Title: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 25, 2006, 10:15:53 AM A few conversations of late have been about particular games coming that post a threat to WoW. This topic picked up steam again because of the announced delay in the release of the expansion. Some feel Vanguard poses a thread. Others feel Warhammer Online (WHO or WAR, depending on your mood) does.
I personally doubt either will strip away a significant portion of the WoW accounts. Players, yes, but these players will do what they did when they jumped ship from UO and EQ too: continue to pay for their account. Maybe a few months thereafter they'll slink back or decide to close the book entirely, but I don't think Blizzard will feel a pinch. I expect them to say what SOE did when DAoC started taking off: "we're happy for the competition. it's brought more folks into the genre and therefore to us". Of course, I also expect them to very soon stop reporting their numbers in a way that is easily disseminated, maybe shut down the /who all command and therefore drive out those folks like WarcraftRealms and PARC who data mine for everything from number of hours played to favorite hair style. Public company after all, gotta protect the perception of the IP. I, also, actually think Blizzard has more to fear from the fragmentation of the genre itself with the rise of casual-MMOs (yea, they exist), those focusing on today's tween players, and those environments from which strong communities, and then games themselves, have spawned. But that's not something they need chew fingernails on anytime soon. What do you think? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on October 25, 2006, 10:24:39 AM I think Blizzard has Blizzard itself to fear. The only competition I can imagine them facing is another Blizzard-made MMORPG. World of Starcraft or something. Even then, I suspect they'd be smart enough to push in a different enough direction to minimize cross-over appeal. Like CCP, I suspect they see no reason to fragment the market.
Now, sooner or later someone will come along with something new that'll be the next big thing and burn MMORPGs away as last year's hot item. Got no idea what, though. From Diku MMORPGS? No competition now, none on the horizon. For something else -- a virtual-world style game? Maybe a little -- but if there's a significant number of players jumping to play a virtual world, I suspect Blizzard will up and create one of their own when the time comes. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on October 25, 2006, 10:29:21 AM No one. Seriously, they don't have anyone to fear. No one has the IP, the limitless budget or the publisher support to pull it off... at least no one who is actually serious about MMOG's. Microsoft? Fuck no, they've been burned too much in the past. Sony? Too busy trying to expand your orifice to include a $600 paperweight DVD drive. EA? Completely inept to the point that they had to buy a company to produce an MMOG with a chance of making a splash.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nija on October 25, 2006, 10:29:37 AM I don't think they have anything to fear for another 4-5 years. The game(s) that they should fear haven't even been announced yet. I don't know anything about them - nobody does - but nothing in development now has a prayer.
Then again they're probably using their incredible income to start another mass-multiplayer project of some type, so when something worth subscribing to shows up they'll be in the process of rolling their wow players into world of starcraft. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: SnakeCharmer on October 25, 2006, 10:31:34 AM They could fart away 250K subs and not blink. In the end, my humble opinion is that Blizzards own worst enemy is Blizzard themselves - victims of their own success. Whether they get overly cocky, lackidaisical, whatever. From what I've seen and know of, there isn't anything on the horizon for the next 2-3 years that looks like any sort of WoW killer. They're just rehashes of a tired genre. Why would people play Vangard, when they can get a richer, more polished, better version of WoW? Warhammer? They all are just new, buggier versions of WoW: elves, ogres, gnomes, swords.
Bioware has the biggest chance to put a sizeable dent in WoW sub numbers, and they're probably the only people that will, unless of course you're looking at 5-10 other MMO's total pull of WoW subs being enough to do something. For me to buy a box these days, it has to be: 1) Different 2) Polished 3) Fun BioWare is the only company that stands out that can hit wish no. 2, who knows if they can hit 1 and 3. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: andar on October 25, 2006, 10:32:20 AM Blizzard should fear themselves, and their increasingly lazy development cycles.
They should be afraid of the suits getting the idea that, hey, TBC, the expansion, makes them more money that patches, and the patches are so slow anyways that people are used to long waits for new stuff, so why not throw out the idea of the "free" (though it's obviously not) 'content patch' all together and instead pump out more boxed expansions with reskinned monsters and more bizarre looking loot. We don't even have to change the gameplay because those suckers will eat it all up anyways. They are addicts, we are the new tobacco industry. Ok, they wouldn't actually say that out loud. Blizzard should fear the players spreading dissent. Blizzard should fear for the day that all those players who in reality loathe the drudgery of the game actually decide to cancel their subscription. Blizzard doesn't have to fear for any of these things though. We should have a Marxist MMO revolution. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Bix on October 25, 2006, 10:47:30 AM If I'm Blizz I wouldn't want to lose 250K folks. They have no competition at the moment, and it doesn't seem like anyone on the horizon either. However I think there is an odd MMO cutomer out there the "floater". These folks jump from game to game because nothing new has come out in a while. If I'm Blizzard I want to suck those folks back into WOW with the BC release.
Bix Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: tazelbain on October 25, 2006, 10:57:10 AM A WoW clone with an equally as polished RMT system.
Compare pre-RMT Puzzle Pirates to post-RMT Puzzle Pirates. A post-RMT WoW would render the term "money hats" obsolete. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Modern Angel on October 25, 2006, 10:58:32 AM Buzzing around all the WoW boards that I do a game like WAR (not neccessarily WAR itself) has a chance to get a good chunk of subscribers. There are alot of people who love MMOG pvp as initially presented by Blizzard but hate the raid game, honor system and class issues that go along with it. I'd say WAR gets good numbers: they have a strong IP and they're at least saying the right things. Execution? Who the fuck can say right now? But there's not going to be a WoW killer. It's the ultimate refinement of Diku. We can trash it or not but people love that shit. I'm not certain where that particular flavor of MMOG can go.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Yegolev on October 25, 2006, 11:11:28 AM I started to read the replies, but I don't really need to right now.
Blizzard will fail because WoW will get old and comfortable or intolerable, which will be some time from now, and because the current set of WoW players will eventually turn into us. Probably about the time WoW is ten years old is when it will look pretty ragged in the current wowtard's eyes. Everyone except the Neo-WUAs will have moved on to something nichey. These games do not exist today, the nichey ones that will bleed WoW like dozens of tiny leeches. They will be created, though, because the number of disaffected WoW players will cause even the craziest ideas to have enough potential playerbase to get off the ground and quite possibly succeed. Unfortunately (perhaps), one of these crazy ideas will be Diablo Online or Starcraft Universe and we will be right back where we started. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Soln on October 25, 2006, 11:15:16 AM yeah I think Bioware may be the only serious contender, but first gen SOE and NCSoft could still deliver if they overcome their own internal problems and bias.
What will eventually eat away at WoW is the game itself, if it doesn't innovate in old areas like housing, crafting, socialization (guild tools etc). If Blizz can add new content and new (old designed) features then it might live on another 4-5 years after the probable shelf life of 7-8 yrs. This is in light of DAoC and UO still being around currently. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on October 25, 2006, 11:18:42 AM Vanguard.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 25, 2006, 11:20:37 AM Neo-WUAs (http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a170/manicv/NeoWhoa.jpg) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on October 25, 2006, 11:21:29 AM A WoW clone with an equally as polished RMT system. Not for the North American market. Us Americans are predisposed to reject official RMT. Now, I understand it works well in the overseas market -- which for MMORPGS is larger than the American market.Compare pre-RMT Puzzle Pirates to post-RMT Puzzle Pirates. A post-RMT WoW would render the term "money hats" obsolete. Mark my words: Official RMT -- whether micropayments or outright level/item/gold-selling is a dead horse in America. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: tazelbain on October 25, 2006, 11:23:48 AM And no one would ever dethrone EQ.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 25, 2006, 11:27:14 AM Not for the North American market. Us Americans are predisposed to reject official RMT. Now, I understand it works well in the overseas market -- which for MMORPGS is larger than the American market. For the current crowd of veteran players who started with EQ.Mark my words: Official RMT -- whether micropayments or outright level/item/gold-selling is a dead horse in America. You'd be surprised what people are willing to microtransact for. It's already a big business. Hell, RMTing is already a big business. And that's when people hate it. Take a look at Runescape. Big RMT business there and their target player (tweens and teens) don't have this predisposed hate to it just because everyone else around them does, or they come from the old school of MUDs when people made games just for the betterment of mankind or some shit. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 25, 2006, 11:28:27 AM EQ was always entirely beatable, and was perceived as such. The big surprise about EQ was that it took as long as it did to be unseated. Once upon a time people were thinking shit like SWG and Sims Online would do a million US subs and blow EQ out of the water.
So what does Blizzard have to fear? Nothing. Their victory is complete. Kneel before Zod. Sure something has to come along and beat them eventually, but whatever that thing will be, it's nothing anyone has even thought of yet. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 25, 2006, 11:30:36 AM I'm mostly wondering if they'll be beat by a game with even greater draw (there are games with much better numbers, but they're not tracked by MMOGcharts so ignored) or if they'll be beat by the sheer amount of people not playing diku-inspired games anymore (or playing for free but microtransacting to fame and fortune).
Fun stuff. Reward five years and we had the same conversation, probably at Waterthread. I love flashbacks :) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Yegolev on October 25, 2006, 11:36:09 AM We need a grammar-checker and a what-I-meant-to-type-checker in addition to a spell-checker. "Reward five years" makes little sense. Remember what I said: lots of little games, not one huge one. I'm going to go get some candy.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Dren on October 25, 2006, 11:39:42 AM And no one would ever dethrone EQ. EQ beat EQ in my opinion. They did just what people here are saying Blizz better not do. Any game gets old over time no matter how many covers you put on the book (expansions.) You could do some of the best things in the world for the game, but people will still look at it and say, "Yeah, but it is still WoW. I'm so over that." Just look at any of the new announcements for UO or EQ, people just don't care past their initial interest of knowing what's going on. Blizzard can ride this horse for another 2 years. Then natural malaise will set in and people will stop playing no matter what you do. Their best bet is to launch Diablo Online or something similar in that time frame. Gradually let WoW shrink and shift support from it to the next best thing. They best not do the UO or EQ thing and ride the ship until it starts sinking and THEN think of what to do next. It is way too late at that point. The games need to overlap to keep the hype strong and make use of the huge resources they have now. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 25, 2006, 11:40:19 AM I think I'm just going to go with the view that the MMO genre has been irreparably ruined, and that Blizzard will rule a kingdom of shitty Dikus from a throne of skulls until the end of time. That way I can only be pleasantly surprised, and I'm probably right anyway.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on October 25, 2006, 11:42:20 AM Not for the North American market. Us Americans are predisposed to reject official RMT. Now, I understand it works well in the overseas market -- which for MMORPGS is larger than the American market. For the current crowd of veteran players who started with EQ.Mark my words: Official RMT -- whether micropayments or outright level/item/gold-selling is a dead horse in America. You'd be surprised what people are willing to microtransact for. It's already a big business. Hell, RMTing is already a big business. And that's when people hate it. Take a look at Runescape. Big RMT business there and their target player (tweens and teens) don't have this predisposed hate to it just because everyone else around them does, or they come from the old school of MUDs when people made games just for the betterment of mankind or some shit. Gold-selling flourishes third party, because everyone can justify THEIR gold purchases ("I don't have as much time as most people -- they're just lazy/unskilled/useless fucks for buying!") -- or if they don't buy, claim everyone else is a gold-buying whore. RMT simply won't work in North America -- not as an official and sanctioned part of a MMORPG. Neither will microtransactions, unless the microtransactions are well-hidden or totally meaningless (the shit like "Special Pet for Collector's Edition/Preorder" is about as far as it goes -- we eat that stupid shit up). It'll turn off more customers than it brings -- and the more RMT, the more subs it turns off. Permanently. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: sinij on October 25, 2006, 12:15:05 PM I think I'm just going to go with the view that the MMO genre has been irreparably ruined, and that Blizzard will rule a kingdom of shitty Dikus from a throne of skulls until the end of time. That way I can only be pleasantly surprised, and I'm probably right anyway. Optimist. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: tazelbain on October 25, 2006, 12:31:44 PM I agree that WoW has already won and no one can take that victory away. Same for EQ. I think the speculation is of who and what the next king will be.
Anyway, making a good RMT is hard in the same making a good MMOG is hard. Blizzard took the Duki formula and made it more palettable for a larger audience. Someone could do the same with RMT. My mother isn't going buy a subscription, my cousin doesn't have a credit card or regular income, and I'm not going to pay subscription for a game I have casual interest. The subscription is a barrier. A well-turned RMT would allow anyone to spend as little or as much money or as they wish and do it at their own pace. Sure there is a risk of games with overpriced or imbalanced RMT, but like other bad games we will avoid them. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Rhonstet on October 25, 2006, 01:17:00 PM I think the biggest threat is in the continued existence of the pay-to-play model. Eventually someone is going to figure out a way to make a decent quality MMO without relying on incremental fees. A good piece of Blizzard's audience are the casual crowd.
But even then, I'm not sure that qualifies as a threat. Blizzard is really good at incorporating new concepts into old ones, be it in the form of arena-style PvP in WoW, RTS/RPG gameplay in War3, or turning an action game into an MMO with Diablo. If someone did discover a magic bullet to incremental fees that was popular, I don't doubt that Blizzard would be fast enough to find a way to copy it. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Rasix on October 25, 2006, 01:23:31 PM A game that has higher accessibility, a built in fanbase through a PC gamer-centric IP, a near perfect launch, and untouchable quality has a chance of taking away signficant subs from WoW.
Vanguard? Original IP and and lack of accessibility (both through PC requirements and design decisions) will hamper it. May garner more subs than EQ did just through how much bigger the MMO market is now. If this game is the next big hit, then of my hope for humanity is lost. Anyhow, it may get more of the rampant catasses away from games I like. That is a good thing. LOTRO: Sure, LOTRO fans likely have a lot of gamers, but not on a scale that Blizzard had with WoW. Gah, I just can't say anything about this game's prospects without violating some NDA, so I won't. WAR: PVP and looks to be extremely competitive in nature; that's points against overall accessibility. A decent gamer base but non on-par with WoW. Will likely do pretty well. Bioware: We don't know what the title or IP is yet. Bioware has had quality issues and making MMOs is HARD. Age of Conan: It's Funcom. Hoping Funcom can put out a MMO with passable quality is like hoping the SWG team could release the NGE without fucking it up. Nothing else comes to mind that's on the horizon. Some of these games will nip 200-300k (or more possibly) subs off WoW, enough to be noticeable. WoW will continue to grow until then. WoW will also age. The content will run its course and people will get sick of it in time. It'll contract, just not collapse like some people hope it will. It can't go on infinitely and it's only a matter of time before Blizzard decides to build its heir. And there's your WoW killer, another Blizzard game in all liklihood. I don't see WoW's current practices being its downfall. People have been railing against Blizzard, their glacial patching, their downtime, their "horrible" PVP, their pandering to raiders for nearly two years now and most of those people are still forking over $15 a month. Sure these practices may drive people to try other games, but I don't see them staying unless the game they pick manages to do what WoW does better. And yah.. I'd rather not see RMT in any game I play. Subs work fine for me. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: SnakeCharmer on October 25, 2006, 01:47:39 PM Quote And yah.. I'd rather not see RMT in any game I play. Subs work fine for me I'd agree with that. If there is something I would be *tempted* to buy, it would be a pregenerated max level character. I hate hate hate hate hate hate grinding, and will do damn near anything possible to avoid it - including exploiting the system to radically accellerate the process. A well defined quest system is fine, but going out and killing 25 million rats? Fuck. That. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Chenghiz on October 25, 2006, 01:51:50 PM A game with PVP as good as WoW's (yeah, I said it), similar content quality, and out-of-the-box access to PVP content (the equivalent level 60 game currently) would win me over in an instant. I see a fair number of people who are frustrated by the fact that one has to spend a large amount of time in the game not PVPing in order to PVP.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: DataGod on October 25, 2006, 01:52:12 PM Funny no one mentioned PoTBS...I think that games going to do pretty well..
OTOH The Gaming Industry itself needs to fear a huge shift of its consumer base into something entirely different....what many of them play today and how they play it will not be the same in 5 years. It would be smart to adjust for that now. Cheap DD and storage, increased bandwidth penetration, and better tools as well as technology will facilitate this. BLizzard should ride the pony until it dies, They're the backstreet boys of the MMO genre (see The Long Tail). Even now we're seeing fewer and fewer big budget releases, why? because the ROI sucks for investors, unless they can capture WOW type numbers and no one can garuntee that. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Sairon on October 25, 2006, 01:57:45 PM I think AoC has a fair shot at it. Sure AO was a train wreck when released, but they have learned a lot. There has been a couple of fuck ups in AO, but then there's a truckload of more shit in it than in for example WoW, and it's hell of a lot more complex. Don't want to get my hopes up but I do in fact think AoC can be a huge success.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nebu on October 25, 2006, 02:06:58 PM A game with PVP as good as WoW's (yeah, I said it), similar content quality, and out-of-the-box access to PVP content (the equivalent level 60 game currently) would win me over in an instant. I see a fair number of people who are frustrated by the fact that one has to spend a large amount of time in the game not PVPing in order to PVP. You're one of the few people I've seen comment that PvP in WoW is good. I think I've been too spoiled by Shadowbane (in concept) and DAoC (in implementation) to ever appreciate WoW PvP. I think that Blizzard's biggest enemy are those that want something new. Once you make it to the endgame and see what lies in store for you in WoW, you have to choose between leaving or waiting for the bar to be raised again by some expansion. Even the new generation of MMO gamers will come to realize that a raid-based endgame holds nothing but an empty promise. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morfiend on October 25, 2006, 02:07:29 PM Funny no one mentioned PoTBS...I think that games going to do pretty well.. I think at this point PotBS has about as much change of de-throwning WoW as SWG does. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on October 25, 2006, 02:16:29 PM Funny no one mentioned PoTBS...I think that games going to do pretty well.. I think at this point PotBS has about as much change of de-throwning WoW as SWG does. On the other hand, their 150k to 300k "virtual world" users will stick until they turn the damn lights off. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Rasix on October 25, 2006, 02:17:36 PM A game with PVP as good as WoW's (yeah, I said it), similar content quality, and out-of-the-box access to PVP content (the equivalent level 60 game currently) would win me over in an instant. I see a fair number of people who are frustrated by the fact that one has to spend a large amount of time in the game not PVPing in order to PVP. You're one of the few people I've seen comment that PvP in WoW is good. I think I've been too spoiled by Shadowbane (in concept) and DAoC (in implementation) to ever appreciate WoW PvP. Helps if you're not there primarily for the PVP. The PVP for me is something that's occasionally fun to do and there's also the fact that I'm able to compete due to still having pretty decent gear (no more raids for me). I'm not paying any attention to the honor grind, the inherent unfairness of certain maps, or what side pwns the most. I'd hope DAoC would have better PVP, because its PVE sucks spriggarn balls. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on October 25, 2006, 02:20:57 PM If PotBS's devs are hinging their business plan on anything more than 50k subscribers a month, they are deluded and will fail. 50k seems to be me to be the sweet spot.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nebu on October 25, 2006, 02:22:03 PM Helps if you're not there primarily for the PVP. The PVP for me is something that's occasionally fun to do and there's also the fact that I'm able to compete due to still having pretty decent gear (no more raids for me). I'm not paying any attention to the honor grind, the inherent unfairness of certain maps, or what side pwns the most. I'd hope DAoC would have better PVP, because its PVE sucks spriggarn balls. Well stated. As for PvE in DAoC, I agree completely. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Margalis on October 25, 2006, 02:29:12 PM In the short term, nothing.
In the long term, arrogance and a dilution of talent. The talent loss has actually been going on for a while now. WC3 was worse than Starcraft for example, because they added D&D-style crap like hunting MOBs to what was supposed to be a skill-based competitive game. Eventually they will be victims of their own success where key employees leave to start their own projects and are replaced by fanboys. Again this has already started to happen with the Guildwars guys leaving and Tigole and Furor coming on board. However as long as they maintain a "release when it is ready" policy there is a limit to how low they can go. One thing they get very well is how development actually works, and that, unlike design talent, is something that can become part of company culture and sustain itself forever. As long as competitors are focused on "we have to ship by 4th quater!!!" they will remain on top. Especially in the world of MMORPGs where the launch matters a lot and you expect the game to last for years, a delay is irrelevant in the long-term. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 25, 2006, 02:30:34 PM As cool as PotBS will be, it's like Conan and Tabula Rasa: great games, but no huge IP with broad awareness in the game space to hang their hat on. It's like when CoH launched. Quality experience, but too generic to cast a wide net without a huge marketing budget.
Quote from: Morat20 It's not some beautiful theory on gaming, but a part of American culture. It's a part of a part of the American culture. Don't look at it through the lens of the current playerbase. You won't get people in the F13/Corpnews/Lum-diaspora/been-around-since-UO crowd to accept legit-RMTing in the mass sense. But there's people designing games and communities with games in them for audiences very different and far larger than our own. This is the fundamental basis behind my original question. It was really driven home at AGC in August: There is already a very big and easy to see divide in the development community: those chasing a better DAoEQWoW and those coming at this space from left field. The former group is your predictable array of I-once-worked-at-SOE crowd while the latter are the YouTubes and MySpaces of the world. The first group defines success by rules that have already been mastered, in a way most companies simply can't match, for every point raised here and since Nov 2005: strong community, strong game-based IP, autonomy from the mothership that has a bottomless pit of cash, a strong decade of success such that autonomy is justified. Who else has this? Nobody. To compete is to decide whether to adhere to the rules and hope to grab a fraction of the base you have the budget to get, or to toss the rules altogether and try for someone else. Those "someone else's" have already been proven to be out there. WoW did not capture them. Blizzard captured more of us, both veterans of dikus and those who hadn't yet realized they liked this sort of game. Nah, the "someone else's" are the 25mil registered accounts in Neopets, the 50mil in Maplestory, the million or so in Club Penguin, the million in Second Life, the soon-to-be-million in Runescape. I mention those five games specifically because each has a business model totally different from the other and from what is measured at MMOGcharts. The best summation of all of this that I've found is in the book Blue Ocean Strategy (http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Uncontested-Competition/dp/1591396190/sr=8-1/qid=1161811720/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-2249516-2914416?ie=UTF8&s=books). The byline does a good job of summarizing: Quote How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant Rules are for the uncreative. The more closely their followed, the more predictable the results. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on October 25, 2006, 02:35:42 PM Darniaq: In all honesty, I'd find the YouTube and MySpace crowd less likely to adopt a RMT or micropayment system. It seems antithecial to the way they arrange social spaces, and would seem a barrier to gameplay.
I'm sure someone will try sooner or later, so I'm guessing we'll find out. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 25, 2006, 02:45:01 PM How do you think those places are making money? YouTube actually hasn't yet turned a profit, but what MySpace (and SL and RS) have done is create a community they can ply for revenue. This isn't unlike microtransactions for cellphone services or On Demand for you TV. The next gen of gamers are used to picking and choosing exactly what they want. They both have more money than us individually and command more dollar purchases for their household (as in, Dad, it'd be cool to have that). It's us and our elders that like the eaiser side of flat monthly no-thought taxes.
The games themselves will change too. I don't expect 40-man raids in some 12th generation WoW. I don't expect WoW either. Heck, even they won't have 40-man raids anymore. Why is that? Certainly not because of us. We've proven to like that shit. So why reduce to 25? For the next group. For the people here now, things will remain as is for some time. We agree there. It's the next group coming, the folks who'll likely never find their way to this ever-aging corner of the net, the youngins' who have it so much easier than we did in our day ;) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on October 25, 2006, 02:51:25 PM How do you think those places are making money? YouTube actually hasn't yet turned a profit, but what MySpace (and SL and RS) have done is create a community they can ply for revenue. This isn't unlike microtransactions for cellphone services or On Demand for you TV. The next gen of gamers are used to picking and choosing exactly what they want. They both have more money than us individually and command more dollar purchases for their household (as in, Dad, it'd be cool to have that). It's us and our elders that like the eaiser side of flat monthly no-thought taxes. MySpace -- and LJ as well -- have a 'free' and a 'paid' content system, yes. I see that as more akin to cable versus broadcast TV. Or free singleplayer mode, small server charge for multiplay mode. Not an RMT/microtransaction model. I think you're taking their social spaces and communications networks and applying them to games. Nothing of the younger generation indicates they're any more likely to want an uneven playing field. The whole point of games is that the field is, theoretically, level. I think that fully supported RMT -- and most microtransaction systems -- are going to cause gamers to feel it's not a game, not a competetion, but "who has the most money". And frankly, that little contest is settled so many times a day in so many subtle ways that people flee to games to avoid it. I happen to think in-game advertisement to offset costs -- that will probably be far more acceptable to them than to us. Quote The games themselves will change too. I don't expect 40-man raids in some 12th generation WoW. I don't expect WoW either. Heck, even they won't have 40-man raids anymore. Why is that? Certainly not because of us. We've proven to like that shit. So why reduce to 25? For the next group. Actually, I figured the raid change was to keep the casuals and the people who liked the 1-59 game, but didn't want to raid. Fuck, I don't want to raid. Even 20-man instances are a pain to me (and I do MC weekly). I don't even like 10 man instances if I can avoid them.For the people here now, things will remain as is for some time. We agree there. It's the next group coming, the folks who'll likely never find their way to this ever-aging corner of the net, the youngins' who have it so much easier than we did in our day ;) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on October 25, 2006, 02:59:27 PM Just a note: Things like SOE's Station Pass (pay more for access to more games) or things like additional accounts/extra toons for a small bump in fee -- that sort of thing I can see.
Outright gold selling? Not unless you can sell the gold back later. :) Microtransactions -- pay a little bit to get access to this dungeon, this new area, this bad-ass sword? Around the edges -- maybe. Not so much mini-expansions (WoW's large and free content expansions are going to continue to make this unfeasible. People ask "Why am I paying more for this when WoW players get it for free?"), but things like GuildWars PvP thingy -- or the Guildwars model in general. I think that culturally we want a sense that the game is fair -- that is that the playing field is level and that cheating is discouraged/prevented/punished. I can see some movement on frills -- in game pets, that sort of thing -- but even if you do something like "Pay extra for more bank storage or a larger house" you risk poisoning the playerbase. We don't mind paying for monthly service -- running the servers. We don't mind paying for large chunks of new content. I think any generation, for the forseeable future, is going to resent like hell being nickel-and-dimed for incremental upgrades or outright gold -- because they will feel forced to keep paying in order to keep the playing field "fair". Which is kind of funny, because they probably WOULD be right alongside paying 15 bucks a month for the exact same thing -- even a gold stipend. I don't see the notion of "Fair games" changing. And I think Americans in general don't like to be constantly reminded they're paying to have a good time. Better to pay once a month or so and not have to worry about 'real money' while you play. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WayAbvPar on October 25, 2006, 03:04:32 PM Quote I'd hope DAoC would have better PVP, because its PVE sucks spriggarn balls. I had to quote this again, since it made me giggle like a sated meth addict. If I try, I can STILL hear the goddamned generic monster noise that spriggarns and half the other humanoids made, and it makes me want to kick Mark Jacobs in the crotch. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Yoru on October 25, 2006, 03:26:41 PM My opinion, I don't think there's anything in the next release cycle that has a prayer of 'killing' WoW. Feeding off it, though, certainly. WoW will keep growing, but those on the way out of WoW will likely latch on to some of the upcoming titles.
