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

MMO Report Tips World Of Warcraft As Leader 52

Posted by simoniker from the blizzard-smash dept.
Thanks to VE3D for reprinting details of a new online gaming report discussing MMO trends and estimated game popularity. According to the excerpts from the Themis Group's report, online gaming will grow from $960 million revenues in 2003 to $4.10 billion in 2008, and the chart estimating "expected popularity of new persistent worlds... in descending order by projected subscriber base twelve months after launch" is headed by Blizzard's World of Warcraft, followed by Sony's EverQuest 2 and Turbine's Middle Earth Online. The report also suggests: "Success with a license challenges developers to find a way to implement the license's core appeal into an MMG-style game - a challenge which Final Fantasy Online met, but Star Wars Galaxies did not."
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MMO Report Tips World Of Warcraft As Leader More

MMO Report Tips World Of Warcraft As Leader

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  • Virtual Property &Real World (Score:4, Interesting)

    by leoaugust ( 665240 ) <<leoaugust> <at> <gmail.com>> on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @07:40AM (#7901973) Journal

    FAST FORWARD TO 2014: ..... Virtual property will emerge as a major driver for gamers and game companies.

    Reminds me of a discussion recently held at /. Will Virtual Economies Affect Real-World Economics? [slashdot.org]Maybe the author of the article discussed there, Edward Castronova, [fullerton.edu]could use some numbers from the report mentioned in the current discussion to give more concrete shape to his ideas. Would love to continue the discussion then ....

  • Isn't there a difference between revenue and profit? Just because a bunch of companies are getting a bunch of money from their subscribers doesn't mean they're profiting more. Because the more people that play MMORPGs, the more servers they need to handle the load, the more tech support they need to help people with issues, the more full-time coders they need to help fix the bugs that come up, and the more designers, coders, artists, etc. they need to create new content for the game to keep people coming
    • Game companies can control that very easily, by raising their prices. This both increases revenue per subscriber, and reduces the number of subscribers to whatever level they want.

      Just normal economy of scale.

      Also, they could create an artificial shortage, by not raising prices, but just capping the maximum number of users.
      • But that limits their revenue as well as their profit. What I was getting at is that there's a difference between saying that the companies are going to get billions of dollars in revenue in the next 4 years, and that those same companies are going to get billions of dollars in profit in the next 4 years.

    • On the contrary... (Score:5, Informative)

      by *weasel ( 174362 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @10:20AM (#7902762)
      quite to the contrary.

      the happy math for corporations is that the costs of a massmog fall as it becomes more popular.

      consider bandwidth:
      an OC-24 can handle 8 times more players than an OC-3, and yet it costs far less than 8 times more per month. (more like 3-4 times as much.) as the game becomes popular, and bandwidth usage increases -- bandwidth cost per player drops.

      consider bugs:
      using the 'shard' model (several 'copies' of the world that each serve a subset of the total playerbase) - the number of bugs to fix holds steady as the number of shards is increased. You don't have to make twice as much content to appease twice as many players - you just plug in another shard.

      Also, as the game ages and becomes more popular, the bugs decline. (bugs such as anything that isn't a GM-request like harassment and such) the number of calls to customer support (eg. hardware compatibility problems, crashing problems) decline. the growth of the 'known bugs' means average call time itself drops. the cost of customer support per player drops.

      consider hardware:
      hardware costs decline as time goes on (and it takes time to become popular). what was a very expensive server farm for Sony when Everquest started in 1996 is now slower than the much cheaper server farm they last added around 4 years later. Hardware cost per player drops. Assuming the worst case, the cost of hardware doesn't measureably fall, still only means that hardware costs would hold steady as the game becomes more popular.

      consider staff:
      you need a certain number of people to ensure 24x7 service at a constant level of quality for a single server farm. yet you do not need twice as many people to cover twice as many servers. furthermore, over time, utilities and procedures will make the most commonn problems easier to deal with, and the bug fixes will make exceptions less frequent. server-maintenance staffing costs fall as the game becomes more popular and the game ages.

      customer support for bugs also decreases as outlined above.

      the only staff that need to increase in proportion to the growth in playerbase are in-game customer service staff (GMs). this at worst is another cost that holds steady as the game becomes more popular.

      consider content:
      also using the shard model (purely a business decision, not a technical one, i assure you) the same number of designers/artists that supply an expansion that will keep 1 shard of 2000 players happy, will keep an infinite number of shards of 2000 players happy.
      average cost of content per player decreases.

      also keep in mind that Sony had a 60% profit margin on monthly fees for Everquest when it cost $10/mo. now it costs 30% more (at the least), and do you honestly think they're spending a dime more on service and support?

