f13.net

Fred Brooks coined the term "the second system effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#The_Second-system_Effect)" to describe what happens when developers are given the green light to come up with a successor to an originally successful system. Developers will want to start from a clean code base to use the newest technologies and standards, will want to add all the features that would have been nice in the original, and generally conceive an overly ambitious system that has high risk of failing.

There is some evidence that this happens in the MMO space.

• SWG, Raph's second MMO was really an attempt to do UO right, but was so ambitious that when the game shut down years later (replaced with NGE), there were still major systems that didn't work correctly.
• Mark Jacob's second MMO (Imperator) never made it our the door. WAR, his second shipped MMO was a clear attempt to do DAOC right, and failed from too many complex systems that were hard to balance and implement correctly.
  
• Richard Garriot's second MMO (TR) was an overly ambitious mess that wound up being thrown out and stripped back to the disappointing game that shipped.
• Vanguard was Brad McQuaid's disastrous successor to EQ.

Is this really a trend? Are there examples of people who have designed and shipped a second successful MMO?

I'm posting this from the future: Blizzard.

They just fix what everyone else fails at. :oh_i_see:

Actually, WAR struck me as a clear attempt to avoid doing anything DAoC got right, and was thus doomed to fail before any game systems even entered the picture.

Calling it now: CCP's 2nd MMO will follow this trend to the letter.

There's another part to this phenomenon too. The release of the 2nd MMO will spell the death of the 1st MMO as well. As Schild says, Blizzard will be the exception.

Don't you see?! WoW is MMO 2.0! IT HAS CAUSED THE DEATH OF ALL OTHER MMOS!


(Sleep deprived, sorry.)

I have often thought of SWG as suffering from Second System, actually. Which according to Brooks bodes well for Metaplace.

I don't think so.

EQ1 has TWO successors, EQ2 and Vanguard. EQ1 still chugs along fine with new expansions every year (whether players want them or not) whereas Vanguard is basically on refrigerated life support. Has EQ2's numbers ever exceeded EQ1 550K peak? AC1 outlived AC2 - AC2 being another obvious example of the "second system effect".

I think the better conclusion is that the second system (aka MMO) from the SAME SET of devs will almost always result in an over engineered POS.

Not necessarily. There's a good argument to be made that many of the designers on MMOGs didn't even know how to design a good game before they made an MMOG, and after making one they still don't know. I expect to see great things from the genre once some unexpected players join the game. Of course, that might be wrong also and we're doomed to playing crap inbetween Blizzard titles. The former is more likely though.

Protip: Don't use Bioware as an example of an unexpected player making an MMOG. Since we have some new folks who will no doubt try to join this conversation, Bioware Austin != Bioware.

Somehow I don't think WoD will be an attempt to do Eve right, and I also doubt it will cause Eve's death.

Of course, it may fail horribly, but somehow I doubt it will with the entire population of deviantart chomping at the bit to subscribe.

Actually, Bioware Austin is run by ex-Mythic people making their second system. :awesome_for_real: And there are definite signs of over-ambition - somehow these guys are going to crack the problem of creating quality story-driven content faster than players can blow through it?

Raph - I am looking forward to Metaplace. It is definitely something really different, and that in itself was a good plan.

I think a really large part is getting too complacent with how one does business and falling into the same traps, assuming that what worked in 2001 will work today. Looking at War, the glaring problems in the game were obvious to virtually everyone who played it, and Mythic's reaction was the same kind of ultra cautious reluctance to fix that they displayed in DAOC. "Oh, we are gathering metrics." "Oh everyone agrees we need to double xp, but instead we'll add 10% for a limited time and see how we feel about it." I can see the future where they go back to the FILO class fixes where the fix isn't enough or the nerf is too hard but you don't get looked at for two years because you're at the bottom of the stack.

Note that assumption I make about patching classes--that's because I see Mythic falling into one of their old patterns and just assume they'll fall into all of them. Not only aren't devs coming at a second gen without a fresh eye, but their players are also familiar with their faults and because of that far less tolerant to weasel word explanations or promises. If the advancement isn't enough, another company might be able to do that 10% and have players say "oh great, they're listening! Whoopdeedo!" but the Mythic history turned it into a negative.

