Ultima X Odyssey - Wisdom In Cancellation? 43
Thanks to Corpnews.com for its discussion of the history of the Ultima MMO franchise in the content of the recent cancellation of MMO title Ultima X: Odyssey. The author argues of the cancellation: "This isn't a surprise. No, really. More fundamentally, all this points to the fact that somebody in EA's headcheese department is scared stiff of potentially sapping subscribers from the only truly successful title [Ultima Online] to come out of the company's development sweatshops." He claims: "Furthermore, all this comes at a time when the amount of 'surefire bets' in the industry seems to be dropping exponentially. Miniscule subscription bases for former hot-ticket games like Horizons and Shadowbane, coupled with disappointing numbers for Star Wars Galaxies - at last count, the game widely predicted to crack the MMO industry open and bring in a new rush of players... make it easier than ever for suits to pull the plug on projects which require millions of dollars to even hit the shallow waters of beta." Where does EA go from here with the online Ultima franchise, given that this is the second cancelled online Ultima title?
Was cancelled for good reasons (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Was cancelled for good reasons (Score:3, Informative)
I quit playing Ultima Online because Age of Shadows completely fucked up PVP. Essentially, if you wanted to be able to compete at all, you had to have lots of gold. Something that simply wasn't true before AoS. With AoS it ceased to be player vs player and became item vs item.
I took about a year off from UO then started playing on free servers. I HIGHLY recommend any and all disgruntled UO players looking for a free and better alternative check out UOGateway [uogateway.com] which wil
Madden? (Score:5, Funny)
Just give up already. (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, give up on online play completely. Throw some cash at a few promising single player games! They still exist, after all. All of these project cancellations have really hurt my already shaky opinion of EA -- to the point where I might just make a concious effort to avoid their titles. But if some of the developers under their wing can cook up something really outstanding with their full support (and negligable meddling), it'd go a long way towards turning that opinion around.
I'm sure there's a Madden Online joke in there somewhere...
Re:Just give up already. (Score:2)
Re:Just give up already. (Score:2)
MMORPG success? Ha... (Score:3, Insightful)
Half of the MMORPG currently in development are doomed to vanish after six months of relative success.
Obvious really. (Score:5, Insightful)
So it has to be compatible with the existing game. e.g. even if it's a new world with different rules etc, the players can be migrated between them, (and probably communicate with each other between worlds - pick the right cost- heck link the "Ether resistance" to the CPU/bandwidth usage if you want) e.g. wormhole/teleport or whatever. Let them retain their attributes and some of their stuff (you could force them to leave behind some items- can't take everything back in the old world).
If you want you could even force them to spend X gp/credits/USD/items etc to travel between the worlds. Or make it a quest or something. Come up with a story.
Maybe some things become transformed into other things during the transfer (greater risk/chance of arbitrage opportunities if you do that).
If lots of players move to the new world, then you can retask/reassign the resources for the old world for the new world.
It is better for you to risk cannibalizing your old game than for SOMEONE ELSE to cannibalize yours.
Perhaps I totally don't get it coz I'm not an MMORPG player or designer. But I don't see why my idea is any worse than frustrating their _developers_. Good developers/artists want to see their work become reality, bad ones are relieved if it never does
Cancel stuff enough times and they'll make a new game - for a competitor.
Maybe MMORPG games suck? (Score:2, Redundant)
I also beta tested for Planetside, and while it was more enjoyable than Horzions, it still didn't catch my interest.
I guess I'll never understand how people can tolerate EverQuest. Ugh.
Re:Maybe MMORPG games suck? (Score:1)
In many ways, Everquest isn't, either. It, like Ultima Online, just arrived on the current scene fairly early and got a lot of attention. It was also more polished than games like Meridian 59, The Realm, Dark Sun Online, and some others that aren't coming to mind currently.
If you ever want to get at the core of what a MMORPG could/should be doing to be fun, find a MUD that you like, if you can. Most MMORPGS are patterned af
MMOs more like TV shows than movies (Score:5, Interesting)
Single player games are 1-time experiences similar to movies, you play the game, you enjoy it, then the next game with better graphics and physics comes along and you play that. You can have tons of titles co-exist. Far Cry isn't killing the customer base for Doom 3 or half life 2, in fact people look forward to see how can they one-up what far cry did.
Contrast this with the persistant experience of MMOs. Its more like a TV series like Friends or the Simpsons. People invest lots of time, they form relationships with the characters, they even alter their life to accomadate the schedule. In this scenario there are limited titles that can co-exist. By their nature you can't have a bunch of "hit" MMOs. Once an MMO has claimed a consumer base, its very difficult to convert them.
