LOTRO TAXI to victory lasted two weeks

[Merusk]

And with the announcement of SC2, the Starcraft battlechest starts appearing on shelves again.  Heh, funny.

(It's been missing locally for about a year. At least that was the last time I saw it.. still see D2 and WC3 all over)

[Johny Cee]

Anyway I already read LOTR, why do I care about the story in the game? I'm all for a good story but I'd prefer one that I hadn't read before and that hadn't already been rehashed 100 times.

It's not the story from LOTR.  It takes place in parallel with the Fellowship and its stuff, but IIRC, they haven't even left Rivendell yet when you get into the storyline.

Turbine can't mess with canon,  so the quests and storyline focus on the North and what's left out or only hinted at in the books.  You get lots of Halbarad, Radagast, etc. directing you in chain quests with specific goals.  It's focused on the reaction in the North to the coming war.  All that's really mentioned in the text is a decisive battle at the Lonely Mountain,  and Mirkwood and Lothlorien ganging up and taking out Angmar.

The North is pretty much glossed over in the text, so there's a fair amount of wiggle room.  Looks like they'll keep advancing the storyline while opening up new zones.  I expect to see Moria, Mirkwood, and the rest opened up in the next year or so....  not sure if they're ever going to push South too far, as that really would get tricky to try and stay true to canon.

The story/lore/world is really very well integrated.  The Story quests are decent,  and the chain quests related to specific places and events can be pretty good.  "Retake Weathertop" is a good example, I think.

Still need alot more solo content in the 30 level range.  It's very dependent on group quests right now,  which are...  a little much the third time you have to do a "fight elites for 2 hours to finish off one quest" deal. 

[Falconeer]

Third weak after release and HRose posts showed it was still at number 4 in the US. Second weak after release they were number 3 http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/790/790642p1.html Vanguard had dropped to number 6 in its third week and did not have a new release above it besides WOW:BC unlike LotRO. By the fourth week it was out of the top 10.

top-10 best selling PC games list for the week of May 20-26th

    1) World Of Warcraft - Vivendi - $18
    2) World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack - Vivendi - $39
    3) Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars - Electronic Arts - $49
    4) The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $30
    5) Starcraft: Battle Chest - Vivendi - $19
    6) Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows Of Angmar - Midway - $49

Given that I consider sales charts as useful as Nielsen rating or whatever it's called, where did you get that chart from, Rose? Is it for North America? Europe? Australasia? World? Linky?

[Trippy]

Here's the list from IGN:

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/794/794007p1.html

However without specific box sales numbers those charts are almost totally useless.

[Phred]

Never gets old.

Except when it's used in a completely unrelated juxtaposition like hrose did in this thread.

[Hound]

The only thing I can really go by is the player load on Silverlode and guild retention numbers. Seems as if the game is pretty stable using both of those measures since I have no problem finding a group in the evenings and the guild forums are not littered with asta la vista posts. Since Turbine is not a publicly traded company I could really give a shit about the number of boxes sold, if I had a block or 2 of their stock then I would worry about box sales.

As far as predictions go, I think the game will enjoy steady growth and this is the first game that will begin the steady leaching of WoW subs. WAR and AoC appear to be another 2 that will be chipping away at the giants throne, although I doubt it will be toppled for a long time to come. Still a hundred thousand here and a another hundred thousand there adds up to a lot of money subscription wise so I would imagine the bean counters at Blizzard are having night sweats.

[Slayerik]

 Still a hundred thousand here and a another hundred thousand there adds up to a lot of money subscription wise so I would imagine the bean counters at Blizzard are having night sweats.

Until they look and go...Hmmm, UO still has like 100k subs after all this time. People become attached to their first MMO. With all the money Blizz has made off this thing, its just a matter of how they can best milk it from here on. You know they expect churn. You know they are planning/working on their next HUGE MMO.

I believe the night sweats really start about the time of AoC launch. Its the only game I know that my old WoW guild will try out. Its also the only game I'll be able to suck my RL friends into. AoC will be big. We'll see how much Funcom has learned soon enough.