(Sorry to pick on Mythic, it's just the one freshest in my mind with some very distinctive habits.)

How about Turbine and Asheron's Call 2 or Funcom and Age of Conan? 

This seems to be true for only the big 5 dev-houses. Lesser known, or should i say lesser paid attention to houses, this doesn't seem to be the case.

But, its funny, this is along the lines of things i see in the art world in general. Can't tell you how many times personally, i have made an image, then tried to do it again...and failed. Thankfully, canvas, paper and ink are cheaper than an MMO.  :grin:

I don't think this is just a development thing, i think its a human thing. That, and i suspect this is where "3ed times the charm" really came from. Its part of the learning, and development as well as creative exploration process, normally it just isn't to the tune of 10m + experiment.

I think the real problem however is, How many of the teams really survive to work on the second MMO? I cant imagine its the SAME EXACT team. If it was, then i bet it would not be as grossly overshot as it is. I guess i am saying, in your team, how many new people are you adding, that this is their first, and your teams second, becouse that may muddy the waters.

Sure, if it was a traditional "sequel" :-)

An other negative aspect of the second system effect is that the rock star developer has more power vs his staff and the suits.  He's getting less contradicted and challenged since he knows how it's done. 

Auto Assault (second MMO for NetDevil)

Does it count as a second MMO syndrome if the first was an abject failure as well?

Warhammer wasn't even complex. They just made it retardedly complex for no reason without the fun factor added in.
Zone pushes at its original state was broken.
Keep taking that rewards one lucky rollers. Hohoho.
PQ still the same deal. One guy gets gold. Sometimes NOBODY gets it.
Ward system that is fuckin archaic and continued to be 'tweaked' to make it necessary for DPS to wear a set.

Intelligent? Hell no.

This also corrolates to authors and movie makers :-)

CCP's WoD does have me a bit concerned. When they built EVE they did it on a shoestring budget, a very small team, and were working with an original IP. None of those are present this time around.

I could easily see CCP trying to bite off more than they can chew. I sure a hell hope this isn't the case, but it's very possible.

If they're doing the new WoD as the setting, it may go that way regardless of how good it is.  Achillie's all-darkness all-the-time doesn't work for me or a lot of people.

I'm 99% confident that I know who you're talking about but I would also point out that there are plenty who don't fit this pattern.

I know its prolly is still in early production but do we know the people making the Warhammer 40k mmo from Relic/THQ?

The same Dev team as Dawn of War RTS? Or a different crew of names from places we reconize. Is this an example of new players?

Relic is not involved with the WH40K MMO (why not? who the fuck knows). It's being done by Vigil Games, a company founded by comic book artists.

I wasn't referring to anyone. It jus happens that some people peak early, or were the one type of creative needed during a unique time in a genre or industry, and learn the wrong things from that one-time win. It's not a pattern, but it happens enough to recognize it from the outside looking in.

It is a development thing.  The game industry is years of not a decade behind on tech and knowing how to build systems.  There are huge systems in use by millions of people that are be updated every few hours with new features, bug fixes, and content.  The MMOs do not have a cheap and fast system for making features and content then test and releasing it.  MMOs need to focus on copying how other companies make, test, and release systems and not just copy features of other MMOs with newly made features (auction house from scratch for example), testing, and release processes.  This information is available for much less then +10m.  Untill they learn how to build it, what they build is greatly limited or controlled by the processes they use.

I think good design is a fluke, mmorpgs are not understood enough to come up with formula for success. We know some components of it - such as stability, usability testing... but a lot of social aspects of it is very similar to producing music videos, you can only make a hit once in a while even following "proven" formula.

If anything this speaks volumes for keeping old mmorpgs alive.

That doesn't bode well. Relic nailed the RTS - I had a lot of fun with the series of expansions (ignoring the non-Relic one that I didn't buy). I can't say I'd feel the same way about Vigil after Mythic screwed the pooch.

Re: WoW... wasn't the re-development put into the hands of ex-EQ devs while still in development (Furor/Tigole)? Does that make it effectively a second system?

I think the truth behind the reality is that you can't plan success.  When success happens, its very easy to then turn around and try to replicate it by making it "better," but it is the happy accidents, the things you came up with because you simply had no time for any other solution that unexpectedly become genius.  And then of course there is the idea that everyone only has that one homerun in them, and after writing your first and best great American novel, you simply have nothing left to give.

