Earth & Beyond was a nice space game... but EA decided they should relocate their assets and funding to another project... a way to get montly subs from The Sims crowd with The Sims Online
On this case, Greed and EA "Suitiness" were the key for it's downfall.
E&A had pretty much no competition on it's genre (since EVE although in space, tends to a different crowd) in it's time... and nowdays "replacements" (Star Trek Online) are many levels below in quality.
MMOs shutdown for many reasons, but usually the main reason is a lack of servers and support. I can't stand localized MMORPGs simply because the original versions always have more updates and are better maintained.
I rememember when Phantasy Star Online forced the fans of that game to buy three consoles, four versions of the game, as well as a PC version.....Just to force people into registering in the original version after North American and European Servers shutdown. Universe did the same thing.....Except they moved things to handhelds and now a community exists demanding to ban all foreigners who play the game in Japan.
The same is true for Final Fantasy XI and XIV. Japanese parties love to act friendly and cute, until you see the same people post in forums (in japanese of course) claiming why Square-Enix allowed foreigners to play their game....
Its all about the will of the first party, which is why from an American Standpoint, its important for an MMORPG to be created and maintained in the US (from the point of view of citizens)...Its true that Americans have a bad reputation when it comes to gaming outside the US......However, Americans make a game and by the second or third version update they patch ALL versions of the game to the same levels.
As for burning games at the stake. It will happen and nothing can stop it from happening. To make a game successful, a point comes when listening to the masses is more detrimental to the game than anything else. Sure, a game gets burned by gamers.....Sure, but its still the first party responsibility to make sure the game succeeds.
Blaming Gamers for the failure of a game is like saying "All gamers who do not buy and support my game should be arrested for murdering my game."
You seem to have all the answers in your article, but have not connected the dots
Yes the answer is money, so the title should not be why do mmos die, but why mmos don't make enough money to survive. Agree?
Then you go on to compare games like Tabula Rasa, Hellgate:London, All Point Bulletin to games that have found success like guild wars. Just looking at the difference in quality tells the entire story.
If developers want more money they need to up their standards. Personally I hope enough games die until developers get the message in no uncertain terms that players are done with the Hellgate:londons of the world.
technically HG:R isn't a new game but a re-release of HG:L so EA and Bamco stil hold the publishing rights (or however things were worked out with that game). revival is being done by Hanabit and after how they got mad and ran off with HG:L without trying to work with EA and namco Bandai those two are probably more than a little resistant to working with hanabit again.
With the large amount of games being thrown at the gaming world (all trying to get that golden egg WoW). Gamers have alot to chose from. Back in the day there was only a few stable games that a game developer could keep large populations and brings in subscriptions.
Also hype is a big factor in what people see as a good game and then it turns out be mediocre. (Warhammer: Age of Rekoning)
With "Beta Testing"....lol sorry couldn't help it, "Beta free Playing" and knee jerk reactions of certain gaming comunities could spell disaster for game developers. So they try to change everything they produced and never really get things back to a level of performance that is required to release a game.
Oh and investors should keep out of when a game is going to be released.
Lets cut to why they die since the op could only come up with 2 things.
Here is my list of why MMO's die
(1) A bad design, that's right nobody wants to play bad games
(2) Bad customer service, you got bad customer service folks will not hang around
(3) MMO's that refuse to listen to their player base
(4) Folks get bored and move on, due to lack of the dev team not understand their players and not hitting the target mark
(5) Lack of content that chases of tons of folks
(6) Continued nerf's in the name of balance instead of trying to come up with great skills to balance it out
If you add all that up in short I will say this. If you have a great game but no end game content folks will leave. If you have a great game but continue to nerf things instead of balancing it out. Content Content Content, lack of content causes board folks and they will leave in droves, failing to provide content on a consistent basis will drive folks off.
So yes the number one reason over all is you close the game when you don't have enough folks paying to keep the servers open, All the above and problem more will kill your player base. No play base = no income = your fired end of game.
Tabula Rasa killed do to lack of understanding what you player base wanted.
SWG lack of understand what you players wanted and a total redesign even though the game still runs max of 30k folks playing.
Vangaurd lack of content, lack of dev team, and yes its the next mmo that gets killed its on its last leg
APB killed and maybe comming back will have to see
Matrix lack of a good dev team, folks quit playing
DDO, LOTRO lack of content. Content now = store, I give it a year and we will check back. I dont expect lotro to live past next december. Main reason that when it comes up for license renwal.
