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Why so many MMO's fail.
Vigiliance
Member UncommonPosts: 213
One of the many reason's why so many new titles in this genre fail, is often overlooked.
The intellectual property, or more simply put, a series of successful games or media before it.
Look at the majority of successful MMO's. Lets take WoW and SWG for example.
One of the biggest reasons these games were so successful is because the content in the game, the characters, the lore, the content its self was recongizable.
How many people when WoW released were looking for Thrall right away, or going wow I can't wait to see Hellscream. How many people signed up going to play a Night elf looking for Furion and the Druids.
Star wars was an even bigger example. It had and still has a cult following, hell even "admiral ackbar" a minor character in one movie has a well known revolving joke based around him.
Since I can't remember when the movies all released and when the MMO released, I know it had atleast 3 successful movies going for it, maybe even 4-6.
Blizzard had more then 5 or 6 versions Of the RTS warcraft out by 2004.
What did Aion have? Rift?
Little to nothing, they were pulled out of thin air, conjured and hyped with flashy CG trailers hoping to gain attention.
You can't just clone a game and throw new textures at your audience and hope to be successful, why leave something you already know and love for an unknown factor that offers little to nothing new?
I think developers and gaming studios need to develop more of a name for themselves before they go out on a massive Project like an MMO. They really are shooting themselves in the foot.
Look at warhammer, think I am ever gonna buy another game backed by EA again? After they killed what should of been a great game, no thanks lol.
/rant off.
Comments
You forgot ONE key point: Both Rift & Aion were Mirror Universe "Clones" of WoW, but lacked the "cult following" that WoW & SWG had built up from their prior media success. Innovation is the only way forward for new titles, neither AION nor Rift had either, and SWTOR is looking worse for ware as we progress past launch. The game, quite simply, isn't there
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The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
So you spent your post explaining how IPs like RIFT and Aion failed because they were unknown to then say that EA "killed" WAR? How about Funcom? Did they kill AoC? LOTRO? DDO?
Did the huge IPs not save them?
Shouldn't we then not assume that IP has fuck all to do with failure?
IP is good for marketting, not good for gameplay.
Where the two collide is the chicken-and-egg problem of being confident of getting the audience to justify the development costs.
(edit: like others, I'm a little uncertain about the original poster's definitions of success and failure)
the reasons newer MMOS fail is quite simple..
the devs are idiots who think just slapping a name on a game will make it a success...
how about we make an mmo based off my little pony.. and call it "trojan fun times" ... surely that will make it a hit right.....
no if you want to make a successful game you need 3 things
1) a game that is enjoyable (it may have bugs or glitches but they should be minior and not game play destorying)
2) it should be fairly fresh (stop remaking WoW..... make something new)
3) dont make it just because of a movie/book/pizza whatever...
if i want to learn about lords of the rings ill read the books.. if i want to watch star wars ill watch the 6 movies even though the ep 1-3 arent that great to the older ones..
make something refreshing and new... too many game devs keep trying to remake past games that fail .... people dont want to play WoW or they would be playing WoW... if you want to make a new WoW fine ... but make it 100% new dont just take WoW ... slap some new paint on it and a new name and call it bob the builder online...
What are you guys on about? Rift and Aion were both successes.
Anyway, gameplay trumps lore. Lore is a nice extra but not the reason that makes me buy the game or keep me playing.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Again, what?
AoC, LOTRO and DDO were all successes in the end.
EDIT: I bet AoC made a hefty profit with box sales alone.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
The premise in your OP is flawed....SWG wasnt some major hit.
The game flew off store shelves at launch, bringing in a bunch of new folks to the MMO genre....and most left as fast as they got there. Within a year, SWG had dropped to 250k subs(which was 200k less than EQ), and was still losing more. You dont think CU and NGE happened cause SWG was doing well do ya?
Of those 250k, many gamers held multiple accounts due to the one character per server rule.
It really was a sad showing for the SW IP. The name got folks to purchase, but the gameplay couldnt hold them.
Same thing with STO. Huge IP, and a bomb for the MMO. You cant make a game in 18 months, and expect to put enough content in it to make folks happy. DDO and DCU also huge failures, although both supposed to be doing better now that they have gone FTP.
2 other sandboxes, with major IPs, have also failed.....Lego and Sims. Conan had folks salivating during the first 20 levels, and most of them wanted to hurl after that. Warhammer was even worse by all accounts.