I really like t he concept behind this thread though.  Its one of those ideas you have in your head or toss around in some late night drunken discussion then find out someone much smarter than you has organized it and put it into a Wiki.

I think it depends on one thing:  what you do with your money once you've had (one, a) success.  People and companies that are frugal and don't spend like idiots should theoretically make it.

As far as CCP, my completely uninformed opinion is that they may drop the WoD setting in favor of just making Ambulation a full-fledged MMO, and then offer the two MMO's (the Spaceship Combat MMO and the Planet-surface Avatar MMO with Guns and Shit) as complementary games a la City of Heroes / City of Villains.  Both of them would be sandboxes, full PVP, etc etc, and the release of the second should boost the playerbase of the current one.

All MMO's are second MMO's as far as I'm concerned.

i.e. They're all shit. I'll never like em as much as I liked them the first time. Partly their fault for not improving and introducing anything dramatic. Partly mine for not being stupid and easily entertained.

Please no.

I can see why it might seem like a smart business move, but I think they have a really good thing going for them right now, making a MAJOR change like this might do more harm than good.  I'm nervous enough about ambulation as it stands (though I'll admit what they are saying seems to indicate that it will be more geared towards the social aspect of the game, which I can totally get behind). 

In regards to the OP, i think what we have here is a case of trying to force things and trying to please everyone.  the "first MMO," it would seem, tends to be less interested in pleasing a large population and more interested in creating the game the developers wanted to begin with.  However, after their initial (even moderate) success, they get a big investor, and the investor wants a big payout.  What they do is then sell their original (good) idea short in favor of trying to appeal to as wide a player base as possible, which generally means a bunch of watered down features, rather than a solid MMO than knows what it is and does it well.  Now, I don't want to be too nostolgic about older MMOs, but I have seen a pattern of late that MMO releases that have tried to please large amounts of people  (WoW aside, its an anomaly), have disappointed me.

Furor and Tigole were EQ players not devs, they both led the top guilds in EQ at one time or another.

Ah cheers - I wasn't too sure on that.

Re: WoW, I was thinking last night that they actually reinvented themselves with BC - reducing reliance on 25mans, reducing levelling grind so that you could get into the good stuff at 70 while not coming close to endgame, implementing the token system etc.

I'll be interested to see whether their next MMO is innovative or more of the traditional MMO fodder.

Innovation? Have you been paying attention to MMOs the past...say ... 10 years? There is fuckall innovation. Hell, shit they even pulled off in UO seems to have been thrown out as a concept (housing) and everything is a Diku fuckfest these days (See AoC, WAR). That being said I switch between Eve and Wow, just cause....well...what else is there that is worth a shit? I'd say Planetside, but the game is dead. For about 6 months, I had a ton of fun with that game.

I'm with Stray. Fuckin' MMOs......grumble grumble grumble

FIFY. Blizzard hasn't broken new ground since, arguably, Diablo 1 in 1996 or earlier. They make highly-polished Genre King games - the sort of games that set the high-water mark for a certain type of gameplay for a very long time. And they do it very, very, very well. I would be very surprised if they pulled some new MMO type out of their collective asses, instead of deciding to win the F2P/Web MMO market or PVP MMO market instead.

I could also theoretically see them moving into less-developed MMO segments like MMORTS, given their *craft heritage, but that would seem a longer shot. MMORTSes never really succeeded beyond crowds of a few tens of thousands.

(Of course, saying that is like saying "MMORPGs never went beyond a few hundred thousand" after EQ and before WOW...)

I guess what I am saying is, noone has innovated since the originals. When I first heard of Ultima Online, I said "finally". I had been hoping for something like that for years. Basically, I thought we would have come much farther with different types of games by now. Shit like Mechwarrior, Xwing/Tie fighter, Syndicate, large scale FPSes like Planetside (thanks for trying SOE).

I like Blizzard for how they have always been. Diablo is just an improved version of Rogue when it comes down to it, but its is damn fun. I will basically buy any game they release if they stick to the system they have for so many years. There success is a double edged sword for a guy like me, I get good games but I get everyone else copying them and fucking up any type of diversity in this market.

