Success and Failure in MMOs

News Reader · Post by **News Reader** » May 22nd, 2009, 11:00

Success and Failure in MMOs
Last year saw the launch of many highly hyped MMOs, all hoping they could replicate World of Warcraft's success. Sadly, their plan to gank WoW failed and few survived. We take a look at why so many MMO games fail so quickly and whether Word of Warcraft will ever be beaten.

Category: PC
Publish Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 09:39:01 +0100
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Description: Computer hardware, games and technology reviews and news

Post by **HereComesPete** » May 23rd, 2009, 19:01

Quite a good read this.

Post by **Dog Pants** » May 23rd, 2009, 19:36

I imagine it's because none of them try to do anything different, so are inevitably both directly comparable and inferior because they haven't had a 5 year head start. I'll go read it and see if I'm right.

Post by **HereComesPete** » May 23rd, 2009, 19:55

There is that. But there's a few other ideas backed up by industry types too.

Post by **Dog Pants** » May 23rd, 2009, 20:03

Yeah. They've actually been very constructive there. It's good to hear voices from the industry talking the talk, but will they walk the walk when their games are released? I hope they do.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » May 23rd, 2009, 20:43

"the primary feature of WoW was that it was the first finished MMO to launch in the marketplace"

That one line says it all.

Post by **Dog Pants** » May 23rd, 2009, 20:44

friznit wrote:
"the primary feature of WoW was that it was the first finished MMO to launch in the marketplace"
That one line says it all.

And possibly the last.

Post by **FatherJack** » May 23rd, 2009, 20:56

The beta and the early days were pretty ropey as I recall. Nowhere near as bad as Tabula Rasa or Hellgate, but not the perfection we enjoy now.

Quite frequent server crashes and boats that you suddenly clipped through and got dumped in the sea an unswimmable distace from shore even up about a year in. You still lose your pet on the Vengeance Landing zepplin even now.

I think the rabid Blizzard fanboys that migrated direct from Diablo 2 have more than a little to do with it's success, and partly why they have waited so long to make its sequel.

Hehulk · Post by **Hehulk** » May 23rd, 2009, 22:08

The server performance in wows beta was....entertaining. I too remeber frequent downtime and stuff, but props to blizzard, I remeber them fixing it for launch.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » May 23rd, 2009, 22:55

I was trying to think what was before WoW. It was of course Everquest, which had a huge following but was beginning to lose its edge when WoW hit the shelves. Nearly all the EQ players picked it up to give it a go, and many never went back. It was a long term EQ fanatic who told me that WoW doesn't do anything particularly innovative, but what it does do, it does very well.

It's the same thing that we've said time and time again: MMO or not, if it's a shoddy product it just won't sell.

Anhamgrimmar · Post by **Anhamgrimmar** » May 24th, 2009, 0:05

my god, just realised acherons call is still running! Thats an MMO that a deputy manager told me about in 97!

Post by **FatherJack** » May 24th, 2009, 0:29

friznit wrote:I was trying to think what was before WoW. It was of course Everquest

Looking at WoW's interface and such, it's obvious it took a lot of err..inspiration from it. Fact is, I'd never considered Everquest, 1 or 2 - I dunno if that's because I didn't know about them, if they'd had bad press from the players complaints about easily cancelling subs, or that broadband hadn't really kicked off over here yet and that paying extra (given most people here were already paying for phone costs, unlike the US) just to play a game seemed like a massive rip-off.

MORDETH LESTOK · Post by **MORDETH LESTOK** » May 24th, 2009, 3:21

FatherJack+Friznit wrote:stuff about Everquest...

I'm a bit....intoxicated...and will do my best to defend Everquest (1999)again. It was the first MMO of its kind(worth mentioning) and was complicated, hardcore as fuck back in 1999. Yes, it was Evercamp but nothing else compared to it. It was the best there was!

I remember Dark Age of Camelot(DAOC 2001) being the first to challenge the MMO...took quite a few of my friends from EQ for the first month...but most came back. It now became a choice of 2. I never bothered since most of my friends came back to EQ so I cannot comment on DAOC.

Then came City of Heroes (2004)! A non-fantasy MMO that was fun as fuck and super simple. It was a haven for stressed out fantasy raiding. So simple that repetition was its middle name. Every expansion since launch has been trying to make it "less" simple. Everquesters came back to EQ after a vacation in the City.

Then came the family/kiddie MMO's...Guild Wars, EQ2, D&DO, LOTR and such which were all so-so and Blizzard said, "Hey! We can be the kings of family/kiddie MMO"s" and WoW was created...

All I see is negative progress...I was at the begining of greatness and all they have done since is dumb the games down and make em pretty so they can make more money from the masses....

Although, I can't expect anyone to think like that unless they played Everquest back in 1999 because you just don't know....better

Matrix came close to copying the complexity of the character classes of EQ...but, the content sucked and failed.

EVE Online was EQ in space to me...although, less PvE and geared to PvP which made it special on its own.