Tabula Rasa did not die due to lack of players, it was actually picking up a month before anounce of its closure, plus it had an expansion coming up, had new trade system, and pvp was getting stronger... to all observing it looked like it was going to return to the mainstream.
The reason Tabula Rasa collapsed, in my opinion, is that it was determined that the resources in TR could be used somewhere else... such as in an upcoming beta/mmo that they hoped would break the market big time... Hang on, wasn't western version of Aion announced about the same time as TR's collapse? Didn't the Korean game begin straight after TR was closed down? Where did they get the server space for Aion I wonder??? Note also that several free mmos were closed down at the same time. Wonder where those resources went?
The reality is that while TR was picking up in subscriptions, it was decided that the profit margin was smaller than they thought they could get, so they could scratch it and start a new ip from scratch. They even offered TR subscribers free entry into beta and to the game when released. How can the link not be seen?
Sometimes it is not money, sometimes it is just to salvage physical resources for a new game.
Bots. Man. Fking Gold Selling bots kill every game they infest. >.>
Actually its the people who supply the gold spammers. The companies who are spamming the selling of gold are only intermediaries. They have websites where they purchase gold from gold sellers (players who have found exploits/easy ways to get money). They then go and spam the games. Once an order goes through the website they send out a message to all of the people who are registered as sellers of gold for that game. Once a seller receives the order they hand the gold over to a broker that works for the gold selling website and they pay the seller/give the gold to the buyer.
If people did not sell their excess in game currency/items to these companies there would be no spammers.
Bots. Man. Fking Gold Selling bots kill every game they infest. >.>
Actually its the people who supply the gold spammers. The companies who are spamming the selling of gold are only intermediaries. They have websites where they purchase gold from gold sellers (players who have found exploits/easy ways to get money). They then go and spam the games. Once an order goes through the website they send out a message to all of the people who are registered as sellers of gold for that game. Once a seller receives the order they hand the gold over to a broker that works for the gold selling website and they pay the seller/give the gold to the buyer.
If people did not sell their excess in game currency/items to these companies there would be no spammers.
OMG somebody is totaly in the dark on how gold spammers work.
First most gold spammers are hackers. They hack folks accounts, strip them down and pass the gold along. They do this because they know the account will be banned soon and move on to the next person. See this happen all the time you read it in these forums and other forums. Second they use hacks and duplications to make more gold but then like I said its on a hacked account.
Yes I blame the folks who buy gold for an easy way out, gold farmwer would not exist if folks were not buying it. However to say actual players in game are supply the gold farmers, thats a streach.
Either we are supposed to read this like a Seinfeld joke rant or this was written by a child. Assuming the author is serious... this is a business, end of story. Does the MMO make enough money to justify keeping it up and running? If so the servers will stay up, if not they close down. If it isn't money directly then it is almost certainly some legal issue. You fail ot provide any examples of MMOs shutting down that aren't due to money or legal issues so I'm guessing you just decided to write a rant without doing any research.
Toomuch homoginization of mmorpg's over the last 5-years, and the sustained subscribership shows it. Failure doesnt have to be tied to closure when looking at many games, but not delivering on a compelling, complete, non-linear game-play activities that contribute to massively-multiplayer interaction, cooperation, competitiveness, and community motivation for involvement as opposed to a focus on single-player redundant pve questing, followed by lack of character game-play achievements and inter-play that should branch out to a purposeful and dynamic mix of non-instanced pvevp of competing factions, as opposed to competing against static and predictable ai and grinding battlegrounds or within shoe-box instances in general.
SWG had the greatest licence in the universe led to incredibly high expectations from players. It’s not so much a case of failure (SWG is still active and regularly updated) but of disappointment from fans of the saga. Fans had high expectations coupled with poor balancing, bugs and changes to gameplay mechanics while ignoring what the players had to say about it. The infamous New Game Enhancements led to a massive uproar and subscription cancellations. The idea was to grab a new audience, but not only it didn’t happened, it angered the existing one. Now a non-remarkable player-base.