To play devil's advocate, MMOs have been introducing innovations as they've developed over time, but this innovation has generally been evolutionary, not revolutionary. A revolutionary MMO comes along and we hear probably wouldn't talk about it because it isn't what we (royal we) generally play.

If we are going to get pissy about it, I can say that RPGs haven't shown innovation since Ultima. I'd be right if I drew a large enough definition of "RPG" and "innovation".

Good point. I just like throwing out sweeping generalizations and hoping I don't get called on it :)

I think you get what I'm saying though.

SWG, yes, but I wonder if it really would have had the same problems if had been labelled 'UO2'.

WAR has a whole set of other problems caused by Mythic's history, but it certainly isn't people trying to do daoc right.

TR is RG setting off in a whole new direction, it doesn't feel like someone trying to correct the problems of UO.

Vanguard is like WAR, it is poisoned by people learning the wrong things from EQ. It isn't people trying to exorcise the ghosts of EQ.

tbh, apart from SWG I can't think of any good examples.

I think many would disagree with you on WAR, but that's been stated.

VG was an attempt to do EQ1 better. They just got it wrong by focusing on the wrong things. That's part of Second System too. This affects EQ2 at launch as well (not EQ2 of today).

I agree with you on TR.

I see some innovation in things like what daoc did with RvR, how CoH was built, and various aspects of EVE. But I also don't really understand why noone will develop MMOGs other than character RPGs.

The only efforts made to 'do daoc better' in WAR have been last minute patched in daoc-lite versions of rvr because oh-shit-the-Guild-Wars-lite-stuff-wasn't-hitting-home-runs.

And mythic openly stated more than once how they threw out the good ideas from daoc to stop it being seen as daoc 2.

I'm not sure anyone seriously sees WAR's problem being Mythic trying to refight the battles they lost in daoc?


Thinking some more, EQ2 is probably an even better example than SWG.

Aimed at exactly the same audience and then largely designed by listing the common gripes in EQ, then overcompensating. The result being a game that had so many sub-systems it almost seemed to play itself, too simple to play, too complex to understand or to feel immersed in, and way too much effort channeled into mechanics and design, not enough into content.

This is second system effect, not sequel effect :-) Mythic clearly thought they learned a few things from DAoC and what players wanted from WoW. But they emphasized the wrong things and thought players would adapt to a system that wasn't designed to bring them together, itself the hallmark of a good combat-oriented PvP game (because WAR never set out to be the other type of PvP of fighting over resources and holdings). There's a who sub-forum for this though, so no reason to rehash.

I agree with your assessment of EQ2 ;-)

And I definitely agree with your thoughts on innovation. So much potential is locked into games that aren't competitive enough for the successful to take notice.

Blizzard could sell "Advanced Intestine Simulator" and their fanboys would scream "its wonderful!!!" and it would sell loads of copies.

It wouldn't retain them if there wasn't any value in the game though.  SWG sold over a million boxes.  WAR has probably hit a million by now.  AoC sold a good chunk.  Were these not online games that might be enough, but it's not since they spend multiples of what a single player game costs in making them.

WoW (and Blizzard) might not be for us, but they are doing things right as far as the market is concerned.

No game will ever be for the crowd assembled here as a whole.  None. Never.

How profound.

Just to be more lame profound, you can please many types of people with a world. Fit whatever games you want in it. And by whatever games, I don't mean the ones you want to play.  :why_so_serious:

Wait, I'm gonna be serious here for a sec.

I think it's technically possible to appeal widely on an abstract/mechanics level, but not neccessarily widely on a theme/content level. For example, say your MMO is a comic book world. Not everyone likes comic books -- so you're limited to fans of that genre. That said, you could keep most of those fans playing if you didn't just cram one game/goal that dictated how you go about existing in that world. To use City of Heroes as an example, it's only one game -- Diku. A pretty tedious one at that (well, it used to be, I don't know anymore). Instead of revolving it around just that, make more effort to appeal to fans of racers, or fighting games, or shooter fans, or hack and slash fans, or whack-a-mole fans, or economists.