Me and some other friends JUST started LOTRO, the only reason is to kill time until AoC. So far, my wife and I seemed to have fun last night in the newbie zone. The graphics are a nice change of pace from WoW...but there is just so much WoW in the game. Not sure if I will buy it after my ten day trial.

[Arthur_Parker]

Interview

Prior to its release, there was some talk about how Lord of the Rings Online might just be a World of Warcraft clone with better graphics. Even if it were a mediocre game, LOTRO would probably have achieved marginal success just for the fact that it featured Urukai orcs and the occasional Gandalf reference. But criticisms that LOTRO was just another “me too” MMO were soon silenced. In just a little over a month, the game has become quite a success, securing its place as the second largest western MMO operating today. Not bad for a so called WoW clone eh?

No figures, so dunno.  HRose you hear that?  You have been silenced!

[Falconeer]

In par with the IGN meaningless numbers, I'll post my meaningless sale chart for EUROPE's last week (source? it doesn't matter when you are n the meaningless chart realm):

1 ) Tomb Raider: Anniversary
2 ) Prey
3 ) The Sims 2
4 ) The Sims 2: H&M Fashion Stuff
5 ) Football Manager 2007
6 ) World Of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (Expansion Pack)
7 ) World Of Warcraft
8 ) Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars Kane Edition (DVD)

Oh look, good ole ChampMan pwned WoW. This means that Blizzard will announce server mergers in the next 3 months and will declare bankrupt in the next 6.

On a mildly different note, let me tell you a story. A true story, it happened to me.
Today I went to school to pickup son and well, some guys were handing out some free stuff to the kiddos. I was curious about it so I went in the crowd and investigated about it. When I was 12 they used to hand out free football stickers and sticker albums, and I loved that so I actually stepped in trying without shame to grab something for myself. But this guy was apparently giving out DVDs... what the hell?

World of Warcraft dvds.

There were these guys in front of all the major schools of Roma handing out free WoW 14 days trial DVDs. To 11 to 13 years old kid. I'd leave the commentary to you, but the next time I hear someone comparing WoW sci-fi sale figures (and investment) to regular down-to-earth MMOs I'll shoot.

Oh, almost forgot, but I think this is VERY interesting. In Italy there are some (lousy) recent laws about marketing and stuff like that, so you have to write stuff that you are supposed to be able to prove. So well, tied with the WoW dvd there was this ad flyer (in italian) claiming stuff like "JOIN 8 MILLION PLAYERS AROUND THE GLOBE(*) IN ONE ONLINE WORLD!

The (*)asterisk led to a very very very tiny note hidden in the bottom of the page saying this (in italian): (*) Based on the number of created accounts ("Basato sul numero di account creati") (I'll post a scan if you don't believe me).

Well, that was curious to me. Am I missing something? Didn't we used to teaste Lineage 2 numbers because they were based on created accounts? I was under the impression that 8 millions were the ACTIVE WoW accounts around the world. Should the italian flyer (it's an official Blizzard ad) be right and true, aren't 8 million "created account" worldwide much less than we all thought about the actual WoW figures?

[Modern Angel]

LOTRO is a solid, pretty game with a few extremely glaring flaws that are making my eyes start to twitch everytime I log on now.

1) Money. Repair costs are too much, crafting is too much, auction fees are too much, training is too much. You can stay afloat but this needs a serious adjustment four weeks ago.

2) Travel. So I decide to play for the first time in a week. I bop over to Rivendell to craft a couple things (friends needed some gems cut so they can pursue their deluded crafting goals) and then hearth (map) out to wherever it was that I was questing. Only to find out I'm in a place with no bank, I forgot to drop off my bag full of crafting shit and I'm motherfucking thirty minutes from a bank. Travel just takes too long because I have to sit there and wait. One of the best things WOW ever did was the auto flight paths.

Travel's too expensive too.

