f13.net

Million that is. (http://www.blizzard.com/press/080122.shtml)

I like how they're upfront about their definition of "subscriber." I always wondered what they meant by that.

They've actually included that definition in all their press releases about numbers, or at least all of the ones I have seen.

Yep. Really quells the naysayers, a lot more than they were ever quelled by Lineage numbers, for example  :grin:

I am particularly intrigued by them having hit 2.5mil in North America. I didn't think they'd continue to grow like that. Good for them!

Three year old game and subscriptions continue to climb.  I'm impressed.

I wonder how many paid, discrete accounts they have had since launch.

Really isn't much in terms of competition… …at least in a polished, cross platform, bug free implementation of an MMO…

Time for an updated chart!

(http://pandadesigns.com/f13/wow_subscriber_2008_01_22.jpg)

You can see the latest figure represents an increase in growth rate from last year. I haven't checked the The9 WoW numbers but most likely it's from an increase in the number of players in China from the release of Burning Crusade near the end of last year.

Anybody want to predict how high it's going to go before it plateaus? :awesome_for_real:

The bit I find most interesting about that chart, and had never noticed it before, is the first few months.  I'm assuming July 05 was when it was released in China, thus the big jump.  However in the first 6 months from Nov 04 to March 05 it hit 2 million - ie 5 times what EQ did at its highest after 3-4 years of being out.  Thats some pretty impressive numbers, especially when you consider thats without China, and also before WoW became something that the average Joe knew about - MMORPGs were still pretty unknown to the gaming public and general public at that stage.

Maybe this is all old news (well of course it is, over 2.5 years old as a matter of fact), but I had never realsed its early non-Asian success was so significant.

Chartzzz

Good for Blizzard. I hope they destroy the entire market for all the shitpiles that come out. Polished and bug-free wins the day people.

Doomed, I tell you. DOOOOOOMED.

Its not surprising. Nobody is really trying to take the pie from them.  Half are content to nible their small piece and the other half aren't even capible enoungh to get a piece for themselves.

I think in order to steal a piece of the WoW pie you have to follow their formula.

No, not make a WoW clone but establish a game company, pump out quality single player, multiplayer games for 10+ years, establish your level of quality for software and engaging game play.  Then once you have a brand that people trust and expect good things from convert all those one time paying consumers into monthly subs.  Then go out and market the shit out of your game.

Yep that's the WoW recipe right there.  I'm shocked more people don't follow it.  Most of them try to hop into the MMO step expecting WoW killer results and end up just with lack luster results.  I also think Blizzard stole the model from Origin.  UO is a pretty similar case study, only EQ was able  to bipass the necessary steps.  But when you offer 3d in a 2d world I guess you can get away with it once.

I'd be interested to see how their numbers looked pre-xmass and then post.  While the chart is nice I'm sure there are some dips and valleys in there.

Bioware ftw?

Bioware isn't known for making good games (I'm not saying what you think I'm saying).

Good stories and world settings? Sure.

But most of what I've seen out of them are poorly implemented UI / other people's rules systems (everything D&D and d20 including KOTOR) or poorly implemented UI / rules systems (Mass Effect).

Tell me this was meant to be green and I've fallen into a sarchasm. Because what you've just said is "in order to beat Blizzard, you have to be exactly like Blizzard". Except that at the end of your 10 year respected single / multiplayer title development, when you theoretically start work on your MMO, Blizzard is STILL 10 years ahead of you and still holds all of the advantages. Imitators rarely exceed those who they try to duplicate.

It's easy to say now, "Oh, Blizzard's formula works so well", but at the time of launch for WoW it was a huge gamble that they would get the numbers they needed to justify the US $55m price tag. A lot of the people who used to be in Blizzard have left to pursue other things, so it's not like Blizzard is one monolithic unchanging entity that has the ways it works fixed in stone.

And then, as you said, you've only really got UO (which had years worth of respected single player titles behind it) which wasn't as successful as EQ. And while I'm sure the 3D graphics - another risk in an era where 3D video cards weren't common - helped, I'm more willing to bet the game-orientate nature of EQ (as opposed to UO's sandbox) helped it attract and keep more players.

It's probably only players and investors who want to compare everything else to WoW's player numbers. For a lot of developers, I'm sure that they'd love 10 million players in their MMO, but are pretty happy when the game is profitable at 100k and they get a regular pay cheque.

At the end of the day, fortune smiled on Blizzard. A lot of factors converged and helped them over a tipping point to make what is probably the most profitable game ever. No company following that point in time is going to be able to capture the same convergence and reap the same rewards. They'd be foolish to try, especially if step 1 is "Devote 10 years of your life to building a reputation".

You don't need to be Blizzard. You "just" need a solid gamer-relevant IP, bottomless pit of cash, handsoff publisher (or VC), industry reknown for solid end to end experiences, competent partners in worldwide territories, and the internal skill at managing vision with an external skill in hiring the right people.

"Just do that" and you'll be raking in cash too.

Or be like the rest of the known universe and play to your strengths. Don't overpromise what you can't deliver, find your competitive edge, identify your actual market, and hit them. That's competence in all the areas that matter: vision, business, development and marketing.

So.

What you're saying is:

You need to be Blizzard. Unless you're Pokemon. And Nintendo gets their fucking head in the game.

:oh_i_see:

Pokemon MMO would catch all WoW subscribers.