I know I'm stating the obvious, but it needs to be said. It's the most obvious problem of mmo's to me. They revolve too much around limited game mechanics. Most of the time, it's just limited to three -- typical diku pve, pvp (heavily based on items and pve overlap), or economy. There are more ways to do things, y'know? And most of the time, when a new mechanic is introduced, it's mostly inconsequential (like, say, some dumb little Holiday ram racing game in WoW), or it's exclusive to high level players (puzzle based bosses in WoW raids).

[edit] Oh, and for all it's warts, SWG really did try to address more than just a few avenues for players to succeed. It was mostly fubar, of course, but they did try!

Diablo 3?

Not Diablo 2-ey enough

would like to toss idea to mythic warhammer forwhatever it's worth now. (my subs' gone)
I would like to kill my own faction kthx.

True, but that's true for fanbois of any company/designer/artist/etc.

if Blizzard made said AIS then you know for sure that they wouldn't release it until & unless it was the most polished and accessible colon simulator ever, good enough to draw in a whole new layer of players new to poop-making games.

But even WAR will also take in multiples of single player game revenue in subscriptions. It is a failure in that it hasn't achieved what Mythic or EA hoped, but assuming it dawdles along with 200k subs, I suspect it will remain profitable.

Character MMORPGs have been the most successful from a development and financial point of view. So, despite the pedigrees of non-MMORPGs like Shattered Galaxy (MMORTS) and Planetside (MMOFPS that was successful for a time) the fact that EQ dominated UO is why were are where we are today.

If, in some alternate universe, the WoW we got at its inception was released today to compete against what we now know to be the current WoW, it would fail, just like Warhammer and AoC.  I don't believe for a second that Blizzard could repeat their success with a new MMO just because they are blizzard or that they have learned some secret of turning games instantly into gold, fanbois of the company or not.  That being said, I think part of what has kept them successfull is that they *know* this and plan to hold onto WoW and milk it for everything its got before they ever dare try to make lightning strike twice.

There are so many other factors aside from an amazing revolutionary polished game involved that the company that does "beat" WoW will probably benefit mostly from very good timing.  History is full of examples of the underdog overcoming the popular powerhouse despite their clear business disadvantage but Blizzard is going to have to make alot of mistakes before it happens.

If they made Diablo Online, some sort of bastardized instanced MMOG-lite to compete with Guild Wars or whatever you want to throw at it, and they charged an extra $5-$10 on top of a WoW subscription or a $15 to non-WoW subscribers, you can bet your sweet ass they'd get 5-15M people AGAIN. Are they there yet? No, Starcraft II and D3 went into development before WoW was even released.

Now, World of Starcraft, yea, I'm not sure, the best move would be to make a package sub. 5M more people at $5-$10 more a month is worth the dev costs though - you know it, I know it, and Blizzard knows it. Yea, they're gonna milk this WoW cashcow, but then, it seems to be giving up it's milk fairly easily. All we can hope at this point - we being those of us that don't play WoW - is that SOE gets their shit together and knocks one of their next titles out of the park or someone like Valve enters the arena. Or Blizzard makes Diablo Online.

And yea, timing is important. Blizzard making mistakes wouldn't change much though. Whether they make mistakes or not, people _will_eventually_get_tired. With their rate of growth though, that won't be for a long, long time.

I think a lot of it has to do with trust in the Dev Team. If I feel a dev team has a chance to fix stuff, I'll stay with a game much longer. If (like in SWG/CoH/Necron) I feel like they're merely adding grind/nerfs or making changes that don't improve the game, I'll leave, but keep checking in to see if stuff gets better. If (AO/WaR/AoC) I think they're disconnected fucktards who have no fucking clue, I'm gone forever.

I take issue with this. Neither WAR nor AoC were in the same league as WoW1.0 in terms of play content, art content, or design decisions (as we see over and over again with both).

While the amount of money and time spent on WoW1.0 wouldn't justify the subscriptions they could squeeze out of the current offerings (in an immediate monetary sense, it might "fail"), it would still outshine both of those epic mistakes, in the first year, living happily as the pre-BC shard - assuming it was literally WoW1.0 released on some server(s?).

Actually, history is full of outsiders coming in and redefining the metric of success. This isn't the glorified david vs goliath scenario. It's more that Blizzard's biggest risk is that they've got almost everyone that wants this type of game and that everyone else present and future goes to a completely different type of game altogether.