No, WoW has won a crown that no other MMO has won yet: it has become a Pop Culture Phenomenon, the PC equivalent to Halo. What will 'kill' WoW eventually are churn, burnout and death-of-fad - over the course of ten years, probably. We've seen EQ and UO live nearly that long already. WoW is the gateway drug, I think - it gets people into the MMO space and some of them, probably a small percentage, will look for other experiences as they burn out and leave WoW. This will probably populate a bunch of second-tier WoWalikes - your Conans, your WARs, your EQ2s, each of which have some specific aspect of the formula polished up to appeal to a small segment of the community with a good-enough experience filling in the rest. I think what will eventually surmount WoW in numbers will be some form of MMO Battlefield 1942 or MMO Call of Duty - Planetside Done Right, with a good launch. The number of FPS players playing these hardcore semi-persistent FPSes is pretty large; I think with the right Pavlovian mechanics and (this is the important part) a good, stable gameplay platform could lure a lot of them in for a low monthly fee or possibly some form of pseudo-subscription (e.g. paying for clan rankings, voice lines, etc.). But it won't kill WoW because it'll cater to a different segment of the gaming market. Other potential WoW-killers? A console version of WoW with a lower subscription fee. Take WoW, add a slightly more consoley control scheme (with mechanics geared towards it), charge $5 or $10/mo., tops. A decade or more down the line, some game with a WoW-like experience and Skinner-box mechanics that's better geared towards 5-30 minutes of playtime whenever you want it, over many months, but with the option to play longer in a given sitting. And it will probably need to be available on a cellphone/portable console as well as (or instead of) a PC/console, so that people can get their fix on the subway, in traffic, at work/lunch, in lecture, whereever. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WayAbvPar on October 25, 2006, 03:29:17 PM Quote I think what will eventually surmount WoW in numbers will be some form of MMO Battlefield 1942 or MMO Call of Duty - Planetside Done Right, with a good launch. The number of FPS players playing these hardcore semi-persistent FPSes is pretty large; I think with the right Pavlovian mechanics and (this is the important part) a good, stable gameplay platform could lure a lot of them in for a low monthly fee or possibly some form of pseudo-subscription (e.g. paying for clan rankings, voice lines, etc.). But it won't kill WoW because it'll cater to a different segment of the gaming market. Sold. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nebu on October 25, 2006, 03:33:43 PM I think what will eventually surmount WoW in numbers will be some form of MMO Battlefield 1942 or MMO Call of Duty - Planetside Done Right, with a good launch. The number of FPS players playing these hardcore semi-persistent FPSes is pretty large; I think with the right Pavlovian mechanics and (this is the important part) a good, stable gameplay platform could lure a lot of them in for a low monthly fee or possibly some form of pseudo-subscription (e.g. paying for clan rankings, voice lines, etc.). But it won't kill WoW because it'll cater to a different segment of the gaming market. I agree as well. I was a HUGE WWII OL fanbois until the actual release of the game ruined me for life. If someone could make a working WWII combat MMOG, it would be my robot jesus. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Scadente on October 25, 2006, 05:34:35 PM No, WoW has won a crown that no other MMO has won yet: it has become a Pop Culture Phenomenon, the PC equivalent to Halo. Ding ding ding! WoW is up there with GTA. The only bad thing is that they are promoting games as a semi-evil tool for escapeists (At least that's how the general public sees it). Anyways, it get's games into pop-culture, games are finally moving above pornography as an accepted medium for adults! Now we only need the RIGHT kind of games, maybe promoting something positive, this time around. WoW really has no competition, the rest are dead horses compared to the steroid monstrousity of WoW. I don't think Bioware stands a chance, but I might be biased (they pulled the orphan storyline too far, I hate them for that). WoW actually has some interesting questlines, so the 1-59 game feels fresh. I agree the "end game" is stale, and I guess alot of their customers leave the store by then, but they'll tell their friends, make a char with them, level and play together. The only thing I can see making a dent in WoW's glory is WAR. But it's lacking that initial appeal, it doesn't have the freshness of WoW and it's not cute, at all. Some of the PvP crowd might move on to that, and that's quite alot of players. Also people who're burned out. As stated; as it stands today, WoW can only kill itself. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 25, 2006, 05:40:23 PM Quote from: Morat20 Nothing of the younger generation indicates they're any more likely to want an uneven playing field. The whole point of games is that the field is, theoretically, level. Actually, that's exactly my point.This isn't about winning. It's about personalization. Someone said earlier that the only way RMTing could work is if it is for stuff that doesn't matter towards game play. That's the way it does work, because the ecosystem is different. Where's the "Game" in the social setting of SL? Maybe something somebody created sure, but for the most part people are buying creations to help them customize their own space. People buy magic brushes in Neopets. People buy furniture for their Igloo. People buy pretty stupid flowers in Maplestory. That is the essence of the success of microtransactions, and why your "Cable vs TV" analog works (though I prefer to think of it as analog TV vs On Demand/Pay per View type). People are willing to, as has been proven, pay more for more options. This isn't about diku. RMTing works there because it's a Black Market. But there's a reason EQ's Station Exchange servers are not the most populated. It makes some good free cash for SOE but it destroys the magic circle people want to believe in. But that's current gen people, millions of folks who don't play what millions of others are playing, and therefore don't care about the same sort of things. For us it's about swords and armor. For those others it's about flowers and tables. Different markets, different demographics. My only point is that they are more numerous :) Otherwise, I agree. ingame advertising (when done right) can work and is fairly well received (Neopets is a good example, as are the better advergames and ARGs). Quote from: Yoru I think what will eventually surmount WoW in numbers will be some form of MMO Battlefield 1942 or MMO Call of Duty - Planetside Done Right I keep hoping. This arbitrary split between the control system that is FPS and the objective-management system that is RPG is pissing me off. PS "done right" to me is PS with a point. I don't think Tabula Rasa is going to blow away the genre, but it's one of the more compelling titles to me personally because it's trying this very thing (RPG with an FPS-like system).Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: El Gallo on October 25, 2006, 06:16:17 PM Different markets, different demographics. And therefore nothing Blizzard should fear. Quote My only point is that they are more numerous As are the markets for bacon, mortgages and blowjobs. Also things Blizzard has no reason to fear. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: schild on October 25, 2006, 06:31:27 PM Haven't read the thread. But I've always said, Blizzard's biggest threat is Blizzard.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Krakrok on October 25, 2006, 06:35:25 PM micropayments You need to look at IMVU. That's how it is going to go down. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: sinij on October 25, 2006, 06:43:52 PM A game with PVP as good as WoW's (yeah, I said it), similar content quality, and out-of-the-box access to PVP content (the equivalent level 60 game currently) would win me over in an instant. I see a fair number of people who are frustrated by the fact that one has to spend a large amount of time in the game not PVPing in order to PVP. I have news for you – WoW PvP is *very* lousy and repetitive when compared to PvP games. Try EvE, try SB. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: tazelbain on October 25, 2006, 07:29:07 PM Maybe if you are an uberguild, most of us aren't.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: jpark on October 25, 2006, 08:08:23 PM * Prays to Zod *
.... Behold the Fallout MMORPG! Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Xanthippe on October 25, 2006, 08:16:20 PM I don't know about you all, but I'm waiting for this. (http://www.sanriotown.com/onlinegame/index.php?s=introduction)
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Yoru on October 25, 2006, 08:25:38 PM Quote from: Yoru I think what will eventually surmount WoW in numbers will be some form of MMO Battlefield 1942 or MMO Call of Duty - Planetside Done Right I keep hoping. This arbitrary split between the control system that is FPS and the objective-management system that is RPG is pissing me off. PS "done right" to me is PS with a point. I don't think Tabula Rasa is going to blow away the genre, but it's one of the more compelling titles to me personally because it's trying this very thing (RPG with an FPS-like system).The only thing FPS-like about Tabula Rasa, when I tried it, was the appearance of the interface. As long as you keep the targeting reticle vaguely near the target (within about 40 degrees of arc), your shots are governed RPG-style. And if that's too hard, you can turn on full autoaim by holding down shift or something like that. So basically, you select your target FPS-style (point and click), then hold down Attack (LMB) and Shift until it dies. There may have been special abilities, but I don't really remember it that clearly. My opinion on TR remains "this could be neat; I'll try the beta"-style cautious curiosity. Also, I was thinking that perhaps the theoretical 'big MMOFPS' could draw more from the AO and BF2142 revenue models, with perhaps a bit of Eve tossed in. Buy the box, buy expansion packs, ongoing revenue from in-game advertising (see AO), no subscription fee, optional services ingame (e.g. VOIP) for small monthly payments (e.g. the Eve VOIP thing). An alternate revenue model would be Teamspeak - allow small 'clan' servers up to X users, then have colo partners resell actual servers, charging the colo partners out the ass for the privilege. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Chenghiz on October 25, 2006, 09:02:42 PM A game with PVP as good as WoW's (yeah, I said it), similar content quality, and out-of-the-box access to PVP content (the equivalent level 60 game currently) would win me over in an instant. I see a fair number of people who are frustrated by the fact that one has to spend a large amount of time in the game not PVPing in order to PVP. I have news for you – WoW PvP is *very* lousy and repetitive when compared to PvP games. Try EvE, try SB. Really? My experience in EVE so far has been flying around in circles autoattacking. SB I can't speak on, but there are other reasons I wouldn't touch that game. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 25, 2006, 09:49:06 PM Blizzard is Rome at it's height. It rules the world. No one can compete with it, everyone is it's bitch. No crazy market paradigm shift or clever competitor will ever defeat it. No ultra-quality persistent FPS with RMT is going to come along like a Great White Hope to unseat the reigning Diku. Anyone with enough money to make that game is going to be too risk-averse to actually do so, and will instead make a pale but safe WoW wannabe game.
The only way it can ever fall is if it gets content, fat, and decadent. And while that's bound to happen eventually, it's not likely to take place for a very long time. Like I said, kneel before Zod. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on October 25, 2006, 10:03:26 PM A game with PVP as good as WoW's (yeah, I said it), similar content quality, and out-of-the-box access to PVP content (the equivalent level 60 game currently) would win me over in an instant. I see a fair number of people who are frustrated by the fact that one has to spend a large amount of time in the game not PVPing in order to PVP. I have news for you – WoW PvP is *very* lousy and repetitive when compared to PvP games. Try EvE, try SB. Really? My experience in EVE so far has been flying around in circles autoattacking. SB I can't speak on, but there are other reasons I wouldn't touch that game. Getting a good guild was a necessity in Shadowbane, but I see that as more of a plus than a minus. Sure, WoW's PvP is convenient and solo friendly. Then again, it only takes place in 3 battlegrounds. It's convenient, but there's very little variety or depth. Even BF1942 has more variety and depth than WoW -- and that's a 5 year old shooter. SB, on the other hand, had politics and war going on (not just "battles"), player cities, seiges, land grabs, and the like. Another important point: You might have needed a guild in SB, but you were fine using plain white gear as well. You didn't need a lot of magic stuff. You could level in half the time too, even without powerleveling. Personally, I find it more convenient to level quickly and get a guild than level and roll for magic items for months on end. Combat wise, SB does everything else better.....Except the Warrior class and/or heavy melee. Blizzard is Rome at it's height. It rules the world. No one can compete with it, everyone is it's bitch. If 7 million customers is "Rome", then MMO's are already dead. I think it can do better. Not that I mean Blizzard has anything in particular to fear right now though.....Just that the genre is still in it's infancy. There are untapped millions waiting to be.....err....tapped. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Arthur_Parker on October 26, 2006, 12:58:56 AM WoW's bubble isn't going to burst anytime soon but I'd expect WAR to easily break 1 million subscriptions in the first 6 months if it's any good. There's also another game (not starting with the letter V) due out next year that I suspect might break 1 million worldwide.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on October 26, 2006, 02:33:52 AM I find it surprising that people are seriously suggesting that WoW has nothing to fear for periods of between three and seven years from now. In this field, seven years is an immense, geological period of time.
The lead time is an issue, yes, but look at the success of Runescape, which came pretty much out of nowhere, and has only really been noticed very recently by most people. Not a WoW-killer, but it shows how numbers can build rapidly with very little warning. Of course, I have no more idea who will seriously threaten Blizzard than anyone else here: if I did, I'd buy shares. And like many people, I look to Bioware as some sort of King Under The Mountain who will come and save us. But I'm willing to bet that, whatever the big thing in MMOs is in five years, it won't be WoW. I doubt hugely if it will be as Dikuesque. It may very well still be Blizz, of course. I'm intrigued to see if someone can hit the mass console market, now that they'll all be hooked up and prepared for stuff like micropayments (I admit I don't know about the Wii's options here). My utopian hope is that continued growth, together with better middleware, will lead to more and smaller MMOs, with greater differentiation between gameplay, worldiness, socialisation etc. Raph, i am sure, will point to distribution in a power-law manner. The hope is that if there are enough niches, there might even be something for jaded old us. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Simond on October 26, 2006, 03:58:01 AM I find it surprising that people are seriously suggesting that WoW has nothing to fear for periods of between three and seven years from now. In this field, seven years is an immense, geological period of time. Everquest ruled the US MMOG market for, what four or five years?I can see EQ-done-right (aka WoW) matching that easily, and doubling that length of time is pretty plausible as well...especially if Blizzard can somehow balance "One expansion a year" against "It'll ship when it's done". Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: schild on October 26, 2006, 04:07:23 AM Ok, I'll be a bit more serious - though I was pretty serious with what I said already.
There are 2 things Blizzard has to fear: 1. Nintendo making a Pokemon MMOG. Seriously. We can chalk this one up to common sense. 2. Any other console company saying - I can do this too. And there exists a console revolution of MMOGs that completely overtakes any effort put forth by Blizzard. The only way to counteract this is to create a Diablo MMOG for the 360 and PS2. Really though, the 360. Mythic/EA, SOE, NCSoft - they are nothing to Blizzard. NOTHING. I could say VUG would buy any company that did post a threat - but that's bullshit. VUG doesn't need to buy any companies because none of them are a threat. At least not in the PC arena. WoW is the biggest thing that will ever happen to PC Gaming (outside of Will Wright's stuff, but hey, no monthly fee and we saw how The Sims Online turned out) until Blizzard does World of Starcraft. And it will go down in history as PC Gaming's last hurrah once a ridiculously accurate mouse and keyboard set comes out for consoles. Which I think will happen by the next generation. Unless it happens with the PS3 - which it very well could. I'm not heralding the death of PC Gaming here. I'm simply stating fact. WoW is the biggest thing in PC Gaming. And the last biggest thing unless Blizzard (or maybe Valve) does something about it. It's pretty much up to them. But there's always an outside chance a kid in a garage makes something better. Hey, it has happened before. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: schild on October 26, 2006, 04:08:20 AM Quote from: Stray Not that I mean Blizzard has anything in particular to fear right now though.....Just that the genre is still in it's infancy. There are untapped millions waiting to be.....err....tapped. Yes, they're all sitting on their COUCHES waiting to be tapped. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Ironwood on October 26, 2006, 04:39:58 AM In the long term, arrogance and a dilution of talent. The talent loss has actually been going on for a while now. WC3 was worse than Starcraft for example, because they added D&D-style crap like hunting MOBs to what was supposed to be a skill-based competitive game. In Your Opinion. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on October 26, 2006, 04:49:03 AM I find it surprising that people are seriously suggesting that WoW has nothing to fear for periods of between three and seven years from now. In this field, seven years is an immense, geological period of time. Everquest ruled the US MMOG market for, what four or five years?Well, I hate to mention the woodcock, but there's a big difference here (http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html) between that light blue line that just stays ahead and the big green monster line at the right. I'm not sure that all that many lessons can really be drawn from a time when (sorry, M59 et al) there were basically two games in the west, and one of them has a continuing reputation as a gankfest. The other big difference for me on that graph is the sheer number of lines needed on the right hand side. I'm not even beginning to be stupid enough as to say WoW is doomed, or that it will be gone in a couple of years, or even that it won't still be number one in four - I suspect that it will. But I do think that by 2011 something else will be there or thereabouts, and if I had to bet between WoW and "Everyone else in the world", I think the latter might edge it. For people to confidently say that it won't be threatened for (in some cases) most of the next decade seems rather over-confident. Blizzard is a different thing from WoW, of course. I think there is every likelihood that the no.1 PC MMO will still be from them. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 26, 2006, 05:45:38 AM WoW is currently No.1, but you need to measure the genre one way in order for that #1 rating to apply. If you measure by the number of registered accounts, or the amount of money generated per player account, or the amount of time spent in a sitting in the game (eyeballs), those would result in different titles.
WoW isn't going to become #2 or less because someone out-Blizzards Blizzard. They'll get that way because the industry itself will change the measure of success. And that change won't happen because of WoW. It'll happen because what's important will be re-assessed based on the reality of microtransactions and ingame advertising. In my opinion, of course :) Quote from: Yoru The only thing FPS-like about Tabula Rasa, when I tried it, was the appearance of the interface. As long as you keep the targeting reticle vaguely near the target (within about 40 degrees of arc), your shots are governed RPG-style Yea, for me too. Last time I played it was E3, but things seemed pretty set in stone UI-wise. It's not dissimilar from PS either. But you know, those systems are good enough for me. I'm not a good FPS gamer. But that's just me. I imagine FPS gamers don't want a gimped-FPS game but rather a massive version of what they're already playing. I didn't actually get a chance to drive Huxley at E3, but it looked like that comes closer. Meanwhile, TR, like PS, felt like a game more appropriate for an RPGer looking for some more twitchy action but not wanting real FPS (like me). Quote from: Chenghiz Really? My experience in EVE so far has been flying around in circles autoattacking. In PvP? Was the other person AFK?Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on October 26, 2006, 06:07:00 AM There are 2 things Blizzard has to fear: 1. Nintendo making a Pokemon MMOG. Seriously. We can chalk this one up to common sense. Yeah, a bunch of us were talking about this a couple of days ago, in a Wii/360/PS3 context. Done even vaguely right, it reeks of immense potential, and the whole point of the Pokemon thing - in so far as a 36-yo Scottish male can ever really get it - lends itself to frequent, paid-for expansions if they went down that kinda GW route... Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: waylander on October 26, 2006, 06:10:28 AM I don't think they'll have any serious competition for the next 3-4 years. I mean even if they fell to a million subscriptions they'd still be over double the next largest MMO now. The biggest thing they have to fear is stagnation, and creating barriers to entry for new players.
Warhammer will be successful, but on a scale of 100k-400k subscriptions. Yes its an old franchise with lots of name recognition, but so was Dungeons and Dragons and last I heard they were hovering somewhere around the 100k mark. I think the most competition that WoW and any MMORPG is going to face is going to come from niche products, or Guild Wars (CORPG's) type games. There's some cool new games coming out (Chronicles of Spellborn, Stargate Worlds, etc) and they'll likely siphon off accounts, but they are going to hit the other companies worse (SOE, Turbine, etc). Also Bioware just doesn't make shitty products, and no one can argue that they can do Dungeons and Dragons or Star Wars license work with no equal. I think they would be a huge success if they are making an MMORPG in either of those settings (OMG wouldn't the Old replic of 3,500 years ago be cool). But honestly, I think the only other PC titles that could be converted to an MMORPG and get millions of accounts are Diablo and Starcraft. D&D could have, but not with Turbine at the helm and a gameworld no one gave a flip about. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Numtini on October 26, 2006, 06:31:58 AM Blizzard has "some Asian company you've never heard of" to fear. That would be about it I think. Their largest market is Asia and I certainly have no clue about who's cooking up what in Korea or the PRC. That I think is the market where they could most easily be hurt in.
In the western market, I don't think they really have much to fear at all. I think there's a huge market for "the next big thing" to be some kind of "Runescape on a console." Or better on PC and more than one console. (The keys to the Runescape model I think are free to play and advance features with a low price.) But I don't think that's necessarily the same market as WOW. I don't see anything that could challenge WOW for a top shelf sort of experience in the west for a very long time. What does the Warcraft/Starcraft franchise have to fear? Yes, AOE has done well and such. But really, if Blizzard wanted to grind out more XCraft games, it probably could do so into the visible future without any damage from competitors. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on October 26, 2006, 06:42:14 AM I just think WoW will start shrinking and decaying soon, if it isn't already started and well covered by Blizzard. After all we are feeded their numbers.
I think Warhammer will be the best selling MMOg after WoW in 2008 but I don't think it will ever "surpass" the scary wowesque 6 million mark. I just think WoW has started its slooow shrink and sooner or later we will notice that a random game has more subscriptions than WoW. Of course this won't be this year or next year but in my opinion second half 2008 could be close to correct. The core of my thinking is that 6 million users is such an EXAGGERATE figure that it is almost not real. It WILL shrink, and when that will happen it will happen fast. They garnered lots of casual players and turned them in hardcore ones (as someone whose name I can't remember said on these boards), sure, but how will that last? How long before those players grow, get back to life or just start playing other non-massive games as they did before? I know I could be way wrong, but there's SO many burned out and bored WoW players out there just hoping TBC could refresh their love that when it won't happen their love will eventually start to fade. When they'll found out TBC is not enough to re-live those magic past 2 years they will start to leav en masse. EverQuest resisted on the top for years before FFXI came out, but that was with a new expansion every 6 months and with close to no competitors at all. How many times, how many years, can you run Molten Core, or the new killer-dungeon-moltencore-equivalent we will get with TBC, before thinking getting a break, or just daring to try the new stuff people is buzzing about, could be a good idea? Bottom line: WoW will start to churn and get old soon. In fact it will show very soon after The Burning Crusade release. And will be beaten by Warhammer Online in late 2008. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on October 26, 2006, 06:52:00 AM I don't know about you all, but I'm waiting for this. (http://www.sanriotown.com/onlinegame/index.php?s=introduction) Sigh, I know. As I am waiting for this (http://www.yogurting.jp). Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Ironwood on October 26, 2006, 07:32:13 AM Hey, another "I'm on Teh Drugz" thread.
Excellent. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: El Gallo on October 26, 2006, 08:02:25 AM For reals, as Schild said, the current gaming companies in the MMO-verse are no competition at all. If even 1/10th Koster says is true, they don't have the talent, money, culture or ambition to do more than fight each other for the crumbs falling off Blizzard's table for the rest of their miserable corporate lives.
What Blizzard could more realistically fear is a non-clownshoes entertainment company making a move into the market. Sony Pictures. Dreamworks. Disney. And their East Asian counterparts I am unfamiliar with. Especially if they make console MMOS. They can hurt Blizzard on its own turf. They also would suffer some bleed from a "sims done right" Desperate-Housewives-Online-style game or from a MaddenFootballOnline game (at least in the USA). They have nothing to fear from pissant myspace minigames anymore than they fear McDonalds. They are not competing for the same customers. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nija on October 26, 2006, 08:09:31 AM WoW is currently No.1, but you need to measure the genre one way in order for that #1 rating to apply. "Best game" is how you have to "look at the genre" to see WOW sitting at #1. Nobody with an IQ above 80 takes shit like Runescape seriously. edit: and fucking Maple Story. Maple Story has a ton of accounts, you say? How many MS accounts do I personally have? 2. How many actual minutes have I played MS? 2. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Viin on October 26, 2006, 08:39:10 AM Blizzard has two things to fear:
1) Themselves. If they get too comfortable they will shoot themselves in the foot. They have to be looking at where the 'mature mmo players' go after they've had their fill of WoW. Sure, it might be a couple of years, but they have to catch those people with a different kind of game before they leave MMOs completely or to someone elses MMO. 2) The amount of competition. Some folks mentioned smaller MMOs (niche).. this is very true. However, now that there are some solid examples of "wow, these games can make a lot of money!" the VCs are now interested in putting a lot of money into a game (or suite of games) to steal WoW players and grow the overall MMO player-base. WoW will ultimately defeat itself, even if only from the standpoint that it was too successful. Blizzard can retain the customers, but not with WoW. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nebu on October 26, 2006, 09:01:51 AM WoW is a polished and well marketed game. Those happen to be two things that Blizzard does well. WoW also happens to hit the middle of the gaming bell curve providing a low entry barrier and a shallow learning curve. Now that they've introduced so many new people to this type of game, players will be expecting more innovative features as they become familiar with MMOG's. This is something that I'm afraid isn't Blizzard's strength.
If Blizzard wants to maintain status at the top of the heap, they will eventually have to give people more than the usual old_game_done_better. They certainly have the resources. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Simond on October 26, 2006, 09:09:10 AM 2. Any other console company saying - I can do this too. And there exists a console revolution of MMOGs that completely overtakes any effort put forth by Blizzard. The only way to counteract this is to create a Diablo MMOG for the 360 and PS2. Really though, the 360. Or Blizzard could just port WoW to the 360/Wii/PS3 and bolt on a FFXI-type console-happy UI. Going by the flexibility of the existing WoW UI and the generally lower WoW system requirements (thinking more of the Wii here), it wouldn't be outside the bounds of possibility.Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on October 26, 2006, 09:43:13 AM Entertainment companies unseat WoW? No. Really they won't, because they lack a tremendous amount of focus when compared to Blizzard.