      Sony even had a profit on retail box sales, for the game and expansions, over their costs to develop the software and install the hardware. (the reason everyone charges for the box on the shelf - even if subscriptions flop they break even if they can sucker a couple hundred thousand people into trying it).

      the way these games are designed, the bigger the game gets - the more they profit.

      only when the player population starts to dwindle do the profit margins fall again. when you have too many underutilized servers. when you have too much staff. many companies will slowly consolidate and layoff to maintain their profit margins for awhile - but eventually running the game just won't be worth their time. They could put those resources on the Next Big Thing and go back to their old profit margin.
      • *weasel wrote:

        consider staff:

        you need a certain number of people to ensure 24x7 service at a constant level of quality for a single server farm. yet you do not need twice as many people to cover twice as many servers. furthermore, over time, utilities and procedures will make the most commonn problems easier to deal with, and the bug fixes will make exceptions less frequent. server-maintenance staffing costs fall as the game becomes more popular and the game ages.

        Not quite true. Customer Service (CS) act

        • there would be a factorial increase in problems between players, except that the effective playerbase caps at the max number of players per 'shard'.

          EQ doesn't really have 400k players. they have ~25 shards with 8k players each who can never interact between shards. sure, the cost of CS is O(n!) for a single shard (n being population). but since there is no interaction across groups, and n has a max cap per group (max population per shard), adding 2 more groups doesn't effectively triple that max n. it'

          • CS per shard stays constant as shards are added.

            Not quite. You also have to consider things like online venues. It's expected that you will have an online forum for people to discuss issues, and *everyone* will be participating in those. You'll have to police those just as you police your servers; more, in fact, since that's your public face to the world.

            Plus, some games are going for a "single huge shard" for their games these days. 10k+ people stuffed into a single world instance at one time is goin

  • Powerleveling (Score:3, Interesting)

    by deanj ( 519759 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @09:26AM (#7902444)
    "Offerings such as combination accounts, power leveling, and character transfers could potentially increase revenue for MMGs by as much as 25% of subscription fees, or $100m annually."

    I think they may be over reaching here, since the fees for character transfers have only been $1 million since the game started.

    I also have to disagree with the "power leveling" part... if a game offers "power leveling" for a fee, that game is sure to not have a long term appeal, since it'll be dominated with folks that just spend more money being the more powerful people in the game.

    Besides, usually "power leveling" (at least in EQ) doesn't do the character that much good long term. You end up with a player that doesn't know various tactics and/or spells work in the game, and hasn't maxed out capabilities that progress as you use them throughout the lifetime of the character. Example: Defense. As you progress, your defense rating gets higher and higher. This only happens ever so often during battle. Defense ends up adding into your overall armor class. Powerleveled characters usually end up having very low defense scores. Same goes with weapons, spell casting capabilities, and the like.
    • Though the concept of power leveling is nauseating to most hard core gamers, I don't necessarily see how it would be detrimental in the long run. While you may be a bit more selective about your party/guild-mates, it is unlikely to be a major factor in what percent of the non-spenders continue their subscriptions. The use of "first degree price discrimination" (the term sounds evil/illegal, but it's just a term) is what economists use to describe the process of pricing a product based upon how much each c
      • It is detrimental. I've played games that have paid powerleveling, as well as classic self-powerleveling (playing 20 hours a day and just outclassing more casual players), and there usually end up being two falldown points: 1. Once a character gets to level 100, or 99, or 250, or whatever the max is, there's a lot less for the player to do. This is even moreso for players that leveled their characters the "hard way," and end up having most of their main skills/abilities/stats/however the game's system work
        • You know, the idea of having a guild blockade a pass sounds like the single most appealing thing ever done in a MMORPG. If they threw a little roleplaying, interacting a bit, and if another guild rallied the rest of the population that would otherwise be interested, there could have been an -incredible- battle, the likes of which would make for legends.
        • And this problem was the one that Shadowbane was trying to overcome, by giving you a framework to compete in with fully leveled characters. If they can just finish getting all the technical problems worked out, we'll get to see if they were right.
    • the problem is that pay-for-loot/pay-for-level systems acknowledge that these games demand too much time, and most of it is not fun.

      level-based systems punish the casual gamer as is. 'cheapening' the experience by selling advancement only alienates more of the small market segment they do have. of course i'd imagine the increased revenue will likely outweigh the losses from those who would quit.

      but i certainly don't think the systems will draw in casual gamers the way these analysts think. all they do is
    • it'll be dominated with folks that just spend more money being the more powerful people in the game.
      This didn't seem to hurt Wizards of the Coast's "Magic: The Gathering". When I was playing a lot five years ago, that game was entirely dominated by people who could aford to buy the powerful rare cards. None the less it was the most popular game around, in both the hard core and casual circles.