Even followups to popular MMOs can fail (much like TV spinoffs) AC2 wasn't able to fully capitalize on the popularity of AC1. I have a number of friends who will quit MMOs altogether, or take a break, when EQ1 gets shutdown. They don't consider EQ2 to be a continuation of their EQ1 experiences.
Just like every TV exec came up with their own version of Survivor, most of which have been cancelled, most of the MMOs that will come out are doomed to cancellation.
Re:MMOs more like TV shows than movies (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd like to take your insight a few steps further though. Specifically the bit about us being able to invest our time&money (and hence pay for) multiple single-experience titles (like movies or single-player games) but no more than a select few ongoing experiences like TV-series or MMO's, and even that we take a break from or completely quit once we don't have the time to shell out.
What that amounts to is that the MMO industry is significant
Soaps & sitcoms (Score:3, Insightful)
It's unrealistic to imagine that a large and complex online environment can be built, provided and maintained for a large player base without costing the developers big bucks. The automatic reaction is to charge players to buy the game and then latch onto them with a monthly fee. Games are pushed out the door early to try to claw back cash from the initial purchasers and suffer because players don't pe
Re:Soaps & sitcoms (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I'm surprised that no one here has suggested an open community development effort. Why not create open standards, engines and objects. GPL and copyleft everything. Let Google handle the who's who and rankings. Then stand back and watch the MMO's grow.
Who knows, maybe that
Re:Soaps & sitcoms (Score:2)
These games exist, there's MUDs & MUSHs [mudconnect.com] that are open sourced. The underlying concepts of MMOs are based on what goes on in MUDs/MUSHs.
Where things get complex is when you throw a 3D world graphics engine, artists, support staff for couple hundred thousand users, and equipment on top of everything.
The business model the companies have is to gamble and try and get a hit game. If you get one you're in the money
Re:Soaps & sitcoms (Score:2)
Perhaps I'm being idealistic, but I think it's better than being unrealistic. Personally, I think the business model will never really work. After all, no one is ever really happy living in a company town.
Re:Soaps & sitcoms (Score:3, Informative)
The ENTRY PRICE you pay for a sitcom is a few bucks a month and 45 minutes a week.
The entry price you pay for an MMO is a few bucks a month and an inconceivably disproportionate amount of time a week. It's the latter element that more and more people realize as the real price of an MMO, and are consequently unwilling to pay it.
That's why quite a few people I know who played MMO's for a while just quit (and I doubt if they'll be coming back).
Re:Soaps & sitcoms (Score:2)
I understand MMOs to be more than just MMORPGs. Granted many RPGs are heavily skewed towards powergamers but I'm not convinced this holds true for MMO games where skill is more of an issue. Shooters, fight games, racing games, space sims for instance. There ar
I see it differently (Score:1)
Basically, game has been done before.
-Jeff
P.S. I do think there's hope: I once told someone if you took the character generation and gameplay of City of Heroes and combined it with the content, world, and economy of FFXI, you'd have a fantastic game. Most games
Re:I see it differently (Score:2)
This is exactly like television, everything is derivative to the point of annoyance. How many "multiple choice your way to millionare shows" were there, now we have reality TV on every single channel. There are like 6 shows with hot chick/guy picks who they want to marry out of a group of hot chicks/guys. 10 reality dating shows, one even hosted by a loser in one of those marriage shows! O
Shit or get off the pot (Score:2, Insightful)
UO was published by Origin in the right place at the right time, and that sort of success is very hard to mirror. EQ has done it, as has DAoC to some degree. There is also Ragnarok and Lineage (1, not 2) to remember, so don't even begin to suggest that there isnt money out there
Re:Shit or get off the pot (Score:2)
Take that, bandwagon! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, if you really have to make a massively multiplayer game, why not try some new ideas? Raph Koster's word is far from law, games like Puzzle Pirates have shown that level grind isn't the only way of doing things and that it's possible to have a vibrant online community without levels, without requiring you to be unemployed and/or a college student to be successful, and without beards and dwarves. The MMORPG scene consists 99% of me-too games and we really don't need any more of those. So, I'm not crying over Ultima X. Its predecessor was revolutionary in many ways and deserved its success, but honestly - what would this game bring to the table that wasn't already there? Creativity, please!