Bottom line: You can't distill the essence of success of WoW and capture it in a bottle.

It's successful because it's WoW.

And isn't the Pokemon fad over by now? Big N isn't going to develop towards the creepy 30somethings who still play that game.

Pokemon's still going. But you don't bother with a $75mil fullscreen MMO for that crowd. You bang something together for a keg and three pizzas, and rake in the pure profit.

Darniaq, Pokemon is the only existing license that can rival WoW.

For a keg and 3 pizzas. And a Wii MMO, they can rival WoW.

Game. Set. Match.

Even I'd play the shit out of it.

And it would have the only good PVP in the entire genre.

I didn't say Pokemon would be a bad idea. I was saying that what you need to deliver a Pokemon MMO people would play is a lot less effort than it took to make WoW.

Imagine WoW as a browser-based Flash somethingorother followup to Warcraft III. Wouldn't work, because their primary audience were those already trained to expect more.

Meanwhile, there's only been a long string of relatively low budget games and cartoons for Pokemon. I wouldn't even bother making it for a console right away. Browser-based all day long, take about 6 to 9 months to make, maybe $3mil if you integrate any sort of microtransactions, and just launch in the U.S. They could make it free then grow it over a year to expand beyond US, maybe go Wii (I don't think that's required at all btw), integrate some Webkinz ID number things with the cards... Porches all around.

Replace that with SOE six years ago  :grin:

Find where I would _ever_ say that. Ever.

The only reason to go Wii would be to guarantee a win in the console race.

What'd I miss? I was not saying you need to be Blizzard. I didn't want you thinking I was saying that either because it would be "SOE" six years ago. I wasn't saying you said "SOE" either though.

Shit I'm tired. Going to bed.

Otherwise, yes. Wii Pokemon MMO would be a huge win. Not sure if that'd do better than a browser-based game though, in terms of launch anyway. But either way, win all around.

No doubt WoW did a good job distilling basic essence of EQ.  But there are a lot of content agnostic lessons to learn.  Easy to grok. Runs well an average computers.  The "fun" is available early.  Player frustrations are minimized.

Sure. Devs would be fools not to look at the best bits of WoW when designing their own games.

F'rex: look at Tabula Rasa's poor excuse for a chat box. All the text in that game is unfriendly and difficult to read.
Compare to WoW's big friendly letters. A player doesn't have to squint to read quest text.

Yes.

Nintendo asleep at the switch. Good that they got all those sales and can't make enough Wii fast enough… …but once you got a toolbooth constructed and propagated, it just silly stupid not to exploit it…

Pokemon MMO on Wii would own.

It's almost a shame Geldon got banned prior to this press release - it was always entertaining watching him squirm and weasel his way around them.  :awesome_for_real:

9.3 million subs in November (their previous announcement), so just over two-thirds of a million added over the holidays.

It's still the same game as it was in 1998, and it's attracting the same demographic it first did.  Both my kids (9 and 4) love pokemon and play the shit out of it on the DS when they aren't playing chibi-robo or Nintendogs.  It's really damn funny to hear the 4 year old say, "It's Pidgey! Dad I caught a pidgey!" in that tone of awe and excitement only kids have.

We all know that WoW's big lesson is the polish. This more than anything took the game out of the basement and into the mass market.

But the real difficulty in replicating WoW's success is that they have now "done" Diku. Anyone else has to come up with something significantly different in gameplay. And experience has shown that designers have had a really hard time coming up with an MMO concept that is different, fun and compelling. PotBS, Conan and TR all tried. At least two of them failed; maybe all three.

Games Workshop has a pretty large, and I think under-estimated fan base. WAR has that going for it, if they can lure table top players into the MMO.

God, I hope that never comes to pass. A polished bug-free turd is still a turd.

Everyone keeps saying that, but in truth, a polished bug-free (bacteria are done with it) turd is oil.

The games that still have bugs and lack polish are turds.  In my book, as soon as there's polish and lack of bugs, the game is above that classification.  It may be boring, in the wrong genre for me, not innovative, whatever; it may not be the best or even "good", but it's above the bottom rank.

Surly, WoW is not a turd. You just don't like it. There's a big difference.

I think Microsoft could do a MMORPG done right with a 6 year plan.  They have the finances, and are willing to take huge losses upfront to get it done (see the XBox).  They would screw it up by doing things like making it an Xbox exclusive and Vista only.

If they could just keep the executive hands off, then it could happen.  Of course, that's like saying "if only the politicians could just work with the other party."

Polished yes.  Bug-free?  Almost... but not quite.

I think Microsoft doesn't do an MMO because there's less money in it for them than what they're doing right now (playing exclusive platform aggregator). They certainly could afford to try, but their constant missteps seem due to not having the attention span for one big huge mega game that isn't called "Halo".

At the same time, a Halo MMO would be interesting. No idea if it'd be good, but it'd at least need to be MMOFPS, and we could stand for more development down that path (so we can get more sci-fi games).

Think in the context of the genre at the time :-)

Relativism?  I don't think that's what the MMOG industry needs.  WoW was a fabulously polished game at release, but it wasn't without its issues.  I think maintaining a focus on those issues is a good thing from a consumer standpoint.

Name one thing about WoW that wasn't done somewhere else other than the much vaunted polish and I'll concede. Short of that, my point still stands.

And the turnout for WAR Events has been massive.
WAR will sell a ton of boxes, but so did SWG.