Blizzard has 1, only one game they are working on (at least until they announce their next MMOG, World of Starcraft), and that's all they are doing. They've tried to create another game at the same time (Ghost) and it's fucked. Their entire goal in life is making Vivendi Games not bleed from its anus. Meanwhile, Sony, Disney, and all the entertainment companies cannot or would not drop everything the fuck else to make Little Mermain Online. They just wouldn't. It's not in their business philosophy. They are about diversification, not "make one thing and make it well." That's one of the keys to Blizzard's success, its single-minded, single-gamed focus, and that's part and parcel of the "when it's done" design philosophy. No one else, and I mean, NO ONE with the IP has that kind of focus. Blizzard is a perfect storm of an MMOG dev company. And another thing, why is everyone so damn sure Bioware is going to turn out a massively fantastic MMOG? Don't get me wrong, Bioware has done some damn good games, but the good part about their games is not the part they need to make good MMOG's. Baldur's Gate, NWN, KotOR and Jade Empire all have fantastic stories but their game systems, the play systems are really derivatives of a game system they did not originate, the D&D system. Baldur's Gate and NWN were interpretations of that system, and KotOR and Jade Empire were both built off the underlying principles of that system. And frankly, that very system is what we already have in MMOG's and are already sick of. It's WoW with different tweakings. The things Bioware does really well, engrossing stories, do not make for good MMOG's. Good MMOG's have good underlying game mechanics and the D&D philosophy is tired. It's DIKU. Maybe Mass Effect will convince me otherwise, but I'm not seeing it yet. I'll certainly give them better chances than say SOE/Sigil or Tulga Games, but I'm not ready to crown them champions yet. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Scadente on October 26, 2006, 09:55:23 AM Baldur's Gate, NWN, KotOR and Jade Empire all have fantastic stories... So you claim that "you're and orphan destined for greatness", in three BIG games is a fantastic story? Mediocre at best. It's the same shit in new wrappings. I dropped my XBOX controller to the floor and broke my Jade Empire disc once I heard the word; "ORPHAN". I'd played this, so should I trudge through some half-assed game-mechanics just to do for the third time? Only difference being a new setting, with even more smoke and mirrors. I think not. Their stories aren't fantastic, they regurgitate the same stuff with the same stereotypes over and over and over again. Sure, they might be the best we got in games, but then games only have poor stories. When the biggest games out there can only muster way-sub-par Halo-novel writers like Eric Nylund (http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6159814.html?sid=6159814) I cringe so hard that I fall to the floor and die. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on October 26, 2006, 09:58:25 AM I didn't say they were literature, but they were decent skeletons to hang game actions on. The orphan thing is a bit of a narrative crutch, but it's effective enough.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Yoru on October 26, 2006, 10:35:30 AM But that's just me. I imagine FPS gamers don't want a gimped-FPS game but rather a massive version of what they're already playing. I didn't actually get a chance to drive Huxley at E3, but it looked like that comes closer. Meanwhile, TR, like PS, felt like a game more appropriate for an RPGer looking for some more twitchy action but not wanting real FPS (like me). I got a few minutes with Huxley at E3. It was basically just like playing a hybrid of UT (footsoldiery) and Battlefield (vehicles). You didn't really feel the 'massive' like you could with Planetside if you got into a big base siege, but that could've been due to the limited nature of the test. However, the fighting areas in the map I played wouldn't accomodate a very large (>40) number of players too well, I think. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 26, 2006, 10:51:17 AM WoW will start to churn and get old soon. In fact it will show very soon after The Burning Crusade release. And will be beaten by Warhammer Online in late 2008. You are smoking motherfucking crack. Everything "big game" of an era, from UO to EQ to Lineage, has gone five or six years before peaking in subscriptions and then beginning to downslide. In 2008 it's entirely possible that WoW will be on it's second expansion and still growing at well over ten million subscriptions. Seriously, I don't like WoW either, but quit saying stupid things. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on October 26, 2006, 11:07:26 AM I didn't say they were literature, but they were decent skeletons to hang game actions on. The orphan thing is a bit of a narrative crutch, but it's effective enough. Fucking staple of fantasy, is what it is. It's a narrative hook everyone has heard of. That shit becomes a narrative crutch because you can assign a wealth of meaning in a single line -- even if the people reading it are kinda dense.We all know what happens to orphaned children in stories -- at least if they're the protaganist. They grow up to be bad ass. That's the way it works. The story is what sort of bad-ass they become. It's a peasant-to-King variant, which is so prevelant in myths and literature that you can easily claim Jesus as an example. You can't kick over a culture without finding the myth of social mobility deeply ingrained in it -- not in the West, at least. Eastern cultures might be different, but I'm betting they still have a social mobility myth -- just couched in terms that are culturally unfamiliar in the West. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: DataGod on October 26, 2006, 11:31:18 AM As to POTBS:
Schild that was my point, 50k subs yeah sweet spot but I’m going to say they have a stickiness factor much higher, 150-250k subs, those will stay until the lights go out. As to Darni Thanks for the link to the book I’m going to pick that up. Also I get what your saying and others, again its long tail thinking vs. old media blockbuster thinking. Even George Lucas recently rejected the notion of making "the blockbuster movie" on 200m, its just not sustainable in media or in games. So yeah your right and so are others as far as the niche. Someone above blasted runescape and maplestory, 2 accounts and 2 minutes played, that’s because you’re not their target. Its like blasting Myspace and Youtube because you think its users suck, your not their target. Something else out there is appealing to you that you’ll pay for; you’re their target, that’s nichefacation and the long tail, that’s itunes man. Someone mentioned Raph, he’s very very right not 1/10th right, there’s a massive convergence of the demographic and games space. Grindfest DIKU MMO's are not obsolete in this space their just a niche farther down the tail. You may violently protest that you and your friends are should be catered to that your important and 40m games should be targeted at you, but that’s not the case anymore, its targeted at the Myspace/YouTube/WOW/Digg/iTunes demographic that don’t want an EQ grind cause that’s not the "new shiny" and there’s other stuff to do besides be a gamer shut in, and Rupert Murdoch will make sure they know about it via their SL/Virtual Laguna Beach mobile phone alert......THATS where its going. But this also means more variety, more indeed games, many of which wont meet long time veteran MMO standards and a few of which will be gems, and that’s a good thing for 5 guys who don’t want to go work for SOE, and their paltry 25k users. So yeah, more access, more open platforms, more tools, more user created content more players. I think a better thread would be "What do veteran MMO players in permanent bitch mode need to fear" and I think the answer to that is nothing, they'll always be MMO's, but they'll also be other things to explore and adapt to...on the other hand some Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Soln on October 26, 2006, 11:56:24 AM we should retitle this "Who DOES GOOGLE need to fear?" for all the good it would do
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 26, 2006, 12:10:40 PM Myspace/YouTube/WOW/Digg/iTunes demographic that don’t want an EQ grind I'll believe that shit like this is the future of anything remotely resembling the MMO industry when I fucking see it, because so far this sort of talk seems the domain of MMO developers in panic-mode because WoW has made everyone else utterly obsolete. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: jpark on October 26, 2006, 12:18:00 PM Blizzard has 1, only one game they are working on (at least until they announce their next MMOG, World of Starcraft), and that's all they are doing. They've tried to create another game at the same time (Ghost) and it's fucked. Their entire goal in life is making Vivendi Games not bleed from its anus. Meanwhile, Sony, Disney, and all the entertainment companies cannot or would not drop everything the fuck else to make Little Mermain Online. They just wouldn't. It's not in their business philosophy. They are about diversification, not "make one thing and make it well." That's one of the keys to Blizzard's success, its single-minded, single-gamed focus... I agree. There is another point here too - which I have mentioned several times with little traction on these boards: product evolution. Blizzard built their world - thematically and in terms of powers and races - through several RTS games. The code does not overlapp - but those products allowed them to progressively build a world. The subsequent addtitions of Tauren and night elves in their RTS gave them time to explore and test new powers, story lines and graphical motiffs that would characterize each race. It is interesting that the reverse progression was a flop: When EQ was released as an RTS it was a disaster. Yes the coding challenges are very different - but it says something else - EQ never had a clear vision of its world that could be distilled into an RTS. WOW does. The next MMORPG killer will likely be one of the successfull single player RPGs today or an RTS :) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on October 26, 2006, 12:38:15 PM Myspace/YouTube/WOW/Digg/iTunes demographic that don’t want an EQ grind I'll believe that shit like this is the future of anything remotely resembling the MMO industry when I fucking see it, because so far this sort of talk seems the domain of MMO developers in panic-mode because WoW has made everyone else utterly obsolete. Massive virtual communities have always been the main goal of mmo's. Not online RPG's, and not even games necessarily. They're about the landscape, not the vehicles that drive on them. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Daeven on October 26, 2006, 12:50:32 PM Blizzard is Rome at it's height. It rules the world. No one can compete with it, everyone is it's bitch. No crazy market paradigm shift or clever competitor will ever defeat it. No ultra-quality persistent FPS with RMT is going to come along like a Great White Hope to unseat the reigning Diku. Anyone with enough money to make that game is going to be too risk-averse to actually do so, and will instead make a pale but safe WoW wannabe game. The only way it can ever fall is if it gets content, fat, and decadent. And while that's bound to happen eventually, it's not likely to take place for a very long time. Like I said, kneel before Zod. Well. That;s it then. Time to start a new project: Visagoths Online! Sack and Burn Rome like is 399! Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trippy on October 26, 2006, 12:56:33 PM In the long term, arrogance and a dilution of talent. The talent loss has actually been going on for a while now. WC3 was worse than Starcraft for example, because they added D&D-style crap like hunting MOBs to what was supposed to be a skill-based competitive game. In Your Opinion.Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Daeven on October 26, 2006, 12:59:10 PM I didn't say they were literature, but they were decent skeletons to hang game actions on. The orphan thing is a bit of a narrative crutch, but it's effective enough. Do you know WHY they keep regurgitating the same storyline over and over you ignorant slut?Look! It's IronBeardAxeHolm, land of the Dwarves! versus Ixorania, land of the Sing-nu. Which game do you think the huddled masses will flock to? This is the exact same reason why Planescape: Torment didn't sell as well as Baldur's Gate. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 26, 2006, 01:33:03 PM Massive virtual communities have always been the main goal of mmo's. Not online RPG's, and not even games necessarily. They're about the landscape, not the vehicles that drive on them. Who gives a shit about virtual communities? We're talking about Blizzard, and Blizzard makes games. If Raph or whoever runs off to go make the next Myspace, he isn't cleverly plotting to outfox Blizzard by broadening his view. He's fucking off to an area of development Blizzard doesn't give a shit about. He's effectively admitting he's been run out of the MMOG genre. EDIT: And he probably wasn't pooh-poohing this whole "game" thing back in the early days of SWG development, when it was supposed to be the million-plus subscription game that would take the genre mainstream. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nebu on October 26, 2006, 01:38:54 PM Who gives a shit about virtual communities? We're talking about Blizzard, and Blizzard makes games. I must be some kind of moron then, because I was of the opinion that WoW was a huge virtual community. One that reached pop-icon proportions. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: tazelbain on October 26, 2006, 01:40:30 PM Seriously, I don't like WoW either, but quit saying stupid things. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on October 26, 2006, 02:04:11 PM WoW will start to churn and get old soon. In fact it will show very soon after The Burning Crusade release. And will be beaten by Warhammer Online in late 2008. You are smoking motherfucking crack. Everything "big game" of an era, from UO to EQ to Lineage, has gone five or six years before peaking in subscriptions and then beginning to downslide. In 2008 it's entirely possible that WoW will be on it's second expansion and still growing at well over ten million subscriptions. Seriously, I don't like WoW either, but quit saying stupid things. So you can only draw conclusions about MMO's market based on nine years of previous experiences? Bear in mind that of those 5 millions only a raw 10% are former MMO players, meaning people who cared enough about videogames and online ones to play more of them even before WoW. The remaining 90% still have to pass the test of time. This whole market is less than 10 years old so it's not so predictable as you want to think. I could be wrong but we will see. I'll admit I said something stupid on December 2008. Until then my opinion is worth as much crap as yours. And by the way, in late 2008 WoW will be 4 years old. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Jayce on October 26, 2006, 02:11:58 PM So you can only draw conclusions about MMO's market based on nine years of previous experiences? Bear in mind that of those 5 millions only a raw 10% are former MMO players, meaning people who cared enough about videogames and online ones to play more of them even before WoW. The remaining 90% still have to pass the test of time. This whole market is less than 10 years old so it's not so predictable as you want to think. I could be wrong but we will see. I'll admit I said something stupid on December 2008. Until then my opinion is worth as much crap as yours. And by the way, in late 2008 WoW will be 4 years old. This whole "predicting the future" thing is notoriously difficult and error-prone in general. Do remember though, that Blizzard is no Johnny-come-lately, and no stranger to success either. Starcraft (for example) is still taking up shelf space 9 years (if my math is right) after its release, in an industry where shelf space is at a premium and usually measured in weeks if not days. That seemingly did not go to their heads, since they followed up with WoW, which sold a few copies, I am told. I hate to sound like a fanboi, but the above are pretty much facts. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nija on October 26, 2006, 02:14:20 PM I hate to sound like a fanboi, but the above are pretty much facts. Keep in mind you're talking to a guy with a MULE avatar. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on October 26, 2006, 02:17:00 PM This whole "predicting the future" thing is notoriously difficult and error-prone in general. Do remember though, that Blizzard is no Johnny-come-lately, and no stranger to success either. Starcraft (for example) is still taking up shelf space 9 years (if my math is right) after its release, in an industry where shelf space is at a premium and usually measured in weeks if not days. That seemingly did not go to their heads, since they followed up with WoW, which sold a few copies, I am told. I hate to sound like a fanboi, but the above are pretty much facts. Of course, you are right. But that was the topic after all: let's play together to "predict the future". What wll happen and when, and why? Too easy to say: "WoW will rule for the next lots of years." How many is "lots"? What will actually surpass is, given that sooner or later it will happen no matter what? The above one is my guess. Maybe right, almost certainly wrong. We'll see. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Arthur_Parker on October 26, 2006, 02:26:11 PM Blizzard's biggest problem will be supplying enough Burning Crusade boxes.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on October 26, 2006, 02:41:44 PM Blizzard's biggest problem will be supplying enough Burning Crusade boxes. I am sure about that. I just think that 6 million people will burn out that Crusade pretty soon. 12 months, maybe 18. It will keep them busy for the whole 2007 and part of 2008. Then what? The carrot of another long delayed expansion? With a 4 - 6 year old graphical engine? Fine. Then I'll be SO wrong. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Merusk on October 26, 2006, 03:06:49 PM Yeah it's not like anyone plays Starcraft, or Diablo anymore, the engines are so old and crappy. Psh.. not like you can find boxes for those crappy-ass 8 & 6 year old games out there anywhere for them to play, even if they wanted to.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Jayce on October 26, 2006, 03:14:00 PM Yeah it's not like anyone plays Starcraft, or Diablo anymore, the engines are so old and crappy. Psh.. not like you can find boxes for those crappy-ass 8 & 6 year old games out there anywhere for them to play, even if they wanted to. Are you being sarcastic? I see Starcraft in every store I go to, from EB to Target to Best Buy. I don't remember seeing Diablo anymore but I am pretty sure I saw D2. And if they are on the shelves, in this business you can be sure it's not out of charity. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Arthur_Parker on October 26, 2006, 03:19:51 PM I thought everyone was being sarcastic, just based on the thread title.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on October 26, 2006, 03:22:33 PM People, we are not talking about WoW going out of business.
Just about its subscriptions being surpassed by other games. UO is launching its 10 year edition shortly, and that's way longer life than Diablo or Starcraft (both subscripritions free). That doesn't mean UO still leads the market it once owned. Anyway, I see your point. I am not so certain or sure about what I "predicted". It's just *a* point of view. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Merusk on October 26, 2006, 03:41:14 PM Yeah it's not like anyone plays Starcraft, or Diablo anymore, the engines are so old and crappy. Psh.. not like you can find boxes for those crappy-ass 8 & 6 year old games out there anywhere for them to play, even if they wanted to. Are you being sarcastic? No. Nobody my age who messes around on the internet is ever, ever sarcastic. The internet is serious business. hahahahahahaha Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Margalis on October 26, 2006, 04:38:08 PM Personel is a huge issue for most companies.
Look at Bioware. They want to get into MMORPGs so they teamed up with some "proven" people. People who had proven they had no business making MMORPGs. Blizzard had no MMORPG experience to speak of. Not only are companies now going to play it safe and copy an existing formula, they are also going to play it safe by hiring utter failures who will predictably fail in the exact same ways they already have before. If I were looking to play it safe with personel I might hire some network programmers who had worked on other MMORPGs or someone else with some technical expertise. Guy like Vogel at SOE I would avoid like the plague. We have a weird notion in our culture that people actually learn from their mistakes and that screwing up is better than doing things right the first time. Because the guy who screwed up knows not to make that mistake again. (In theory) The fact is that some people screw up a lot and some don't. You could see that here in Boston during the Cardinal Law (Catholic Priest) scandal. His defense was basically: "Sure, I made a lot of mistakes. I let a bunch of kids get molested. But that taught me a valuable lesson, and I'll never let kids get molested again! Now I know!!" Blizzard understands how to *develop* games. Not even how to design them. How to develop them. How to iterate to improve the overall experience, what kind of product to ship out the door, and how to approch the entire dev cycle. I don't understand what Bioware is doing getting people who have shown beyond any doubt that they don't get that at all. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on October 26, 2006, 05:33:49 PM Blizzard's biggest problem will be supplying enough Burning Crusade boxes. I am sure about that. I just think that 6 million people will burn out that Crusade pretty soon. 12 months, maybe 18. It will keep them busy for the whole 2007 and part of 2008. Then what? The carrot of another long delayed expansion? With a 4 - 6 year old graphical engine? Fine. Then I'll be SO wrong. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: jpark on October 26, 2006, 06:19:36 PM We have talked about this but not enough so I will give the brief rehash:
WoW graphical strategy is brilliant. By basing their game on a cartoon - rather than polygon counts - they are effectively immune to have their graphics rendered obsolete for the foreseeable future. I never look at Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck and say - those graphics are old. I enjoy that stuff just as much today as I did back then. On the other hand, games that attempt to be photorealistic - get dated quite quickly. This is WoW's brilliance in my mind. What is a competitor going to do here - present graphics that are more "realistic" than WOW's ? That makes no sense - the graphics never were realistic. They only thing they can do is offer a look that is more stylistic. That's about Art, not graphics cards. /fanboi off. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on October 26, 2006, 06:46:07 PM We have talked about this but not enough so I will give the brief rehash: It also has the lovely side-effect of running smoothly on lower-end machines. If you want a mass-market game, you can't launch requiring the current high-end game monster to run it. WoW graphical strategy is brilliant. By basing their game on a cartoon - rather than polygon counts - they are effectively immune to have their graphics rendered obsolete for the foreseeable future. I never look at Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck and say - those graphics are old. I enjoy that stuff just as much today as I did back then. On the other hand, games that attempt to be photorealistic - get dated quite quickly. This is WoW's brilliance in my mind. What is a competitor going to do here - present graphics that are more "realistic" than WOW's ? That makes no sense - the graphics never were realistic. They only thing they can do is offer a look that is more stylistic. That's about Art, not graphics cards. /fanboi off. Some people don't like WoW's art style -- but more people have a chance to look at it at launch than will have a chance to run Vanguard at launch. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trippy on October 26, 2006, 06:50:29 PM Blizzard has "some Asian company you've never heard of" to fear. That would be about it I think. Their largest market is Asia and I certainly have no clue about who's cooking up what in Korea or the PRC. That I think is the market where they could most easily be hurt in. China is certainly able to generate some eye-popping subscriber/account numbers but the economics over there are quite a bit different than in NA and Europe and none of the really popular MMORPG titles over there are popular over here except for, of course, WoW. If WoW suddenly got kicked out of the China for some reason there would still be 3 million+ people coughing up ~US$15 a month in Korea, NA, and Europe. Somebody would have to get to at least 1 million paying subscribers for NA and Europe combined before Vivendi would start to get worried, I would imagine.Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 26, 2006, 08:14:48 PM Predicting that the makers of the mildly successful Dark Age of Camelot are about to hit the ball out of the park and score an order of magnitude more subscribers with their second game, while at the same time the biggest success story in the history of the genre suffers an unprecedented collapse? Yeah, that's stupid.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on October 27, 2006, 01:30:25 AM Blizzard is Rome at it's height. It rules the world. No one can compete with it, everyone is it's bitch. No crazy market paradigm shift or clever competitor will ever defeat it. No ultra-quality persistent FPS with RMT is going to come along like a Great White Hope to unseat the reigning Diku. Anyone with enough money to make that game is going to be too risk-averse to actually do so, and will instead make a pale but safe WoW wannabe game. The only way it can ever fall is if it gets content, fat, and decadent. And while that's bound to happen eventually, it's not likely to take place for a very long time. Like I said, kneel before Zod. I don't know if you care, since this is tangential at best. I'm not being pedantic or picky here, but if you're interested, then this view of the fall of the (western) Roman Empire has been losing ground for a while. Peter Heather's "The Fall of the Roman Empire" is one example of the view that Rmoe was pretty much at its height, strength-wise when it fell, and actually getting stronger. The Rome analogy is still informative for the MMO sphere, though: Heather says that the Romans were defeated because their dominance gave a strong example to their neighbours; that technology and techniques leaked and made their competitors (the Germanic tribes) stronger; and that they were defeated less by their major competitor (to the east) than by a large number of smaller, regional players, some of whom had been faster to adopt new technologies and techniques. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Margalis on October 27, 2006, 02:28:48 AM The problem is companies will learn the wrong things.
Here is the average takeaway for most companies: Spend more. Because you are spending more, you better play it safe and copy WOW. Because you are spending more, you better play it safe and hire former SOE guys to make your WOW copy. Because you are trying to beat WOW, you better launch in the 3-month window you've convinced yourself is crucial to success, preferably well-timed between WOW expansions. Here are the actual lessons people *should* be learning: Your game should be fun early. Make the fun parts more fun. Remove the parts that aren't fun. Keep doing this, over and over. Ship when it is really fun. This is highly justifiable from an economic perspective: Iterating over gameplay changes is relatively cheap and does not require much staff, especially early in the process but even late as gameplay changes don't require a lot of totally new systems or content additions. Launch word-of-mouth is probably the #1 factor in determing the success of a game. Launch timing pales in comparison. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Ironwood on October 27, 2006, 02:43:42 AM In the long term, arrogance and a dilution of talent. The talent loss has actually been going on for a while now. WC3 was worse than Starcraft for example, because they added D&D-style crap like hunting MOBs to what was supposed to be a skill-based competitive game. In Your Opinion.And that's your opinion heard also. I'm still disagreeing. Warcraft 3 was Miiiiiiiles better than Starcraft (In My Opinion). The Creep hunting aspect appears in other RTS games, the difference being that it usually only adds extra liberated units to your side. Not that these opinions matter any. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Daeven on October 27, 2006, 08:12:58 AM And that's your opinion heard also. I'm still disagreeing. Warcraft 3 was Miiiiiiiles better than Starcraft (In My Opinion). The Creep hunting aspect appears in other RTS games, the difference being that it usually only adds extra liberated units to your side. And now I'll commit heresy:Not that these opinions matter any. Both Starcraft and Warcraft were crap. RTS is crap. Stupid, crappy, clickfesty, resource harvesting, tactically stupid, crap. On Warhammer: Let me know when I can roll up a Scar-Veteran, stomp around on a Carnosaur and rip the still beating heart out of some stupid Skaven / Human / Elfin interloper. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Yegolev on October 27, 2006, 08:26:31 AM I don't know about you all, but I'm waiting for this. (http://www.sanriotown.com/onlinegame/index.php?s=introduction) I would totally play that. I am a sucker for collect-em-all games. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Jayce on October 27, 2006, 08:29:40 AM And that's your opinion heard also. I'm still disagreeing. Warcraft 3 was Miiiiiiiles better than Starcraft (In My Opinion). The Creep hunting aspect appears in other RTS games, the difference being that it usually only adds extra liberated units to your side. And now I'll commit heresy:Not that these opinions matter any. Both Starcraft and Warcraft were crap. RTS is crap. Stupid, crappy, clickfesty, resource harvesting, tactically stupid, crap. On Warhammer: Let me know when I can roll up a Scar-Veteran, stomp around on a Carnosaur and rip the still beating heart out of some stupid Skaven / Human / Elfin interloper. It's not heresy, it's opinion. You don't like RTS, I don't like FPS (any more). Po-tay-toes, po-tah-toes and all that. Let's call the whole thing off. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Yegolev on October 27, 2006, 08:39:15 AM Predicting that the makers of the mildly successful Dark Age of Camelot are about to hit the ball out of the park and score an order of magnitude more subscribers with their second game, while at the same time the biggest success story in the history of the genre suffers an unprecedented collapse? Yeah, that's stupid. Oooh, oooh, you forgot to mention the RvR version 3. No firsthand knowledge, but the executive summary I gather is that they are redoing DAoC RvR with new races, plus removing some suck (PvE). I predict DAoC RvR except this time you can crash into the homelands rather than just masturbate in the RvR regions. I didn't mention PotBS earlier because their WoW is actually EVE. The two things that I am aware they have on EVE is avatar combat and a nautical pirate theme (EVE having space pirates already). Aside from having three years on PotBS, EVE will also be adding large amounts of content in Q406 and Q107, meaning multiple entire new game systems; more to do for more types of players. Maybe PotBS will really take off, but I doubt they will do it by competing with EVE directly. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Daeven on October 27, 2006, 09:01:55 AM It's not heresy, it's opinion. You don't like RTS, I don't like FPS (any more). Po-tay-toes, po-tah-toes and all that. Eleventy Quadrizillion Koreans think Starcraft is the Second Coming. I'll stick with Heresy. ;)Let's call the whole thing off. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WayAbvPar on October 27, 2006, 09:14:26 AM Quote Both Starcraft and Warcraft were crap. RTS is crap. Stupid, crappy, clickfesty, resource harvesting, tactically stupid, crap. Preach on, brotha! Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Soln on October 27, 2006, 09:38:55 AM unbelievable no one has said, but Spore.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on October 27, 2006, 09:54:36 AM unbelievable no one has said, but Spore. I thought about it but I don't like the art direction so far, so I chose to forget it :) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 27, 2006, 09:59:11 AM unbelievable no one has said, but Spore. EA.I don't care who's actually building it, because they never do either. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on October 27, 2006, 10:01:02 AM EA. I don't care who's actually building it, because they never do either. So this is why you think Warhammer is doomed too? EA? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 27, 2006, 10:47:19 AM Because Mythic's previous game couldn't even keep ahead of billion year old UO in terms of subscriptions, this game looks like more of the very same, and Warhammer isn't THAT valuable of an IP. Even the Warhammer fans I know of are annoyed that the game isn't based on 40k.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Raph on October 27, 2006, 10:59:22 AM Massive virtual communities have always been the main goal of mmo's. Not online RPG's, and not even games necessarily. They're about the landscape, not the vehicles that drive on them. Who gives a shit about virtual communities? We're talking about Blizzard, and Blizzard makes games. If Raph or whoever runs off to go make the next Myspace, he isn't cleverly plotting to outfox Blizzard by broadening his view. He's fucking off to an area of development Blizzard doesn't give a shit about. He's effectively admitting he's been run out of the MMOG genre. EDIT: And he probably wasn't pooh-poohing this whole "game" thing back in the early days of SWG development, when it was supposed to be the million-plus subscription game that would take the genre mainstream. I wasn't? You weren't paying attention. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Daeven on October 27, 2006, 11:12:26 AM and Warhammer isn't THAT valuable of an IP. Even the Warhammer fans I know of are annoyed that the game isn't based on 40k. America = 40k Europe = Fantasy. You're polling the wrong userbase. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on October 27, 2006, 11:23:41 AM and Warhammer isn't THAT valuable of an IP. Even the Warhammer fans I know of are annoyed that the game isn't based on 40k. America = 40k Europe = Fantasy. You're polling the wrong userbase. Agreed. Local polls doesn't count no matter how large is your circle of friends, but I don't know personally a single human that prefers 40k over fantasy Warhammer. In fact, I don't know a single human that doesn't think 40k is a pile of crap. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on October 27, 2006, 11:26:41 AM And that's your opinion heard also. I'm still disagreeing. Warcraft 3 was Miiiiiiiles better than Starcraft (In My Opinion). The Creep hunting aspect appears in other RTS games, the difference being that it usually only adds extra liberated units to your side. And now I'll commit heresy:Not that these opinions matter any. Both Starcraft and Warcraft were crap. RTS is crap. Stupid, crappy, clickfesty, resource harvesting, tactically stupid, crap. HAH HAH, you are CORrect, Sir. Diablo was too. Warcraft was ok fun, but Command and Conquer was a better game. People like to buy crap. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 27, 2006, 12:02:41 PM I wasn't? You weren't paying attention. Then I stand corrected. Though I can't help but notice that you (and some others, but you post here, so you) really picked up the volume on this sort of talk after Blizzard walked up and ate all your lunches. Everyone was content to do the monthly-fee online RPG thing, until Bliz came along and did it on a scale that they knew they would never, ever, ever be able to compete with. Now suddenly Cokemusic or virtual horsies or what the hell ever, those are the future. Okay. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on October 27, 2006, 01:00:12 PM Now suddenly Cokemusic or virtual horsies or what the hell ever, those are the future. Okay. Those are the future of the MMOG MEDIUM. The MMORPG GENRE, a subset of the MMOG MEDIUM, will not be about what those are about. There is more money, more products and more diversity in the medium than in the genre, and no one can have a stranglehold on the medium. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: DataGod on October 27, 2006, 01:37:55 PM Yes and there are people far more experianced than you and I wanting to "tap that medium" as it were...
http://www.valleywag.com/tech/myspace/myspace-the-business-of-spam-20-exhaustive-edition-199924.php Tom is apparently a figure-bobble-head, as if people really believed otherwise.... Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 27, 2006, 02:01:28 PM The future of massively multiplayer online gaming lies in big-budget subscription-based games. Those eleventy million people playing Bejeweled for free are never going to pay cash money to a bunch of ragged MMORPG development refugees just because they slapped a chat box and a virtual dollhouse onto the game. Those eleventy million people are more likely to go back to playing Windows Solitaire while chatting on AIM first.