AC2, a creation to a sequel of one of the most beloved MMORPGs, which turned out to be trickier than expected. Experienced studio Turbine tried its best... to annoy players, it seemed. Of course it was “nothing like the original game”. No one was happy and Asheron’s Call 2 featured a vast and completely empty world. Graphics were better but that’s not the issue here, as players quickly reverted to Asheron’s Call, or moved on to something else.
AoC: Skyrocketing to 700,000k + copies sold and subscribers within it's first few months, then nose-diving to less than or around 200,000 sustained subscribers from month 4 to month 6 post-launch.
STO: An overly glorified pve-centric single-player lobby system game based on a hugely popular IP, of which the devs did absolutely no massively-multiplayer justice to. Another heavy pve game with no consequences, massively-multiplayer community-centric and dynamically involved game-play, and certainly a 1/4-baked Klingon faction.
WAR: Launched to probably 700,000 sales and subscribers early on also. Only to be greeted with static PQ's, too much static pve along a rail-system of quest-lines that pathed you through-out a path from one progressive location to another of the same kill 10 rats quests and more static PQ's, laced with scenarios that were mind-numbling grind-fests of no fear of loss and nothing notable for victory, no emotional connection between anything game-play worthy between only 2 Realms, but to wash-rinse-reapeat the same limited game-play actions over and over. After 4-months, a mass exodus of bored and disappointed players, down to around 300,000 subscribers which just continued to erode to below 200,000, I'd think.
EQ2 became the usual suspect of mediocrity ghosts past, and the list goes on.
To start off , you talk about every MMO out there should be F2P and on the other side you got people crying about P2P being too expensive per month but they are able to spend 2-3x the ammount of a P2P onto a F2P game?
Now to the part of MMOs dieing , it is currently human nature to compare any fantasy MMO to World of Warcraft. I'm not a WoW lover or hater , I played it for a few months and moved on. But you still got millions still registered to WoW , so if it were up to me and if I were playing WoW for a few years in all epic shiny gear , I'd ask myself this :"Is it worth leaving WoW to go onto another MMO?" That simple question that people asks themselves is what dictates the future of most upcoming MMOs. If WoW we're to die today , you'd have a few thoudand people playing Ogre Island rated at 2.5 on this site since every other MMOs will be overloaded.
Onto the next point , MMOs cost money to create and maintaining them cost money and you need to have the right people being able to sacrifice their salary to give their game a chance to be off life control for a while so it can generate some income on it's own.
Final point , about F2P such as Nexon , they sure are popular in Asia. Now tell me , how many North/South Americans even know who Nexon are and actually play any of their F2P games? Also all those F2P Devs , has anyone ever stopped to wonder that maybe they are alive because of RMT's ? And maybe , just maybe we're in such a hell hole with botters/RMT's because of these F2P MMOs ? It's worth a thought and why I will never play nor support a F2P MMO , since the Devs themselves are supporters of such activities, otherwise you wouldn't see half the population of any F2P botting their asses off nor will you see all these crappy F2P MMOs out liveing pieces of arts. My hat goes off to CCP and Blizzard on working their butts off on making their MMOs as legit as possible.
To start off , you talk about every MMO out there should be F2P and on the other side you got people crying about P2P being too expensive per month but they are able to spend 2-3x the ammount of a P2P onto a F2P game?
Now to the part of MMOs dieing , it is currently human nature to compare any fantasy MMO to World of Warcraft. I'm not a WoW lover or hater , I played it for a few months and moved on. But you still got millions still registered to WoW , so if it were up to me and if I were playing WoW for a few years in all epic shiny gear , I'd ask myself this :"Is it worth leaving WoW to go onto another MMO?" That simple question that people asks themselves is what dictates the future of most upcoming MMOs. If WoW we're to die today , you'd have a few thoudand people playing Ogre Island rated at 2.5 on this site since every other MMOs will be overloaded.
Onto the next point , MMOs cost money to create and maintaining them cost money and you need to have the right people being able to sacrifice their salary to give their game a chance to be off life control for a while so it can generate some income on it's own.
Final point , about F2P such as Nexon , they sure are popular in Asia. Now tell me , how many North/South Americans even know who Nexon are and actually play any of their F2P games? Also all those F2P Devs , has anyone ever stopped to wonder that maybe they are alive because of RMT's ? And maybe , just maybe we're in such a hell hole with botters/RMT's because of these F2P MMOs ? It's worth a thought and why I will never play nor support a F2P MMO , since the Devs themselves are supporters of such activities, otherwise you wouldn't see half the population of any F2P botting their asses off nor will you see all these crappy F2P MMOs out liveing pieces of arts. My hat goes off to CCP and Blizzard on working their butts off on making their MMOs as legit as possible.