People are making excuses if they think Blizzard is still relying on their pre-WOW fan base for subs this far out.

I agree, WoW has there mac-esque ads with "celebrates" shilling for them, its really become the McDonalds of MMO's. Anyone with an internet connection and a computer made in the last 5 years can check out this 'WoW thing', this low entry barrier and fun initial gameplay is what I'd say is driving sub number now. I also would'nt be surprised if it hits 12mil after Wrath of the Lich King launchs.

Not sure quoting you is appropriate, but what ever I felt like quoting.

I think any one thinking that WAR will put a dent in WoWs numbers is dilusional.  Beyond WARs niche and the MMOhardcore who knows about it?  Seriously I'm sure you know some people who know jack about MMOs want to bet they've heard of WoW?  Want to bet they have no idea what WAR is and aren't even curious?

Blizzard "canabalized" it's fan base into playing WoW, it took them a very long time to create the brand and while some people might think it's a fluke, I think it was just execution.  Granted market forces helped (ie no competition).  Even trying to steal anything resembling a statistical significant amount of the WoW virgin fans would be a miracle, the second the combat is "different" they wont like it.  If the UI isn't WoW like and WoW customizable, they wont like it.

To have a smash success (and this is all my opinion) you need to canabalize your own established fan base.  Sure there is some cross over but you hope not because when average joe is faced with shelling out $15 a month for diku1 versus diku2, they will choose the lowest barrier of entry/ greatest return on their entertainment dollar and go with that game.

The bug-free formula only gets you that your box sales might estimate your monthly subs, that's about it.  I mean who would market a game on the basis of "hey our servers our stable and our bugs are almost non existant!".  Who cares?  You published a standard product for the masses.  Your fans are going to viral market for you if that's the case, you just need a large base for that to be even close to effective.

So yep, to be a WoW killer you have to be WoW and as I stated that has absolutely little to do with the game you come out with but awhole lot with what you have done prior.  Also this imaginary WoW killer, will have very little impact on WoW, that is as long as it's not Starcraft.  Blizzard might screw them selves on that one.

I think the difference with WOW on the bug free thing is (at least at my level of casual play) I've not come across "the bugs that everyone knows about and have been there since launch that there is no expectation will ever be fixed." The servers at launch were a disaster, but they got fixed. There have been this or that bug, but they get fixed. It's really as much an attitude as it is an actual level of being bug free at any particular point in time.

I remember, just as an example, in EQ the boats were always broken. And the solution wasn't to fix them, it was to have a GM put in a teleport gnome if someone reported they were down. That kind of tolerance for "broken" is just not anything I've ever seen in WOW.

That's a good theory, but history will prove you wrong. Microsoft bankrolled most of the development of Vanguard. As an observer, I'd say that puts them well outside the "make a good MMO" window. And I'm pretty sure they're not in a hurry to finance another MMO after that boondoggle.

It's still possible, especially given that one of the driving factors towards financing Vanguard was to have an xbox MMO, but they've been trying for that since True Fantasy Live Online on the original Xbox. If it hasn't happened by now, you have to start thinking there is a reason.

That would be of -computer games-, even. A major reason WoW made it in spite of being an MMO was because it wasn't promoted as an MMO but an online game, any game. "Played Hearts over MSN? This is as easy, but more fun." The marketing revolved around "if you're going to play a game, you might aswell play ours because we are -the- game", which works better and better with every new subscriber. It's the same marketing as McDonald's uses - it's not for those of taste X or preference Y, it's for -everyone-.

WoW is for the whole family, not just the members of the household who like a good game. As one of many, I fell for it, despite never having considered an MMO previous to WoW.

The tried that, it's called Vanguard.

The true secret of WoW is that behind it all there's one or more developers who are able to look at what works, both in their own game and others, and evolve towards something that makes a fun game. This is then backed up with reasonable coding, a well known IP and a good layer of polish, but the reason it works is because much of the design makes sense. The way they've avoided adding an AA system and gone the other way towards agressively obsoleting old content, adding things like rest XP and dailies to balance up progression, alternate paths of progression, crafts that are actually enjoyable is really impressive. Quest based progression after EQ's "sit on a zoneline and kill mobs till ding"? yes please. Even their decision to rein in the graphics so that adding new content is cheaper and it doesn't take an uber PC to run it was a good choice.

I remember reading Enoyls posts during open beta and just nodding in agreement. I still think they got a fair bit wrong, their LFG system was inane and their 24 hour day / night cycle was a terrible idea, but most of the core mechanics make sense.

Meanwhile Vanguard, EQ2, Tabula Rasa and a host of others are much worse games than they should be for the amount of money that was spent. In all of those cases years of development effort was wasted in implementing "novel" ideas that weren't actually fun or workable.  There's just a lack of cohesion (and fun) in the design. Are we going to see the same in War or AoC? I'm betting we will.

I'll actually be re-subbing to WoW soon. Building a new computer for my fiance and I can't think of a better game to introduce her to MMORPG's with.

No, but without it, there wouldn't be enough word-of-mouth watercooler chat to get them this far.

The Blizzfan base was integral to WoW's success.

MS Games, which I think their MMO division has been defunct for ages now, bank rolled Asheron's Call (we'll call this a success), Asheron's Call 2 (we'll call this complete and uter failure), Mythica (shit canned and they decided to get out of the MMO business completely at this point) and Vanguard which was more of a VC venture then a colaborative work since they had at that point bailed on the concept (we'll call this a failure).

