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MMORPGs Are Thriving, And Other Problems
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MMORPGs Are Thriving, And Other Problems
Money talks. Throughout the history of the modern MMORPG, we have seen massive transitions, from how and where MMORPGs are being played, to how MMORPGs are being funded. Two decades ago, as we sat on the cusp of the MMO revolution, had we foreseen where MMOs would end up today, could we have stopped it? Would we have wanted to? The MMO scene is more popular and more diverse than it has ever been, if you know where to look, and yet, so many gamers sit idly by, arms crossed, brows furrowed, waitin
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The article was an interesting read to say the least. I'm all for new tech and growth for sure.
The reality is that until the crowdfunded model, players were not accustomed to seeing the 5-7 years of development that previously went on behind closed doors, and then when things started to be teased in alpha and into beta, they were typically 1.5-2 years from completion, leading to the illusion that these games were developed much faster than they actually were.
Traditional development cycles for MMORPGs (SWTOR, ESO, EQ2, etc.) was around the 7 years mark on average; between 6 - 8, and sometimes as many as 9 years (SWTOR was 7 years, ESO was 9 years as examples).
When crowdfunding became the model used to fund these types of games, suddenly players were subject to the previous "behind closed doors" 5-7 years of pre-alphas and early alphas, leading to the illusion that these games were/are "taking forever" or "never going to release".
While there have been some failures (Pathfinder as an example), and some that had poor launches (Shroud of the Avatar), the reality is that most of the crowfunded MMMORPGs haven't really had their gestation cycle yet.
Most started cropping up around 2012-2014. Many of those from 2012 have launched. Not all have, but many.
The crop from 2014 (ours included, Pantheon, some others) are just now entering into the 6 year mark, which is around the *earliest* most MMORPGs have ever reached completion.
We, personally, will be at the 8 year mark when we launch around Q4 2021. Which is "on schedule" when you look at the overall arch of how long traditional MMORPGs take to develop.
So you can't really say that crowdfunding is a failed model when many of the games haven't even reached a "beyond reasonable time frame for development". And you can even look at games like Star Citizen, with its every-year-is-a-bigger-year as proof that the crowdfunding model can evolve into something else entirely, with game development expanding in scope based on the contibutions of the fans.
So no, not in any way, shape, or form is the crowdfunding model unreliable. It's just that most MMORPG players have unrealistic expectations of how long something actually takes to develop and publish.
When games start hitting the 10 year mark of development? *That's* when players can start throwing hissy fits about games taking too long or the crowdfunding model being unreliable. But even then, you have to take into consideration that the crowdfunded model isn't coming close to generating hundreds of millions of dollars per game (Star Citizen being the exception to the rule), but rather tens of millions, which means smaller staffs, which naturally take longer to develop things.
Umm... gotta call you out on this one. The expectations were not set by the players. The expectations were set by the developers. They are the ones that said they could deliver in 2 or 3 years. Not in every case of course, but this holds true for the vast majority of the Crowdfunded MMORPGs and particularly the larger ones. I guess the players are responsible for actually believing the developers, but those are the guys that are SUPPOSED to know more/better. Either they honestly did NOT know better (incompetence) or they did and lied about it.
So it becomes unreliable when you cannot rely on the word of the developer to be even reasonably close to a delivery date. We have games that are currently DOUBLE their initial ETA for release but are not even in Alpha, and those games have raised millions.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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Fair enough. There are absolutely a few developers who have done this.
I would say that, in the case of Star Citizen as an example, the explosion of interest was enough to expand the scope of what they had originally set out to do. Which is why I've given them tons of slack (I'm a 50 dollar backer from Kickstarter) because I can log in and have fun, and their newsletters are jam-packed with updates, all of which are things I love, and I am actively interested in seeing that game evolve as much as it can.
Other games with celebrity developers who know better? Sure, I'd say you can give them some grief for unrealistic timeline projections.
Pathfinder didn't release, at least, in the way it was supposed to and wasn't playable.
Greedmonger was DOA.
SOTA was never what it was supposed to be.
City of Titans is in its second round of funding, with little more than a beta of the character creator released.
The Repopulation is running, but isn't populated at all, about 3 people in the past week.