3) Boar pieces. I don't want to kill anymore boars. The problem is that the Tolkien estate is very, very protective of their license and in the books as written there's not exactly a wealth of enemies to choose from. Spiders are bad, wolves are bad and there are orcs but... well, that's pretty much it. So I'm still killing boars to feed villages at level 25 and my friends are still doing it in their 30s and I just don't want to kill anymore fucking boars.

4) The UI/combat pacing (which I think are totally related) has been covered pretty well elsewhere.

I'm still subbed and I'm still having fun in short spurts but the game is really let down by a few poor design decisions that grate on me the more I play. I'm holding out for this first big content patch to see how it goes.

[Modern Angel]

Oh, Monster Play. This was my big draw: world pvp over objectives that people actually cared about. Except Meneldor now has a good number of 40-50 people and nobody gives a fuck. Seriously, I've seen two players in the zone EVER. I think it has to do with the type of player it attracts. They're more interested in living in ME than pewpew which makes for a nice community but for shitty pvp.

[DraconianOne]

In par with the IGN meaningless numbers, I'll post my meaningless sale chart for EUROPE's last week (source? it doesn't matter when you are n the meaningless chart realm):

Here are the charts for the last week in the UK.  LOTRO at #4. 

1 COMMAND & CONQUER 3: TIBERIUM WARS
2     FOOTBALL MANAGER 2007
3     WORLD OF WARCRAFT: THE BURNING CRUSADE
4     LOTR ONLINE: SHADOWS OF ANGMAR
5     THE SIMS 2: SEASONS
6     THE SIMS 2
...
11     GUILD WARS: NIGHTFALL

I mention 11 because if you check the archive, it seems that about 4 weeks ago, GW: Nightfall was at #19.  This means than in a couple of weeks it will be the best game ever in the history of everything.

[Merusk]

Oh, almost forgot, but I think this is VERY interesting. In Italy there are some (lousy) recent laws about marketing and stuff like that, so you have to write stuff that you are supposed to be able to prove. So well, tied with the WoW dvd there was this ad flyer (in italian) claiming stuff like "JOIN 8 MILLION PLAYERS AROUND THE GLOBE(*) IN ONE ONLINE WORLD!

The (*)asterisk led to a very very very tiny note hidden in the bottom of the page saying this (in italian): (*) Based on the number of created accounts ("Basato sul numero di account creati") (I'll post a scan if you don't believe me).

Well, that was curious to me. Am I missing something? Didn't we used to teaste Lineage 2 numbers because they were based on created accounts? I was under the impression that 8 millions were the ACTIVE WoW accounts around the world. Should the italian flyer (it's an official Blizzard ad) be right and true, aren't 8 million "created account" worldwide much less than we all thought about the actual WoW figures?

Given what you describe about the Italian laws around advertising, saying "x-million created accounts" is more sensible than having to reprint those promos every time subs change, or having someone come back later to file against them.  Sounds like a cautious legal team, to me.   The figures Blizzard/ VU uses in their press releases have always previously indicated they were referring to active accounts in the previous 30 days.

[HRose]

But criticisms that LOTRO was just another “me too” MMO were soon silenced. In just a little over a month, the game has become quite a success, securing its place as the second largest western MMO operating today.

Like DDO being the fastest selling MMO?

Eve-Online is likely bigger than LOTRO currently. If they dare to repeat those claims why don't they give us subs numbers? It would clear out most of the suspects and guesses.

And pretty much every review I read about LOTRO, while praising it, repeats it's a "me too" MMO.

[HRose]

If you think about it the MMO market isn't exactly flourishing as a whole.

UO, EQ, DAoC, AC, Anarchy Online, DDO, Auto Assault, Vanguard, Matrix Online, SWG... These are all wrecks with nothing left to say. EQ2 survives off WoW's crumbs.

Where's this competition if you exclude those decaying wrecks and all the other works in project? Is really Eve currently the biggest and most solid MMO outside of WoW?

For a market supposed to be popular and growing the overall choice and quality sucks.