I think MS games to stick with 360 development (who'd blame them) and their previous track record shows that they have no inhouse expertise (beyond money and maybe testing facilities, AC2 had the best windowed mode ever for the time) to market or publish MMOs.  I think the canning of Mythica showed that this was not a pond they wanted to play in ever, I'm sure the $30 mill to Vanguard has reinforced this attitude.  Then again I don't work for MS, no longer know any one at MSGames so I could be wrong.

 :awesome_for_real:

WAR has one major potential problem (monthly fee probably more than $15/m i.e. more than WoW), and a number of possible pitfalls (will reskinned-DAoC PvP be any more popular this time around? Will people accept such limited instancing for PvE? What's the realistic minimum system requirements? How long will it be before EA eventually wade in with their size 13s and screw it all up?)

 :awesome_for_real:

This is too easy.

Except established fan bases prolly don't like swallowing shit, as you two previous examples show. Here I'll give a counter example:


Note Diablo and Action-roleplaying will also be acceptable.

How can you seriously say you'd play Pokemon?  Let alone on a Wii?  Thinking this is like catching your parents having sex.  It makes you cringe and scars you for life.

Agreed. 

Also, WAR will likely sell a ton of boxes but will not retain players unless the game is as polished as WoW, with the dev team having a similar attitude as Blizzard's.

My standards to play are a lot higher now than they were when I played DAOC, and that's due to WoW.  I think I'm not alone on this.

WAR by itself as a game for that IP probably couldn't dent WoW, no. WAR with a huge marketing budget both before and after launch though...


I'm responding to you saying WoW was a turd, implying that it was imperically turdy. It's the very essence of not being one, due specifically to that polish. It did nothing else except launch a mostly content complete experience that was playable on day one by a large number of people who'd never considered the genre before, or left because of the grind2crap nonsense of everything that preceded it. The whole genre was niche. WoW singlehandedly made it not.

Bugs galore. I was on the Pacific/Mountain system that had all those problems in early year 1. I played with friends who were on Eastern/Central after the P/M stuff was solved. I tried to play a Troll and a Tauren and found neither as content complete as NEs and Humans. I was a Mage throughout, a veritable rollercoaster of uber to why-log-in to uber to wtf?

And I'd been through every game that preceded it. This was the best launch of a full game to that point. Since then we've seen GW and LoTRO launch very well (they had their own problems), other games wtfbombwreck, and still others get pushed out to not follow that path. None of them are perfect. None of them are SB relevant-PvP with Eve socioeconomics, ATiTD crafting, and Freespace 2 flight mechanics in space with chocolate and kisses. But I've long since stopped wishing for that in this genre. We just got past the point where launching was good enough. Now polish is part of the business of driving success. The next step is actual, like innovation and stuff.

What is A LOT more interesting is that WoW player base seem to mature and demand more quality game and less grind. *A LOT* of things that were 'given' at release, like horrible grinds or raid or gtfo, are being toned down due overwhelming played base demand. Also another note of interest - given choice between raiding and PvP for equal rewards most people pick up PvP route.

PvP means you don't have to be dependant on Leroy Jenkins for your purpz. You get a bad Battleground, and it's over and you move on. You get stuck in a shitty raid guild, and they might be the only guild who've got Illidan (or whoever the fuck you kids are farming lately) on farm status.

It's another expression of "forced grouping sucks ass".

Not that PvP can't be fun, but most everyone in the /bg channel is doing it for the lewtz.

I'd rather do an activity where I only have myself to blame if something goes wrong (PvE, non-Raid) as opposed to one relying on teammates who are either retarded, high, drunk, or terrible players (PvP).  Part of the reason I don't play Call of Duty anymore (and I want to, everyday.  I think about it every god damn day) is because my friends aren't on and the PUGs I join are bottom-dwelling scum-sucking algae eaters.  I'll top the charts and they'll be right there at the bottom all content with their 2 kills 14 deaths.

Battlegrounds are mostly similar.  It's either Organized or it's "Why am I even fucking playing?"

Its also a far far less time investment for a guaranteed reward, you can put a hour a night in and get epic item x after a time period relevant to your participation and to some degree skill (In Arenas). PVE raiding is a totally different affair where 3-4 hours a night is considered the minimum, the item you seek may not even drop and then dependent on what ever loot distribution system your guild uses you may not even have a chance at it. Tokens were a partial fix but even those are hit and miss with what classes need what tokens.

I think Badges of Justice were the further fix to that.  At least having them drop in the 10 mans.

Agreed. And also agree that WoW has itself gone through a number of changes, evolving as a game as the demands of neophyte MMOers have similarly evolved. Which itself is also indicative of how much the genre has changed.

By that metric, all but one or two of Shakespeare's plays were turds.


Yeah...a friend of mine was looking for Pirates of the Burning Sea yesterday. I swear, one of the cashiers asked her, "Is that a World of Warcraft thing?"  :uhrr:

Exactly, WoW Polish doesn't mean bug free.  
EQ's tolerance for broken is one example of unpolished. But also there's Vanguards adding major system a week before launch. There's SB with game crashing rendering the game moot. There is EvE and UO that drops noobs in the deep end and says "sink or swim bitch" while throwing pine cones at them. There is EQ2 which could hardly run on anybody's computer.  AC2 decided that all content was TBDL.