Hex: Shards of Fate has 14 players, as recorded on steam (granted this one was ported to mobile so maybe it found a following there, but even their reddit is pretty barren.
There are some okay games that have kept going after their kickstarter campaign.
Crowfall is still kicking.
Temtem released (as early access) on steam and has gotten good reviews.
Ashes of Creation is supposedly still around, though they released a battle royale with microtransactions to keep going.
Camelot Unchained is working on a second game to continue production (purportedly).
Star Citizen has had its controversy with their endless funding, and nonstop wildly expensive ship costs.
Pantheon, as you may know, is still kicking and many of us here are looking forward to it.
What can we expect from a Kickstarter game? We don't know! Sounds unreliable to me.
Modding = thousands of talented content creators chipping in to realize a shared vision.
Crowdfunding + Modding = Epic MMOs that would be impossible to create within the current paradigm.
This is the best way forward, imo.
I played Pathfinder the day of release for about 2 weeks straight. It's also one of the best CRPG available. Odd to use one of the best examples of crowdfunding success as a "respectfully disagree.
It certainly wasn't the experience we were sold.
Pathfinder Kingmaker is an excellent CRPG.
Pathfinder Online is an absolute abomination of an MMORPG.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
There is no reason for Free to play to ever be outlawed. Loot boxes on the other hand, that "could" be outlawed.
But free to play doesn't have to have loot boxes.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Not all mmorpgs are equal. I love certain mmorpgs and do not enjoy most others. I am willing to try most if they check certain boxes. I have no interest in mmos at all, nor every single game labelled as survival, etc. I want specific things (good rpg systems and chardev systems), and do not want specific things (games revolved around crafting or that have no content i.e. certain "sandbox" games).
If you go on steam and sort by genre and look at rpgs you would think the genre is booming - but 2019 may have been the worst year for rpgs ever for my tastes and what I am looking for, and 2020 so far has been awful for the genre.
hype is a fickle thing and they kind of need it it for their funding.
best thing would probably be to secure funding and create something that maybe you can crowdfund the touch up process of instead(I.E the later stage when they don't need to wait 10 ish years to see the final product).
I had fun once, it was terrible.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
You have to scrape pretty deep to find 10. I may have missed a couple people might like to cite but thats about it. Sure there are going ot be niche ones where a few people hang out with their friends and they can cal it 'fun' but that to me doesnt count. Like I said semantics.
Of those listed WoW, ESO BDO and FF have probably 95% of the total player population. I play one of those semi regularly, one I have never played, one I havent played in years and another I own but have never made an account for. I own two lifetime passes to Lotro I havent played it in years and I havent even logged in in probably 9 months. Obviously this is all anecdotal but I am sure I am the rule not the exception.
As for making money they do but its also going to be similar across all those games a few whales supporting everyone, and most of those whales are going to be buying the same things over and over again or at least buying the same area of items they always buy.
We will see what Amazons new game does. I suspect a MASSIVE influx but then the usual dying off. Unless they can somehow throw enough people at it to keep content coming. But ESO does as good a job as anyone of putting new content into their game and it still isnt enough. It is the one I play regularly and I still havent done any of the expansions yet, and only a few of the DLCs. SO new content (to an old game) isnt the answer either.
Its all about expectations and some 'new' not new scenery but new everything. Even these 'new' games that are coming out, they look exactly like shit that has been out for years just a different name with different graphics. Wolfen or whatever it is called (not an MMO) is basically a mish mash of 3 games everyone has already played.
These game makers are lazy and uninspired. They also all ook for the lowest common denominator and they piggy back and outright copy stuff that is already making money thinking the ;new' will work. which it might if enough people 'sell' it but generally after the initial surge people will go back to the one that is best. So its a contradiction of stuff. People want new and they also want better. New only buys you so much time.
MMO simply cost way too much to make way too much to maintain and way too much to continually add content to. Plus they are counter against the new A.D.D nature of most games people look for. Excape from tarkov (also not an MMO) is pretty popular right now (mostly because big streamers are being paid to play it) but it is at least making a move back to a 'slower' paced and more 'long term' 'commitment' but even then 70 hours of play will have you pretty advanced. Less than that if you have help or guidance. While 70 hrs is now some sort of huge amount of 'content' people who are old like me look at games in their steam Library with 700+ hours in then. I have over 1K hours in a few actually. But hours also dont always equal 'advancement' it might equal 'obsession' Which it most definitely does with a lot of the newer games now.