[Trippy]

Interview
In just a little over a month, the game has become quite a success, securing its place as the second largest western MMO operating today. Not bad for a so called WoW clone eh?

Unless they can show me where that information came from I'm assuming Games Radar just made that up. I.e. that's not a quote from Turbine.

[Calantus]

Interestingly enough, *one* of early LotRO quests is of this "think for yourself" variety. Player is asked by few hundred year old ghost to find a ring which was lost somewhere "close to black rock, near the barracks gate". The catch is (and the quest text indicates it) there is no barracks in "modern Bree" anymore. The solution is to head to *old* part of town and search ruins there that include large, flashing rock at that point.

Not surprisingly this quest is the single most queried about thing in the game 'advice' channel, with typically 5-10 people asking for help to solve it, per hour.

That's a shit quest. No really, scavenger hunts are not interesting or challenging in any meaningful way. You guys are just so busy going crazy over not having a quest tell you what to do that you don't realise how it's still a shit quest. If you want to challenge a player you should, you know, challenge them, not give them a quest that is merely a function of time and luck. Make them solve a puzzle or fight a combat for the ring, not search rocks near ruins until they come across the right one. Don't make a player talk to or hover over NPCs until they find the right one to give them a clue euther, if the player wants to talk to NPCs they can do so of their own choice. I read every quest text, I talk to random NPCs all the time, but when all I want to do is finish a quest I don't want to be having to scavenger hunt for some lame NPC/item because not giving me accurate directions somehow adds to my game.

[Calantus]

I'm willing to bet that if you quizzed the playerbase right this minute, that they couldn't tell you anything specific about the majority of quests they've done unless something about it was close to a plotline they saw in the movies.  They click, grab the quest, follow the laundry list, and get their carrot.  DING GRATZ!  (and all that)

It's on. WoW quests and why you're given them incoming. All from memory.

Dun Morough

A dwarf wants you to collect meat from wolves for food supplies.
A dwarf wants you to kill troggs because they're a threat.
Your class trainer wants to see you.
A dwarf wants you to deliver the mail to someone away from the town.
A gnome wants you to pick up his tools that he had to leave behind because trolls ran him out.
When you deliver the mail it also has a letter for another dwarf and you have to deliver it.
A dwarf wants you to kill boars because there's too many.
When you deliver the mail, the dwarf wants you to kill trolls, he was sent to investigate them but beyond that I don't recall why he wants you to kill them.
A dwarf wants you to deliver beer to town, you then have to return the mug.
The troll quest dwarf wants you to retrieve his journal that he lost to the trolls because it contains his notes.
He then wants you to deliver a message to someone in the next dwarf town.
On the way you meet a guy who has the general "go to the inn" quest, I forget why he sends you there.
In the next town a dwarf wants you to gather boar ribs and rhapsody malt so he can make some ribs.
Another dwarf wants you to go to steelgrill's depot to deliver some tools.
In the depot 2 steam tank drivers want supplies for their tanks, and another dwarf wants you to retrieve and deliver some ammo to rumbleshot.
A gnome wants you to collect gears from lepper gnomes near gnomeregon because he needs them for a machine he hopes will reverse the leper gnome condition.
Once you get the supplies for the tanks one of them wants you to pick up some beer from another town.
The dwarf you delivered the troll message to wants you to explore a troll cave and report back to him what you find because he is responsible for assessing the threat of trolls.
When you go ask for the beer in the other town the dwarf says he will only give you the beer if you do him a favour. Namely he wants you to kill off some of the wildlife because they're getting a little numerous.
He also wants you to gather some shimmer weed from the trolls because he thinks he can make a good beer from it.
A dwarf woman here wants you to switch her beer with the thunderbrew lager because she wants to show them her beer is just as good.
When you give the dwarf the shimmer weed he wants you to deliver some of the beer to a relative of his.
Up in the mountains is a dwarf who wants you to retrieve some meats that he had to abandon due to a yeti.
When you return from the troll cave, that dwarf wants you to go to Ironforge to deliver his report.
At amberstill ranch they have a problem with another yeti who is killing their rams. Naturally they want you to kill it.
At the quarry they are having problems because troggs broke into the quarry and took over. They give you 2 kill quests to get rid of them.
In the northern pass a tank commander wants you to find one of his men who hasn't been seen for a while. When you find him he is dead and you avenge him by killing the bear that killed him.
In the southern pass you give the shimmer stout to the guy's relative and he wants you to give some to a friend of his.