It's about that hour starts to moment the player decides to give your game a go. Can they run the game? Can they understand the game? Can they immediately find something fun to do? Can you get they excited about continuing the game? Are there frustrating aspects that encourage them to quit? Otherwise there no reason to talk about your game outside the gaming community.

More than the any other MMOG WoW was built as a piece entertain first. Creating a time waster, a grand social experiment, an peen measuring stick, or a simulation is not important unless it dovetails into entertainment.  If you aren't willing to do that, you aren't making a WoW competitor.
 

That's what most developers do.


Oh, you mean 'satisfy them'.  Not 'bludgeon them until they cry'.

Yeah, then no.  Nobody does that.


On polish:  The sadfunniest thing I've read out of Conan is the head honcho's belief that a final 6 months of polish is what makes or breaks a game.  Polish starts on day 1. 

Head honcho of AOC does look at it like a high-exec of a corporation: Direct competitors that are going to launch MMO's are WAR (delayed to Q2...at least) and WoTLK (expected Q3/Q4?). So the strategic managment decision is to launch it end of Q1, suck in the "waiting" subscribers, polish the game until the competitors show up....and this is why AoC is going the same road as Vanguard did, if the game launches unpolished.
I am still playing the turd, desperately looking for something new and every new MMO launched is a big pile of shit and every time because of these stupid, avoidable mistakes...errr...managment decisions....
It's not rocket-science that one secret of the success of WoW was the polish, the accessibility (easy-mode) and the comfort of a good UI.

Hes right. While trying to polish, or at least do things right does start on day one, the last 10% (out of 100% development time) is the key part.

No.

The first 10% is the key part.  You cannot unfuck a bad architecture in the last 6 months.  Execs tend to believe you can, possibly because in other industries it is possible to buy your way out of a bad architecture.  In software this is not the case, and I've personally seen it fail every single time it has been attempted, in multiple disciplines.

One of the reasons I'm bullish on PotBS is -- gameplay issues aside -- I've followed Joe Ludwig's blog, and it's clear that from the outset they knew what they were doing technology-wise, and have the tools and expertise in place to fix it or change it.

No one was talking about architecture (including the developer your talking about, im sure)... :roll: The term "Polish" is applied to the game level (IE: Game features, mechanics, and potentially art assets ETC...)part of the application not the core architecture.

I'd be happy if development houses would focus on one simple detail: Is their game fun? 

So simple, yet so few manage to capture the essence.   WoW is, at its core, a fun game.  It's possibly the first MMO to be fun first.  I'd say that is the fundamental reason for its success above all others.  It's not flashy.  It's not revolutionary.  It's just fun. 

Stop worrying about detailed mechanics, spreadsheet development schemes, ultra-rare loot tables.  Just make the game something to look forward to.  Noone needs a second job. 

<yes, I realize this has been beaten to death>

By the time you get to polish, the game should already be fun, thats what all those ugly, dirty and quick iterations were for.  :grin:

Actually you are talking about polish in the sense of architecture, most people couldn't care less about it though, except when it's done badly.  ZOMG my server crashes every 2 minutes, ZOMG the login lags, My ping is over 9000!  You know the kind of things that will drive your standard consumer right out the door to look for a product where they can actually play and be entertained and not worry about why cluster X keeps crashing.  They don't care the reason for why it crashes or doesn't work correctly, they will assume you did your do diligence, designed it to handle bandwidth and expect it to work.  If it doesn't they will eventually take their money else where.  The silent majority that will never post or even surf forums.

Once you actually have all your tech so that you don't have to deal with basically tech-nerd issues people will then want good FPS (i mean as a standard product delivery), no memory leaks and that it can run on their 386 with math co-processor! (I exegerate but that it runs on the min specs and it runs well), and from there they'll care what your game looks like, and sounds and once they've gotten past the point of this is not a turd (assuming who ever satisfied these little pre-reqs) the part which you consider "polish" is that the game is logical the minigames (combat, crafting, looting, what ever) are well designed, are not boring.  The final part in which you will retain (up to this point they just want to play your game, here they'll actually pay to play it) these customers, they will expect you have entertaining content.  What ever that means, for some it means go kill that rat 10k times to see numbers go up, others will want the rats to get bigger and nastier.  

All those little things, some subtle, some invisible really need to be thought about, designed, implemented and tested day 1.  You can parse out the definitions that server architecture is not polish, but that's from a technical standpoint the reality is most people will lump a laggy server (due to what ever bad design you can name) similar to having bad poly counts on your NPCs which drop FPS.

This can go round and round.

It wasn't what i was talking about, and i bet its not what the developer was talking about. While i understand and agree with what boath of you are saying. Its not normality what the term refers to.

Games have many parts, at the top of the heap is the game level, the part that makes it a game, and not just a collection of audio layer, rendering engine,Image libs , and databases (The parts of a game engine).

Any way, continue on.

I was not arguing about the core mechanics of a game. If the core mechanics suck the game is going to fail anyways. I was talking about the polish of a game, like UI, easy and comprehensive introduction into the game mechanics of combat, chatting etc..
HGL is a perfect example for a failure in the polish. Even with a fun game design (ding-lewt-gratz) the failure was the abundance of polish. Obstacles to group with others, due to stupid grouping bugs, uncomfortable friends list functions, uncomfortable chat functions and small, silly things like going through the long login process again, if you just wanted to switch to another character,  was driving me away from the game, even more then the sucking mem-leak.