I'm sure those Myspace guys have huge moneyhats, but Myspace isn't gaming. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: tazelbain on October 27, 2006, 02:06:41 PM IRC isn't gaming either but something like plays a huge part current MMOG.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: SnakeCharmer on October 27, 2006, 02:32:48 PM The future of massively multiplayer online gaming lies in big-budget subscription-based games. Those eleventy million people playing Bejeweled for free are never going to pay cash money to a bunch of ragged MMORPG development refugees just because they slapped a chat box and a virtual dollhouse onto the game. Those eleventy million people are more likely to go back to playing Windows Solitaire while chatting on AIM first. I'm sure those Myspace guys have huge moneyhats, but Myspace isn't gaming. But. But. It works in Asiaaaa!!!! And cel phone games!!! They all work in Asia!!!! We should be looking to Asiaaaa for inspiration!!! I've heard/read a less sarcastic version of that so many times...And if Asia is where dev houses are looking for inspiration for the American market, God help us all. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Margalis on October 27, 2006, 02:42:42 PM SC was obviously better than WC3 in the eyes of consumers. In addition it was better in the eyes of serious RTS players.
The main group of folks that like WC3 over SC are people who are not serious RTS players who liked the D&D aspects of it. I can see that, and I can see why some people liked that better. But overall SC was more popular AND more liked by genre experts. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Chenghiz on October 27, 2006, 03:11:44 PM Warcraft 3 is much more extensible, though. Not many people play vanilla War3, but a lot of people play the various mods like DotA.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nija on October 27, 2006, 03:37:57 PM TA Spring is the best RTS that you can play these days.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Raph on October 27, 2006, 04:22:35 PM I wasn't? You weren't paying attention. Then I stand corrected. Though I can't help but notice that you (and some others, but you post here, so you) really picked up the volume on this sort of talk after Blizzard walked up and ate all your lunches. Everyone was content to do the monthly-fee online RPG thing, until Bliz came along and did it on a scale that they knew they would never, ever, ever be able to compete with. Now suddenly Cokemusic or virtual horsies or what the hell ever, those are the future. Okay. There's no doubt that I picked up the volume; However, I REALLY picked it up after I left SOE, not when WoW came along. When I was first made CCO of SOE, one of the first emails I wrote was one that said "Someone is going to make an uberDiku spending more than anyone imagined, with top notch story and art and experience design taken from their expertise in other arenas, and eat everyone's lunch. We should be looking for alternate markets altogether." Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 27, 2006, 05:12:27 PM EA. I don't care who's actually building it, because they never do either. So this is why you think Warhammer is doomed too? EA? And to clarify my issue with Spore: it's way-beyond-the-looking-glass out there. Even the Sims and Sims 2 were just logical extensions of SimCity when the demographic that actually played SimCity was understood and given a more appropriate game. Spore is a cool dream. But even assuming it launches with a Blizzard-level of polish, it's still straight out wierd, and therefore has a higher hurdle in communication to the gamer base. And I don't base this on Wright. I base this on the much older concept of Atriarch, which'll likely never launch but introduced itself much the same way in 2000. Spore is a completely open ended system. There's no recognizable humanoid foundation from which to spawn. There's no cohesive recognizable narrative. It's a pure 3D community building exercise without the machinima engine that Second Life has become. It's a blowout of the momentary experiences offered in Black & White but in a business model requiring years of retention. Awesome idea, and will probably be polished. But its challenges are everywhere. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on October 27, 2006, 05:13:19 PM When I was first made CCO of SOE, one of the first emails I wrote was one that said "Someone is going to make an uberDiku spending more than anyone imagined, with top notch story and art and experience design taken from their expertise in other arenas, and eat everyone's lunch. We should be looking for alternate markets altogether." This is, by far, the single greatest quote ever made by you. May we use it against you in further discussions? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 27, 2006, 05:23:56 PM There's no doubt that I picked up the volume; However, I REALLY picked it up after I left SOE, not when WoW came along. When I was first made CCO of SOE, one of the first emails I wrote was one that said "Someone is going to make an uberDiku spending more than anyone imagined, with top notch story and art and experience design taken from their expertise in other arenas, and eat everyone's lunch. We should be looking for alternate markets altogether." But damnit, you're not supposed to go make MyCokeMusicSpace or whatever. You're supposed to make a damned Koster "virtual world" game, minus the new-genre mistakes of UO and the straightjacketing IP and SOE fucked-uppedness of SWG. I want a newer and better UO where everything works right, and if you don't make it, nobody else ever will. It wouldn't be a game that made huge numbers, but I bet it would perform consistently for a long damned time. Look how long UO has hung on. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on October 27, 2006, 05:26:09 PM There's no doubt that words Quote But damnit, you're not supposed to go make MyCokeMusicSpace or whatever. You're supposed to make a damned Koster "virtual world" game, minus the new-genre mistakes of UO and the straightjacketing IP and SOE fucked-uppedness of SWG. I want a newer and better UO where everything works right, and if you don't make it, nobody else ever will. It wouldn't be a game that made huge numbers, but I bet it would perform consistently for a long damned time. Look how long UO has hung on. Isn't that what he has been doing, and pretty much where he is heading? Maybe I am misunderstanding his posts lately. I never claimed to be the smart. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 27, 2006, 05:27:32 PM Your mastery of the quote function proves it...
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trippy on October 27, 2006, 05:42:57 PM and Warhammer isn't THAT valuable of an IP. Even the Warhammer fans I know of are annoyed that the game isn't based on 40k. America = 40kEurope = Fantasy. You're polling the wrong userbase. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 27, 2006, 06:40:42 PM Quote from: WUA But damnit, you're not supposed to go make MyCokeMusicSpace or whatever. You're supposed to make a damned Koster "virtual world" game, minus the new-genre mistakes of UO and the straightjacketing IP and SOE fucked-uppedness of SWG Why do you assume that can't be the same thing? Because it doesn't have "Britannia 2.0" emblazoned on it, or something else?As an aside, remember just how frickin' long ago UO was envisioned and everything that has come since. Shit, even broadband wasn't that ubiquitous. And nobody new dink about "wi-fi". Using the term "it was a different world" about the mid-90s doesn't even barely come close to doing justice. I know you don't give a shit. Just had to get it off my chest. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Kageru on October 27, 2006, 06:49:53 PM My hope is that MMORPG's of the scale of WoW are just a transition phase. While the idea of "5 million online!" is sexy most people play in far more limited social circles. Indeed I believe the figure is most people play WoW solo? Meanwhile the massive investment required to support it means high subscriptions, massively complex servers in dedicated hosting facilities and content that must be "stretched" to keep people online even when the content creation can't come close to keeping up.
Ideally I'd like to see the characters kept in a global server but the games hosted in a local trusted server (pretty much a requirement for a fair FPS massive game). That way virtual communities, such as guilds, would become the more permanent social element spanning a variety of games. There would be a flow between games based on interest and which game is "stale" and which has new content. This would also allow a variety of games to co-exist, rather than the current model which encourages people to flow to the behemoth because "that's where all the people are". The console games could potentially do this, since the model suits them much better. The next generation are all internet enabled, probably capable of hosting a 5 person group (the game logic), and in theory both servers and client could be secured. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 27, 2006, 06:54:53 PM In a sense we're seeing the rise of this in other quarters. Guild Wars for example only uses persistent spaces for social and commerce needs. Everything else is small boutique adventure environments with people invited there (or sent to their own unique separate instance of it).
NWN 1.0 and soon NWN 2.0 do a bit more of what you're talking about. The key is creating the persistent space everyone goes to first. After that, social convention can take over and shunt people where they need to go. The problem with NWN 1.0 persistent worlds (quilt worlds where zones were hosted on individual computers but connected through code) is that so few people knew where to start. NWN 2.0 will have the same problem unless there's more centralized support for announcing the front door to persistent world quilts. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Daeven on October 27, 2006, 07:35:11 PM I prefer 40K over Fantasy. Heretic. Now go impale yourself on a $50 plastic tank.Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on October 27, 2006, 07:50:23 PM Who cares if 40k or Fantasy is better? Mythic is being half assed about WH Fantasy anyways. That should be the real point of argument.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on October 27, 2006, 09:01:11 PM And to clarify my issue with Spore: it's way-beyond-the-looking-glass out there. Even the Sims and Sims 2 were just logical extensions of SimCity when the demographic that actually played SimCity was understood and given a more appropriate game. Spore is a cool dream. But even assuming it launches with a Blizzard-level of polish, it's still straight out wierd, and therefore has a higher hurdle in communication to the gamer base. And I don't base this on Wright. I base this on the much older concept of Atriarch, which'll likely never launch but introduced itself much the same way in 2000. I don't know what to make of Spore. I'm fully fanboy about it, but that's because Spore is everything I've always wanted in a game. EVER. It's the sort of experience I play games for. (I feel the same way about genetic programming -- it's that kind of cool shit that made me want to be a programmer in the first place). However, I am keenly aware that I am not most gamers.Spore is a completely open ended system. There's no recognizable humanoid foundation from which to spawn. There's no cohesive recognizable narrative. It's a pure 3D community building exercise without the machinima engine that Second Life has become. It's a blowout of the momentary experiences offered in Black & White but in a business model requiring years of retention. Awesome idea, and will probably be polished. But its challenges are everywhere. On the other hand, Katamari Damancy doesn't look at all like it's something that people would want to play -- yet it's fun as hell. I don't know if Spore's going to be an easy sell -- but what I suspect will make or break it is the UI. If the interface is as smooth, intuitive, and powerful as Wright claims (assuming gameplay is good) -- the game will be up there as one of the all time biggies. I won't call it a WoW breaker, but it'll make big damn waves in an industry that's gotten a bit stagnant. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trippy on October 27, 2006, 09:50:04 PM I prefer 40K over Fantasy. Heretic. Now go impale yourself on a $50 plastic tank.Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trouble on October 27, 2006, 10:11:33 PM Fear itself.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: ahoythematey on October 27, 2006, 10:16:31 PM I still want to play Atriarch.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Slyfeind on October 27, 2006, 11:18:36 PM But. But. It works in Asiaaaa!!!! And cel phone games!!! They all work in Asia!!!! We should be looking to Asiaaaa for inspiration!!! I've heard/read a less sarcastic version of that so many times...And if Asia is where dev houses are looking for inspiration for the American market, God help us all. I think it's more like this: "Let's look to Asia for inspiration for online gaming, then sell online games to Asia." Like Asia said "Let's look to America for inspiration for cars, then sell cars to America." Yeah, God help us all because that means more Space Cowboy and Flyff and Hello Kitty Island Adventure, but oh well. EQ and UO will be around long after our grandchildren have passed away, so we can always go home to them every year around Christmas time. Holy fuck that was an awful metaphor. I'll leave it there because I like making myself look stupid. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 28, 2006, 04:52:53 AM Quote from: Morat20 I won't call it a WoW breaker, but it'll make big damn waves in an industry that's gotten a bit stagnant. Yea, I really have no idea how good or no Spore will do. I just think it has lots of challenges ahead.I'm mostly curious about whether it becomes a big game with big numbers or just one of those critically-acclaimed sandboxy worlds everyone talks about but nobody really plays. Like Second Life (almost a million account holders but only 25k actually paying anything for it with a peak concurrency of about 10k). Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Soln on October 28, 2006, 05:52:35 AM we're speculating on sutff -- here's my morning prediction
as more games and virtual worlds enter the market, gamers, as opposed to grazers (MyCokeMusicSpace kids), are going to be turned off more and more by the giganto popular titles. Or those designs which dumb themselves down in the attempt to have millions of regs. Gamers prefer communities, even if they want to destroy them. Can you have a community in a title with 100k's of concurrent subs? The people who empahsize that a game needs millions of subs or concurrent users are only professionals with a deep, deep bias towards advertising. Yes subscriptions are great, but realistically they know the more eyeballs and box purchases they can get the better they are, since advertising is a much easier business (you're taking someone else's money and they have the risk). Who gives a shit if a title has millions of subs? I never saw pre-WoW people that anxious about L2 or whatever that had millions of active wonks. If the future is more and diffierent VW games then I don't see huge sub counts as an important criteria, because you can sustain a business much better with a loyal community than temporary grazers running through and posting spoilers and teh h8 everywhere. UO, DAoC, ATiTD, bloody EVE and SWG -- YES, SWG -- are alll surviving well with obviously <1M communities. And Spore will surprise us because the combination of personalization + P2P + persistence + competition will run big numbers with new entrants and WoW burnouts. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: schild on October 28, 2006, 05:56:20 AM and Warhammer isn't THAT valuable of an IP. Even the Warhammer fans I know of are annoyed that the game isn't based on 40k. America = 40kEurope = Fantasy. You're polling the wrong userbase. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Tale on October 28, 2006, 06:07:46 AM My hope is that MMORPG's of the scale of WoW are just a transition phase. While the idea of "5 million online!" is sexy most people play in far more limited social circles. At the current "7 million online!", I doubt they care :) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 28, 2006, 06:17:44 AM Quote from: Soln Who gives a shit if a title has millions of subs? Exactly. There's no community of 7 million people anyway. It's more like a vague thousand per faction per server, further broken down by guilds and alliances. I'd say the average community is no more than the Dunbar number really, since that seems to be how things evolve anyway. Yes, I know there are folks here in communities of hundreds and stuff. I consider those the exception to the rule. Instancing does not require a community of thousands, making the only connection between some groups on servers the economy itself.However I think WoW has millions because it got millions to a good game that resonates with many cultures. Lineage 2 absolutely does not have that same global appeal. Nor does/will Maplestory. Being big is not an attraction. Being big and good is though. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Malathor on October 28, 2006, 06:39:10 AM When I was first made CCO of SOE, one of the first emails I wrote was one that said "Someone is going to make an uberDiku spending more than anyone imagined, with top notch story and art and experience design taken from their expertise in other arenas, and eat everyone's lunch. We should be looking for alternate markets altogether." SWG could, and should, have been that uberDiku. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: tkinnun0 on October 28, 2006, 07:43:28 AM When I was first made CCO of SOE, one of the first emails I wrote was one that said "Someone is going to make an uberDiku spending more than anyone imagined, with top notch story and art and experience design taken from their expertise in other arenas, and eat everyone's lunch. We should be looking for alternate markets altogether." This is, by far, the single greatest quote ever made by you. May we use it against you in further discussions? Now imagine a boss from Twentieth Century Fox or other Hollywood studio saying that. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on October 28, 2006, 12:52:23 PM I just think people are off-base predicting the demise or diminishment of a business model that has done nothing but pick up steam. Subscription-based games are the past, the present, and the future for any sort of forseeable timeframe. Some may be huge and expensive and require millions of subs to get by. Others may be small and perfectly capable of turning a profit with fifty-thousand subs. But the emergence of anything else as a serious competitor to this business model is so far off on the horizon that it's like trying to guess who'll be President in 2032.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on October 28, 2006, 01:08:45 PM Guild Wars has done fine for itself. Even while flopping in Korea, it has sold something like 2 million boxes (last I checked.....I don't know about the new expansion). And that's still in the mmorpg sphere, which is already "niche" to begin with.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Margalis on October 28, 2006, 02:43:32 PM The problem with subscription models is that people will only subscribe to so many games at once. That moves the industry towards a few mega-games taking all the money. And it has already been moving that way for a while now.
IMO the future of subscription models is in content aggregators like Station Pass, especially as more games come out that are subscription based but are not games you play 20 hours a week for 2 years. I thnk someone paying $10 a month for PSO, $5 a month for Planetside, $15 for WOW and $5 for CokeMusicMyspace is going to quickly feel nickle and dimed. Paying $15, $25 or $30 for some aggregation for those is going to be more pallatable, especially if that option allows you do to things like keep characters in all games forever without accoutns being deactivated. StationPass would be a huge hit if SOE had more games worth playing and the games existed on different levels on time commitment. The problem I see with it now is that StationPass basically amounts to: Choose an EQ (new or old) + Planetside. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: MahrinSkel on October 28, 2006, 03:56:11 PM Are PotBS's devs being realistic? There is probably a decent sized market for a more "virtual world" MMORPG, and it's a new genre -- if they're shooting for 300k users, they're being optimistic but reasonable. (Depending on the game's actual quality). If they're aiming at million+, they're deluded. I've talked to the Burning Sea guys. Without sharing details I shouldn't, there's not the slightest notion or need of dethroning WoW.On the other hand, their 150k to 300k "virtual world" users will stick until they turn the damn lights off. --Dave Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 28, 2006, 04:06:43 PM Gotta realize that very few companies would even need to try and dethrone WoW. Only those that absolutely need to brag about subscription numbers need worry about Blizzard. Everyone else is free to identify a sub-niche group of players, grab a few hundred thousand of them, and do just fine.
If they're making a subscriptions-based game. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Jayce on October 28, 2006, 06:08:16 PM The problem with subscription models is that people will only subscribe to so many games at once. That moves the industry towards a few mega-games taking all the money. And it has already been moving that way for a while now. You talk as if it's a zero-sum, finite-pie sort of game, but it's not. There are always people entering the genre, leaving it, switching around inside of it, having multiple accounts one place or subscribing to 2-3 different ones. Or letting their sub keep going even though they don't login for a year. There are so many variables, I think you can't make any assumptions based on average behavior of a defined number of people. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Kageru on October 28, 2006, 06:16:19 PM My hope is that MMORPG's of the scale of WoW are just a transition phase. While the idea of "5 million online!" is sexy most people play in far more limited social circles. At the current "7 million online!", I doubt they care :) Actually I was more talking from the gamers point of view. WoW's 7 million subscribers doesn't really seem to have translated into all that much more content (read, benefit). And in practice I play on a single server (2-4k people?) and in reality spend most of the time gaming with my guildmates (30-50 people, soon to be reduced by the new raid limits). I don't think the distributed model will happen on the PC though. Since the platform is so incredibly hackable the game must be entirely hosted on company servers. A game where you download to your console, and host 3-4 of your friends, sounds possible with the next gen consoles. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: MahrinSkel on October 28, 2006, 07:35:01 PM FWIW, Eve's offline skill gain seems to be the best device for keeping inactive players paying that I've ever seen. At least a dozen guys in my corp alone who are not playing right now, but log in every once in a while to change their skill training.
--Dave Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 28, 2006, 07:52:18 PM I totally agree. The only system that even comes close would be UO's old house decay system, or, in a lighter sense, SWG's vendors (log in, update vendor, log out to play something fun). Eve's is the best one though because the purpose is entirely about further character customization, something everyone needs in that game and craves by default anyway.
I've never questioned why CCP requires people log in to update their skill learning :evil: Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Big Gulp on October 28, 2006, 08:09:55 PM If I'm Blizz I wouldn't want to lose 250K folks. Blizzard just banned 70,000 accounts for gold farming/cheating. They did it without blinking. For most MMO's that'd be the majority of their playerbase. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Margalis on October 29, 2006, 02:21:10 AM But at the same time they know most of those accounts will just be re-opened. Banning gold farmers is never a big loss because they just create new accounts.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Numtini on October 29, 2006, 05:38:06 AM Ban 5000 people that buy gold and you'd do a lot better. I imagine it's quite lucrative for Bliz. Ban the accounts and you then get the box sales. Plus you get approval from your playerbase for doing it. I certainly have nice feelings for Bliz whenever I see one of these announcements.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: SnakeCharmer on October 29, 2006, 10:56:07 AM When I was first made CCO of SOE, one of the first emails I wrote was one that said "Someone is going to make an uberDiku spending more than anyone imagined, with top notch story and art and experience design taken from their expertise in other arenas, and eat everyone's lunch. We should be looking for alternate markets altogether." This has bothered me for a few days. Are you saying you *didn't* know what Bliizard was up to with WoW? If memory serves, you were promoted up and out of SW:G about 3 months after it released, which would have been November-ish 2003. WoW was release in November 2004, just one year later. So it's not like WoW was still on paper, it was in fullfledged beta. NDA or not, I find it hard to believe that you didn't know WoW was going to be what it is. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Raph on October 29, 2006, 11:07:25 AM When I was first made CCO of SOE, one of the first emails I wrote was one that said "Someone is going to make an uberDiku spending more than anyone imagined, with top notch story and art and experience design taken from their expertise in other arenas, and eat everyone's lunch. We should be looking for alternate markets altogether." This has bothered me for a few days. Are you saying you *didn't* know what Bliizard was up to with WoW? If memory serves, you were promoted up and out of SW:G about 3 months after it released, which would have been November-ish 2003. WoW was release in November 2004, just one year later. So it's not like WoW was still on paper, it was in fullfledged beta. NDA or not, I find it hard to believe that you didn't know WoW was going to be what it is. I was actually offered the CCO job in Dec of 2002, and postponed taking it until SWG shipped. I didn't move to San Diego until December 2003, but I wrote the email in question in the early summer of 2003. I did actually have hopes that SWG could have been the uber-Diku, in a sense. And I still enjoy (and plan to make) virtual world games. But I don't expect it to be within the context of how the current MMO industry works. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on October 29, 2006, 11:29:13 AM I also prefer 40k over fantasy. Always have. No, I know. I understand. I was just saying that I know lots of local gamers but I don't know in person a single one that prefers 40k over fantasy. Just to agree on the fact that local polls are always wrong as apparently it's true that Europe seems to prefer Fantasy while US is on 40k, but they are both very popular and moneymaking settings. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: SnakeCharmer on October 29, 2006, 12:12:17 PM When I was first made CCO of SOE, one of the first emails I wrote was one that said "Someone is going to make an uberDiku spending more than anyone imagined, with top notch story and art and experience design taken from their expertise in other arenas, and eat everyone's lunch. We should be looking for alternate markets altogether." This has bothered me for a few days. Are you saying you *didn't* know what Bliizard was up to with WoW? If memory serves, you were promoted up and out of SW:G about 3 months after it released, which would have been November-ish 2003. WoW was release in November 2004, just one year later. So it's not like WoW was still on paper, it was in fullfledged beta. NDA or not, I find it hard to believe that you didn't know WoW was going to be what it is. I was actually offered the CCO job in Dec of 2002, and postponed taking it until SWG shipped. I didn't move to San Diego until December 2003, but I wrote the email in question in the early summer of 2003. I did actually have hopes that SWG could have been the uber-Diku, in a sense. And I still enjoy (and plan to make) virtual world games. But I don't expect it to be within the context of how the current MMO industry works. What I was curious about, when you wrote that email - were you aware of what Blizzard was doing with WoW? I don't know if you missed that part of my post, or are intentionally avoiding it. In my mind, it's always good to know what the other guys are doing. And if you, or anyone else as high up or higher on the corporate ladder *didn't* know what Blizzard was putting into WoW, then I don't know what to say. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Azazel on October 29, 2006, 12:24:07 PM If I'm Blizz I wouldn't want to lose 250K folks. Blizzard just banned 70,000 accounts for gold farming/cheating. They did it without blinking. For most MMO's that'd be the majority of their playerbase. What? Again? Or is this a reference to the bannings they did a few months ago? Margalis nailed it though. They really just created 70k more box sales and set some Chinese guys the task of levelling up their night elf and undead rogues and hunters all over again. Ban 5000 people that buy gold and you'd do a lot better. I imagine it's quite lucrative for Bliz. Ban the accounts and you then get the box sales. Plus you get approval from your playerbase for doing it. I certainly have nice feelings for Bliz whenever I see one of these announcements. I wonder about how they'd go about proving something like that though. Transfers of large amounts of gold between players outside of trades is a natural thing in these games. A friend lent me 540 gold to buy my epic mount awhile back, and I've been sending him the money back in 100g chunks. Did anyone read that article on Something Awful where the guy was impersonating a flirty chick and all these morons laid gifts of cash and items etc all over her(him)? Easier to ban the clearly-macroed bot farming felcloth in Azshara. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Mandrel on October 29, 2006, 01:11:46 PM If I'm Blizz I wouldn't want to lose 250K folks. Blizzard just banned 70,000 accounts for gold farming/cheating. They did it without blinking. For most MMO's that'd be the majority of their playerbase. What? Again? Or is this a reference to the bannings they did a few months ago? Margalis nailed it though. They really just created 70k more box sales and set some Chinese guys the task of levelling up their night elf and undead rogues and hunters all over again. Yeah, again. Another 70,000 in the middle of October. Totaling 165,000 accounts banned in 6 months. Those bannings also removed 63 Million gold from said accounts. Most games would be happy to even HAVE 165,000 accounts... Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Raph on October 30, 2006, 12:30:45 AM What I was curious about, when you wrote that email - were you aware of what Blizzard was doing with WoW? I don't know if you missed that part of my post, or are intentionally avoiding it. In my mind, it's always good to know what the other guys are doing. And if you, or anyone else as high up or higher on the corporate ladder *didn't* know what Blizzard was putting into WoW, then I don't know what to say. Oh, sure; everyone was. I don't think there was an expectation of how much they would spend, how much time they'd put in on it, and how much bigger than everything else the eventual userbase would be. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Ironwood on October 30, 2006, 01:39:24 AM Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Arthur_Parker on October 30, 2006, 03:07:20 AM I also prefer 40k over fantasy. Always have. No, I know. I understand. I was just saying that I know lots of local gamers but I don't know in person a single one that prefers 40k over fantasy. Just to agree on the fact that local polls are always wrong as apparently it's true that Europe seems to prefer Fantasy while US is on 40k, but they are both very popular and moneymaking settings. Why does Europe prefer Fantasy over 40k? Pretty much anyone I talk to about Warhammer here in Europe thinks 40k would be more interesting than the Fantasy. I think PVP is more popular in Europe (Europe has a larger percentage of PVP servers in WoW than the US), but I'm not seeing a Fantasy bias. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on October 30, 2006, 03:59:42 AM Why does Europe prefer Fantasy over 40k? Pretty much anyone I talk to about Warhammer here in Europe thinks 40k would be more interesting than the Fantasy. I think PVP is more popular in Europe (Europe has a larger percentage of PVP servers in WoW than the US), but I'm not seeing a Fantasy bias. Did the US get the two in a more "compressed" time frame than Europe? If my memory serves me right then here in Scotland I saw WFB - I still have the 1st Edn - quite some time before 40k came along. Perhaps by that point people were used to the fantasy setting: it had market share, so to speak. If I was in America, then would I have become aware of the two of them at pretty much the same time, when GW decided to try and break into the US market? On an anecdotal level, most of my friends went for 40k, leaving my sizable army of Brettonian knights with nothing to do but practise heavily armoured gymkhana routines. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Arthur_Parker on October 30, 2006, 04:06:33 AM I don't know about time frame, I do know around the time when WFB was in 2nd edition and 40K in first, the US only had a handful of GW stores and the top seller over there by a massive margin was the board game Talisman.