MMOs are an enigma they have a goal without having a goal. You advance but sometimes the advancing isnt what the main purpose of the game is. At least not the 'good' ones. You always want to be progressing but it isnt all about instant gratification, or it didnt used to be. THAT is what has to be brought back if MMOs (old style) are ever going to be relevant again.
The industry is NOT doing good but is good doing well at the same time,makes no sense,well if you look at it simply then yeah it doesn't.
So how to say it in as few words as possible?
When you invest LESS in a game and often doing it with crowd funded money,then yeah profits can soar.Investors love to see instant returns on games and then when games goes live just add a cash shop for even more profits from that same game.
The other thing that is going on is tough to notice but not really if you open your eyes.There is VERY little longevity,i have seen gamer's with hundreds even in to the thousands of games bought on Steam.Then we heard it from Steam a couple years ago, a high number of games bought are never even played.
So this creates a whirlwind of spending,gamer's buying because nothing holds their interest very long but devs love that because this means buy buy buy never sticking to one game for very long.
So the big picture is that games/devs only need to sell their product for a couple months maybe 3-4 then players move on to buy other games.This means LESS content aka all the arpg's and BR's very low content,just a quick gaming fix and that's it,easy money,easy profits.Then if some do stick around just open up a cash shop,make more money from those suckers.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
There are already a few "mobile sucks" comments in this thread as expected but we must push past the "success" barrier bias of mobile games because when people hate on mobile they are part of the time hating that they've been successful in wrangling the next generation of gamers from right under PC gaming's feet. They've done this in a few ways by providing the gaming experience to a generation on their phones which they've had since a very young age so they don't think anything of playing games for hours on them and convenience of being able to do that anywhere.
People who dislike mobile often complain about not being able to play on their PC and even if there is bluestacks which allows most mobile games to be played on pc that program is sometimes unreliable and feels kind of budget. With the hundreds of millions of players who play mobile a sizable percentage of them would probably want to play on their PC so why doesn't someone like Google buy Bluestacks. Instead of creating Stadia that has hundreds of thousands not hundreds of millions of players Google could have bought Bluestacks, improved it, stuck the Google label on it and allowed the probably billion+ players who use their play store to play most android games on their PC. That would be a huge step forward for MMO's when you think about it.
When you compare what mobile MMO's offer vs PC MMO's the basic foundations are the same.
-Provide character progression
-Provide a world
-Provide a multiplayer experience
Those three basics are the same from classic MMO'S to mobile ones. The extras like monetization and everything else is where the complications start. With crowdfunded titles the dishonesty is they tried and are still trying to sell people ideas and concept art and things "they plan to do". There is no way to hold anyone accountable just with words on what they "plan to do" cause situations change and those changes in a court of law almost always favor the defense in modern times. I could go into detail more about it but it'll take too long. Mobile games created their product and released it and even though they are asking you for 100 bucks and not shy about it they aren't baiting you along for a decade and making money off your hope that some day you can play the game they promised. Mobile games provide you the full product for the most part minus microtransaction stuff WHEN YOU INSTALL IT.
Thinking that new tech by itself will bring back the old school is wishful. When devs reduced complexity (ex Blizzard), they saw more money, or way more than when they did not.
This is what happens when things become popular. The knuckleheads are less discerning and spend way more for less then the eggheads. Unless this changes, you'll see the same types of games on new technology. How likely is that when the OP admits becoming a knucklehead himself?
The day gaming became mainstream was the day the eggheads lost. They stole your games like they stole your bike.
I guess we'll just have to accept that like we did the shift from MMORPGs to other types of games, conveniently referred to and glossed over in this article.
At least that's the immediate future I see coming.
More proof, if so, that we're standing at the death bed of MMORPGs. I wonder how long it will be before this site is selling RMT? Oh, those glorious private auctions, don't you love 'em? The new wave of the future.
Once upon a time....