That should be stapled to the forehead of every software developer everywhere.

I think you're mistaking the degree of influence of software on the whole system.  Software isn't just memory leaks.  It's combat mechanics, it's the ability to LOD your 3d objects so they look good, it's managing your color palette, it's logging game data so you can go back over it and find out why combat sucks.  The idea that there is a level of the game above the software is a myth.  It's a fine, and probably even beneficial, myth for players to believe.  Any developer who believes it is doomed.

Here's the quote from Gaute where the world 'polish' came in.

It's clear he's talking about bugs, not how good the music score is.

I lose track, are these numbers still growing?

Or is this just the expansion bump from China?

It should be fun and you should know why its fun.  The polish should be to make it shine.

Yep. Not all companies can afford Blizzard's level of polish. Personally, I think your first sentence is far more important than your second.  :awesome_for_real:

Totally true that polish starts on day one, which is why I hate the word "polish" itself.  It implies it's something you do after the game is complete, or nearly complete, which is not at all the case.

Regarding the stuff about architecture not counting as polish, that's true in the sense that the end user doesn't care how the servers internals are working, but that's the only sense in which it is true.  Obviously when you call a game "polished" you are talking about the end user experience, but that experience is influenced by how solid the architecture is.

The stuff people are talking about regarding how a company can appear "tolerant" of bugs (like with EQ's boats) is almost certainly due to poor architecture.  There's a difference between bugs that are just due to an oversight by the engineer and bugs that are due to a flaw in the architecture.  The first you can fix, and the second you may never realistically be able to fix, ever.  That's why the final six months aren't really what makes the game "polished," because if you've made too many mistakes before you get to that point, you will never be able to get the game working properly.

This isn't, like, abstract stuff, this is exactly the reason that games, and MMOs in particular (with their more complex architecture) end up being fucked up.  It's not that nobody's aware of the bugs, or that nobody is available to fix them, or that they ran out of time... it's that they fucked up along the way and now they're fucked.

You don't polish the transmission belt or the power steering fluid container. You design and engineer it well. What you actually polish is the integration of all these individual systems into a cohesive system.

But often, what people refer to as "polish" (beyond being of Poland) is the prettiness of the graphics or the cleanlines of the UI. That, as has been said here already, is just making something prettier. It doesn't solve fundamental architectural issues. Pretty cars fall apart too.

Polish doesn't start on day one. Design and engineering does. Once you've proven they work (as in function and are fun), then you proceed with polishing.

Still growing, I think. IIRC, this is the first time that it's been "over 2 million" and "[/b]over two and a half million" respectively.

If I would own a pretty car, that is not just good looking, but really pretty, I would be pissed if I had to read a 300 page manual just to manage to put the drivers seat in the position I wanted it to be.

For games it's just the same.

And that's something Blizzard has done well with WoW.

I agree with those saying "polish" is really about first impressions/last touches. When discussing games (hell, any software, perhaps any -product-), the last 10% is what makes the consumer go "Oh, how fancy", they don't care shit for the architecture until it's working so badly that their experience is directly impeded by it. Tacky technology can go a long, long way with chewing gum and duct tape. A good system design is easier to polish, but it's the polish that's the hard, boring, ungrateful bit to do. Everyone is familiar with how tedious it is to do those last 20% that only give a 2% increase in quality, while the first prototype that worked to 70% was so fun to build. Prototyping is fun, finishing up is horrid. Game developers are no different. A good system design takes two clever people, a good end polish takes the entire company's combined effort. It's just human nature - if you're going to fuck up, it'll be near the end.

Problem is, on something as content-heavy as a diku, you just have so many systems, bits and ends to polish that it's almost an insurmountable task to handle it all, even if you got enough staff.

When it comes to WoW's polish, I think what credits it most is the even level of polish, rather than the highs. There's no point where you get backstabbed with a shiv of blunt game design as is legion in this genre. But pretty much every game got polish, often more than WoW in some sense. It just does the majority better than the rest. Thus the majority plays it.

Edit; Spelling and clarification.

It's not so delusional. I made a response awhile back in another forum that basically answers this question of how WAR vs WoW can play out.



[edit]
 Beyond WARs niche and the MMOhardcore who knows about it?  Seriously I'm sure you know some people who know jack about MMOs want to bet they've heard of WoW?  Want to bet they have no idea what WAR is and aren't even curious?[/edit]

This point is irrelevent. WoW was in the same boat.

Wow initially succeeded among their target demographics which was their fans and those who knew about MMOs.  As time wore on more people were introduced to WoW by these players and word of mouth spread of a good game to play through everything from college dorms to national news like NPR. Now Blizzard is just doing what any good business does when they have a huge market share. Their size alone attracts people because other people are there. Blizzard also reinvests their profits to launch media campaigns that target people beyond gaming circles. Lastly since WoW is a cultural hub that grows in population it gains more people who advertise for it for free on the cheap by incorparrating it into their own work like South Park or Machina movies.

Warhammer just has to do what any "start up" has to do. Pick a target demographic and do your best to attract them. Because of wow EA Mythic actually has an easier time attracting the attention of people because the MMO audience became alot bigger. The problem EA Mythic has is convincing these people to leave a good game for their own. There a few ways of doing it and Mythic has chosen one of the better methods which is to differentiate itself by focusing more heavily on pvp. I have strong doubts they will meet expectations of pvpers but they should be able to satisfy them well enough.