In the UK, Talisman barely got a look in, WFB and 40K out sold everything else. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on October 30, 2006, 04:44:15 AM Why does Europe prefer Fantasy over 40k? Pretty much anyone I talk to about Warhammer here in Europe thinks 40k would be more interesting than the Fantasy. I think PVP is more popular in Europe (Europe has a larger percentage of PVP servers in WoW than the US), but I'm not seeing a Fantasy bias. Again, I can't speak for Europe, just for a veeeery small circle of gamers that counts about 100 heads. I have the impression that Fantasy Warhammer is more popular in Europe than 40k, but of course I could be wrong. On the reasons, maybe it's because fantasy Warhammer flavour is so medieval that we feel some sort of ties with our cities, our history and so on... For me that's often the catch. My country is filled with ruins of castles, towers, manors... everything here echoes that fascinating past. Playing in a medieval setting lets me "live" those places before they were ruins (or before they were turned public offices, hospitals, banks...). No idea if 40k lets US players relive their past in some ways, or their future. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: waylander on October 30, 2006, 06:14:47 AM Quote from: Raph And I still enjoy (and plan to make) virtual world games. But I don't expect it to be within the context of how the current MMO industry works. There's a reason people still fondly remember UO. It had less to do with Richard G., and more to do with how the world was setup and run. Updated a little bit with what we know now, and I'd still be fond of an enhanced UO virtual world concept. The challenge would be to make the rest of the game interesting. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Modern Angel on October 30, 2006, 06:36:48 AM Why does Europe prefer Fantasy over 40k? Pretty much anyone I talk to about Warhammer here in Europe thinks 40k would be more interesting than the Fantasy. I think PVP is more popular in Europe (Europe has a larger percentage of PVP servers in WoW than the US), but I'm not seeing a Fantasy bias. Again, I can't speak for Europe, just for a veeeery small circle of gamers that counts about 100 heads. I have the impression that Fantasy Warhammer is more popular in Europe than 40k, but of course I could be wrong. On the reasons, maybe it's because fantasy Warhammer flavour is so medieval that we feel some sort of ties with our cities, our history and so on... For me that's often the catch. My country is filled with ruins of castles, towers, manors... everything here echoes that fascinating past. Playing in a medieval setting lets me "live" those places before they were ruins (or before they were turned public offices, hospitals, banks...). No idea if 40k lets US players relive their past in some ways, or their future. I worked retail for them for about a year in the late 90s. My mother is also a Brit and I spent a few summers overseas playing. 40K is DEFINITELY more popular here in the states but I'd say it's about an even split in the UK. I'm not precisely sure on the reasoning for it beyond some mix of gun culture, 40K being closer to GI Joe/Transformers/whatever kids play with today, and rules simplicitiy. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: shiznitz on October 30, 2006, 07:45:50 AM Quote from: Raph And I still enjoy (and plan to make) virtual world games. But I don't expect it to be within the context of how the current MMO industry works. There's a reason people still fondly remember UO. It had less to do with Richard G., and more to do with how the world was setup and run. Updated a little bit with what we know now, and I'd still be fond of an enhanced UO virtual world concept. The challenge would be to make the rest of the game interesting. If one built a UO today, how would quests get integrated? Clearly, the customer base expects quests to steer the story and their character from place to place quite a bit. But without exp, are players going to be as interested in quests for loot only? Probably, but hard to know for sure. A lot of the game dynamics people have come to expect aren't as applicable in a skills-based system so that would seem to mean that a dev team would have to really break away from current systems. We can hope, but don't hope too hard. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Scadente on October 30, 2006, 07:51:33 AM Last time I played 40k the rules were anything but simple.
Like Falconeer said, most of Europe has a long history, WH Fantasy does tie into that. So you can do all sorts of historical references. 40k is more about guns, which I'd think American kids are more up for. I'm actually starting to look forward to WAR, I'm just doubting how commercially viable it is. Sure they'll make money, but it won't be as big as WoW in the next five years, looking like some good stuff though (but reading/watching anything from Mythic is pretty embarrassing :-(). Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Modern Angel on October 30, 2006, 08:51:41 AM Last time I played 40k the rules were anything but simple. Like Falconeer said, most of Europe has a long history, WH Fantasy does tie into that. So you can do all sorts of historical references. 40k is more about guns, which I'd think American kids are more up for. I'm actually starting to look forward to WAR, I'm just doubting how commercially viable it is. Sure they'll make money, but it won't be as big as WoW in the next five years, looking like some good stuff though (but reading/watching anything from Mythic is pretty embarrassing :-(). 40K got stupidly simple in third edition. Regardless of the reasons, it's true that 40K outsells Fantasy in the US. I've no interest in 40K anymore due to the overly simple rules but I can't find a fantasy player to save my life anywhere. I live in Raleigh which is smack dab in the middle of alot of tabletop minis geeks and they're simply nowhere to be found. Lest you think it's endemic to this area it was like that while I was working the GW store and before, no matter where I lived. Additionally, while I didn't get firm figures on WFB vs. 40K sales it was confirmed to me by the regional manager one day when we were shooting the shit. Anyway, I don't expect WAR to threaten WoW in an overall, big picture sort of way but in a manner that takes away a certain stripe of player. Alot of PvP folks are dissatisfied with WoW's pvp. That sort of ties into the whole death by a million cuts theory. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on October 30, 2006, 11:26:40 AM The future of massively multiplayer online gaming lies in big-budget subscription-based games. Those eleventy million people playing Bejeweled for free are never going to pay cash money to a bunch of ragged MMORPG development refugees just because they slapped a chat box and a virtual dollhouse onto the game. Those eleventy million people are more likely to go back to playing Windows Solitaire while chatting on AIM first. I'm sure those Myspace guys have huge moneyhats, but Myspace isn't gaming. But. But. It works in Asiaaaa!!!! And cel phone games!!! They all work in Asia!!!! We should be looking to Asiaaaa for inspiration!!! They aren't looking to Asia for inspiration. They are looking for a MARKET. American audiences just aren't obsessive compulsive enough. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morfiend on October 30, 2006, 12:22:47 PM but I can't find a fantasy player to save my life anywhere. I live in Raleigh which is smack dab in the middle of alot of tabletop minis geeks and they're simply nowhere to be found. They are all at home playing WoW. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: DataGod on October 30, 2006, 12:43:37 PM "They aren't looking to Asia for inspiration. They are looking for a MARKET. American audiences just aren't obsessive compulsive enough."
Ding! Ding! Spot on! Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Daeven on October 30, 2006, 03:18:06 PM Regardless of the reasons, it's true that 40K outsells Fantasy in the US. I've no interest in 40K anymore due to the overly simple rules but I can't find a fantasy player to save my life anywhere. Denver = WH Fantasy land, with literally new faces every time to show up for a game. Hell. There is even a strong Warmaster / Ancients contingent.It's probably the lack of oxygen. Makes us do odd things you know. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on October 30, 2006, 05:15:45 PM If one built a UO today, how would quests get integrated? Clearly, the customer base expects quests to steer the story and their character from place to place quite a bit. But without exp, are players going to be as interested in quests for loot only? Probably, but hard to know for sure. A lot of the game dynamics people have come to expect aren't as applicable in a skills-based system so that would seem to mean that a dev team would have to really break away from current systems. Some quests were already there, in the form of those news posts you'd see outside Empath Abbey. Click, read, get told in what heading and distance was some event, go, it spawns. Same basis as mission terminals in SWG: game generated mini-missions.We can hope, but don't hope too hard. As for big quests, that's just pure content. UO was a complex system. Making quests for it, with the usual array of triggered/timed spawns and epic drops is comparably easy. Finally, UO had XP. It was just gained through use and you could gain many tracks simultaneously. There were levels too (when abilities unlocked/could be learned), they just weren't called that. Ultimately, there were Classes too, except they were called "templates". Still confusing to the average person who wants straight content and easy-to-understand ladders, but that too could be programmed into the system. Ask a player what they want to be when their character is fleshed out, have the player select, and then give the player every skill they needed in order to achieve the end template. UO was so friggin' close to a perfect game. So close. Do it 3D and add in both the content and game-direction and you'd have a winner. Unfortunately, the only way to do that responsibly is to start a new project you fund against box sales. And nobody's got the balls to try it. They want easy or niche. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Modern Angel on October 30, 2006, 05:46:32 PM Regardless of the reasons, it's true that 40K outsells Fantasy in the US. I've no interest in 40K anymore due to the overly simple rules but I can't find a fantasy player to save my life anywhere. Denver = WH Fantasy land, with literally new faces every time to show up for a game. Hell. There is even a strong Warmaster / Ancients contingent.It's probably the lack of oxygen. Makes us do odd things you know. I'd sell my family for a group of people who played Ancients. My miniatures have lain fallow for four years now because I simply do not care to play 40K with the stripped down "rush to the center of the table and have a big melee" rules and it's all anyone plays. Fuck it... turning off my brain with WoW is a hell of a lot cheaper. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: UnSub on October 30, 2006, 11:23:27 PM Who should Blizzard fear?
1) Vivendi. At some point one party (Blizzard or Vivdendi) might try to stretch the friendship and end up causing lots of internal / external problems. I've got no idea of the respective agreements these guys have, but if Vivendi could shut down distribution or force people out of Blizzard, things could get ugly very quickly. Probability: Not likely, unless Vivendi pushes too hard on the next Blizzard product. 2) Niche games. If a player gets bored of WoW and starts looking around for some other game to play, they might find a niche MMOG they prefer. If enough players get bored and head off to two dozen different niche products that Blizzard can't adapt to, then they would start to have problems with decreasing size of the player base. Probability: Not likely - there are a lot of ifs and you need a lot of niche MMOGs to pull this off. Might be more likely 2 years from now. 3) The next big Asian MMOG fad. Just by the way the market operates, Asia tends to see MMOGs come through that post big numbers for a while, then get replaced by the next MMOG that everyone plays. Sure, the "old" MMOG doesn't just die immediately, but if WoW were to lose 1m players in Asia over a short time period it would certainly draw attention. Probability: Maybe. Something new and big will come along at some point, but it might be next month or in 2009. 4) The next big gamer IP MMOG. WoW attracted a lot of attention when it built on an existing game IP that everyone had heard of. In general MMOGs based on IPs have sucked, probably due to the IP owner and / or capitalists behind the MMOG jumping up and down for the devs to just release the damn game already. Blizzard took their time to get things done "right". So, if the next big gamer IP title (not that there are huge numbers of them, but a Halflife MMOG would certainly attract attention) or even general nerd IP MMOG (as an example: the Marvel Universe Online) was done "right" could see a lot of players jump ship from WoW as well as attracting new players into the genre. Probability: Maybe. As has been said, there is a tendancy for players to not just cancel one MMOG to start another - they'll run two accounts for a while. So it may take a while - even a year or two - to accurately gauge the impact of a major new MMOG title on WoW's player base. 5) Reception of The Burning Crusade. Yes, some players will love it. The question is what the proportion of players will be who play through the new parts and go, "Is that it?". It's those players - the players who are just hanging on until the expansion can make their boredom go away and things get fun again - who hold a big question mark over the future of WoW. I don't know how many there are or how long they will last after BC comes out, but I'm sure that Blizzard wonders exactly how entrenched their player base is in their game. We'll know after the expansion comes out. Probability: Good. I'm not saying that WoW will die after the launch of BC, just that Blizzard must fear it because it is the first expansion and will be used by players / commentators to see what Blizzard's hand is regarding the future development of WoW. _____ WoW isn't going to die any time soon. However, it's very hard to determine what is going to knock it off its perch given that there is a lack of ability to determine exactly what made it such a big hit to begin with. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on October 31, 2006, 09:32:20 AM Who should Blizzard fear? 1) Vivendi. At some point one party (Blizzard or Vivdendi) might try to stretch the friendship and end up causing lots of internal / external problems. I've got no idea of the respective agreements these guys have, but if Vivendi could shut down distribution or force people out of Blizzard, things could get ugly very quickly. Probability: Not likely, unless Vivendi pushes too hard on the next Blizzard product. Not happening. WoW and Blizzard MADE Vivendi after they almost bought the farm. Had WoW failed, Vivendi would have gone with them. Blizzard is now the butch in this relationship, not because they have the power but because without Blizzard, Vivendi has fuckall. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: waylander on October 31, 2006, 11:08:31 AM If one built a UO today, how would quests get integrated? Clearly, the customer base expects quests to steer the story and their character from place to place quite a bit. But without exp, are players going to be as interested in quests for loot only? Probably, but hard to know for sure. A lot of the game dynamics people have come to expect aren't as applicable in a skills-based system so that would seem to mean that a dev team would have to really break away from current systems. Some quests were already there, in the form of those news posts you'd see outside Empath Abbey. Click, read, get told in what heading and distance was some event, go, it spawns. Same basis as mission terminals in SWG: game generated mini-missions.We can hope, but don't hope too hard. As for big quests, that's just pure content. UO was a complex system. Making quests for it, with the usual array of triggered/timed spawns and epic drops is comparably easy. Finally, UO had XP. It was just gained through use and you could gain many tracks simultaneously. There were levels too (when abilities unlocked/could be learned), they just weren't called that. Ultimately, there were Classes too, except they were called "templates". Still confusing to the average person who wants straight content and easy-to-understand ladders, but that too could be programmed into the system. Ask a player what they want to be when their character is fleshed out, have the player select, and then give the player every skill they needed in order to achieve the end template. UO was so friggin' close to a perfect game. So close. Do it 3D and add in both the content and game-direction and you'd have a winner. Unfortunately, the only way to do that responsibly is to start a new project you fund against box sales. And nobody's got the balls to try it. They want easy or niche. Yeah the quest type content would need to be handled differently, and my comment was more or less directed towards the virtual world element (not gameplay). The world had finite resources, so lots of things affected lots of other things. In the end nothing seemed tedious, it was just that you had to understand how supply and demand worked. So just from a world building standpoint, the way UO worked was and still is my favorte. Other than that Darniaq summed up what I would have said. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Reifz on October 31, 2006, 03:35:16 PM Who should Blizzard fear? 1) Vivendi. At some point one party (Blizzard or Vivdendi) might try to stretch the friendship and end up causing lots of internal / external problems. I've got no idea of the respective agreements these guys have, but if Vivendi could shut down distribution or force people out of Blizzard, things could get ugly very quickly. Probability: Not likely, unless Vivendi pushes too hard on the next Blizzard product. Not happening. WoW and Blizzard MADE Vivendi after they almost bought the farm. Had WoW failed, Vivendi would have gone with them. Blizzard is now the butch in this relationship, not because they have the power but because without Blizzard, Vivendi has fuckall. Vivendi own Blizzard lock, stock & barrel. They have done since 1998. Vivendi says "jump", Blizzard says "How high?" Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Merusk on October 31, 2006, 06:36:23 PM Which is why BC is shipping at the end of November, just like Vivendi said it would.
Err, wha? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: schild on October 31, 2006, 06:39:46 PM Interesting angle, saying Vivendi is pwned by Blizzard.
Interesting. But completely WRONG. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Teleku on October 31, 2006, 07:47:06 PM I really wish GW would give in and just make a god damn WH40k/WHF online computer game, based around the actual minitures game. Just transfer the rules straight into computer form, give me access to all the armies, and charge me a monthly fee. I would love to get into WH, but I just dont have the fricken money it takes to put together an army, nor people to really play it with for that matter. Im sure it would be really popular. Having a computer to inforce rules would be a god send, so I dont have to worry about the stats for the 20 different guns each member of every squad is carrying. You also wouldnt be restricted by lack of terrain features as well. I seriously dont think it would impact the minitures market much anyways, since people who like to model will keep playing the physical form, while the shit tons of other people who dont have the time/money to do that would pay for a computer version. WHY DONT THEY MAKE THIS GAME.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on November 01, 2006, 01:38:59 AM Vivendi own Blizzard lock, stock & barrel. They have done since 1998. Vivendi says "release", Blizzard says "Not yet, it's not polished enough, come back in a few months", Vivendi says "Shoah tin', massa, just please don't leave en masse and let us bleed money and die" There, fixed that for you. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Simond on November 01, 2006, 07:47:05 AM Some of the doomcasting of WoW at this moment in time is akin to the belief still held by certain devs (Brad McQuaid being the most obvious example) that "Sure, WoW has lots of subscribers now but come back in a few months and they'll have all quit. Yup. Just wait. You'll see. Uh-huh."
That was a possibility two years ago, when nobody knew what WoW's retention would be like. Nowadays...not such a smart position to take. Hell, EQ kept 400K+ subscribers for five years through everything Verant and then SOE did - and it took SOE massively screwing up an expansion (Gates of Discord) and a big-name 'successor' game actually pulling off the "EQ done right" trick for the EQ playerbase to significantly decline. It'll take something similar for WoW to begin its death spiral, and I don't see either of them happening in the next couple of years, let alone both. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on November 01, 2006, 10:31:31 AM Vivendi own Blizzard lock, stock & barrel. They have done since 1998. Vivendi says "release", Blizzard says "Not yet, it's not polished enough, come back in a few months", Vivendi says "Shoah tin', massa, just please don't leave en masse and let us bleed money and die" There, fixed that for you. Yeah, that's about it. Vivendi has what... Sierra? While Sierra does have some hits, they don't bring in Blizzard money. I'd wager that all of Vivendi's other game stuf combined does not equal the money Blizzard makes for the company with WoW. Vivendi was practically broke before WoW came out. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: shiznitz on November 01, 2006, 12:15:54 PM I just want to clarify. When you write "Vivendi" you mean VUG, not the huge french conglomerate as a whole?
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on November 01, 2006, 12:59:48 PM Correct. VUG is a boil on the butt of Vivendi proper, were it not for Blizzard. Legally, VUG has all the power over Blizzard, but they'd be cutting their own throats if they soured that relationship.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Slyfeind on November 01, 2006, 02:14:47 PM There's a reason people still fondly remember UO. It had less to do with Richard G., and more to do with how the world was setup and run. A huge part of UO was the playerbase. We were all so diverse and forced to live together, and we all just didn't get along so we built niches for ourselves. Sometimes we crossed each others' paths and things got rough, then we withdrew to our corners to compose ourselves. Then more genres of MMOs came out and all that went away; I don't think we'd be able to get that magic back again. I did actually have hopes that SWG could have been the uber-Diku. I think a lot of people expected SWG to be the uber-Diku. Personally I thought WoW would only capture a subset of the Battle.net crowd, and be lucky to get 100k subs. Correct. VUG is a boil on the butt of Vivendi proper, were it not for Blizzard. Legally, VUG has all the power over Blizzard, but they'd be cutting their own throats if they soured that relationship. Heh, that reminds me of... Vivendi: Blizzard will be making MMOs of all their franchises. Blizzard: No we won't. STFU Vivendi. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: El Gallo on November 01, 2006, 02:21:11 PM I think a lot of people expected SWG to be the uber-Diku. Personally I thought WoW would only capture a subset of the Battle.net crowd, and be lucky to get 100k subs. You must be the guy managing my retirement account :cry: Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: geldonyetich on November 01, 2006, 03:27:51 PM Blizzard needs to fear me, or I'll totally doomcast their game again.
... Seriously, Blizzard doesn't need to fear much. World of Warcraft wasn't the runaway success it was just because it's a reasonably good MMORPG that managed to provide some fun on the GUI level. The GUI level is where the vast majority of of MMORPGs fail, and I say this without any need for statistics because I'm telling you that as a firsthand opinion of somebody whose been gaming for 20-something years. That makes it fact because I'm magical, but I'll admit that some doubt my powers. Fools! So as I was saying, World of Warcraft managed to be a fun game on the GUI level, but they basically slapped this on top of the same old EverQuest clone formula we've been seeing since the dawn of the graphical MMORPG age. What made the game so very fabulously popular was not that the game was solid enough to to be worth playing in the first place, what made the game so very fabulously popular was it was made by Blizzard, which had tons of popularity to throw at any game they release. In the eastern hemisphere of earth Blizzard-mania could be classified as a world religion - just look at how many Korean MMORPGs heavily resemble Diablo. ... There, I've said everything that needed to be said 5 days ago. My Doomcast probably would have come true if more game developers had the talent to develop comparitively fun GUI games and Blizzard mania working for them, since World of Warcraft really isn't robot jesus and we all know it. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trippy on November 01, 2006, 06:05:24 PM Heh, that reminds me of... Blizzard, as in all the higher-ups, didn't want to make WoW either.Vivendi: Blizzard will be making MMOs of all their franchises. Blizzard: No we won't. STFU Vivendi. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Drogo on November 02, 2006, 12:10:12 AM Removed rant. There is nothing to see here.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on November 02, 2006, 01:20:43 AM P. P. S. Raph, I doubt you will answer this post, but if you do, I will give you a cookie if you remember who I am from beta since I argued with you often in beta 2 and 3 before I gave up on SWG because of lack of developers listening to beta testers. How could you have been expected to take such betrayal? You are quite right to nurse a grudge over all these years, stroking it and keeping it warm in the dark hours ofthe night while sobbing uncontrollably and shaking your fist at the ceiling, crying out "How long, Raph? How long must your servant suffer? You could have incorporated my ideas, and perhaps seen how good they were and invited me to Austin to comment on some upcoming ideas before anyone else saw them. We might have become friends, and perhaps gone fishing together to discuss game design while you sat there with a look of awe as I casually reveal how to beat WoW with my ideas for PvP. You blew it, Raph, and now I have to kill you." Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Simond on November 02, 2006, 04:03:31 AM Yeah, that was shaping up to be a half-decent rant until the left turn into Misery/Cable Guy territory.
Edit: Geldonyetch, you missed the final step: Blizzard games aren't just popular because they're Blizzard games; they're popular because Blizzard makes good, fun games...which is what makes them (and Blizzard) popular. Innovative? Nope. WoW is the proverbial "EQ done right" which so many people were asking for, their strat games are based on polish, balance and entertainment and so on. If something isn't shaping up to be worth playing...they kill it (Warcraft Adventures & Starcraft: Ghost being the two most notable examples). A counterpoint: EA are known around the world, and sell lots and lots of games. Games Workshop is slightly less well-known, but still a solid brand in its own right. How many subscribers do you think that Warhammer Online will have, two years after launch? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 02, 2006, 04:11:55 AM <shitload of words which made me sleepy> Why have you not reported to the lurker thread? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Malathor on November 02, 2006, 06:43:42 AM Let me edit that rant.
...he never tried to make SWG the next big Diku. If he had gone in that direction SWG would probably have had a million or more subs. Instead he consistently told the beta community that he was not trying to make a Galactic War Simulator where people leveled up through combat, but he was creating a virtual world to live in. He ignored most of the beta threads that wanted more action, more leveling, more separation of characters and or better designed combat system. He knew that SWG was not going to be the big Diku, like WoW became, because he designed SWG to be the next UO Indeed. If Raph wanted SWG to be that uberDiku, he ought to have started by making it a Diku. Instead he left the door wide open for WoW to step through. It's as simple as that. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Tmon on November 02, 2006, 07:31:25 AM Quote Innovative? Nope. WoW is the proverbial "EQ done right" which so many people were asking for I hadn't played a Blizzard game since Diablo 1, but when I tried the open beta of WoW it felt like they had used my what I hate about EQ list as a design doc. Which is basically what I told my friends who were looking for a new game. Now if only someone would put out a UO done right I would be a pretty happy camper. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: El Gallo on November 02, 2006, 07:47:25 AM I like the new guy. That was some high-quality hate for a first post.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: geldonyetich on November 02, 2006, 07:48:09 AM Edit: Geldonyetch, you missed the final step: Blizzard games aren't just popular because they're Blizzard games; they're popular because Blizzard makes good, fun games...which is what makes them (and Blizzard) popular. Agred. Maybe who Blizzard needs fear most is themselves, as if they started releasing crappy games they've a lot of popularity to lose.Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on November 02, 2006, 08:10:00 AM I like the new guy. That was some high-quality hate for a first post. That wasn't hate. It was desperate, spurned love. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Engels on November 02, 2006, 08:26:41 AM No, he has a point. If Raph is now saying that his intention was to design a Diku, its only fair to point out that back in beta that was not what was aimed for.