Do you want me to move onto Loch Modan? Perhaps some other starting zones? Or a higher level zone? :P

[Cheddar]

What the fuck just happened here?  I think he was referring to normal people.

[Hound]

I still figure Blizz got a nice smack in the subs when LoTRO released. maybe it was just coincidence however I recieved the following email on 16 May

Try World of Warcraft(R): The Burning Crusade(TM) 10 Days FREE*!
*Only previous and current World of Warcraft retail account holders are eligible

You've taken Azeroth by storm. Now a dark frontier awaits. Take on hundreds of new quests, acquire powerful new gear, and travel the shattered skies of Outland with your own flying mount! All of these experiences and more are yours to discover in the first expansion to World of Warcraft - The Burning Crusade.


Enable your World of Warcraft account to play the new Burning Crusade content for 10 Days FREE by following these easy steps: 
 
1) Click on the link below or copy it into your browser:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/trial/forward.html?referrer=worldofwarcraft&source=BC_TEDirectEmail1


2) Log-in to your World of Warcraft account


3) Select confirm to enable your FREE trial


4) Download THe Burning Crusade client

When EQII and WoW released a few years ago I was on the EQII bandwagon however I received WoW as a early Christmas present from my brother,who could be the poster child as a WoW fanboy. I played through the free 30 to keep family peace but never subscribed at the end of the first month. As near as I can recall this is the first email I received from them since canceling, maybe they wee just to busy counting their money but the timing was pretty good anyway. Even using the figure of 100k multiply that by $15 dollars and that by 12 months and it isn't exactly chump change. If they get similar hits from AoC and WAR I doubt the big man in the top floor corner office will be pleased no matter how much money he is still raking in.





 

[Calantus]

What the fuck just happened here?  I think he was referring to normal people.

Well then the logical conclusion is those people don't want to be engaged by that specific mechanic. It was even stated above that the wonderful ring quest got a lot of questions in the advice chat. That's just how some (many?) people work, they don't want to read the story, they just want the dinggratz, and if magically fun quest mechanic of obscuring facts gets in the way they will find the facts another way. There's nothing about the way quests are presented in WoW that make them any more or less memorable. The content of the quests sure can. If you read it (and there's something wrong with you if you did) you'd notice I didn't remember the reason why I had to go to the inn because my mind knew it was an inconsequential detail in an obviously contrived quest. I've done that quest so many times, you have no idea, but I don't recall anything about it beyond that it exists. On the other hand I could tell you all about some quests I've only done once or twice because the story stuck. All of them "held my hand" (read: didn't fuck me around) roughly an equal amount to every other quest.

[Sky]

If you think about it the MMO market isn't exactly flourishing as a whole.

You don't seem to understand WoW is an anomaly.

[tmp]

Still need alot more solo content in the 30 level range.  It's very dependent on group quests right now,  which are...  a little much the third time you have to do a "fight elites for 2 hours to finish off one quest" deal. 

If I read it right they recognize the problem and are about to add some shitload of solo 30+ quests with the free Evendim update that hits the servers next week (June 13th)  Of course the quality of these or lack thereof remains to be seen.

[Chimpy]

I still figure Blizz got a nice smack in the subs when LoTRO released. maybe it was just coincidence however I recieved the following email on 16 May

Try World of Warcraft(R): The Burning Crusade(TM) 10 Days FREE*!
*Only previous and current World of Warcraft retail account holders are eligible

You've taken Azeroth by storm. Now a dark frontier awaits. Take on hundreds of new quests, acquire powerful new gear, and travel the shattered skies of Outland with your own flying mount! All of these experiences and more are yours to discover in the first expansion to World of Warcraft - The Burning Crusade.