Just on their marketing campaign alone they've already gained a sizeable following and a portion of that following agressively advertise for them for free on WoW in game and in the forums. Sometimes they're obnoxious about it but they are making people think about WAR.


If WAR is a good game it will continue to grow like Eve and WoW has. If it is a really good game it will be able to reach a million players within a year and the moment it does that it will snowball in a similar manner like WoW. It's up in the air though how large their peak will be though. To even make an educated guess on that inital sales have to be tracked.

?

Party affiliation in the Harris Poll has been 65-80% Dem or GOP (http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=548) since they started taking it.  WAR might overtake WoW, but I don't think it'll have anything to do with a native American resistance to pigeonholing.

A lot of this disagreement is boiling down to semantics.  What I (and others, I think) are saying is more that the end result of a polished product is not just due to the product having another six months tacked on at the end, but rather due to more careful design and engineering throughout.  Giving a game "another six months" (or any software product, for that matter) isn't necessarily going to make a difference, or at least not enough of one.  It will still look "unpolished" from the end user's point of view, ultimately because of flawed work done at the start of the project.

A good example is probably (bearing in mind that I have no idea of what WoW's development was like) is how smooth the zone transitions are in WoW vs. the "chunking" in Vanguard.  The slower chunking could be seen as lacking "polish," but it's almost certainly something that was fated back in early development and will never really be fixed.  Yet people would still see that as "unpolished."

Another example might be the slow combat responsiveness of LOTRO (and, well, lots of games that aren't WoW, frankly).  Again, that's going to seem to people like a "polish" issue, but I imagine it's nigh impossible to change at such a late stage of development.

These are only possible examples (particularly the LOTRO one, as it's entirely possible they could make it more responsive and just choose not to, I dunno), but regardless of whether they happen to be accurate in these particular cases, they certainly could be the case, and illustrate the point.

I maybe way off with the percentages but you are way off in focusing on the example in the manner you did. The example was an extrapolation on human behavior, more specifically how we like to or can't help but divide ourselves. Within WoW alone their subcultures within the WoW culture. WAR can grow by convincing sub groups within WoW they do that thing WoW does better.

Actually it's completely relevant, how many boxsales do you think the warcraft franchise had prior to WoW launch?  Would you think it's easier to convert table top gamers to MMO gamers, or single player/ co-op gamers into MMO gamers?  I would bet that the initial WoW crowd came directly because they were waiting for the next version of the warcraft series, that it happened to be an MMO was not the deciding factor (beyond converting them from one time to monthly sub status).  Sure the MMO vets from AC, EQ, UO came along but they would have come along any way if the game was any good and prior to WoW no one thought "millions" in the western market was conceivable.

Your points about PvP, I have no idea on.  It assumes that DAoC RvR concept has a bigger market than it does (adjusting for growth) and that people want this (I know you have some forum bitching).  WoW is very good at providing meta-game pvp, we'll just call it loot so it can be put in context.  Most people just want that next shiney so they can show off their armory, bs with friends in game and the process in which they get that shiney is usually the path of least resistance.  Raiding in WoW is time prohibitive for any one who falls into the I play a few hours a week crowd or has time schedules which are flexible.  It's why the WoW battlegrounds work, you basically have a guaranteed outcome based on just being there.  Your team mates can suck, you can lose the short term objective but in 5 minutes you can be back at it again and the long term objective gets moved ever closer.

So given that I think your assesment of how important a "pvp mechanic" which only really takes into account PKing is important to people (mind you this is my opinion here, I have zero data to backup these claims) I would say that WAR wont dent WoWs subs in the least, I'll make a bold statement and say a year from now they'll announce 13 million world wide and WAR will not announce 250k active subs.  My opinion is that MMOs are just not a platform you can truely design PK around, FPS games with less moving parts are much better for this crowd.  That PvP in is abstract form revolves around the small portion of player killing (world pvp, arena pvp, battleground pvp) is what I disagree with.  It's not what is driving those WoW players (you never see any one caring that their arena rating is 2200 because they are awesome they care because they are farming points for the next loots and a small minority care because they know those points are valuable and can earn real cash by selling the teams off.

I'm holding out for a Bible MMO - at this point it's the only IP left that is popular enough to compete. Because I judge my self worth on how big my MMO is (just like my penis.)  :grin:

Actually LOTR outsells the Bible.  Or so I read somwhere!

MS is willing to take a huge upfront loss on their hardware if it helps sell software. I'm not sure they are willing to take a huge loss on their software.

Also, MUO is pretty close to what you're describing - MS publishing, Xbox360 and Vista dedicated, I'd say it probably has a timeline closer to 3 years than 6. 6 years is two hardware cycles, so probably at least one redesign of internal game engine architecture to meet new hardware stardards (Gig Cores and terrabyte video cards, or the Xbox 1080 or whatever).

From my external viewpoint, it's not that designing a MMO for the Xbox 360 is hard so much as the Xbox Live architecture appears to not scale well to massively multiplayer games. I say this based on a lot of assumptions, but the recent problems at Xmas just added to this belief. Fixing the Live architecture is a job for MS and one they probably don't see a lot of value in doing for an unproven game format (i.e. MMOs on consoles).

<fanboi>

CoH came out before WoW and there was a wide consensus is that it was fun out of the box. It also had a great launch. It is also, for its budget and studio, a financial success.