I was in beta too, and felt that as a sand box, it was marginally playable, but as a combat game, it was just a broken system. I was ok with that, to be honest, since during beta, the sand box thing showed promise. Yes, you had to grind a lot, but I figured they'd work it out. Then only 2 days before release that they started to nerf the ever living crap out of every single aspect of the game, including combat. They implimented a grind that would make Koreans blush. And not a grind for combat, although that was of couse grindy, but a grind for sand box players. You can make combat players grind, since there's a rabid fanaticism behind combat players that allows them to churn through content even if its piled 2 miles high. You can't, however, do that to sand box players. I think the poster caught Raph backpeddaling, and called him on it. If they'd done what CoH did, which was to pull the game entirely and redo it from scratch after the initial testing of their first alpha release, then SWG might have reemerged as a diku, or at least something substantive. I don't blame Raph, since he was probably going to face dismissal if he did, but for fuck's sake, don't state that you meant SWG to be a Diku. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Lantyssa on November 02, 2006, 09:01:56 AM Raph Fangirl Club Counterattack!
[rant] Ooops, I have to leave for a lunch date. Toodles! [/rant] Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Slyfeind on November 02, 2006, 10:15:55 AM SWG was a Diku; or more specifically, it had a Diku in it. But that Diku was largely eclipsed by the other games in SWG; games which were more fleshed out like crafting and economy and socializing.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on November 02, 2006, 10:49:48 AM SWG was a Diku; or more specifically, it had a Diku in it. But that Diku was largely eclipsed by the other games in SWG; games which were more fleshed out like crafting and economy and socializing. It was only Diku at all, I suspect, because it had to have some combat and Diku is the combat model for MMORPGs. It wasn't designed to JUST be a Diku -- it was a virtual world (economic sim + socialization sim) + Diku combat. Would more people have played it if it had been pure Diku combat? Probably. Would we still keep making hundred page threads about it if they had gone that way and failed? Probably not. Virtual worlds are sticky. I'd be really interested to see average account length for UO or SWG, once you ditch out the "tried it for a month and quit" group. (IE: The guys who didn't want a virtual world). Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Jayce on November 02, 2006, 11:26:19 AM You guys should be careful. If you keep going down this thread, we might have to define what a Diku actually IS.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Furiously on November 02, 2006, 11:28:42 AM Virtual worlds are sticky. Thats cause there is nothing to do but cyber. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: shiznitz on November 02, 2006, 12:48:29 PM Or suck diku.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nija on November 02, 2006, 12:49:43 PM You guys should be careful. If you keep going down this thread, we might have to define what a Diku actually IS. That's easy. Download the source and see what the defaults are. (http://ftp://ftp.game.org/pub/mud/diku/) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Daeven on November 02, 2006, 12:59:55 PM P. P. S. Raph, I doubt you will answer this post, but if you do, I will give you a cookie if you remember who I am from beta since I argued with you often in beta 2 and 3 before I gave up on SWG because of lack of developers listening to beta testers. How could you have been expected to take such betrayal? You are quite right to nurse a grudge over all these years, stroking it and keeping it warm in the dark hours ofthe night while sobbing uncontrollably and shaking your fist at the ceiling, crying out "How long, Raph? How long must your servant suffer? You could have incorporated my ideas, and perhaps seen how good they were and invited me to Austin to comment on some upcoming ideas before anyone else saw them. We might have become friends, and perhaps gone fishing together to discuss game design while you sat there with a look of awe as I casually reveal how to beat WoW with my ideas for PvP. You blew it, Raph, and now I have to kill you." We hates him! Dirty, evil, false, wicked Koster! We Hates him for stealing our Precious! Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Jayce on November 02, 2006, 01:04:37 PM You guys should be careful. If you keep going down this thread, we might have to define what a Diku actually IS. That's easy. Download the source and see what the defaults are. (http://ftp://ftp.game.org/pub/mud/diku/) If you did that, you'd just see the server code for EQ1. :rimshot: Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: El Gallo on November 02, 2006, 02:55:32 PM Quote from: Endie link=topic=8501.msg236630#msg236630 That wasn't hate. It was desperate, spurned love. [/quote Isn't that the source of all the hate around here? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Fabricated on November 02, 2006, 02:57:32 PM Hay guyz, I'm in the game industry and here's what's gonna happen DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOO
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Margalis on November 02, 2006, 11:09:20 PM I hadn't played a Blizzard game since Diablo 1, but when I tried the open beta of WoW it felt like they had used my what I hate about EQ list as a design doc. Which is basically what I told my friends who were looking for a new game. Now if only someone would put out a UO done right I would be a pretty happy camper. They did. Seriously. That was the the entire WOW design. Just keep sanding away until you remove all the jagged bits. That is what polish is, by definition. If something isn't fun, figure out a way to make it fun or remove it. If players complain about X, change or remove X. Just keep doing that and you'll have a game that may not be innovative or incredibly exciting but has nothing terribly wrong with it either. It isn't about vision, its about removing all the "man this sucks" complaints. I've said it a thousand times, and I'll say it again. The triumph of WOW is that it doesn't have a lot of awful things wrong with it. That is very different from having a lot of good things. Lack of awfulness is good though, especially in this genre. Its like the Patriots. What are the Patriots really good at? Not sucking. In most MMORPGs you can make a list a mile long of things wrong with it, and the devs will tell you that is the vision, that is by design, that makes the game more rewarding, etc. Travelling a half-hour to meet with your friends then not being able to group because one of you is 4 levels higher than the others? As designed. Edit: I missed the rant. Can we get some sort of u-pick-em MMORPG type thing going on here. How many subs will each have game by this time next year?: Warhammer Online Age of Conan Lord of the Rings Online Whatever else is coming out... That would be awesome. Winner gets mad props. We should formally organize this into a contest. (With no prize) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 03, 2006, 01:59:09 PM Can we get some sort of u-pick-em MMORPG type thing going on here. How many subs will each have game by this time next year?: Warhammer Online Age of Conan Lord of the Rings Online Whatever else is coming out... That would be awesome. Winner gets mad props. We should formally organize this into a contest. (With no prize) This could be fun. I say let's open a new topic just for this, keep it clean from comments and 1 post per user just with the predictions. Keep it sticky so everyone can add his/her predictions until, say December 31st of this year. Then, next year, we'll see who of us shamans get closer to the real thing. But to be fair, I'd say 1 year is not enough. Warhammer could be still unreleased in November 2007 and Conan could be pretty young if existant at all. I say let's make predictions for November 2008. The Games are: - Conan - Lord of the Rings - Vanguard - Warhammer ...and World of Warcraft as a tiebreaker. You can just allocate predictions for 5 games. You can eventually predict the subs for another game out of this list but you have to drop one of these 5 and your off-list game will be counted only if it actually manages to fare better than the title you dropped. EDIT: An afterthought: what should we base our results on, in November 2008? Sir Bruce's? Mmh.. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 03, 2006, 02:28:40 PM - Conan = 35k
- Lord of the Rings = 40k - Vanguard = 60k - Warhammer = 45k ...and World of Warcraft as a tiebreaker. = 9 million Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 03, 2006, 02:35:58 PM - Conan = 35k - Lord of the Rings = 40k - Vanguard = 60k - Warhammer = 45k ...and World of Warcraft as a tiebreaker. = 9 million Woot! Based on your predictions Vanguard will be "Best MMORPG of teh western world" runner up! Brad will be delighted! Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on November 03, 2006, 02:41:48 PM Warhammer and Conan will at least break 150k. Cheddar's right about the others.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: DataGod on November 03, 2006, 02:51:40 PM Do I get to use external sources or just guesstimate with out my data? :evil:
We using announced games? My guesstimate: - Vanguard: 68,500 -Lord of the Rings: 108,600 -PoTBS: 154,500 - Warhammer: 1,879,352 ...and World of Warcraft as a tiebreaker. 4,120,357 Notes: - Conan: Im seeing conan as perhaps even with Vanguard, but not out performing Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 03, 2006, 03:17:12 PM Warhammer and Conan will at least break 150k. Cheddar's right about the others. My estimates are based 6 months after launch, and I am spot on. Conan may be a bit high, though. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: tazelbain on November 03, 2006, 03:42:38 PM WAR 300k
There is an undercurrent people looking for accessible, engaging, non-punitive PvP. Basicly the exact opposite of SB. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 03, 2006, 04:03:43 PM WAR 300k There is an undercurrent people looking for accessible, engaging, non-punitive PvP. Basicly the exact opposite of SB. Yes and no. They want BALANCED PvP. This is not going to happen with the current design of WAR. Everyone will end up zerking in one faction, or Mythic will force people to join lower volume factions, which will just piss people off. I took a semester of Sociology, I KNOW! Plus I have had a few beers. I am right. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on November 03, 2006, 06:24:56 PM Vanguard: 150,000 - Those icky crazy EQ catasses do exist, just not in as great a number as Brad wishes.
Lord of the Rings: 90,000 - The D&D brand didn't help Turbine much, and neither will this one. PoTBS: 40,000 - Still smells like an indie shitpile to me. Warhammer: 300,000 - I'm being optimistic. Being just a non-Blizzard WoW is asking to get owned. Then again, even if it gets written off as a WoW-clone, at least it's a clone of something people like. And Mythic at least isn't a bunch of fuckups. Conan: 150,000 - Some novel features and gore should get them to this point. Warcraft: 9,000,000 - Get real, haters, the subs on this game are only going to go up for a couple more years. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 03, 2006, 06:42:13 PM Vanguard: 150,000 - Those icky crazy EQ catasses do exist, just not in as great a number as Brad wishes. Lord of the Rings: 90,000 - The D&D brand didn't help Turbine much, and neither will this one. PoTBS: 40,000 - Still smells like an indie shitpile to me. Warhammer: 300,000 - I'm being optimistic. Being just a non-Blizzard WoW is asking to get owned. Then again, even if it gets written off as a WoW-clone, at least it's a clone of something people like. And Mythic at least isn't a bunch of fuckups. Conan: 150,000 - Some novel features and gore should get them to this point. Warcraft: 9,000,000 - Get real, haters, the subs on this game are only going to go up for a couple more years. These are crazy numbers, besides I got dibs on 9mill for WoW. Lets start a bet thread and lock it! Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: andar on November 03, 2006, 07:23:31 PM Well, assuming all these games are out by this time next year:
Vanguard: 50,000 It may have a strong showing at first, but I predict a sharp decline in subscribers once people realize that grinding really isn't that much fun. LoTR: 20,000 Turbine just isn't very good at making games.. Maybe they'll finally close. Warhammer: 150,000 They might not get many casual players, but there's always die-hards. I look forward to reuniting with my DAoC comrades, assuming they don't still hate me :heartbreak: Conan: 80,000 As much as I'd like to see this game succeed, there probably aren't a whole lot of people out there willing to put the needed effort into MMOs that require the player to create the content. World of Warcraft: 8 million The fact that my roommate quit playing is a hopeful sign; he is as big a blizzard fanboy as I can imagine there being. But the evil of TBC is drawing him back in despite all my omens that he'll fail college if he turns back. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 03, 2006, 07:34:19 PM These are crazy numbers, besides I got dibs on 9mill for WoW. Lets start a bet thread and lock it! Up for the soon-to-be-locked bet thread, but betting on november 2008. One year from now I bet that Warhammer and Conan will be both still unreleased. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 03, 2006, 07:35:50 PM Why would anyone bet that WAR has 100K+ players? Thats like betting on DDO... idiots.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on November 03, 2006, 07:39:37 PM WAR isn't made by Turbine. Idiot :).
I didn't like DAoC either, but they are relatively competent. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 03, 2006, 07:43:25 PM I (idiot) bet on Warhammer to score way more than 500k subs.
Enough trashtalk. Let's bet 'n lock! Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on November 03, 2006, 08:03:11 PM War and Conan have the best chances of getting high subs (mainly because of disgruntled pvp'ers). War even moreso, because of Mythic's reputation (not Warhammer's).
6 months in: WAR = 400k, Conan = 200k Vanguard: Most ex-EQ players were never "hardcore". They wanted something like WoW. Now they've got it. Vanguard will end up being the most expensive, barely populated, niche mmo ever. It'll be the new Horizons and Auto Assault. On top of that, the high sys reqs will push people away even further. 6 months in: 30k subs LotR, despite it being from Turbine, will grab a respectable number at first. Then it'll disgust people. Then hold on to a desperate fanbase....Much like SWG. 6 months in: 200k subs 2 years in: 30k subs God's and Heroes and PotBS will be the new, "moderately successful" titles. They're subscription rates will rise slowly, but eventually, I they'll rise. Much like Eve. 6 months in: 50k subs 2 years in: 250k subs Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: geldonyetich on November 03, 2006, 09:48:26 PM I'm expecting World of Warcraft to undergo radical subscription reversal any day now, but it seems that my rampant doomcast of the game has thus far been proved incorrect. :heartbreak: I honestly can't see why the game has such a massive subscription retention, as the end game is raiding or PvP, neither of which have ever really been great at getting players' attention before. I'm currently thinking it's the accessibility and fun on the GUI level, coupled with Blizzard popularity, that has it as popular as it is.
I guess it's because popularity isn't really a great indication about how good a game is anyway. There's a lot of great games out there that have enough players to be a moderate success, and that's all that matters. It's when innovative cutting edge awesome games fall by the wayside due to lack of popularity that the cooperate consumption monster wins. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Margalis on November 04, 2006, 01:14:18 AM 2008 is too far. Just do end of year 2007. If you think a game won't be release by then just estimate zero or hedge your bets accordingly.
Predicting if a game will come on time or at all is half the puzzle! Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Simond on November 04, 2006, 01:41:55 AM I guess it's because popularity isn't really a great indication about how good a game is anyway. Why isn't popularity a decent indicator for subscription-based games? :?Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 04, 2006, 04:09:15 AM 2008 is too far. Just do end of year 2007. If you think a game won't be release by then just estimate zero or hedge your bets accordingly. Predicting if a game will come on time or at all is half the puzzle! Darn. I'll comply then. - Warhammer: 500k - Lord of the Rings: 200k - Conan: 250k - Vanguard: 400k ...and World of Warcraft still at 5millions (my Doomcast for WoW predicts a huge drop in late 2008.. I am not ready for predictions of late 2007...) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on November 04, 2006, 04:11:34 AM Falconeer is thisclose to drawing a chart with WoW at -55,000 subscriptions.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 04, 2006, 05:13:08 AM Falconeer is thisclose to drawing a chart with WoW at -55,000 subscriptions. You are never happy. :) I said 5 millions for WoW, not just 5. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on November 04, 2006, 05:17:58 AM How the HELL is Vanguard going to get 400k? Nobody wants to play it except an extreme segment of EQ fanboi's -- who are, in turn, part of only a slightly larger group of extreme EQ fanboi's (i.e. people who like to catass and raid). And even then, it'll chase some of these crazy fucks off because they don't have the jobs to afford the hardware to meet the ridiculous system requirements.
If it ever gets 400k, it'll be after 2 years of total subs ever, with the help of Station Pass skewing. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on November 04, 2006, 05:33:51 AM Y'know...
Screw this divination crap. I'd like to insure that my predictions become reality. Somebody give me the bad mojo Brad McQuaid voodoo doll. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 04, 2006, 05:48:27 AM How the HELL is Vanguard going to get 400k? 'Cause I am one of those who think that people will look for something else massively online to play once they start quitting WoW. As I said elsewhere, 80% of those 5 millions+ never heard of MMORPGs before WoW. After quitting, they'll discover a whole new frontier and *could* get interested in new (old) things. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: waylander on November 04, 2006, 07:18:05 AM War and Conan have the best chances of getting high subs (mainly because of disgruntled pvp'ers). War even moreso, because of Mythic's reputation (not Warhammer's). 6 months in: WAR = 400k, Conan = 200k Vanguard: Most ex-EQ players were never "hardcore". They wanted something like WoW. Now they've got it. Vanguard will end up being the most expensive, barely populated, niche mmo ever. It'll be the new Horizons and Auto Assault. On top of that, the high sys reqs will push people away even further. 6 months in: 30k subs LotR, despite it being from Turbine, will grab a respectable number at first. Then it'll disgust people. Then hold on to a desperate fanbase....Much like SWG. 6 months in: 200k subs 2 years in: 30k subs God's and Heroes and PotBS will be the new, "moderately successful" titles. They're subscription rates will rise slowly, but eventually, I they'll rise. Much like Eve. 6 months in: 50k subs 2 years in: 250k subs I think you are right on the money with this assessment. I am interested in Warhammer, but not if its just going to promote massive zergs. Conan sounds interesting, and I need to follow up on that one since I haven't checked it out. Don't forget that within the next two years we have Star Trek Online and Stargate Worlds due out. I think Stargate has a chance to do well as a niche game 50-100k subs, but I think Star Trek is going to be a rehash about what everyone hates about SWG. Chronicles of Spellborn also looks interesting, and is worth watching. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: SnakeCharmer on November 04, 2006, 10:31:34 AM I'm curious about something though...
How many of WoW's subs are first time MMO'ers? And when these first time MMO'ers try something else that isn't as polished as WoW, that isn't as "fun" as WoW (was to them), are faced with *another* grind in a different game that isn't as well done as the WoW grind, how many of these people are going to go right *back* to WoW? What I am getting at, is that all the first time MMO'ers are going to view WoW as the "gold standard" because that is what they *know*. And when faced with other games, that are - lets face it - crap compared to the WoW "done right" game, are they going to turned off by the genre altogether? They'll give VG a shot, maybe Conan, or Warhammer, and they MIGHT go back to WoW, or they might wait for the next MMO. The fact is, for the next 3 years, there looks to be less than shiny shit coming out for MMOs. Who can create something good? Bioware? Maybe. SOE? Doubtful. Anything they touch for the next 3-5 years is going to be looked at with suspicion by the playerbase. I dunno if the above made any sense. Working on a grade a hangover. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: SnakeCharmer on November 04, 2006, 10:37:05 AM I honestly can't see why the game has such a massive subscription retention Because there is absolutely NOTHING worth playing out there. Look at the list: Phantasy Star? Sure. Sign me up. :roll: SWG. Right. Never giving SOE another DOLLAR of box sale, or sub revenue :heartbreak: RF Online? Newp. EQ/2? See SOE, hack and slash fantasy Roma Victor? Dark and Light? Matrix? AO? UO? DAOC? Auto Assault? COH/V? I'm actually toying around with that one. Decent fun, for 30 minutes at at time EVE? I want to walk around, not always fly. I own my business IRL, don't need to run one online. Lineage/II? Guild Wars? There is absolute DOG SHIT for MMO's out there. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Driakos on November 04, 2006, 11:29:49 AM How the HELL is Vanguard going to get 400k? 'Cause I am one of those who think that people will look for something else massively online to play once they start quitting WoW. As I said elsewhere, 80% of those 5 millions+ never heard of MMORPGs before WoW. After quitting, they'll discover a whole new frontier and *could* get interested in new (old) things. I think the majority of those MMO newbies, might try other games, but they wont stick to any of them, unless they are as finished/polished as WoW. I think it is more likely they'll quit MMOs outright, rather than deal with a buggy game. They've already had their First MMO experience, everything else is going to have a hard time competing with that, and will always be compared to their First. Consistant look/stylized, low time barrier to fun, and mostly bug free, are going to kick the shit out of clump, every time. Even if clump has some features unique to it. Vanguard isn't going to have much polish, just lots of tape and glue. Maybe some cat people made out of macaroni and construction paper. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 04, 2006, 11:40:23 AM I think the majority of those MMO newbies, might try other games, but they wont stick to any of them, unless they are as finished/polished as WoW. On WoW polish: I know talent is not something that grows on trees, but I think every big software house out there knows that they *HAVE TO* copy from WoW polish. NOT from WoW as a game, but from their level of polish, accessibility and so on. This DEFINITELY doesn't mean that they will be able to accomplish that. But, for sure, that they will try as hell to copy THAT aspect of the game. Again, I could be wrong, but I think in the future we will see less "hurried releases" and, as an average, lots more polish in every major MMORPG. Hence, more polish and accessibility for Conan, Warhammer, Lotro too (although you can't improve that much when you are Turbine...) and even Vanguard. Vanguard could use a mind interface and it would stay un-accessible anyway, but as for Conan or Warhammer... I think we could be really surprised by the level of "polish" they will be able to achieve. And please refrain to tell me how unpolished those games are now. I am not interested anymore in betas, just releases. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Malathor on November 04, 2006, 11:59:15 AM On WoW polish: I know talent is not something that grows on trees, but I think every big software house out there knows that they *HAVE TO* copy from WoW polish. NOT from WoW as a game, but from their level of polish, accessibility and so on. This DEFINITELY doesn't mean that they will be able to accomplish that. But, for sure, that they will try as hell to copy THAT aspect of the game. Again, I could be wrong, but I think in the future we will see less "hurried releases" and, as an average, lots more polish in every major MMORPG. Hence, more polish and accessibility for Conan, Warhammer, Lotro too (although you can't improve that much when you are Turbine...) and even Vanguard. Right. Since WoW released we've seen Auto Assault, DDO, Dark and Light and SWG's NGE. Seems to me that nobody's learned a damned thing. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on November 04, 2006, 12:26:46 PM On the basis of rising tides and floating boats:
- Warhammer: 180k - Lord of the Rings: 300k <--- This is where I am really going to look stupid unless Turbine have learned from DDO - Conan: 120k - Vanguard: 90k World of Warcraft at 4.1 million. I was going to go much lower, but I suspect that they'll be launching another expansion abouit then, and this one might be less pointless than the current one, which is just a few new zones, two new races that are really not that different from cross-factional equivalents, and a game of swappsies with existing classes. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 04, 2006, 12:28:51 PM Right. Since WoW released we've seen Auto Assault, DDO, Dark and Light and SWG's NGE. Seems to me that nobody's learned a damned thing. Too easy shot, buddy. You know as good as me that those games were filled with the pre-WoW arrogance that you could sell shit as long as its smell was online. Now it's a totally different things and investors, I guess, are a little more cautious. And demanding. Not to say designers or project leaders. Am I wrong or among those 4 big games, 2 already got major delays and revamps, and the other twos don't dare a launch date yet. Would something like this have happened at all a couple of years ago, in the era of the pay-to-beta MMOGs? Again, I am not saying this will be enough to achieve HALF the polish (and fun) of WoW. I am saying that someone *probably* learned some lessons in the last WoW years (I think we could start scrapping the christian calendar and substitute it with a Wow Calendar - Today is aactually November, 4th, year 2 A.W.). Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Margalis on November 04, 2006, 02:52:10 PM MMORPGs take a long time to make, games that came out in the last year were started well before WOW launched.
I'm not making my predictions until we get a sticky thread or something, too hard to follow in this thread. I see a lot of PSU players that have come from WOW, as well as some from FFXI. I haven't heard of any from EQ or other games yet. I've seen a few "I dropped WOW for this game." I think with the lack of content these people will burn out quite fast, but a lot of them seem to have the same motivation - WOW was "ruined" by the level 60+ game where you have to have the right equipment, form up the right groups with the right classes, play your roles "correctly", etc etc. In PSU you can just form up any old group and have a good time. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Arthur_Parker on November 04, 2006, 03:49:46 PM Worldwide
- Warhammer: over 1 million - Conan: 90k - Vanguard: 60k Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 04, 2006, 04:39:01 PM Worldwide - Warhammer: over 1 million I am one of the few to think Warhammer will break the 1 million barrier, but in a year from now Arthur? Do you think it will be released soon enough to score 1 million in november 2007? My prediction for Warhammer is 500k close to launch (November 2007), 1 million+ one year after that (November 2008). Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 04, 2006, 04:59:34 PM Worldwide - Warhammer: over 1 million I am one of the few to think Warhammer will break the 1 million barrier, but in a year from now Arthur? Do you think it will be released soon enough to score 1 million in november 2007? My prediction for Warhammer is 500k close to launch (November 2007), 1 million+ one year after that (November 2008). Crack smokers. They will launch with about 150k, and it will fluctuate from there. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Signe on November 04, 2006, 05:06:02 PM Worldwide - Warhammer: over 1 million - Conan: 90k - Vanguard: 60k I keep reading game people who say Vanguard will steal the show in 2007, but I also don't see it happening. Too much has leaked out about corpse runs, death penalties, forced grouping situations, camping. Only die hard EQ fans, who have mostly ignored WoW, EQ2 and other MMOs, will want to go back to that nonsense. Even if it's not true or they fix it, there have been so many alledged :nda: breakers claiming it's true. Anyway, McQuaids views on MMOs in posts and interviews have put me right off the game. I'm kind of sort of almost looking forward to Warhammer, though. Somewhat mostly. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Arthur_Parker on November 04, 2006, 05:10:54 PM I am one of the few to think Warhammer will break the 1 million barrier, but in a year from now Arthur? Do you think it will be released soon enough to score 1 million in november 2007? My prediction for Warhammer is 500k close to launch (November 2007), 1 million+ one year after that (November 2008). I thought we were talking november 2008, I doubt Warhammer will be out until spring 2008, I can't see them meeting a 2007 target. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Comstar on November 04, 2006, 06:29:02 PM Vanguard: 50K. I have no interest in replaying all the bad memories I have of EQ. That's all I hear about Vanguard.
Lord of the Rings: 50K. D&D didn't work, and it had a better chance than LOTR now that the movies are over. PoTBS: 20K but rising. Much like EvE did, start small but keep climbing. They need to be able to surive on a low base to keep climbing though. Warhammer: 120K. DAoC experiences, and a better PvP than WoW. Will keep going up though (much like WoW has). Conan: 70K. I'd *LIKE* to see this go higher, but I fear 90% of players won't finish the single player part first. Warcraft: 9million. Will be replaced by World of Starcraft when it starts losing it's numbers. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on November 04, 2006, 10:07:32 PM Betcha the "must fuck around in single-player for a while" requirement vanishes within the first six months.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Zane0 on November 04, 2006, 10:18:31 PM My theory: no one really knows what the market is capable of. Most people predicted WoW would draw 200-500k- including Blizzard!