So I read through the wall of text and tried to make since of what you were saying so I will shorten it down. I think you said folks are crying about games going free to play, other folks griping about paying to much for a monthly sub.
Then there was the rant about the free to play mmo's in asia. I also have to ask who is Nexon. Most of those mmo's over there live and die so quickly they just move on to the next mmo. Honestly most of us in the us could care less about those mmo's over there, most of us never heard of them, nor would be interested. The reason why most of us in theus would not be interested in a free to play mmo in Asia, it is simple were a different type of mindset as far as society goes, what works for them don't work for us.
1. Guild Wars is not F2P. In order to play GW, you must buy it. In order to buy it, you must spend money. If you must spend money on it, it's not free. It's, at best, Buy To Play.
The reason F2P/Cash Shops work is because companies design the games in ways that funnel players toward the cash shop, where they'll spend potentially far more in any given month than they ever would on a subscription.... and are duped into believing they're somehow getting a better bargain for their money.
Meanwhile, they get to put the word FREE! on all their ads, and they get to use every single account ever registered to their game as an "active account", because technically a F2P is never "inactive". So, yes... even that account I made for RoM months ago but haven't touched since is still counted as an active account. I'm sure marketing and PR folks love that.
2. I had a hunch of where the author might go when I started reading it. Lo and behold... they went there; the suggestion that MMOs should just launch F2P in the first place. I heartily disagree for myriad reasons, but that's a debate for another thread. I also won't go so far as to say it's a veiled pro F2P article, nor was it one specifically about F2P... but... well... I'm sure Richard Aioshi was smiling and nodding ecstatically if/when he read it.
I do agree with the article "in spirit"... It would be nice to know that I could log into AC2 right now if I wanted to and set out into Dereth again. I can't, unfortunately.... well I could go into AC1 instead, but that game never grabbed me the way AC2 did.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
1. Guild Wars is not F2P. In order to play GW, you must buy it. In order to buy it, you must spend money. If you must spend money on it, it's not free. It's, at best, Buy To Play.
The reason F2P/Cash Shops work is because companies design the games in ways that funnel players toward the cash shop, where they'll spend potentially far more in any given month than they ever would on a subscription.... and are duped into believing they're somehow getting a better bargain for their money.
Meanwhile, they get to put the word FREE! on all their ads, and they get to use every single account ever registered to their game as an "active account", because technically a F2P is never "inactive". So, yes... even that account I made for RoM months ago but haven't touched since is still counted as an active account. I'm sure marketing and PR folks love that.
2. I had a hunch of where the author might go when I started reading it. Lo and behold... they went there; the suggestion that MMOs should just launch F2P in the first place. I heartily disagree for myriad reasons, but that's a debate for another thread. I also won't go so far as to say it's a veiled pro F2P article, nor was it one specifically about F2P... but... well... I'm sure Richard Aioshi was smiling and nodding ecstatically if/when he read it.
I do agree with the article "in spirit"... It would be nice to know that I could log into AC2 right now if I wanted to and set out into Dereth again. I can't, unfortunately.... well I could go into AC1 instead, but that game never grabbed me the way AC2 did.
I keep seing the obvious slant of the free to play on this site, I used to wonder about it then I finally realized that its all in the advertising. How many sub based games do you see buying advertising on this site. When you think about that how many fee to play gams do you see advertising a bunch. So yes they want want games to go free to play as the only way to hook new players into that game is to advertise, then hope you can hook them into the rmt stores that are in those games.
I watched lotro go free to play, and watched my inbox get spammed to death daily, but this in the store, buy that, this is on sale. Other games its not so obvious, but with lotro its in your face 24/7 even now with loading screens.
I would dearly love to see the free to play changed to free to create an account, this games are not free, a lot of them you have to unlock levels, powers, and other stuff in the store to make the game playable.