Enable your World of Warcraft account to play the new Burning Crusade content for 10 Days FREE by following these easy steps: 
 

I don't think it has much, if anything, to do with other games, honestly. Blizzard is just marketing directly to people who they know might be more willing to pony up for BC and re-sub than your average joe. I played for 18 months before cancelling in November. I have gotten 3 of those emails since early April, and got a nice shiny "10 day trial of the BUrning Crusade!" DVD in the mail right before memorial day.

Even if they lose 500k subscribers in the U.S. Blizzard is still not going to lose their license to print money hats any time soon.

[Nebu]

Stuff

My point was that the majority of the player base would be just as happy if they installed vending machines.  Go to the machine, drop in 5 wolf pelts, get a prize.  For the largest majority, the storyline is just a wall of text that they never bother to read.  Click guy with ?, get quest, read objective/reward, do quest, return for phat lewtz.  Ask them what they just did and most would be powerless to tell you.  The last few betas I was in, I submitted many reports on grammatical errors and location errors in quest text.  Very few other people noticed this. 

[HaemishM]

Eve-Online is likely bigger than LOTRO currently. If they dare to repeat those claims why don't they give us subs numbers? It would clear out most of the suspects and guesses.

They don't give sub numbers because it doesn't really matter diddly shit to anyone but them. And that includes me.

If they are profitable, IT'S ALL GOOD. If they are not, everyone will know soon enough. The number of subs really is unimportant these days, especially with the 8-million pound gorilla in the room.

If you think about it the MMO market isn't exactly flourishing as a whole.

UO, EQ, DAoC, AC, Anarchy Online, DDO, Auto Assault, Vanguard, Matrix Online, SWG... These are all wrecks with nothing left to say. EQ2 survives off WoW's crumbs.

Where's this competition if you exclude those decaying wrecks and all the other works in project? Is really Eve currently the biggest and most solid MMO outside of WoW?

For a market supposed to be popular and growing the overall choice and quality sucks.

Your post actually shows the MMO market IS flourishing. Look at how many titles are out there, STILL MAKING MONEY. UO and EQ are approaching a decade in operation and are still profitable. DAoC, a small indy shop game, released stable, became the 3rd largest MMO at the time, and made the company enough that they snagged the Warhammer license even after cancelling another in-house project. Oh, and they got bought out for a pretty penny. Despite being shit shit shitty shit at release, Anarchy Online, Auto Assault, Matrix Online and Vanguard are STILL GOING. One presumes they even make money.

While I won't argue that most of those products are deriviative shit (or just boring because I've played so much of it), the market is huge if you count up subs across all the games. It's even bigger when you consider that there isn't really a mass market genre in the medium yet (as in Fantasy is not a mass market genre). And there's only 1 MMOG on a console.

There's no need to be the biggest dick on the block anymore. Having "The One True MMOG" was stifling the industry back when EQ was the big boy. Why? Because everything became an EQ clone, which is the crop of MMOG's you've listed. Having WoW be there with dev budgets and subscriber numbers that no one in the fucking world can compete with means you have to do something that is NOT WOW. We just won't see the fruits of that for 3-5 years yet.

[Venkman]

Some people, maybe including Hrose, seem to think that as soon as MMOs fall off the PR pile-on that is CNN, or worse, IGN, they are no longer relevant, are dying, losing money, people are quiting, all that crap. And, as a build on this, if a new MMO doesn't launch to the fanfare of a million angry people on line at GameSpot in their local mall, it's a dud, only for stupid people who don't know any better.

These people are flat out wrong.