The IP means nothing if you dont have a solid game to back it up. Basically the name will get the folks to look, but it is the devs job to keep the customers attention. LoTRO gave Tolken fans a solid game, and has been rewarded for it. Since going FTP, it is doing even better by all accounts.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
I am rolling with the premise of the op for the sake of convo.
Even if i grant him the inane notion that those games are "failures", his post makes no lick of sense.
why they "fail" (over long time)?
- lot players are (wow-)players who maybe even played wow (or their game) for years and are also little tired of wow/it..
- new (p2p)-mmorpg comes out and also alot (wow-)players think: "great.. some distraction from wow/my game"
- ppl start playing new mmorpg en masse
- normally levelup in new mmorpgs dont take that long and usually they dont/cant have that much endgame-content..
- so maybe after 1-3 months ppl will think about: "will i stay and pay for that new mmorpg.. or will i go back to my "home" mmorpg (which should be wow in most cases) where i have my friends/guildmembers, several high-lvl-chars with right equipment, alot more content available"
- at the end the new mmorpg is more like "vacation" from the loved game (wow) for some months..
but thats all just a guess
on the other side:
maybe a developer wants to bring out a new mmorpg.. they see: wow is still successful.. so lets make a game similar to wow and not risk to much with new mechanisms.. at the end the players also want some kind of new wow (with other setting) but at the same time they are already bored of wow (and so they will be bored of the new "wow" after short time)
?!
I think recognizable IP has little to do with MMOs failing. I think the major issue is most of todays MMOs are so similar to each other and offer so little inovation that players just get bored more quickly and quit playing.
Not saying earlier MMOs were better but the genre was new and players had nothing to compare the experience to so the games were "fresh". Now, after most people have played WoW, EQ, RIFT, AoC, et al; the games are no longer "fresh".
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
If you think making money is a failure, i would say not though. "Most" MMO"s make money. And if you take the exception out of your thinking, you will see that they all do about the same. As long as the game is decent and not a bug ridden hunk of junk:)
I would say rather, that the MMO market grows a set amount each year, and that we have enough MMO's that are made and released each year or 2, to keep up with that market.
If we ever had a longer period of time when no MMO's were released, i think you would see a noticable rise in almost all the MMO's that are out. Since they would not have a new game to go to. Thats why you see EVE with a slow but steady rise in subs all those years. There was no other competition for that market so they got all that like that hard core space/sci-fi game.
Unless we see something truly unique, we will follow this trend for quite a while. A set amount of new people to MMO market each year, and a new MMO every year or 2. With large to huge box sells and then subs down to pretty much the norm for most MMO's.
WOW. The freak. The exception. You really must forget that as any type of metric or comparison. They were like hitting the lottery, just perfect timing for the huge increase of internet access to more people and lower prices on PC's. And no matter what people say, a game that has the most content, and one of, if not the easiest, on computers to run. Most peoples first game, and one they fall back on the most. Just take it out of the equation, and you will make more sense of the MMO market.
Actually, I see little correlation between an MMO's IP and its success rate, seems like its more important whether or not it's a good game or not.
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
This ^^^
We're all throwing around a lot of opinions here, but is there any reliable hard data on the subject? This thread has me interested in trying to find a list of IP:budget:openning population:population after 2 years to test our opinions about how an IP affects a game getting made, getting marketted and long-term success (which I presume says more about quality than the initial rush of marketting-lured accounts).
While I think a well made game with a familiar IP will do better than a well made game with a brand new one at first, I don't think IP decides if a MMO will be overall successful or not.
However I do agree with the idea that MMO devs should try to make a name for themselves before going the MMO route, by simply making successful singleplayer games first. They don't need Blizzard time success, just basic understanding of game development. One thing that always makes me laugh when I read stuff on the developer forums here and elsewhere, is that someones first big game is going to be a MMO...you're just setting yourself up for failure.
"Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." - Eleanor Roosevelt
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Yeah, you are right.
First of all can a game that is great become a huge hit with more or less no story whatsoever. Just look on Diablo, it's story is basically that a great demon is at the bottom of a dungeon under the village and you should kill it. A 10 year old kid could have written that but still it was a huge hit since the game was well made.
Secondly is famous IPs often not fit to be a MMO. Books like Lord of the rings or Wheel of time are specifically made to tell a single story as well as possible and that make them rather bad for telling the stories of all the players as well.