Yet, you're given free access to a portion of the game and you control whether you spend or not. I think that sounds fairly free and fair enough to call it free. Seriously you can be biased heavily against a genre due to poor game design and RMT etc. etc., but come on, arguing over semantic on what we call it is really trivial. Let's call it Free Unless You're An Idiot/Sucker....if that makes you feel better.
NOTE: I don't really see such an obvious slant towards free to play when they talk about subscription games just as much, wasn't Cataclysm practically featured daily for the last week and a half or so? He was pointing out that in order for MMO's to even get their shoes into the door anymore companies have to start providing more for less due to the heavy amounts of competition in the industry and how fickle/short-sighted/albeit-not-so-easily-"duped" gamers are.
We have a buffet of MMO's and sure its easy to taste and try here and there in smaller portions, but the MMO's that stick around and make the most money (consumed in larger portions) are the ones with better quality overall hence why games live and die Saw 1-6/3D style.
I'm waiting for the day that a to be cancelled MMO gets an open source server/mod package released so the customers who remain and are still dedicated to the title can generate their own worlds/quests. Many times very talented developers/admins/modders can be discovered and tapped by the company for future projects or a rewrite. As was stated, a MMO that gets canceled prevents anyone out there from taking a nostalgic trip down memory MMO lane. There is a robust and dedicated Mod community out there who would love to get their hands on AC2 or another in the long lines of forgotten (virtual)friends.
I am certainly in line for that one, love to see a working emulator going for AC2. There is one in development so hopefully it's open to the masses some day soon.
Played: Asheron's Call(still the best fantasy MMO!), EQ1, EQ2, Vanguard, DAoC, Horizons, City of Heroes/Villians, WoW (crap), LOTORO, D&D Online, Eve, Anarchy Online, and still playing SWG daily.
Comments
Earth & Beyond was a nice space game... but EA decided they should relocate their assets and funding to another project... a way to get montly subs from The Sims crowd with The Sims Online
On this case, Greed and EA "Suitiness" were the key for it's downfall.
E&A had pretty much no competition on it's genre (since EVE although in space, tends to a different crowd) in it's time... and nowdays "replacements" (Star Trek Online) are many levels below in quality.
They don't die. They multiply.
Aion
Final Fantasy XI
Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online
the best part of this article is the last 2 paragraphs sum up the entire thing
the reasons that games like hellgate and Tabula rasa died is becuase we the gamers burned them at the stake.,
When in doubt, get more explosives.
MMOs shutdown for many reasons, but usually the main reason is a lack of servers and support. I can't stand localized MMORPGs simply because the original versions always have more updates and are better maintained.
I rememember when Phantasy Star Online forced the fans of that game to buy three consoles, four versions of the game, as well as a PC version.....Just to force people into registering in the original version after North American and European Servers shutdown. Universe did the same thing.....Except they moved things to handhelds and now a community exists demanding to ban all foreigners who play the game in Japan.
The same is true for Final Fantasy XI and XIV. Japanese parties love to act friendly and cute, until you see the same people post in forums (in japanese of course) claiming why Square-Enix allowed foreigners to play their game....
Its all about the will of the first party, which is why from an American Standpoint, its important for an MMORPG to be created and maintained in the US (from the point of view of citizens)...Its true that Americans have a bad reputation when it comes to gaming outside the US......However, Americans make a game and by the second or third version update they patch ALL versions of the game to the same levels.
As for burning games at the stake. It will happen and nothing can stop it from happening. To make a game successful, a point comes when listening to the masses is more detrimental to the game than anything else. Sure, a game gets burned by gamers.....Sure, but its still the first party responsibility to make sure the game succeeds.
Blaming Gamers for the failure of a game is like saying "All gamers who do not buy and support my game should be arrested for murdering my game."
You seem to have all the answers in your article, but have not connected the dots
Yes the answer is money, so the title should not be why do mmos die, but why mmos don't make enough money to survive. Agree?
Then you go on to compare games like Tabula Rasa, Hellgate:London, All Point Bulletin to games that have found success like guild wars. Just looking at the difference in quality tells the entire story.
If developers want more money they need to up their standards. Personally I hope enough games die until developers get the message in no uncertain terms that players are done with the Hellgate:londons of the world.
technically HG:R isn't a new game but a re-release of HG:L so EA and Bamco stil hold the publishing rights (or however things were worked out with that game). revival is being done by Hanabit and after how they got mad and ran off with HG:L without trying to work with EA and namco Bandai those two are probably more than a little resistant to working with hanabit again.