Not saying that'll happen anytime soon though. For one, the new game would have to become a mass hit with a larger audience still (and measured in a way that is comparable to WoW). For another, it would have to attract a sufficient number of current WoW players in a way that also keeps them.

That I don't see anytime soon. WAR and AoC proved there's a lot of people willing to look, while also proving their expectations are much higher than when we jumped onto DAoC.

As far as I am concerned people just need to stop trying to beat WoW in the first place.  It isn't going to happen.  It is so far off the charts compared to every single other MMO ever released that the comparisons are barely worth it.   It seems like it has been proven that you aren't going to steal WoW players FROM WoW.  Your options are to 1) Get people that don't want WoW anymore or 2) Make a game people are willing to play WITH WoW.   This pretty much means WoW clones are in trouble, because you can't "out blizzard" blizzard.   

This does not mean you can not make a successful (which for these purposes I am defining as making enough money to continue development and pay all your employees, basically, profit from the game) game like WoW.  LOTRO and WAR are both very similar to WoW, but are both viable games.

In terms of future Blizzard MMO projects, I really can't see why they would bother risking what they have going for them.  There is no reason to NOT focus on WoW.  Anything that destabilizes what they have has to be seen as a bad marketing decision.  I mean, sure, World of Starcraft or World of Diablo (for lack of better terms to use to describe these potential games), would have a lot of interest in them, but I couldn't see them adding an appreciable amount of players unless they think people are really going to pay for more than one account across the games.  Sure, people might switch, and you might get a few new players, but considering all the costs of creating and maintaining an MMO, its hard to think a second Blizzard MMO would pay for itself.

It's for this kind of reason I think that the first good current gen MMO that goes onto a console has a great chance of surpassing that 1 million player mark without really trying. The trick in the MMO market right now is to grow it in a different direction rather than try to steal market share off of WoW.

I can say this with the full authority of someone who posts on a MMO forum.  :grin:

I've got to say, a prime reason why I wasn't interested in WAR or AOC is because of the development teams. I put my time into DAOC and AO, but this time around, I had a much more appealing alternative.

I _promise_ I haven't been saying this for nearly 4 years.

WOTLK WoW couldn't triumph over WoW 1.0? I would think the better defined PvP alone would ensure WoTLK's viability vs WoW 1.0 Also the pve encounters in WOTLK are better designed. If they came out at the same time neither game would've grown as fast as WoW by itself but I can't believe WOTLK wouldn't take the crown.


If you said the next MMO Blizzard creates won't do as well as WoW I could agree with you in certain cases. Lineage 2 did not do as well as Lineage.  Sequels to past MMOs in general follow the same trend of having an initially better growth rate than the MMO they are based on but in the end they don't sell as well.

If Blizzard makes a game with the majority of mechanics greatly different from WoW, doesn't involve the WoW lore itself, and puts everything together in a way that makes the game fun then I think their next MMO could even sell better than the old WoW when you consider internet technology is increasing in proliferation thanks to wireless advances.

That's exactly what he's saying
He's saying that WoTLK would crush WoW 1.0.

Fixed, for literacy and understanding?

Actually that wasn't what I was saying at all.  Rather than explain what I considered to be a straightforward post I will simply say read it over one more time for some clarity.

I'm losing track of who is green, who is double green, and who is down in the sarchasm.

This thread is so much fun.

The WoW of today is what it is because it learned from the WoW of yesterday.  Those other games didn't.  So it's true the environment isn't the same, but so far they're the only ones who have grasped that.  Because they understand that, why would they be releasing WoW 1.0?

Sure timing matters.  Happy accidents happen.  Services which understand that timing do even better.  Blizzard surprised themselves with the initial popularity, but their strategy was, and for the time being still is, solid.

If CCP remakes EVE but with vampires, they will get more than 200k players. Single server, fighting werewolves and drinking blood off humans, trade and politics, large scale battles, etc.

There is no green here.

Any actual news on that?  Do we know for sure that they are working on it?

They're still trying to figure out how to make avatars walk. It's very complex shit, yo.