</fanboi>

I don't think you can point to one factor - that WoW was casual friendly with low barriers to entry, that it had the Blizzard name behind it, that it was polished, that it had near simultaneous worldwide release - and say that was the one factor that is the reason for WoW's success. Truth is that it was a whole range of factors and that if they weren't all working, WoW's status might have been very different. If it'd been a highly polished hardcore PvP game then it certainly wouldn't be seeing 10 million players.

While WoW is casual friendly up to the endgame, it also lets players be uber-loot whores and min/max their way through the game if they want. Some people make it their second job / substitute for a social life.  It does a good job of allowing for a wide range of playstyles, which only helps with its success.

However, WoW is what it is and it can't be duplicated. If any of the new games copy WoW and just add a few features, they are always going to be behind WoW. Out of WAR and AoC, I've got a lot more interest in AoC because they seem to be trying a number of new things. AoC's devs have a greater chance of mucking it up, but I also think they've got a greater chance of surpassing expectations (assuming the servers don't meltdown and AoC deletes every third file from your PC). That said, I think WAR's sub numbers will be better at launch than AoC's since WAR will be a 'safer' jump from WoW.

Harry Potter outsells the Bible. Plus a HP MMO would be better because everyone gets to use magic, not just the guy with the beard.

No wait, here's the part that makes it good - the guy with the beard gets stuck inside Mondain's Gem of Immortality as it gets broken into thousands of shards. Plus it would have fewer   :pedobear:

Edit: O wait, I forgot about the Catholic faction.

Warcraft was an IP that was strongly relevant to computer gamers, put forth by a company with a reputation so sterling that it alone practically outshone the IP.  Warhammer has none of that going for it.  It's just another case of "Well if some people who like a thing that has nothing to do with computer gaming suddenly decide that this brand will make them play an MMO..."

I would assume if it turns a tidy profit, returns the VCs their investment and yields say 15% return on investment per anum, any game can be considered a success (mild one at 15% most VCs would probably be looking at closer to 50% 3 years).  Which will be slightly different than what gamers feel a success is, which is so subjective.  I'm sure COH paid off in spades, Blizzard poured a ton of money into their dev cycle (more than any one todate that I can think of).  Does this mean the only MMOs worth making are blockbusters?  No but this thread was specifically about WoW subs with a bit of WAR will make them decline banter thrown in for flavor.

And a harry potter MMO, tell me who's making it and I'll tell you how hard it flops :)

 :thumbs_up:

EA owns all video game rights to Harry Potter.

Actually Fountainhead outsold them both. Or was it Atlas Shrugged? Dunno. But I read it somewhere!

Sims Online +  :pedobear: + :pedobear: +  :ye_gods: = Epic Fail

I couldn't think of anything more to add, so yeah, thanks for finishing that thought. ^_^

Tbh when i played WoW during the open beta, i didn't find it really any more fun than Anarchy Online or Ragnarok Online that i'd played before. It had exactly the same 'find foozle and whack it and the little numbers on your character get bigger" thing these others did. It wasn't less fun but it wasn't more, either.

It probably just shows the concept of 'capturing essence of fun' is like trying to capture essence of 'sexy'. Everyone knows sexy when they see it but try to ask 10 people what they find sexy and you'll get 10 different answers.

Yeah that's been done to death too. Sorry.

hehe tmp, this whole thread has been done to death. The factors of WoW. The cries for a game to be fun without definitive metrics. I think even the HP MMO thing. Heck, we're just a post or two away from it being den'd for someone bringing up SWG :-)

It's amazing to read through all this "No no no, the REAL reason why WoW is so successfull is....." and be able to think to yourself "it sure is a reason" time and time again.

Let's be honest- it's just the same story as it was for Half-Life. How long did it take for other companies to actually get anywhere near the HL sells with their own FPSs?

The Objectivist MMO would have RMT. Fact.

Plus your Objectivist character would be above physically fighting his opponents - you'd only be able to talk condescendingly at them. Burying them under a wall of text defeats them.

Did someone say, "Twitch"?

That'll get this bitch denned for sure.  :drill:

I agree completely about CoH being fun right out of the box, and for a few months after.  But then it fails to remain fun.

What I just don't understand - really don't understand - is why Cryptic doesn't do something about it.  ("It" being the levelling grind that kicks in after 25, I mean.)  Every time I think about going back to CoH, I remember why I left and how it's not different now in that regard.  It's a pity, too - I would have levelled several characters to pvp with, if the level cap was 30 or even 40. 

Thank you, that what i was getting at. I do, at many times, fail at words.

CoH's fun started right away too. I made sooo many chars that really never got played. Their character creation was just that awesome.

CoH's core gameplay is in character creation, travel powers, and re-rolling alts.  I think this is as much a bane as a success.  The game suffers from a severe lack of gameplay variety. 

In the month I subbed to COH I think I made 20 different characters to level 10 and spent hours upon hours making characters.  It was awesome.  Gameplay and control scheme was awful though.

Exactly.  That is what I did for about 3 months.  I quit and never looked back.  Never will unless they announce some huge revamp that adds more dimension to the game.  Endlessly going from instance to instance that all looked and played the same is just not my thing.  While I do this in WoW to a much lesser degree, there are a ton of other things to do when I get bored with that small element of the game.  For CoH, it just means quitting.

Hell, they probably did add some things to it that I'd like.  Sorry, too little too late.