Thirdly does most game devs make the usual misstake of adding the same usual MMO mechanics to stories who should have special mechanics to fit the world. The trinity combat does not fit worlds like Star wars or Middle earth, neither world have combat healers and neither of the stories seems to have tanking in them. A game world must have lore that goes together with the basic mechanics of the game.
As I see it you can either choose a mechanics that you want to use and build a world around that yourself or you can choose a world and make a mechanics for it. Otherwise the game is not as good as it should have been, just look on WAR.
A great game needs both great game mechanics and a great world to truly be what a MMO can be, and using someone elses world is a lot harder than making one by yourself. P&P IPs like Warhammer and Shadowrun actually are easier than book or movie IPs but they still demands the right mechanics.
No IP in the world can save a bad game, and a good IP can actually destroy a good game if you don't implement it right.
Actually I feel big name IP games fail more often than unknown IPs. There is a very simple reason for this... Fan Expectations. Fans know their chosen IP inside and out and have their own ideas of how it should be treated. When a developer makes 'Generic MMO #58' with their beloved IP painted on to it people tend to react badly. Look at what happened to STO for a prime example. Fans had this fantasy of what living in the Star Trek Universe should be like and when Cryptic delivered a very bland generic combat centric game most fans went balistic.
We are seeing the same thing now with SW:TOR to a lesser extent. I don't know how many threads I've read criticizing the game that the first sentence was, "I'm a huge Star Wars fan but...". This should be a huge red flag to any developer because these people should be their core audience. Now before the rabid fanboy bandwagon jumps all over me I'm not saying the game is bad... I'm just saying what I'm seeing all over every forum that discusses that game.
When you make a game based on a well known and beloved by many IP you are taking a huge risk because if you don't get it exactly right the fans are going to linch you. We saw this with STO, AOC, SWG(NGE), Matrix, WAR, CO, DCU, DDO and now to a lesser extent SW:TOR(Only because it is too early to tell, it could go either way at this point). The only two that seemed to get it right were WOW and LOTRO. That isn't a very good batting average if you ask me.
Bren
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all i can say is that most IP fail cuz of IPs fail cuz of the expectations of the audiance and i totaly agree when u have a fav IP and they dont make the game Spot ON then the game will be talked about and known as 'Faliurs'
Because they feel there isn't a need to be creative or innovative when the zombie masses are happy with getting their shinies in a linear chain-quest ridden world made to not let them even remotely fail. Run on that hamster wheel of lame garbage, we will reward you!
I agree.
On the other hand, I would prefer an original IP so that no licensing fees have to be paid out and a maximum amount of money can go back into the game.
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Spot on is not the problem, the problem is that they just slap your IP on the usual EQ/Wow game which make it seems nothing like the real IP.
Take Warhammer. They used almost nothing from the original IP, only Altdorf looks as it should and only the greenskins have part of the warhammer dark humor. The adult theme was removed all together to not upset parents. It is one of the best made worlds there is and they used like 2% of it.
Then they slapp those 2% on top of Wow but with PvP focus instead of PvE. It was a disaster.
I can live with some misstakes but I want the game to feel like the right IP at least. If I play LOTRO it should have the feel of the books, Warhammer should have the feeling of either the tabletop or the RPG and Star trek should feel like watching an episode on telly. If they can't deliver that they shouldn't license the IP at all, they are losing more than they gain from that.
I think he meant TOR?
They fail because our expectations are bloated more than their features can possibly be.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
MMOGs Fail because they're not given the amount of time, effort, and money that they deserve to have invested in them.
A development team of 80-100 people is totally inadequate for a project the size and scope of a MMOG...it's patently absurd to think that a puny little team of 100 peeps could ever build anything larger than a single player game. That's the main reason single player games are vastly superior, in terms of quality, to their raggedy MMO cousins. A development team of 1,200-1,800 people - mostly artists and designers - is more appropriate for an undertaking as massive as a MMOG (should be).
The budgets for MMOGs are also inappropriately small...$50-80 million is a joke. The movie Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince cost like $250 million to produce 153 minutes of entertainment. A MMOG, on the other hand, is available 24/7/365...well, you do the fuckin math!
Ultimately, MMOGs fail because the end users are idiots who will play anything! Most MMOG players would totally fail the Stanford 'Marshmellow Test'! MMOG player have very low standards, as far as I've been able to see...THAT'S the real reason MMOG are so fail!
Stanford marshmallow experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Marshmallow Experiment - Instant Gratification - YouTube