Why do mmos die?..
...because they sucked so hard it killed them?
Online Games in Girl's Eyes
http://chickgeekgames.blogspot.com
Because MMO heaven would be empty if they didn't.
I call it MMO-ADD.
With the large amount of games being thrown at the gaming world (all trying to get that golden egg WoW). Gamers have alot to chose from. Back in the day there was only a few stable games that a game developer could keep large populations and brings in subscriptions.
Also hype is a big factor in what people see as a good game and then it turns out be mediocre. (Warhammer: Age of Rekoning)
With "Beta Testing"....lol sorry couldn't help it, "Beta free Playing" and knee jerk reactions of certain gaming comunities could spell disaster for game developers. So they try to change everything they produced and never really get things back to a level of performance that is required to release a game.
Oh and investors should keep out of when a game is going to be released.
Collector of old minis.
Playing WAR:Age of Rekoning
www.oldtimersguild.com
Lets cut to why they die since the op could only come up with 2 things.
Here is my list of why MMO's die
(1) A bad design, that's right nobody wants to play bad games
(2) Bad customer service, you got bad customer service folks will not hang around
(3) MMO's that refuse to listen to their player base
(4) Folks get bored and move on, due to lack of the dev team not understand their players and not hitting the target mark
(5) Lack of content that chases of tons of folks
(6) Continued nerf's in the name of balance instead of trying to come up with great skills to balance it out
If you add all that up in short I will say this. If you have a great game but no end game content folks will leave. If you have a great game but continue to nerf things instead of balancing it out. Content Content Content, lack of content causes board folks and they will leave in droves, failing to provide content on a consistent basis will drive folks off.
So yes the number one reason over all is you close the game when you don't have enough folks paying to keep the servers open, All the above and problem more will kill your player base. No play base = no income = your fired end of game.
Tabula Rasa killed do to lack of understanding what you player base wanted.
SWG lack of understand what you players wanted and a total redesign even though the game still runs max of 30k folks playing.
Vangaurd lack of content, lack of dev team, and yes its the next mmo that gets killed its on its last leg
APB killed and maybe comming back will have to see
Matrix lack of a good dev team, folks quit playing
DDO, LOTRO lack of content. Content now = store, I give it a year and we will check back. I dont expect lotro to live past next december. Main reason that when it comes up for license renwal.
Tabula Rasa did not die due to lack of players, it was actually picking up a month before anounce of its closure, plus it had an expansion coming up, had new trade system, and pvp was getting stronger... to all observing it looked like it was going to return to the mainstream.
The reason Tabula Rasa collapsed, in my opinion, is that it was determined that the resources in TR could be used somewhere else... such as in an upcoming beta/mmo that they hoped would break the market big time... Hang on, wasn't western version of Aion announced about the same time as TR's collapse? Didn't the Korean game begin straight after TR was closed down? Where did they get the server space for Aion I wonder??? Note also that several free mmos were closed down at the same time. Wonder where those resources went?
The reality is that while TR was picking up in subscriptions, it was decided that the profit margin was smaller than they thought they could get, so they could scratch it and start a new ip from scratch. They even offered TR subscribers free entry into beta and to the game when released. How can the link not be seen?
Sometimes it is not money, sometimes it is just to salvage physical resources for a new game.
Actually its the people who supply the gold spammers. The companies who are spamming the selling of gold are only intermediaries. They have websites where they purchase gold from gold sellers (players who have found exploits/easy ways to get money). They then go and spam the games. Once an order goes through the website they send out a message to all of the people who are registered as sellers of gold for that game. Once a seller receives the order they hand the gold over to a broker that works for the gold selling website and they pay the seller/give the gold to the buyer.
If people did not sell their excess in game currency/items to these companies there would be no spammers.
OMG somebody is totaly in the dark on how gold spammers work.
First most gold spammers are hackers. They hack folks accounts, strip them down and pass the gold along. They do this because they know the account will be banned soon and move on to the next person. See this happen all the time you read it in these forums and other forums. Second they use hacks and duplications to make more gold but then like I said its on a hacked account.
Yes I blame the folks who buy gold for an easy way out, gold farmwer would not exist if folks were not buying it. However to say actual players in game are supply the gold farmers, thats a streach.