      • Re:Powerleveling (Score:2, Interesting)

        by gauauu ( 649169 )
        That's because Magic is inherently a fun, well-designed competitive game. It's a competitive game where you compete against another person. As long as you have invested about the same amount of money as the person you are playing with, you will generally have fun playing the game.

        This isn't true of MMORPGS. Here, the entire appeal to is to amass more power, more levels. There is not very much appeal in sitting around playing the game as one of the "little-guys," as there really isn't that much fun stu

  • Next! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by idlethought ( 558209 )
    Interesting that the 'Best' MMO is always the one that will be released next.
    • it's easy to be better when your feature list is merely promises. :)

      imo, the only truly interesting thing that will occur in the next generation of massmog launches - is seeing how EQ2 cannibalizes EQ's playerbase - and seeing if Blizzard actually 'gets it' in regards to bringing a massmog to the mass market.

      will they actually bring in casual gamers? or will they just leverage their built-in fanbase and their usual attention to detail?

      i personally don't think there's a soul in a decision-making position

      • Re:Next! (Score:2, Interesting)

        by llefler ( 184847 )
        imo, the only truly interesting thing that will occur in the next generation of massmog launches - is seeing how EQ2 cannibalizes EQ's playerbase

        I'm curious to see what happens here as well. When Turbine released Asheron's Call 2 it pulled quite a few people from AC1. And if AC2 had been worth playing it could have meant the death of AC1. It seem like "getting it right" in regards to a MMOG sequel includes shooting yourself in the foot on your current game.

        Recently, I've started to wonder if building s

        • Re:Next! (Score:3, Insightful)

          by *weasel ( 174362 )
          MMOGs do get stale. people leave. eventually the publisher decides that it isn't worth the resources to continue to operate on the lower profit margin than what they previously enjoyed when it was more popular.

          what they want to do, instead of closing shop, is to try to pull back in all those people who tried their last game, and start the profit cycle over again.

          i think the people making business decisions want to cannibalize the old player base. new games mean new purchases, higher fees, and a brand new

          • Re:Next! (Score:2, Interesting)

            by llefler ( 184847 )
            Are there any successful MMOG sequels?

            If you read some of the white papers on the site linked to in the article, one of them states that MMOGs can and have had lifespans that exceed 10 years.

            Moving customers to a new MMOG is like when your cellphone contract expires. You hope they will sign up with you again, but there are no guarantees. I know that when I leave AC1 I will look at all the 'new' MMOGs. I won't just run out and buy an ACx, Middle Earth, or D&D Online simply because Turbine is producing
            • Gemstone, Airwarrior, DragonRealms - of course those are fairly old for-pay games, but what other persistant online games have been around long enough to try sequels?
              (aside from the cancelled UO2 and the disasterous AC2). It's also noteworthy that their predecessors didn't really survive the transition to the sequels.

              Thing is, the suits don't particularly care if the 'old game' folks move over to the 'new game' or not. because odds are, if the new game doesn't appeal to you, you'll keep playing the old o

    • Re:Next! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Cosmik ( 730707 )
      Interesting that the 'Best' MMO is always the one that will be released next.

      Indeed. SWG was meant to embody the be-all-and-end-all of MMORPGs; a game which many people would flock to and stay with. EQ still enjoys higher numbers than SWG, whereas a newer game, Horizons, laments lower subscribership. A game which has been out for a while in Asia, and not so long in NA, FFXI enjoys great reviews and subscribers - breaking a few records I believe.

      While I agree that WoW has a good chance of being the most
  • How do you project the popularity of a game before it has even been released?

    • By how much people talk about it, and preorder sales. If I remember right, World of Warcraft preorder registration was open for the best part of 2003.
      • This works for retail boxed games, but not for MMO games. Retail sales (which is all you can preorder) account for maybe 10% of a MMO games final revenues. So you'll get a spike in expected revenue when people order the box, but then they might not pay after the first free month.

        The only real way to measure an MMOs success is a year or so after launch, by looking at subscriber retention rates. Any other measurement is flawed.