In regards to Vanguard, I've only seen a couple videos, and I'll sorta agree that it doesn't seem very interesting. But, who knows. It'll be very interesting to see how well a straight 'diku' performs in the post-WoW market. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on November 04, 2006, 10:49:40 PM Betcha the "must fuck around in single-player for a while" requirement vanishes within the first six months. It's not "for a while". It's 20 levels (out of 80, I think). The beginning part of Conan is basically a short RPG. Not an MMO tutorial. Besides that, I think the entire class choosing process is built around it. If that's the case, it'd be hard to rework. Secondly, who would want to choose an online, foozle oriented experience over a character oriented, story based one? Thirdly, it's a smart way for Funcom to get people attached to their characters, and lure them to the rest of the game. Why would they want to sacrifice that? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: caladein on November 04, 2006, 11:40:57 PM Betcha the "must fuck around in single-player for a while" requirement vanishes within the first six months. It's not "for a while". It's 20 levels (out of 80, I think). The beginning part of Conan is basically a short RPG. Not an MMO tutorial. Besides that, I think the entire class choosing process is built around it. If that's the case, it'd be hard to rework. Secondly, who would want to choose an online, foozle oriented experience over a character oriented, story based one? Thirdly, it's a smart way for Funcom to get people attached to their characters, and lure them to the rest of the game. Why would they want to sacrifice that? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on November 04, 2006, 11:58:21 PM Betcha the "must fuck around in single-player for a while" requirement vanishes within the first six months. It's not "for a while". It's 20 levels (out of 80, I think). The beginning part of Conan is basically a short RPG. Not an MMO tutorial. Besides that, I think the entire class choosing process is built around it. If that's the case, it'd be hard to rework. Secondly, who would want to choose an online, foozle oriented experience over a character oriented, story based one? Thirdly, it's a smart way for Funcom to get people attached to their characters, and lure them to the rest of the game. Why would they want to sacrifice that? Do you get a free /20 too? That'd be nice. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: damijin on November 05, 2006, 01:50:28 AM My only issue with the conan single player thing is that a lot of us mmo veterans belong to guilds who move to new games as a whole. If that single player thing takes a long time it's going to be a lot of this conversation on vent:
"Hey I just talked to the old man at the village... what part are you at?" "I just got on the boat, now they're telling me to kill some pirates." "Oh, dude, I did that like 2 hours ago." "Oh wow, I'm really falling be-" "HAY GUYZ I JUST GOT TO THE VILLAGE WHO DO I TALK TO?" "eh..." As you can see, everyone other than the first 3 people will be listening to the fastest path through the 20 level pre-game rather than actually playing it. But for people who dont hang out on ventrilo all day like I do, I suppose that's not much of a problem. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on November 05, 2006, 02:00:46 AM The majority of people don't hang out on ventrilo all day, but yeah......It's a problem. Hopefully, having 2 or 3 hour differences won't be some deathblow to uberguild endgame coordination.
Oh wait, wtf am I saying? Bring on the deathblow. Fuck it. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on November 05, 2006, 02:09:01 AM People aren't going to want to buy an MMO and then spend the first couple days playing a tacked on single-player RPG. Bet you a "Yes server, I did the single-player shit and chose class X. Also I farmed as much money as your sanity checks would let me." crack appears within the first month.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: caladein on November 05, 2006, 02:26:39 AM My only issue with the conan single player thing is that a lot of us mmo veterans belong to guilds who move to new games as a whole. If that single player thing takes a long time it's going to be a lot of this conversation on vent: Eh... that reminds me of when Oblivion came out, or more recently FF12. Don't see too much of a problem there, was kind of fun actually.... But for people who dont hang out on ventrilo all day like I do, I suppose that's not much of a problem. A semi-decent analogy for the bad possibility is when I got a few of my guildmates to play EVE. Apart from the tutorial being soul-crushing, it was basically "how to speed through this without really figuring anything out". Not very productive. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Slyfeind on November 05, 2006, 08:59:05 AM Secondly, who would want to choose an online, foozle oriented experience over a character oriented, story based one? Me me me! I hate story and characterization, and I like to chat with people within the first minute of logging on to a game. With over 100 MMOs that let me do that, AOC won't be getting my money...unless the first 20 levels happen in an hour or two. Does anyone know how long the first 20 levels take? Because I like Conan and I like Funcom, and I hate single player RPGs. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on November 05, 2006, 10:20:42 AM Trade and community happens in the massive-multiplayer portions of pre-20 Conan. It's the required-MMO/PvP stuff that kicks in thereafter. Think GW public space with single-player instances for 25% of your levels.
I can't really play the numbers game. I learned my lesson through being way off on WoW and CoH. Quote from: Stray Secondly, who would want to choose an online, foozle oriented experience over a character oriented, story based one? WoW? Sure there's a story there, but few care. The game is character oriented, but advancement is through foozles.Quote from: Geldonyetich I honestly can't see why the game has such a massive subscription retention Because in your search for a way to measure how qualitatively measure MMOGs, you continue to refuse to account for how popularity and business success spawn emulation. "Good" is often defined by success and popularity.Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on November 05, 2006, 12:14:54 PM Trade and community happens in the massive-multiplayer portions of pre-20 Conan. It's the required-MMO/PvP stuff that kicks in thereafter. Think GW public space with single-player instances for 25% of your levels. That's different from what I thought, but still just as gay in it's own special way. I'm no fan of forced grouping, but not being able to group at all for the first twenty levels? Are they charging me a monthly fee while I'm doing this shit? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on November 05, 2006, 04:46:29 PM WoW? Sure there's a story there, but few care. The game is character oriented, but advancement is through foozles. WoW is no way to tell whether people care or not. It has good lore, but practically no story at all. Few care because only a few quests warrant that kind of attention. Even the worst single player adventure/rpg games are better at this. Hell, even I bypass "story" and quests in WoW as much as possible (i.e. I'm optimal grinding spot oriented). Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on November 05, 2006, 05:11:27 PM WoW has good lore and good story, it just isn't integrated into the game play well. That is the case with every MMOG I've played. They're getting better, but mostly because of the appropriate use of instancing (can't change the game world for decisions made by players? You can change it at least for them).
I say a critical mass of people don't care not because of WoW. Blizzard succeeded in attracting more people to MMOGs, but almost two years later, those people here now are effectively liking what we liked half a decade ago in EQ. The story didn't matter much there either. It's about character growth and foozles, and as long as the story doesn't get in the way, it's optional. This is actually why I like the virtual-worldy stuff too. Those games let players make their own stories, even if many don't realize they're doing so. For every vendor put up, every shingle hung, every house built and every business venture or inter-faction war waged, players are creating their own histories alongside playing a game. It's only those that document this that are called storytellers. The rest though are all storymakers. That does happen in WoW too. Emergent behavior truly shows the passion people have for such a linear and constricting space. But it's more poignant in games with far more accountability, even if so fewer players are playing them :) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Scadente on November 05, 2006, 06:15:53 PM Compleatly agree Darniaq. I really like the the whole Deadmines lore, down to the Stockades (craptastic instance tho). It wasn't amazing in any way, but it was on par with most single-player adventure games. The Scarlet Crusade stuff is cool aswell, same goes for all of Blackrock Mountain. The "problem" is just that it's poorly implemented, like you said, I had to engage myself to get engaged in the storyline; and that's not always an easy feat.
I'm starting to get my eyes up for EVE, as reading the EVE forums here is really exciting and I got a 50day gamecard lying around. Once I get a connection that's not proxyied to death I'll be on EVE. But from the little I've seen from it; it didn't really look very inviting, it was sort of like booting up Maya 3D for the first time... HELP!!!! Whereas WoW grabbed me by the nuts and pulled me in with it's vivid colors and cute characters. I'm just hoping that EVE is a tough, but good buy, a unsharpened diamond of sorts that you have to engage yourself in. But I'm hoping the rewards might be greater, the only thing stopping me is the fact that it seems like such a big time-investment, but I might be wrong :) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on November 05, 2006, 08:37:14 PM Eve is a great game to self-pace. You can literally do nothing and advance your character skills, or you could log in 10 hours a day and mine, fight, trade, whatever. Whereas each WoW instance is going to take X hours, and you know that going in, Eve mostly doesn't have specific duration requirements outside of those self-created (or if you go the dedicated PvE mission route).
The UI is due a major overhaul sometime early next year when they take full advantage of DirectX10 and Vista. Not sure what stage it's at now. But yea, it looks like it was made in another country. Convention be damned. Once you get into it though, you realize some of the reasons they did what they did. But it's still not intuitive really. But then again, WoW wouldn't be intuitive much either if not for a few years of MMORPGs and RPGs trying different things and seeing what stuck :) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Furiously on November 06, 2006, 08:10:36 AM So - I just wanted to point out something...
I've been playing D&D online. And looking at LOTR's online screenshots, I had an interesting observation, it's using the same engine. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 06, 2006, 08:22:38 AM I've been playing D&D online. And looking at LOTR's online screenshots, I had an interesting observation, it's using the same engine. Mh.. good news or bad news for Lotro? I'd say whateva news. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 06, 2006, 08:33:38 AM So - I just wanted to point out something... I've been playing D&D online. And looking at LOTR's online screenshots, I had an interesting observation, it's using the same engine. Reminds me of the AC2 engine, though cannot say why :nda: Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on November 06, 2006, 08:40:48 AM They're both based on a tweaked AC2 engine.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on November 06, 2006, 11:25:03 AM And Engine to me is less important than style. Can't speak for LoTRO, but I did think AC2 at least had promise. Bright cheery promise, not the mud-slung grungy "reality", say, EQ2 tried to achieve.
I don't want real when being real means I don't want to be there (queue Matrix too). Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nebu on November 06, 2006, 11:28:18 AM And Engine to me is less important than style. Can't speak for LoTRO, but I did think AC2 at least had promise. Bright cheery promise, not the mud-slung grungy "reality", say, EQ2 tried to achieve. I don't want real when being real means I don't want to be there (queue Matrix too). Funny... I prefer "realistic" to "stylized". I found WoW almost unbearable to play and felt similarly about AC and AC2 due to their cartoonish appearance. Just goes to show that it takes a lot of different tastes to make a world this big. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on November 06, 2006, 11:48:25 AM EQ2 just looks like shit. It's not a problem of being realistic. Half Life 2 and Assassin's Creed are realistic, but for whatever reason, they look far more inviting than EQ2.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: DataGod on November 06, 2006, 12:13:12 PM Someone mentioned earlier: Why aren't subscriptions a good indicator of a games popularity?
Answer: Sub numbers are a good indicator of a games popularity when there is a decent selection of games on the market, in fact currently, there are not a decent selection of games on the market. Sub numbers are a bad indicator when there are fewer offerings on the market, meaning people settle for what they're comfortable playing. Churn (number of subs added and lost) comes into play as a good indicator in almost every instance, but mores when the market is rather flat (as it is now). Because that means if a games losing subs in a flat market theyre doing a shitty job of retaining people without options to play other games. "The fact is, for the next 3 years, there looks to be less than shiny shit coming out for MMOs. Who can create something good?" The fact is 2006 saw few if any new MMO releases worth a shit, in 2007 there are scheduled to be released at least 1 (and sometimes two) well financed games A QUARTER that have been in development 2-3+ years. Im not sure how you quantify "shiny shit" comming out over the next 3 years. But rest assured there is some SS comming out. A few people brought up concerns about the WOW players leaving to try new stuff. This brings up a few areas actually: 1. Will new MMO players who've played WOW tolerate anything less polished? I think this depends on burnout rates, which IMHO are pretty high atm, even for new players and most certainly many of them are looking at more gear dependant kinds and thinking: OK we need to try something else.... Also how well developed is the game and how much grind? How polished? Quest system? Unique combat? So this is why Im a fairly big fan of PoTBS, and this is why IMO its going to do well, they aren't trying to be WOW, they're trying to be innovative with an entirely new theme for Mo's and from what Ive seen they're doing a good job of integrating things that are interesting to: Casual gamers, PVP'ers, and crafting/economy types. 2. What about veteran MMO players currently playing WOW? My observations: 1. Your seeing increased sub numbers in EVE because of veteran gamer drift off of WOW, EVE has PVP for the PVP'er as well. 1a. Lots of Vet's like the PVP system, but just as many complain about not having an avatar.... 2. Vets see the writing on the wall with the grind/mudflation in BC in WOW, in fact the absolute worst thing Blizzard could have done was release an expansion right when vanguard was launching, given the choice of 6 months of grinding or trying a new game with your guild......even if its a new grindy game, Im going to the new game. The fact that they changed the date to coincide with and drown out Vanguards release lets me know theyre worried about sub drift A lot of people around here hate Vanguard, and I admittedly did based on the grind premise, but I looked it over objectively and they do have a ton of feature sets in there, enough to be sticky and retian 60-100k subs easily. Whats more, after looking at cartoon bullshit low pixelated characters for 2 years who dosnt want some realism back? So yeah, I'm going to have to disagree with the 9 million for WOW, in 2007 theyll lose traction and retention in thier playerbase, it might not be a net loss but itll flatten theyre advancement. Dont look for another 2 million added in 1 year, they aint getting it. As to why WAR is going to do well? WAR is going to do well because its WOW for PVP'ers, and theres a whole lot of PVP'ers sick of how bad WOW PVP is....WOW is PVE done right, and PVP done half assed backwards wrong. As a gamer if theres a choice between 14.99 a month x 12 months, or trying the 5 new MMO's on the market in 2007 in the hopes I find something worth playing for another 2-4 years Im buying those 5 new games and trying them....... Thats what Blizzard fears in 2007..... Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Jayce on November 06, 2006, 12:24:31 PM Someone mentioned earlier: Why aren't subscriptions a good indicator of a games popularity? Answer: Sub numbers are a good indicator of a games popularity when there is a decent selection of games on the market, in fact currently, there are not a decent selection of games on the market. Sub numbers are a bad indicator when there are fewer offerings on the market, meaning people settle for what they're comfortable playing. What is "a decent number" of games? Is there a cutoff in # of subs (now niche it is), whether it's for pay, whether it's web-based, text-based, graphics based, game or world? Also, I think that if there is nothing good out, most people (ie, the casuals) simply don't play any game. Your logic seems to imply that everyone plays some game, and if there is nothing out, they just settle for a bad one. I'm not buyin. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 06, 2006, 12:57:59 PM <lots of words> The fact is we will not see many people who leave WoW turning to other MMOs. We have not seen it yet, and will not see it in the future. The people being drawn in are not masochist nor enthusiasts like we are. They expect to be babied, they expect shiny elf tits, and they expect little things in WoW's game mechanics like "Death without consequence." Has anyone done a total number comparison for the last few years as far as MMO's, not counting WoW's numbers? Have we seen a percentage increase due to WoW coming out? I seriously doubt it, and doubt we will in the future. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: shiznitz on November 06, 2006, 01:50:52 PM I disagree. The new EQ2 expansion will get some WoWers. It won't be enough to hurt WoW at all, but even 30k new EQ2 subs will be a huge win for that game. That said, those in my guild who left EQ2 for WoW about a year ago are not talking about coming back to EQ2 for Echoes of Faydwer so maybe I am completely dreaming.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nebu on November 06, 2006, 01:59:41 PM I'd argue that that reason we don't see any crossover (people leaving WoW for other games) is largely due to the fact that WoW is the best PvE MMOG available. I've seen a few people come from WoW to DAoC for the PvP appeal, but that's about it. The bottom line is that there's isn't a reason to play anything else atm if PvE is your thing. WoW does PvE MMOG's better than any available alternative.
Perhaps the next release wave of MMOG's may attract a few players from WoW. I doubt they'll stay long once they realize that it's a rehash of what they've already experienced. Warhammer is about the only title offering WoW gamers anything new... unless they're into pain and suffering, then there's Vanguard. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 06, 2006, 02:17:14 PM I disagree. The new EQ2 expansion will get some WoWers. It won't be enough to hurt WoW at all, but even 30k new EQ2 subs will be a huge win for that game. That said, those in my guild who left EQ2 for WoW about a year ago are not talking about coming back to EQ2 for Echoes of Faydwer so maybe I am completely dreaming. But these are not the OMGWOWSUCK'EMIN numbers people keep speculating about. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on November 06, 2006, 07:15:12 PM I'd argue that that reason we don't see any crossover (people leaving WoW for other games) is largely due to the fact that WoW is the best PvE MMOG available. I've seen a few people come from WoW to DAoC for the PvP appeal, but that's about it. The bottom line is that there's isn't a reason to play anything else atm if PvE is your thing. WoW does PvE MMOG's better than any available alternative. I agree with this.
Prior to WoW, retention was estimated to average 6 months. After, people saw an average of 14 months. Of course, that average was announced 14 months after WoW was launched, so is largely irrelevant. I don't know what the average is today. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 06, 2006, 07:54:24 PM I'd argue that that reason we don't see any crossover (people leaving WoW for other games) is largely due to the fact that WoW is the best PvE MMOG available. I've seen a few people come from WoW to DAoC for the PvP appeal, but that's about it. The bottom line is that there's isn't a reason to play anything else atm if PvE is your thing. WoW does PvE MMOG's better than any available alternative. I agree with this.
Prior to WoW, retention was estimated to average 6 months. After, people saw an average of 14 months. Of course, that average was announced 14 months after WoW was launched, so is largely irrelevant. I don't know what the average is today. And how many people trickled from UO, AC, EQ, etc to WoW? A lot. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on November 07, 2006, 08:15:43 AM Yep, yep, all those WoW players are going to finally get bored and boost some other game via migration any minute now. Yep. They're going to get tired of those "cartoony" graphics at any moment. It's only a matter of time until people flock to the sort of stupid, ugly, broken shit that WoW is generally hailed for sweeping aside. Vanguard is sure to be a success.
:roll: Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: ajax34i on November 07, 2006, 10:41:30 AM Perhaps the next release wave of MMOG's may attract a few players from WoW. I doubt they'll stay long once they realize that it's a rehash of what they've already experienced. I disagree. WoW is a social game too, and I'm done with the actual game content, and I'm staying on only cause my friends are there and I can chat with them, and still do things with them, even if it's old. A rehash of the WoW game mechanics, but with new graphics, would be just great, as it would allow us to go through the whole "experience things together" all over again, with new things instead of content we've seen already. I think WoW's subscriptions will continue to rise for quite some time. All they have to do is add new zones, not neccessarily harder or higher tier, but just new things for all the communities of friends that have formed there to experience together. The other games, I have no clue. Some of my friends were talking about trying Vanguard out. I know it's crap, and I've mentioned this to them, but I'll try it if they do. If it's so crappy that it warrants me leaving my friends, then I'll stop playing, but otherwise I'll suffer some if it means continued social entertainment. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: shiznitz on November 07, 2006, 10:56:08 AM I never used to play MMORPGs with Teamspeak or Vent, but now our guild uses a Vent server for EQ2 for just casual playing. Our guild is small and only a bunch of us use it, but it makes it more social. I had played with some of these people for 5 years and never heard their voice or known their real name.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: DataGod on November 07, 2006, 01:38:52 PM @Cheddar
"And how many people trickled from UO, AC, EQ, etc to WoW? A lot." My point exactly, and how many will trickle away? A lot." @Darniaq I'd say retention and churn are directly proportionate to the number of releases currently taking place in the market, youve seen an extended retention in WOW because...well answer this: How many Major MMO's (not indies) have launched since WOW was released? (last 2 years) @WindUp In large guilds (100+) there are typically boards where they plan migration, or plan small groups to check out and evaluate new game relleases, or have internal discussions about beta's they are testing. If a large part of the guild migrates youll see 80% of the members typically migrating. Further how many vet gamers hated wows graphics on initially playing that game, how many of them would like to get back to more detailed graphics. Again how many new mmo players of WOW have only ever seen the "cartoon" graphics in an MMO, what do you think thier initial response will be to more detailed graphic rendering that matches consoles? Ajax34i comments are a good example of the points I'm trying to make. So no I dont think WOW's dying anytime soon, I do think theyll see some churn due to new games, and my point is 07 brings an end to the MMO release drought we've seen since WOW got released.... Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on November 07, 2006, 10:06:57 PM Quote from: Cheddar And how many people trickled from UO, AC, EQ, etc to WoW? A lot. Of course. But work the numbers: EQ at it's peak had only around 525k subscribers. UO around 215k, AC maybe broke 125k if lucky. WoW hit the total of all three of those in the space of 8 weeks (maybe 7). The amount of people that trickled into WoW from back when the genre was assumed to just be three games (because M59 was on hiatus and others were closing), which includes myself, is not nearly as much as the people who have come since. And when I say "since", I mean late 2003/early 2004 when new people were beginning to come into these games due to the rise in media coverage and broadband-equipped households.Quote from: DataGod I'd say retention and churn are directly proportionate to the number of releases currently taking place in the market, youve seen an extended retention in WOW because...well answer this: I agree with this. And looking forward, the expected release of comparable experience, as in those games trying to target a WoW/EQ player, is really not that much more than it has been. We average maybe a handful of these big budget diku-inspired games a year, if that.How many Major MMO's (not indies) have launched since WOW was released? (last 2 years) But this is why I also keep watching the other MMOs out and coming. There's scores of them. They just have no appeal to the WoW/EQ/diku crowd (even if the games share similarities). It's mostly because those games are either imports that can't gain traction for the stigma of grind or legit-RMT, or because they target cutty-pasty crafters or tween/teen players. All this really proves is that there's many sub-categories to MMOs, with sub-groups getting targeted to the exclusion of others. Very VERY few games try to target "the MMO player", partly because that doesn't exist and partly because of the geometrically skyrocketing costs associated with widening the net being cast. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trouble on November 07, 2006, 10:08:06 PM I understand theory, basically that there have been no options since WoW has released. I suppose it has some value, but there HAVE been games released. Lots of smaller games, one notably being D&D. There are games coming out in 2007, but none of them seem to be shaping up to be blockbusters. They all seem to be the type of game that hitting 300k subs would be a huge success. While the quantity may be higher than it has been the last couple years, it still just seems like more of the same, and therefore I have no reason to expect we'll see any extraordinary amounts of migration.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: damijin on November 08, 2006, 01:20:39 AM It saddens me deeply when I hear WoW players who are "in the know", who do check out MMO websites, and do keep up to date on the latest releases -- and the only thing that they think might be mildly better than WoW is WAR. And that's just because it's being touted as WoW+1 in it's alpha nobody-really-knows-anything-yet stage.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: stray on November 08, 2006, 01:24:59 AM It saddens me deeply when I hear WoW players who are "in the know", who do check out MMO websites, and do keep up to date on the latest releases -- and the only thing that they think might be mildly better than WoW is WAR. And that's just because it's being touted as WoW+1 in it's alpha nobody-really-knows-anything-yet stage. Agreed. [edit] Besides all that, I think WAR will hurt Guild Wars more than it hurts WoW. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: squirrel on November 08, 2006, 03:00:53 AM Someone mentioned earlier: Why aren't subscriptions a good indicator of a games popularity? Answer: Sub numbers are a good indicator of a games popularity when there is a decent selection of games on the market, in fact currently, there are not a decent selection of games on the market. Sub numbers are a bad indicator when there are fewer offerings on the market, meaning people settle for what they're comfortable playing. <snip> Thats what Blizzard fears in 2007..... Apologies for the editing but it was a long post. And to the topic - are you fucking kidding me? Are you too young to remember the past? Honestly here's the problem with your argument: a). There are more MMORPG's available to the consumer now than at any other time in gamings history. Fact. (DAoC, SB, EVE, EQ1, EQ2, UO, AO, AC1, Lineage 1/2, DDO, FF, WWIIOL et al.) That more are on the horizon or these are old titles is irrespective of the argument, there's more choice now than ever before. b). As an EVE player (and a SB, DAoC, ACDT, WoW player) I can assure you that WoW refugees are not the catalyst for EVE's growth. If I had to attribute it to another game in fact I would point to the alienated SWG player base, but in general I think EVE is doing a great word of mouth job attracting the PvP crowd from all games in the genre. c.) Subscription numbers ARE everything. You're smoking crack if you think that any of the major publishers in the genre are willing to settle for the 150k level of sustenance now. You talk about player churn and subs as if this was a close race. IT'S NOT. I don't link to he that shall not be named charts but go take a look at WoW's current market share. It's s joke. WoW now defines this market. You cannot trivialize or dismiss that level of commercial success as simply a consumer phase that resulted from a lack of competition. It's not. WoW now OWNS diku-mog. Totally. d.) No upcoming title can even be categorized as a threat to WoW IMO. I'm looking forward to Warhammer, but it won't get more than 250k. Noone will. Come January with Burning Crusade WoW will hit 8+ Million worldwide in 2k7. Vanguard will dissapoint big-time #'s wise. As others have said, Blizzard need only fear itself at this point. They have all the power of their existing product with the additional network economy effects. No other diku is going to catch them, we all know it. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on November 08, 2006, 10:06:37 AM Quote from: Trouble I understand theory, basically that there have been no options since WoW has released. I suppose it has some value, but there HAVE been games released. Lots of smaller games, one notably being D&D. There are games coming out in 2007, but none of them seem to be shaping up to be blockbusters. They all seem to be the type of game that hitting 300k subs would be a huge success. While the quantity may be higher than it has been the last couple years, it still just seems like more of the same, and therefore I have no reason to expect we'll see any extraordinary amounts of migration. This is my point, and has been an ongoing discussion since there were more than three well-played games in the genre. Just replace "WoW" with "EQ" and then (arguably) "FFXI", since it hit more numbers.It's not that there haven't been "no" options. It's that, compared to WoW, almost everything else is an indie production, even when they weren't supposed to be. But again, the same was said in the era of EQ dominance too. There are people who don't do anything unless lots of other people are doing it to. This is the success-breeding-success factor. In general, you get a lot of followers to fall into an already existing experience. Meanwhile, the envelope pushers/trendspotters are both less numerous in number and more discerning. At least nowdays. Three years ago you could label something "MMO" and get 50k registered easy. Nowadays the quality standard (as in, what it looks like, how stable it is, and whether it is immediately fun) are all much higher. This happens to anything that matures, and MMOs are starting to. Quote from: squrrel As an EVE player (and a SB, DAoC, ACDT, WoW player) I can assure you that WoW refugees are not the catalyst for EVE's growth Yea. They have SWG NGE to that for that :) *runs*Quote WoW now defines this market. You cannot trivialize or dismiss that level of commercial success as simply a consumer phase that resulted from a lack of competition. It's not. WoW now OWNS diku-mog. Totally. Unless you measure success differently. 7mil accountis alot. But the amount it cost to make WoW far exceed every other game. They need a lot more accounts. Eve does not. ATITD does not. SL does not. The list goes on.Then forget subs for a sec and go with RMTing. The average person turns a lot more revenue for hte company individually in an RMT situation than they do in a flat-fee one. This is specifically why so many companies are trying to import the concept to the U.S. It will happen because there's too much potential to it already being realized to ignore. It just won't be for the WoW set. It'll be for the next one, the younger players, of which there are way more of them than us, and the baggage we carry. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Yegolev on November 08, 2006, 10:39:57 AM Quote from: squrrel As an EVE player (and a SB, DAoC, ACDT, WoW player) I can assure you that WoW refugees are not the catalyst for EVE's growth Yea. They have SWG NGE to that for that :) *runs*I will third this notion. WoW is the new EverCrack and I have not been able to lure friends into EVE that are currently neck-deep in the WoW raid-for-items culture, only the one who was getting his fantasy diku on in EQ with me. He's also got the personality for EVE, whereas my other friends would find EVE too punishing or freeform or boob-less. The WoW playerbase just isn't the sort to want to try EVE, it's too different in every aspect. SWG, I didn't play, but the surge in EVE subs (currently 150k if you believe CCP) coincides with the CU/NGE timing according to all the reports I hear. I expect there are a lot of SB players that came over after reading about the large-scale scams that sometimes pop up on places like mmorpg.com and such. Once they bothered to investigate EVE and got a peek at the political maneuvering, forum dickwaving, territorial wars, station sieges, etc., I think they saw familiar gameplay and jumped in. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Xuri on November 13, 2006, 07:45:09 PM Trade and community happens in the massive-multiplayer portions of pre-20 Conan. It's the required-MMO/PvP stuff that kicks in thereafter. Think GW public space with single-player instances for 25% of your levels. That's different from what I thought, but still just as gay in it's own special way. I'm no fan of forced grouping, but not being able to group at all for the first twenty levels? Are they charging me a monthly fee while I'm doing this shit? No. A quote from the lead developer of AoC: Quote At all times you are actually playing against our servers, and you will be able to send/receive tells to and from friends playing in the MMO part of the game. You will have to enter your credit card, and also gain access to the full month of free play time in the MMO part of the game. The players will be able to enter the MMO at level 20, were you also choose your specialized class. Even without paying any monthly subscription you will be able to play the solo campaign as long as you want, and as many times as you like – as long as you have a valid CD key and have registered a Credit card. ShackNews, 16th June 2006 (Gaute Godager) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trippy on November 13, 2006, 08:02:47 PM Trade and community happens in the massive-multiplayer portions of pre-20 Conan. It's the required-MMO/PvP stuff that kicks in thereafter. Think GW public space with single-player instances for 25% of your levels. That's different from what I thought, but still just as gay in it's own special way. I'm no fan of forced grouping, but not being able to group at all for the first twenty levels? Are they charging me a monthly fee while I'm doing this shit?Quote At all times you are actually playing against our servers, and you will be able to send/receive tells to and from friends playing in the MMO part of the game. You will have to enter your credit card, and also gain access to the full month of free play time in the MMO part of the game. The players will be able to enter the MMO at level 20, were you also choose your specialized class. Even without paying any monthly subscription you will be able to play the solo campaign as long as you want, and as many times as you like – as long as you have a valid CD key and have registered a Credit card. ShackNews, 16th June 2006 (Gaute Godager) Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: caladein on November 14, 2006, 01:11:58 AM It saddens me deeply when I hear WoW players who are "in the know", who do check out MMO websites, and do keep up to date on the latest releases -- and the only thing that they think might be mildly better than WoW is WAR. And that's just because it's being touted as WoW+1 in it's alpha nobody-really-knows-anything-yet stage. Agreed. [edit] Besides all that, I think WAR will hurt Guild Wars more than it hurts WoW. Because it has the most interesting take of the first batch of WoW-clones? WoW + PvP sounds a lot more interesting then WoW + Hobbits or WoW + Electrodes to the Scrotum. Since no one is really spending $50mil+ on something right now, they can't afford the breadth of WoW while maintaining polish (because half-baked thankfully won't cut it anymore). So either they try it all and fail or try to take as much of WoW as they can and add their own emphasis. Knowing that, WAR is the only thing even remotely on my (and a lot of my friend's/guildmate's) radar for that reason. EVE, GW, Huxley, or AoC I see as different beasts. For me, they're something different, they're Lineage 2 during my last few seasons of CAL-BF42 (after playing FPSs forever). So they hold my interest not as Robot Jesus, but because they're something that isn't WoW. Hell, I've even lost interest in WAR because the WoW expansion is addressing just about every complaint I had about WoW's PvP. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 14, 2006, 05:00:57 AM I know what Blizzard has to fear: World of Warcraft Trading Card Game (http://ude.com/wow)
Seriously, I'm enjoying it way more than the MMORPG. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: dEOS on November 14, 2006, 08:36:17 AM The next MMORPG to be feared by Blizzard is the next one that will launch after having a beta that doesn't use NDA.