Either we are supposed to read this like a Seinfeld joke rant or this was written by a child. Assuming the author is serious... this is a business, end of story. Does the MMO make enough money to justify keeping it up and running? If so the servers will stay up, if not they close down. If it isn't money directly then it is almost certainly some legal issue. You fail ot provide any examples of MMOs shutting down that aren't due to money or legal issues so I'm guessing you just decided to write a rant without doing any research.
Toomuch homoginization of mmorpg's over the last 5-years, and the sustained subscribership shows it. Failure doesnt have to be tied to closure when looking at many games, but not delivering on a compelling, complete, non-linear game-play activities that contribute to massively-multiplayer interaction, cooperation, competitiveness, and community motivation for involvement as opposed to a focus on single-player redundant pve questing, followed by lack of character game-play achievements and inter-play that should branch out to a purposeful and dynamic mix of non-instanced pvevp of competing factions, as opposed to competing against static and predictable ai and grinding battlegrounds or within shoe-box instances in general.
SWG had the greatest licence in the universe led to incredibly high expectations from players. It’s not so much a case of failure (SWG is still active and regularly updated) but of disappointment from fans of the saga. Fans had high expectations coupled with poor balancing, bugs and changes to gameplay mechanics while ignoring what the players had to say about it. The infamous New Game Enhancements led to a massive uproar and subscription cancellations. The idea was to grab a new audience, but not only it didn’t happened, it angered the existing one. Now a non-remarkable player-base.
AC2, a creation to a sequel of one of the most beloved MMORPGs, which turned out to be trickier than expected. Experienced studio Turbine tried its best... to annoy players, it seemed. Of course it was “nothing like the original game”. No one was happy and Asheron’s Call 2 featured a vast and completely empty world. Graphics were better but that’s not the issue here, as players quickly reverted to Asheron’s Call, or moved on to something else.
AoC: Skyrocketing to 700,000k + copies sold and subscribers within it's first few months, then nose-diving to less than or around 200,000 sustained subscribers from month 4 to month 6 post-launch.
STO: An overly glorified pve-centric single-player lobby system game based on a hugely popular IP, of which the devs did absolutely no massively-multiplayer justice to. Another heavy pve game with no consequences, massively-multiplayer community-centric and dynamically involved game-play, and certainly a 1/4-baked Klingon faction.
WAR: Launched to probably 700,000 sales and subscribers early on also. Only to be greeted with static PQ's, too much static pve along a rail-system of quest-lines that pathed you through-out a path from one progressive location to another of the same kill 10 rats quests and more static PQ's, laced with scenarios that were mind-numbling grind-fests of no fear of loss and nothing notable for victory, no emotional connection between anything game-play worthy between only 2 Realms, but to wash-rinse-reapeat the same limited game-play actions over and over. After 4-months, a mass exodus of bored and disappointed players, down to around 300,000 subscribers which just continued to erode to below 200,000, I'd think.
EQ2 became the usual suspect of mediocrity ghosts past, and the list goes on.
Cause we live in a captialist society which requires $$$ to do stuff.
Majority of the time anyway.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
because people die
To start off , you talk about every MMO out there should be F2P and on the other side you got people crying about P2P being too expensive per month but they are able to spend 2-3x the ammount of a P2P onto a F2P game?
Now to the part of MMOs dieing , it is currently human nature to compare any fantasy MMO to World of Warcraft. I'm not a WoW lover or hater , I played it for a few months and moved on. But you still got millions still registered to WoW , so if it were up to me and if I were playing WoW for a few years in all epic shiny gear , I'd ask myself this :"Is it worth leaving WoW to go onto another MMO?" That simple question that people asks themselves is what dictates the future of most upcoming MMOs. If WoW we're to die today , you'd have a few thoudand people playing Ogre Island rated at 2.5 on this site since every other MMOs will be overloaded.
Onto the next point , MMOs cost money to create and maintaining them cost money and you need to have the right people being able to sacrifice their salary to give their game a chance to be off life control for a while so it can generate some income on it's own.