The problem is scale, it's easy to grind out new star systems--select what set of stock art you want, what and where the assets are, and you're done. The issue I see for any sort of "Eve on earth" type of thing is the art assets required. What makes Eve's PVP palatable is the size of each system and the vast number of them. It's so large that you have room to play without some griefer PKing you every time you set foot out of town. I don't see how it's possible to create that vastness in a more mainstream 3d type of game.

You just turn into a bat and fly like a spaceship. But. Even. More. Slowly.

You weren't saying that WoTLK WoW would smash WoW 1.0? Maybe my critical thinking (or just plain reading) skills are not nearly as developed as I had hoped

For the subject at hand: in order for CCP (or nearly any company) to create enough landmass to rival the vastness of EVE space, wouldn't it be necessary for them to use some kind of automatic terrain creation algorithm? Maybe I'm talking out of my ass here, but I think some old games used to do something similar. I would probably play Vampire Politics: Online, but only because I'm a junkie and need my fix

You guys are assuming a uniserver full of zoned-based land control wars fought by vampires?

I'm not. The vampire setting is going to be a bitch and a half to implement into MMOG form. I fully expect Typical MMO template here.

Why? THe overall design of Eve is unconventional compared to other MMOs. Even the UI and past iterations of it are unconventional.

He was saying that if yesterday WoW did not exist and you released WOTLK WoW today you would do well against the current crop of MMOs out there(or bad, i don't recall which)

Your talking about a space game.

Personally, I suspect it'll be more like UO.

EVE is closest we ever got to UO2. There is no reason UO couldn't work a second time in a fantasy setting, even if it did have EVE's unconventional skill system.

Also it doesn't hurt that Blizzard can afford to actually advertise their product.  I'm completely done with WoW but everytime I see the Ozzy Osborne commercial I get that slight tingle to maybe just maybe check it out one more time.

Anyone nerdy and dedicated enough to resume the most common facts and opinions about WoW/Blizzard in a bullet point format?  I'd like cut and paste it every time a thread degenerate on the future of WoW and it's eventual killer with a touch of Blizzard's design philosophy and willingness to polish their games before release.

Finally the true sucsessor to M59!

What this thing has been in stealth for 2 and years? It's anybody guess what it is but I can hope they do something revolutionary.  And no that doesn't include anything related to UO.

But since we are taking WAGs... My experience with WoD is mostly the vampire card game were vampires not only represent an emo bloodsuckers but also their economic and political interests.  So I would set up an economic simulation with a heavy emphasis on corporations (that aren't guilds, have real accountability) and less emphasis moving stuff around. The political simulation is where players via to climb the hierarchy in their society.  Both of these activities are center Locations ie City of Chicago and further divided by the various societies (Mage, Vampire etc.).  The different skills give you advantages in economic and political pvp.  A physical level your powers would be mainly to pve missions/storylines, roleplaying  and, when politics break down, open combat.

Off the top of my head, so I may have missed some:

• Gamer-relevant longtime game IP.
• Gamer-relevant developer name recognition (doesn't matter which Blizzard it was to the B.net folks), backed by a huge ass publishing parent company.
• Biggest game development budget to date.
• Long development cycle with a solid 25-30% of it spent iterating a playable game.
• Innovated off of a proven popular style of MMO.
• Almost entirely content-complete at launch (I felt Trolls were week though...)
• Staggered release into more markets in 2005 than most other MMOs ever hit in their lifetimes, resulting in rolling "records broken" press releases that continued to drive game awareness.

* A pronounced absence of a publicity hungry egoistical dev / producer claiming credit for all of the above.

So called "Game Gods" on an MMOG would virtually guarantee over-hype of the first system AND a disappointing follow-up in the second.

Pffft. Blizz is as publicity hungry and egotistical as any other dev. They look down on you from high on an ivory tower and laugh at you 362 days out of the year. The other 3 days, they invite you to a convention to eat cake.


You don't think Tabula Rasa ended up costing as much if not more?

Vanguard was pretty damn high on the cash burn-o-meter also.

 - Low barriers to entry i.e. low comp specs needed to play, easy to pick up and play even with little MMO experience.
 - Positive word-of-mouth that snowballed in attracting more players, even those who hadn't played MMOs before.

Isn't it time for a Chuck Norris joke?

That money only went to ONE game according to their Finance team.