        Remember: The Sims Online was also projected as being a huge blockbuster wit

    • I believe they use a very complicated series of algorithms and a sequence of analyses to determine a cooefficient. They use this cooefficient in turn with a sliding scale to draw a likely number.

      I believe it's called the "Fanboi Factor".

  • Expected and undeserved (Score:5, Interesting)

    by theefer ( 467185 ) * on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @11:22AM (#7903288) Homepage
    I really don't expect much from WoW. Blizzard is a great game company, and I'm still a big Starcraft lover. They make nifty, well polished games, but WoW sounds just so unoriginal. Yes, the design is quite cool, and so are the races, and the spells ... But does it really sound an RPG ? No. Can you expect to have a really interesting roleplay with orcs and humans and the other races available ? I don't think so, and it does not seem to be the point. Does it bring MMORPG to new grounds ? No. Is it gonna be a hit ? Probably.

    Reading the latest big report [slashdot.org] on the games seems to bring two main conclusions : (1) the gameplay is still open and under discussion, (2) the gameplay is plain unoriginal. They are building a well thought game upon the existing basis, but there is really no risk taken whatsoever, nothing that could really make it the next generation MMORPG.

    As an amateur MMORPG [milcis.net] game designer myself, I have found that there are an incredibly large amount of possibilities in that genre, but as always most commercial products stay in the same area, ever perfecting one type of game without risking to discover new ones. Too bad Blizzard did not dare to try though, they'd probably have done it the right way.

    For my part, I'm waiting for Ryzom [ryzom.com], not because it has a much more original gameplay than WoW, not because of its gorgeous graphical design (probably the best out there for an MMORPG), but becauses it dared to leave the traditional fantasy field to explore a new, fresh and tribal universe that is simply fascinating. The objective is more to carry the player into a dream-like original place than put him in front of monsters to fight.
    • In all the MMORPGs I've played, RP isn't the idea. It starts out nice, when hardly anybody plays them, and you can get some very cool roleplay between major guilds. I'm still nostalgic over the wars in Dransik between the Lotorian Knights and the Minions of Talazar. There was even a GM-controlled NPC named Talazar who would appear occasionally and lay waste to towns, and LK would show up and try to drive him off. Very fun.

      Then, after a while, people with names like Oosexfucker69oO and l337asspwnj00n00b sta
      • About the only way to keep RP alive in a game is to have an RP-devoted server, and litterally make players apply for a character in it (like some of the old MUD's did), which unfortunately, no MMORPGs that I know of have ever done.

        For business reasons yes, of course.
        But I see what you mean.

        In my opinion, the only way to have RP is to reward it, just as most games currently reward hack and slash for instance. Then either you want an RP-only game, and you just make sure the game is not interesting unless y
        • It also could be that role playing is work. While some players might put out the effort to stay in character all the time, most are there to play. Sometimes hack-and-slash is good, mindless stress relief.

          Compare it to AD&D. Some players I know had in-depth histories of all their characters. Others just rolled a few dice and gave it a name.

          I think roleplaying is one of those things that we all say we want, but don't really. I suppose if they put a translator in the client so everything I typed came ou
          • RP in online games isn't all that much work, really. For the most part, it's simply a matter of talking about in-game things as real, and not referencing out-of-game material. At the most, it's a bit of dialect speech, which I generally didn't bother with short of the drunken slur while presiding at guild meetings (The guild I ran was always... shall we say, Well Lubricated. I always brought a few bottles of Parian Stout to council meetings).
          • I will play WoW only if griefing of other players is possible...(kill stealing/pk/experiance killing etc). The ability of the game to support a roleplaying environment would enhance my enjoyment, but unless I can directly affect other people in game either negatively or positively, WoW will have little appeal. If Blizzard is sharp they will have a pvp server with appropriate rule sets. It's time to get rid of the hack & slash monster bash crap and get back to our pre UOR roots.
        • RP isn't determined by the game so much as it's determined by the community. The only successful RP communities I've seen were formed because the twinks would get ostrasized. The problem is getting a large enough RP community that it has the ABILITY to ostrasize twinks and not let them be overwhelmed.

          Anyone ever play a consent based mu*? No one can drag you into an RP scene without your permission. So if someone wanted to be ass they could go into the plaza and shout out how the government is all evil
    • What I expect from WoW is the first major North American MMOG where Mac & PC users can seamlessly interact together.