Final point , about F2P such as Nexon , they sure are popular in Asia. Now tell me , how many North/South Americans even know who Nexon are and actually play any of their F2P games? Also all those F2P Devs , has anyone ever stopped to wonder that maybe they are alive because of RMT's ? And maybe , just maybe we're in such a hell hole with botters/RMT's because of these F2P MMOs ? It's worth a thought and why I will never play nor support a F2P MMO , since the Devs themselves are supporters of such activities, otherwise you wouldn't see half the population of any F2P botting their asses off nor will you see all these crappy F2P MMOs out liveing pieces of arts. My hat goes off to CCP and Blizzard on working their butts off on making their MMOs as legit as possible.
So I read through the wall of text and tried to make since of what you were saying so I will shorten it down. I think you said folks are crying about games going free to play, other folks griping about paying to much for a monthly sub.
Then there was the rant about the free to play mmo's in asia. I also have to ask who is Nexon. Most of those mmo's over there live and die so quickly they just move on to the next mmo. Honestly most of us in the us could care less about those mmo's over there, most of us never heard of them, nor would be interested. The reason why most of us in theus would not be interested in a free to play mmo in Asia, it is simple were a different type of mindset as far as society goes, what works for them don't work for us.
1. Guild Wars is not F2P. In order to play GW, you must buy it. In order to buy it, you must spend money. If you must spend money on it, it's not free. It's, at best, Buy To Play.
The reason F2P/Cash Shops work is because companies design the games in ways that funnel players toward the cash shop, where they'll spend potentially far more in any given month than they ever would on a subscription.... and are duped into believing they're somehow getting a better bargain for their money.
Meanwhile, they get to put the word FREE! on all their ads, and they get to use every single account ever registered to their game as an "active account", because technically a F2P is never "inactive". So, yes... even that account I made for RoM months ago but haven't touched since is still counted as an active account. I'm sure marketing and PR folks love that.
2. I had a hunch of where the author might go when I started reading it. Lo and behold... they went there; the suggestion that MMOs should just launch F2P in the first place. I heartily disagree for myriad reasons, but that's a debate for another thread. I also won't go so far as to say it's a veiled pro F2P article, nor was it one specifically about F2P... but... well... I'm sure Richard Aioshi was smiling and nodding ecstatically if/when he read it.
I do agree with the article "in spirit"... It would be nice to know that I could log into AC2 right now if I wanted to and set out into Dereth again. I can't, unfortunately.... well I could go into AC1 instead, but that game never grabbed me the way AC2 did.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I keep seing the obvious slant of the free to play on this site, I used to wonder about it then I finally realized that its all in the advertising. How many sub based games do you see buying advertising on this site. When you think about that how many fee to play gams do you see advertising a bunch. So yes they want want games to go free to play as the only way to hook new players into that game is to advertise, then hope you can hook them into the rmt stores that are in those games.
I watched lotro go free to play, and watched my inbox get spammed to death daily, but this in the store, buy that, this is on sale. Other games its not so obvious, but with lotro its in your face 24/7 even now with loading screens.
I would dearly love to see the free to play changed to free to create an account, this games are not free, a lot of them you have to unlock levels, powers, and other stuff in the store to make the game playable.
Yet, you're given free access to a portion of the game and you control whether you spend or not. I think that sounds fairly free and fair enough to call it free. Seriously you can be biased heavily against a genre due to poor game design and RMT etc. etc., but come on, arguing over semantic on what we call it is really trivial. Let's call it Free Unless You're An Idiot/Sucker....if that makes you feel better.
NOTE: I don't really see such an obvious slant towards free to play when they talk about subscription games just as much, wasn't Cataclysm practically featured daily for the last week and a half or so? He was pointing out that in order for MMO's to even get their shoes into the door anymore companies have to start providing more for less due to the heavy amounts of competition in the industry and how fickle/short-sighted/albeit-not-so-easily-"duped" gamers are.
We have a buffet of MMO's and sure its easy to taste and try here and there in smaller portions, but the MMO's that stick around and make the most money (consumed in larger portions) are the ones with better quality overall hence why games live and die Saw 1-6/3D style.
AC2, FTP, FTW
I am certainly in line for that one, love to see a working emulator going for AC2. There is one in development so hopefully it's open to the masses some day soon.
Played: Asheron's Call(still the best fantasy MMO!), EQ1, EQ2, Vanguard, DAoC, Horizons, City of Heroes/Villians, WoW (crap), LOTORO, D&D Online, Eve, Anarchy Online, and still playing SWG daily.