Re:Take that, bandwagon! (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that the market is vastly over-saturated. However, there are reasons why each publisher can be easily convinced that an MMORPG is worth the risks:
* Very, very good antipiracy protection -- you're selling a service, not really the game.
* A subscription model. Aside from making more money per year than a per-copy game, it's easy to get people "subscribed".
* Good, free AIs. Oh, there are disadvantages to having humans running other NPCs (such as out-of-context behavior), but major advantages. People are smart, understand commands in English and can organize tactics. They can become friends (and hence increase the value of the game). If there is competition, there is generally tough competition out there -- in most single-player games, it's possible to beat/out-manuver all the computer AIs.
* A channel to make more sales. If you have a strong media channel to your customers, you can freely push ads to other products that you're making.
* A predictable revenue source. If you have sales numbers for each month, you have nice, predictable numbers to work with to show investors and whatnot.
* Greater freedom from deadlines. If a developer doesn't have to finish all of a game by a deadline -- he can build another country while being paid by revenues from initial sales -- he has the ability to work on a project that is uniquely his for a long period of time.
* Planned obsolescence. There is now a lot of video game content out there. Every person that is still spending time playing Tetris or Pac-Man or Super Metroid is not buying new games. Unless you can somehow springboard new sales from the old, having people continuing to play your game is *bad* -- it means that your market is less interested in buying your next game. I can play a fifteen-year-old videogame for most systems today. With an MMORPG, once the other players are gone, the game is "gone", and a player has nothing to do but buy the next product from the publisher.
* Gambling mentality -- the nature of MMORPGs has shown to exploit well addictive personalities. Vendors love addictive types of people -- they will do a marvelous job of shoveling money into the company's pockets forever. MMORPGs generally have no "end", continually have new content, and generally do a good job of forcing people to *start* playing a little bit per time period, making it easy to play a *lot* per time period without an effort of will.
Re:Take that, bandwagon! (Score:1)
In other words, with a game like Morrowind, you might get one fan of the original game buying the expansion. With Everquest, you get one fan who buys the expa
pretty obvious (Score:1)
The sapping subscribers argument in this article is pretty dumb though. It should be clear by now that anyone who is playing Ultima Online is either not interested in 3D MMOs or has the cash to be willing to pay for multiple
Re:pretty obvious (Score:2)
Re:pretty obvious (Score:2, Informative)
Easy, they hired other companies (like Liquid Development) to do the work and just told them their contract is over. The company stopped working on UXO and worked on another of the numerous projects they were hired to work on. There's noone who could be fired over this.
Here is how they did it. (Score:2)
They didn't fire anyone/let anyone go when they announced this because they ALREADY did it.
Horizons (Score:2, Interesting)
Some of the recent dropoff was due to the layoffs that occurred in the staff. Now that they've consolidated, they're working a little more on communicating with the players on what they want to see. One of the biggest problems was that the dev's never listened to the players, and they're at least trying to fix that now. There's talk of se
Re:Horizons (Score:2)
The result was a game that was wholely uninteresting at launch, save for the mildly amusing dragon class, which qu
Re:Horizons (Score:1)
I got in about two months after release, and I've played since. They've made some pretty serious changes since I joined.
Horizons Will Die and MMORPGs will not make money (Score:2)
Horizons runs purely off of the Everquest model. Now before you get your panties in a bundle over me calling Horizons Everquest, realize what the Everquest model is. It isn't the silly little features an experienced MMORPG player recognizes. It is the basic and fundimental game play. The fundamental gameplay of Horizons is the same as Ev
Re:Horizons Will Die... (Score:1)
Maybe the game goes under in a year. Big deal. I've played and enjoyed it, I like it, I'll be sad to see it go if and when it does. Until then
Worlds of Warcraft... (Score:2)
I don't think we've seen that game yet. I think it's coming this year though: World of Warcraft
Re:Worlds of Warcraft... (Score:3, Insightful)
Star Wars, breaking things open? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes I was excited about it until I found out that I couldn't be a Jedi (a 0.002% chance is not good enough for me). And to add insult to injury, once a Jedi dies, it's dead FOREVER!
FAT CHANCE, buster! My dollars go to City of Heroes and DAoC now.
New development funding model (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm, I think I need to send some emails to some other people I know in the industry. :X)
EA Needs a Good Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
why start development in the first place? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, but unfortunately for EA, none of the higher-ups were "scared stiff" of dropping a few million dollars each on TWO separate, canceled UO sequels. Both canceled for the same reason, no less. Way to learn from your mistakes, guys.