      Yes, Lineage did it first. Not enough NA market penetration, apparently. Yes EQ has a Mac version. With separate Mac servers only. Shadowbane has this currently (and has a large proportion of Mac players as a result), but has its problems technically. However, being a mixed game has helped player retention somewhat, in that there is no other game that mixed guilds can migrate to without

    • From your post it seems you're making two vital mistakes in your dismissal of WoW. First, it doesn't seem you've played any of the Warcraft games. Secondly, you're basing your opinions off of a /. article.

      Warcraft isn't just another RTS game, it actually has a well thought out backstory (complete with many novels). Sure, there are orcs and dwarves and elves just like "every other" fantasy setting, but any Warcraft fan will tell you that their traits and personalities are completely different than what you

  • Multiplayer impact on Industry Growth (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wonder how multiplayer games impact the growth of the Games industry as a whole.

    When games were single player only you played through 20-60hour game and then bought the next game. Now with multiplayer games especially MMO games the same title can last literally thousands of hours (how many hours have I spent on EQ & Counterstrike & NWN). Also with such high player time investment, it becomes more difficult for new title to supplant existing ones. I have heard people saying they'd just quit MMO

  • SWG (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Terminal Saint ( 668751 )
    I may well be tarred and feathered for saying this, but I happen to enjoy Star Wars Galaxies. I've been playing since launch and I still have a blast with it, and I know a number of people who have been as well. This seems to be just another case of the people who dislike the game being especially vocal, while those who like it are too busy playing to respond. Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for a few stormtroopers to meet the business end of my flamethrower.
    • 'This seems to be just another case of the people who dislike the game being especially vocal,

      or maybe a lot of people who were looking foward to it were turned off by the final product...hmm I wonder why...

      Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for a few stormtroopers to meet the business end of my flamethrower.

      Ahh could this be it? Could it be that most players didn't like it, because it wasn't LIKE the star wars movies? How many times during the star wars movies did you see someone running aro
      • Well yes, you make good points, however I was simply saying that I and many others still enjoy the game, and isn't that what it's all about?
    • I enjoyed SWG for awhile, I think the hardcore type player especially veterans of previous MMORPGs, found the game lacked any high level content. The holocron Xmas gifts was a dead giveaway (pardon the pun) since the only interesting thing left for many people is unlocking the Force Sensitive slot. I dont mean to sound pessimistic but it seems the holocrons were given away to keep people another few months and hopefully enough new content will be brought in by then to keep them longer. The game also suffer
    • "This seems to be just another case of the people who dislike the game being especially vocal, while those who like it are too busy playing to respond."

      Not attacking you or anything, but based on what?

      Personally I played for about 2 months before quitting, pretty unsatisfied, but I rarely discuss it (except right now).

      • Re:SWG (Score:1)

        by CFTM ( 513264 )
        I'm inclined to agree, I played it for about a month and became bored with the gameplay. The world was huge but the content was lacking, not to mention how the skill system worked was quite boring ... "Geee, I'll make a macro to dig for special water and go watch TV for half an hour!". I'm sure this all was impart due to my choice to attempt to become a craftsperson but damn did I ever get bored. Oh well just my two cents.

  • Metaverses (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jafuser ( 112236 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @03:36PM (#7905907)
    MMO gamess are fun for a while, but I think after you've seen 2 or 3 of them, you realize that the difference between them isn't really all that remarkable. They all have the same general framework of doing mundane tasks to increase virtual rank.

    I think the next big online phenomenon is going to be metaverses.

    In a metaverse, you are not given a bunch of artificial skills and abilities. You (the person behind the keyboard) are the determining factor of your online persona's skill. And it's not a twitchy kind of skill either, it's pure creativity.

    The first time I logged into a network and was able to communicate with other people around the world in real time, I knew it was going to eventually catch on and spread to the point of being mainstream phenomenon.

    Now I'm getting the same feeling now, as I've jumped into the "metaverse" environemnt known as Second Life. I've played a handful of MMORPGs before Second Life, and got the impression from them that all online environments would have basically the same general template.

    My first day within SL was like my first time on the internet, I was overwhelmed that so much creative flexibility could be organized in a real time multiperson environement. It's sort of a feeling like walking down a very long narrow confining hallway which suddenly opens up to a wide open outdoor field.

    The metaverse-like applications we have currently are nowhere near the sophistication of those dipicted in science fiction, but to be fair, we're just getting started. Before too long, I predict that they are going to be as mainstream as the internet is now.

    I think MMO games are nearing their limit for flexibility. The only direction to go from here is to open up the virtual world that make up these games and let your users truly create the content. Of course, when that happens, it's hard to stay confined to a theme or license, so it seems inevitable that metaverses will be the next rung on the evolutionary ladder.

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