So...anyone who has played/loved EQ or EVE has a hard time finding another MMO of its genre that is actually better...prettier yes...but not better...

Everquest is from 1999...its like the original Star Trek show....then some fuck like JJ Abrams comes along and make a new "teenage" pretty Star Trek...just like WoW

I want progress!!! Not food for the masses...oh, nm...its about the $$$$$

I don't care if you hate my ramblings...gnite

Post by **Dog Pants** » May 24th, 2009, 7:07

MORDETH LESTOK wrote:Then came the family/kiddie MMO's...Guild Wars, EQ2, D&DO, LOTR and such which were all so-so and Blizzard said, "Hey! We can be the kings of family/kiddie MMO"s" and WoW was created...

All I see is negative progress...I was at the begining of greatness and all they have done since is dumb the games down and make em pretty so they can make more money from the masses....

Although, I can't expect anyone to think like that unless they played Everquest back in 1999 because you just don't know....better

That sounds very arrogant to me. I don't like having to spend hours of grind and toil just learning how to play a game. I like to find out how to play it straight off, then get better at it. I also don't like having to spend all my free time playing catchup to people who don't have anything better to do than play the game. Warcraft has so far offered the best experience for that. So does that make my gaming attitudes immature, or 'kiddie' as you put it? It all smacks of elitism, and most people who post about EQ in any forum I've read do it only so they can say 'I was playing your game before it was your game, so I'm better than you'.

Hehulk · Post by **Hehulk** » May 24th, 2009, 8:34

I think the point Mord was trying to make, was that MMOs started off as really hardcore. The best surviving example of this imo is Eve, because of the death penality. AO, that first successful MMO arguably, not only had full body looting, but you could break into someones house and knick their stuff.

EQ took that sort of idea as design inspiration for their dungeons, which at launch were neigh on impossible. Since then, MMO makers have toned down the difficulty of the their content (again, odd exceptions), and so there's nothing new and hard, just new and easy.
For about two weeks, it looked like a possibility that WAR was going to step up to the plate in this regards for end-game PVE content. Then playerbase found out that the reason they were getting skull-fucked in dungeons was because of needing certain pieces of armour to lower the damage the tanks were taking and boost the damage the DPS did. Healers also needed this armour because of AOE spell one-shotting them.

Now granted, from a buisness stand-point, it makes sence to make your content more accessable to the mass. They'll play it longer and you'll make more cash, but for the people who hunger for truely difficult PVE encounters, that day has basically gone.

And hey, let's be honest. WOW did appeal to the kiddies and the families. Look at the general alliance age demographic and the fact that we're all (sorta) grown-ups.

Post by **Dog Pants** » May 24th, 2009, 8:47

I understand the point he was trying to make. I've heard it a million times on other forums, and more often than I'd care to here. I take exception to being spoken down to because I play a game that isn't considered to be 'hardcore', because I can play it when I like and not suffer a huge disadvantage. It's elitism, it's too common, and I don't like it here. I don't give a shit if you can steal people's stuff in EQ - that just sounds like another vehicle for griefing by the 'hardcore' to me, but it doesn't matter because I don't play it. It's the 'my game is better than your game' argument again, and it's repetitive and pointless, and when it comes with statements like 'kiddy game' and 'you don't know any better' then it's nigh on trolling.

Post by **Roman Totale** » May 24th, 2009, 8:51

And I think the point that Pants was trying to make is that not everyone has hours of spare time on their hands that they can sink into a game.

This reminds of people who stop liking a certain band because they become popular. If you want a truly difficult game of something with obtuse, impenetrable rules then you'd probably have to go back to pen and paper old school D&D type games (where people can then complain that not enough people play).

MORDETH LESTOK · Post by **MORDETH LESTOK** » May 24th, 2009, 16:28

Sorry Pants...and thanks Hehulk for explaining my point a bit.

I'm not knocking the people who play these games. I'm knocking the games for becoming too simplified. They just skipped over the happy medium in my eyes.

And really, the whiskey came out in that post because I see all you guys playing WoW and wish I could be a part of it but I can't.

Post by **Dog Pants** » May 24th, 2009, 16:44

Don't worry about it. I was in quite a bit of pain this morning (still am actually), so was grumpier than usual. I can see your point about there being no middle ground though. Games either seem to want to be WoW or Eve, and a lot of people would like something in the middle.

Post by **Joose** » May 24th, 2009, 23:25

Dog Pants wrote:Games either seem to want to be WoW or Eve, and a lot of people would like something in the middle.

I think the biggest problem with MMO's at the moment is that everyone bar CCP seem to think that MMO's *have* to be basically WoW with knobs on. And despite the fact that EvE is bloody popular largely (I think) because its utterly dissimilar to WoW, all the devs/publishers seem petrified of making the same sort of gamble. If you make a WoW clone, even a very polished one, its directly competing with the most successful of that kind of game, ever. Make something significantly different, and you are aiming at a significantly different market.