You can't measure MMOs the way you measure buy-a-new-game-every-three-months normal video games (and most console games). Believe it or not, most MMO players do not bounce to every single new MMO that enters beta. Most MMO players don't care there's a zillion alternatives. They don't burn through their current MMO frothing for more. They may eventually ditch the current game to follow some friends. But otherwise, well, there's a reason why UO, EQ1, AC1, AO, and blah blah blah still exist. There's a reason new normal video games are measured for maybe a dozen or two hours of solid play, maybe a score or two at best. Meanwhile, MMOs are designed for hundreds of hours of play.

Now, we could argue the relative quality of those hours, and have, and will. But that's not germaine here. Designing an MMO is much more than nail-biting the server architecture. The fundamentals of the experience are different. They need to be or you have no reason to be called an MMO.

Account attraction matters most at launch. Thereafter it's about attracting to offset attrition, to achieve aggregate retention. These games are lifestyles because their business model requires it. SOE has made much much more case from the EQ1 accounts they keep than any they attract at this point. It's declined, sure, but it's not closed. Plateaus feed business models.

[sam, an eggplant]

there's a reason why UO, EQ1, AC1, AO, and blah blah blah still exist.

Yeah, people forget to cancel their accounts.

[HRose]

Some people, maybe including Hrose, seem to think that as soon as MMOs fall off the PR pile-on that is CNN, or worse, IGN, they are no longer relevant, are dying, losing money, people are quiting, all that crap.

You read whatever you like in what I write, but surely it isn't what I meant.

I was commenting the quality mostly. A MMO is dying when subscribers decrease over time. It is dying when devs assigned to the live team are halved in numbers. It is dying when money is moved elsewhere.

There are people who still play Ultima 7, but how's this relevant in the discussion where we talk about present and future?

Subs numbers matter, whether you want it or not, because they directly influence those three points above and whether the game will be kept on life support or it will grow and continue to be interesting.

The same about the TV. You could not give a damn if a TV series is losing audience. You may still like the show, so why should you care about how many others are watching it? Because the show, as result of the decline, will lose authors, will decrease in quality, will switch hands and may be finally get canceled.

Subs numbers, the same way as audience on TV, are what matters above everything else. It's what brings the money and the first reason why these games are made and are possible.

Moreover, if all those games are so successful and making money, including SWG, Vanguard, DDO and Auto Assault, then this would REALLY be the goose with golden eggs. By what you write EVERYTHING is successful and nothing ever fails. Neverending streams of money, successful, competent people who do everything at best. No one ever lose his job. It's all sunny with rainbows all over.

[Murgos]

You read whatever you like in what I write, but surely it isn't what I meant.

Classic.

[Riggswolfe]

Moreover, if all those games are so successful and making money, including SWG, Vanguard, DDO and Auto Assault, then this would REALLY be the goose with golden eggs. By what you write EVERYTHING is successful and nothing ever fails. Neverending streams of money, successful, competent people who do everything at best. No one ever lose his job. It's all sunny with rainbows all over.

I'm not saying that I'm saying I don't want to be PKed! Err..wait sorry. The tone in this post reminded me of a different discussion.

[HRose]

Classic.

I'm sorry. I hereby confirm that Darniaq knows my opinions better than myself and is entitled to paraphrase and warp everything I write because he knows better.

[Chimpy]

Don't you people realize that you have to outsell World of Warcraft every week for 6 consecutive years or it is impossible for you to be successful in the MMO business?

[Murgos]

Classic.

I'm sorry. I hereby confirm that Darniaq knows my opinions better than myself and is entitled to paraphrase and warp everything I write because he knows better.

No one knows what you write.  Almost every person you ever have had a conversation with has had to guess at what you are trying to say and attempt to come up with something relevant.

This entire thread is a case in point.  TAXI TO VICTORY has crap all to do with LoTRO's launch and crap all to do with ANYTHING in this thread and yet there was three pages of discussion of it because no one has a clue wtf you are talking about.

edit:  Heck, the whole premise of this thread is a conversation you were having with another entirely different group of people somewhere else and everyone here is just trying to figure out what the hell is going on by working their way backwards to whatever the hell point you were trying to make.

[AcidCat]

HRose when are you going to bring the Cesspit back to life? I miss your ramblings.