solely on the U.S. and European market, without taking into account the Asian market.

    So far, all MMO games that have been released have failed to achieve cross-over between the Western and Eastern markets. This includes MMOGs that started in the U.S and Europe, like Everquest, and MMOGs that started in Asia, like Lineage.

    The true global market is probably at about 10-12% saturation with today's games, meaning we are still in the Early Ado

  • Funny... (Score:4, Informative)

    by An'Desha Danin ( 666568 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @02:01PM (#7046438) Homepage
    I recall seeing a statistical analysis [netcom.com] on /. a month or two ago explaining that the MMORPG market was already oversaturated.
  • I go into this in more detail here [switchbox.cc], but I think that the main barrier to more widespread acceptance of MMGs is their inability to provide forms that lend themselves to more "orderly" gaming. In short, the games aren't cooperative enough.
  • Based on his own analysis, and SirBruce's MMOG subscription chart, he projects that the best growth for MMORPGs is still ahead.

    Well, yeah, but that's only because Dragon Fantasy Mystic Shadow Dungeon Horizon Event Online Sports Night 7 [somethingawful.com] isn't out yet!

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