All MMORPG that have used NDA during betas to protect info leaks have been fiasco. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Sunbury on November 14, 2006, 09:06:54 AM On a somewhat related note, "American Dad" did a (unnamed) MMORPG story just like South Park did a WoW-related story.
Since it takes like 8 months from concept to air, it can't be a copy cat idea. Does this indicate that MMORPGs have reached "mainstream pop-culture consciousness" (whatever that means) because of WoWs player base? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on November 14, 2006, 09:11:15 AM They reached that status when Dave Chappelle started talking about how much WoW he played.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trippy on November 14, 2006, 03:50:19 PM I thought it was when Curt Schilling talked about how much EQ he played.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Driakos on November 14, 2006, 04:29:12 PM No no no, it was when Robin Williams talked about playing WoW.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nebu on November 14, 2006, 04:55:36 PM No no no, it was when Robin Williams talked about playing Fixed Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Rasix on November 14, 2006, 05:12:24 PM No no no, it was when Robin Williams talked about playing Fixed Found links for BF2 (http://www.joystiq.com/2005/12/14/robin-williams-is-a-sniper-in-battlefield-2/) and WoW. (http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/top/kotaku-stalku-robin-williams-gets-arse-kicked-by-wow-173017.php) I saw him mention DAoC (http://movies.zap2it.com/movies/news/story/0,1259,---13446,00.html) in an interview, but not actually say that he played it. And yes, before you ask, I'm bored. Waiting for the wife to bring home some food :-D Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Fabricated on November 14, 2006, 07:11:04 PM Robin Williams is a long admitted gamer, and a pretty hardcore one at that. He played Team Fortress Classic and was a sniper in that too. I think he played Counterstrike and Day of Defeat as well.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Raph on November 15, 2006, 09:54:18 AM The average person turns a lot more revenue for hte company individually in an RMT situation than they do in a flat-fee one. Actually, the typical ARPU figures I have seen range from as low as $5 to as high as $30. Based on multiple subholders, I'd estimate that typical ARPU for a sub-based MMO is around $30-$37. The thing about microtransactions is that you make it up in volume (as subs provide a barrier to entry to the product and a high price threshold), plus you don't have the artificial barrier at the high end of the spending scale; people can and do spend $1000's. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on November 15, 2006, 10:14:17 AM Robin Williams is a long admitted gamer, and a pretty hardcore one at that. He played Team Fortress Classic and was a sniper in that too. I think he played Counterstrike and Day of Defeat as well. I dunno if I could live down the shame of being WTFpwned by Robin Williams. Then again, I suck at FPS games. (Only one I ever finished was Dark Forces II. I keep meaning to buy Halo 2.....). Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on November 15, 2006, 10:29:02 AM I'd get pwned by Robin Williams just to hear the shit-talk over voice chat.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 15, 2006, 10:30:32 AM I'd get pwned by Robin Williams just to hear the shit-talk over voice chat. [sinij]But you cant because you carebears destroyed an entire MMOG and are pussies and hide in safe zones! [/sinij] Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: DataGod on November 15, 2006, 12:13:46 PM "Apologies for the editing but it was a long post. And to the topic - are you fucking kidding me? Are you too young to remember the past?"
Oh lets not get into ageism shall we.....I really liked playing dungeon master on my commadore 64 with its tape drive that took 30 minutes to laod a 1mb game....what about you? "Honestly here's the problem with your argument: a). There are more MMORPG's available to the consumer now than at any other time in gamings history. Fact. (DAoC, SB, EVE, EQ1, EQ2, UO, AO, AC1, Lineage 1/2, DDO, FF, WWIIOL et al.) That more are on the horizon or these are old titles is irrespective of the argument, there's more choice now than ever before." I wasnt arguing about volume of choice, I was commenting about volume of new releases of 3rd generation titles, its obvious that the bell curve (at least to me) contains the newest, shiney, thats what people flock to, its also quite obvious that the area under the curve is dominated by WOW. Choice and a products position in the market does not indicate that one product is more superior to another product, there can be correlations, but no not always.... Examples: There are choices in cars, but Im sure youd rather be driving a new Jag rather than a Model A (unless your a classic PS: You forgot M59 b). As an EVE player (and a SB, DAoC, ACDT, WoW player) I can assure you that WoW refugees are not the catalyst for EVE's growth. If I had to attribute it to another game in fact I would point to the alienated SWG player base, but in general I think EVE is doing a great word of mouth job attracting the PvP crowd from all games in the genre. As an EvE player I can assure you that SWG refugees are a part of EVE's growth as well, from the point of the NGE, until maybe 5 months ago. I also attrribute it to PVPers playing WOW getting board...... c.) Subscription numbers ARE everything. You're smoking crack if you think that any of the major publishers in the genre are willing to settle for the 150k level of sustenance now. You talk about player churn and subs as if this was a close race. IT'S NOT. I don't link to he that shall not be named charts but go take a look at WoW's current market share. It's s joke. WoW now defines this market. You cannot trivialize or dismiss that level of commercial success as simply a consumer phase that resulted from a lack of competition. It's not. WoW now OWNS diku-mog. Totally. Are subscriptions everything? Or are active accounts everthing? Or are actual unique players everything? or are registered users everything? SL has 1.3 million registered but 10-20k concurrent at any one time. I dont know, I'd say 150k subs is a nice longtail niche and likely a decent ROI for a small to medium or even indie publisher. I dont know the motives of what drives a major publisher, perhaps you can enlighten me, but I will say this, not even the president of Vivendi thinks anyone should be spending 60+ million making a game (raph had a link to the speech on his site). The conclusion then that I draw as an observer is that attempting to "race" is likely not a good idea. Therefore that leaves those who dont want to burn 60+m with another choice: create more games, cheaper, in less time. "WOW now defines this market" So what your saying is every MMO developer should either be looking to raise some VC money to the tune of 60+m or just throw in the towel, call it a day and go work doing something else? Because WOW has magically innovated as far as this genre can go? I call bullshit, go visit multiverse, go visit SL, go visit any of the many free casual online games available..... The era of the blockbuster movie is comming to a close, so to with games. WOW was the last 60m huzzah....WOW is to MMO what the backstreet boys are to music (A The Longtail refferance). I dont dismiss its commercial success, it was brilliantly executed for optimal optimization and adoptation bringing new players into the genre. So is Mc Donalds d.) "No upcoming title can even be categorized as a threat to WoW IMO. I'm looking forward to Warhammer, but it won't get more than 250k. Noone will. Come January with Burning Crusade WoW will hit 8+ Million worldwide in 2k7. Vanguard will dissapoint big-time #'s wise." I actually agree with this (partially) no one is a threat to Myspace either, and yet large (and small) alternatives exist side by side in the market place.....slowly gaining users as the suckage factor increases. What Im saying and my point was that while WOW wont miss 50-100k here and there (actually I think they would because money is money, and theyre very attentive to the bottom line) 50-100k X 5 or X 10 or X 20? well now your talking a bleed.....a net loss. You seriously think they'll get another 800k users because they added an end game expansion people cant access until the current level cap? Tell you what I'll trade you crack, mines apparently pretty good. (I'll give them 50K + more accounts as en estimate but those are all the banned gold farmers releveling toons) Warhammer at 250k to 350k and thats bad how? I'd say thats very respectable. Even 60-100k for Vanguard will be decent for long term ROI for Brad, good for him, at least its not a clone of the thing that defines the market eh? As others have said, Blizzard need only fear itself at this point. They have all the power of their existing product with the additional network economy effects. No other diku is going to catch them, we all know it And why would anyone want to? When they could made nearly 6 other games for the same price with a decent ROI? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Damn Dirty Ape on November 15, 2006, 04:55:20 PM As an EvE player I can assure you that SWG refugees are a part of EVE's growth as well, from the point of the NGE, until maybe 5 months ago. I also attrribute it to PVPers playing WOW getting board...... I can't imagine why anyone, especially a PvPer, would play WoW for getting board. The game doesn't even have a lumberjack skill! :rimshot: Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Signe on November 15, 2006, 05:40:36 PM That was really corny. :roll:
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Damn Dirty Ape on November 15, 2006, 06:08:13 PM (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/Ep_503_03.gif)
Wow, what a really great audience. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Driakos on November 15, 2006, 06:46:20 PM You seriously think they'll get another 800k users because they added an end game expansion people cant access until the current level cap? Tell you what I'll trade you crack, mines apparently pretty good. (I'll give them 50K + more accounts as en estimate but those are all the banned gold farmers releveling toons) I think you are going to end up eating that. 10 million by next fall (2007) would be a modest guesstimate (if BC launches in January). Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Viin on November 15, 2006, 07:22:45 PM I also don't see how an expansion will increase subs. Granted, they are increasing subs all the time, but will it boost that growth? Or just keep their current playerbase from leaving for a while longer? (Thus the win to loss ratio might lower a bit).
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 15, 2006, 07:41:54 PM I also don't see how an expansion will increase subs. Granted, they are increasing subs all the time, but will it boost that growth? Or just keep their current playerbase from leaving for a while longer? (Thus the win to loss ratio might lower a bit). I was under the impression that the primary point of releasing expansions is to draw in new players and cancelled subs. Taking what we have seen in the past (via furry boys graphs) we can probably speculate a 20% growth rate. I could be wrong. From a design perspective, what is the primary objective for an expansion? Raph? Lum? Bueller? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: UnSub on November 15, 2006, 08:05:36 PM The BC expansion will see a spike in the numbers... but by how much is anyone's guess. All the stuff I, a non-WoW player, hear about BC is that it is end-content centric. Given I haven't even started on the beginning content, the expansion means nothing to me.
WoW has re-written a number of MMOG rules, so it will be interesting to see if the expansion really does boost player numbers up to 10 million or if the upwards spike is just a small trend (ie 500k). Are there really hordes of WoW players out there who have unsubbed and just waiting for the hot new thing, or are they just not active right now but still paying the monthly fee? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trippy on November 15, 2006, 08:14:34 PM Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Threash on November 15, 2006, 09:26:16 PM Quote You seriously think they'll get another 800k users because they added an end game expansion people cant access until the current level cap? Tell you what I'll trade you crack, mines apparently pretty good. (I'll give them 50K + more accounts as en estimate but those are all the banned gold farmers releveling toons) Oh this is going to be fun to bump when they hit 10 million users 3 months after the expansion, yeah that my prediction, though most of them will be returning customers (that arent currently counted on the 7.5mil). Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WindupAtheist on November 15, 2006, 10:13:01 PM People here still seem to think WoW is populated by savvy MMO players worried about whether the expansion is endgame-centric or not. Wrong. You fail. It's populated by millions and millions of normal gamers who've never played an MMO before WoW, have never purchased an MMO expansion before, are used to buying expansions for their normal games, and who are going to walk into that store and think "SWEET NEW WOW BOX IT WAS ON SOUTH PARK LOL!"
Ten million within three months? I don't know, they may not be printing discs that fast. Ten million within the first six to twelve months? You bet your ass. And the guy who predicted a gain of a mere 50k needs to quit smoking catnip. A gain of 50k would be well under one percent, and may as well be zero. They ban 50k people for cheating every couple months and never miss them. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: caladein on November 16, 2006, 12:12:21 AM Ten million within three months? I don't know, they may not be printing discs that fast. Ten million within the first six to twelve months? You bet your ass. If their patching system didn't blow goats they could probably move up to Money Sombreros just selling the keys from their site (at full price even). Of course, University IT departments are probably very glad that isn't going to happen. Still though, throw me in the "10mil in six months" bracket. If Blizzard gets their Asian distribution deals cleared up quick, three months doesn't look so impossible. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: eldaec on November 16, 2006, 07:58:22 AM I also don't see how an expansion will increase subs. Granted, they are increasing subs all the time, but will it boost that growth? Or just keep their current playerbase from leaving for a while longer? (Thus the win to loss ratio might lower a bit). Because they put your box back on the retail shelves, and because they always have increased subs of every MMOG ever. Quote I don't link to he that shall not be named charts SirBruce is not 'he who shall not be named'. 'He who shall not be named' phd, is the author of a series of spacecraft "simulations". He became 'he who shall not be named' because of his habit of using search engines to seek out message boards that mention him or his "product" and then vomit-posting all over them. Sirbruce on the other hand is just a dick with too much time on his hands; lets not go giving him airs. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Ironwood on November 16, 2006, 09:23:27 AM He still reads the site tho. You've just offended him beyond his ability to reply. Shame on you.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Morat20 on November 16, 2006, 09:24:14 AM SirBruce is not 'he who shall not be named'. 'He who shall not be named' phd, is the author of a series of spacecraft "simulations". He became 'he who shall not be named' because of his habit of using search engines to seek out message boards that mention him or his "product" and then vomit-posting all over them. Sirbruce on the other hand is just a dick with too much time on his hands; lets not go giving him airs. Okay, I'm showing my newbness here -- someone PM me the story on that one, please. I gotta know who it is. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on November 16, 2006, 09:31:09 AM Serek Dmart, Serek Dmart, Serek Dmart.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: WayAbvPar on November 16, 2006, 09:31:59 AM Serek Dmart, Serek Dmart, Serek Dmart. You are a very bad man. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Nebu on November 16, 2006, 10:28:17 AM Serek Dmart, Serek Dmart, Serek Dmart. (http://www.u-blog.net/hide1983/img/films-beetlejuice.jpg) Oops, wrong guy... or is it? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: HaemishM on November 16, 2006, 11:30:32 AM The one in your picture is better looking, and likely doesn't smell like Jovan Musk.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Daeven on November 16, 2006, 12:09:09 PM *Attempts counter spell*
BC3k is the blestestest Flight simulator / ground combat / driving / HR emulator / Space combat / Elite Clone released by 3 publishers EVER! Joe Huffington is the devil! Coke Machines do not kick back! *flees* Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: squirrel on November 16, 2006, 07:55:45 PM You seriously think they'll get another 800k users because they added an end game expansion people cant access until the current level cap? Tell you what I'll trade you crack, mines apparently pretty good. (I'll give them 50K + more accounts as en estimate but those are all the banned gold farmers releveling toons) Quote from: squirrel No upcoming title can even be categorized as a threat to WoW IMO. I'm looking forward to Warhammer, but it won't get more than 250k. Noone will. Come January with Burning Crusade WoW will hit 8+ Million worldwide in 2k7. Vanguard will dissapoint big-time #'s wise. Um, yeah I think they'll EASILY get 800k more subs in 2007 to get to 8 million. Which is what I said (above), not solely based on the BC expac. If you seriously think they will only get another 50k subs in 2007 you're not on crack, you're mentally deficient. Which I don't believe because I somewhat agree on your stance regarding smaller niche titles - PotBS is one I'm looking forward to. But I don't believe that any major publisher will establish a comprehensive enough stable to threaten Blizz/Vivendi. Hence why I don't think Blizzard fears that at all. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Cheddar on November 16, 2006, 07:57:59 PM Look kids, its simple. WoW is the new USA. Get used to it.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on November 21, 2006, 08:19:16 AM Serek Dmart, Serek Dmart, Serek Dmart. You are a very bad man. He should know that Serek Dmart, PhD is only to be mentioned in italics (http://archive.gamespy.com/dailyvictim/index.asp?id=232), and even then, with reverence. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Venkman on November 21, 2006, 01:08:42 PM You seriously think they'll get another 800k users because they added an end game expansion people cant access until the current level cap? Tell you what I'll trade you crack, mines apparently pretty good. (I'll give them 50K + more accounts as en estimate but those are all the banned gold farmers releveling toons) Um, yeah I think they'll EASILY get 800k more subs in 2007 to get to 8 million. Which is what I said (above), not solely based on the BC expac. If you seriously think they will only get another 50k subs in 2007 you're not on crack, you're mentally deficient. But more importantly, it's not about increasing the current numbers by 800k or more. It's about getting back everyone who's left. I have no idea how many people have left, and how many new players have come to push their number over 7.5mil, but I would guess they've at least lost 2mil accounts in two years (about 20% loss maybe). My best is they hit at least 9mil, with a very real shot at 10mil. They probably won't sustain that into the summer, as everyone who returns will quickly remember why they left in the face of new content that isn't so fundamentally different from what's already there. And that is a real danger for Blizzard. The hype of their success has dragged in lots of previously-resistant players. It'll be interesting to see if the negativity of a decline would accelerate that decline. But I wholly expect Blizzard to stop reporting numbers long before they show a decline if one comes. [/quote] Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on November 22, 2006, 01:12:47 AM But I wholly expect Blizzard to stop reporting numbers long before they show a decline if one comes. You may well think that, and you might even be right. But Blizzard's Chinese partner is less able to shield such info from investors. So we know that use of WoW is down 10% in China this quarter (http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2169162/warcraft-profits-fall-China): Quote "The fall in revenue comes as long-term users begin to desert the aging game in China." I have no doubt that they are right to suggest that numbers will spike again with the release of TBC. I admit that I seem to be the only person who thinks that The Burning Crusade is a terrible expansion, with largely insubstantial changes to make the factions even more identical ("balanced") and nothing new in the crucial 20-60 range beyond grinding a new tradeskill in the worst crafting game I've played in ages. But still, does anyone think that TBC will string teh same people along for another 2 years? Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trippy on November 22, 2006, 01:20:28 AM But I wholly expect Blizzard to stop reporting numbers long before they show a decline if one comes. You may well think that, and you might even be right.But Blizzard's Chinese partner is less able to shield such info from investors. So we know that use of WoW is down 10% in China this quarter (http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2169162/warcraft-profits-fall-China): Quote "The fall in revenue comes as long-term users begin to desert the aging game in China." Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Xuri on November 22, 2006, 01:27:54 AM In other news, Funcom have apparently decided to let players group(link (http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?session=d2xk54lufyxd0ukoowq0kos4hwvifz&func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=1411&sort=PRIORITY&table=CONTENT)) with other players during the 20 initial "single player"-levels of Age of Conan, after listening to feedback from their testers in closed beta.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Ironwood on November 22, 2006, 01:33:59 AM Shock, Horror.
:roll: Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 22, 2006, 01:49:34 AM You all know I am crazy, sickfuck, broken and whatever. But coherently with my prediction, enter the 2008 Wow-killer, also called internally "WoW 2.0".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-p9-ABGG_g Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trippy on November 22, 2006, 02:01:16 AM You all know I am crazy, sickfuck, broken and whatever. But coherently with my prediction, enter the 2008 Wow-killer, also called internally "WoW 2.0". More like "WoW 1.1". I'm mean, that's like the best they can do after all this time? How about aiming a little higher next time?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-p9-ABGG_g Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on November 22, 2006, 02:07:03 AM It's nice that the poster is trying to recreate that mid-90's WFB heyday thing with the soundtrack. I think that the last time I heard Megadeath's "Symphony of Destruction" was a decade ago, in the Games Workshop shop in Edinburgh. I expect Bolt-Thrower or some other Norwegian Death Metal band on the next one.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Trippy on November 22, 2006, 02:23:57 AM It's nice that the poster is trying to recreate that mid-90's WFB heyday thing with the soundtrack. I think that the last time I heard Megadeath's "Symphony of Destruction" was a decade ago, in the Games Workshop shop in Edinburgh. I expect Bolt-Thrower or some other Norwegian Death Metal band on the next one. Except that Mythic ditched the "dark" style that Climax originally developed that more closely matched WH's illustration and art style and went with the brightly colored cartoon style of the 'Eavy Metal painted miniatures (which, oddly enough, looks a lot like what Blizzard did with WarCraft).Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Falconeer on November 22, 2006, 02:26:12 AM More like "WoW 1.1". I'm mean, that's like the best they can do after all this time? How about aiming a little higher next time? You are not so far from the truth, but that's what I used to say for the whole 2003 and 2004 watching to WoW pre-release screenshots. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Endie on November 22, 2006, 02:36:02 AM It's nice that the poster is trying to recreate that mid-90's WFB heyday thing with the soundtrack. I think that the last time I heard Megadeath's "Symphony of Destruction" was a decade ago, in the Games Workshop shop in Edinburgh. I expect Bolt-Thrower or some other Norwegian Death Metal band on the next one. Except that Mythic ditched the "dark" style that Climax originally developed that more closely matched WH's illustration and art style and went with the brightly colored cartoon style of the 'Eavy Metal painted miniatures (which, oddly enough, looks a lot like what Blizzard did with WarCraft).Yeah, I really liked the darker art style they were going with in the cancelled version. The sewers under one of the cities (Middenheim?) in particular looked pretty promising. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Simond on November 22, 2006, 03:44:04 AM By 'cancelled' you mean 'vapourware', yes? Climax were the (software pirating) developers who grabbed random people off the street to bulk out their headcount whenever investors were wandering round the offices, iirc. That version of Warhammer Online was about as likely to ship as Dawn or the original, permadeath, version of MEO/LOTRO.
Anyway, WAR will be DAoC v2 - Mythic will try and 'fix' everything wrong with WoW (as per DAoC:EQ), introduce a whole bunch more problems, be unable to balance PvE & PvP (*cough*Trials of Atlantis*cough*), and ultimately end up with less subs than the game they were trying to improve upon. In my opinion, natch. Plus, you know, EA. Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Arthur_Parker on November 22, 2006, 02:32:21 PM I'm a bit of a fanboy for WAR but that video wasn't very good.
Title: Re: Who DOES Blizzard need to fear? Post by: Lt.Dan on November 22, 2006, 02:46:28 PM I'm a bit of a fanboy for WAR but that video wasn't very good. Yeah, what's up with the dwarf's giant steps? |