I know things are bad all over, but...

[Soln]

yahoo$

Wow.  Funcom 52wk Range:   3.48 - 55.50.  Big time negative EBITDA google$

Net Profit Margin    -55.27%    31.39%    -25.66%
Operating Margin    -44.04%    -108.22%    -75.17%
EBITD Margin    -    -77.80%    -45.85%

[schild]

That right there is impressive. I should've bought them and rode their lightning.

[Engels]

nm

[Nebu]

The 5 year is just plain ugly.  Looks like 1929.

[Falconeer]

What really sucks is that AoC is a good game. Seriously, I don't understand.


EDIT: I changed my mind. I do understand. While it's true that both Conan and Warhammer lack in the stickyness department, they are failing too fast and too hard compared to older games. Hell, not even EQ2, who launched at the same time as WoW, became empty so fast.
In a nutshell: the "MMORPG addiction" is slowly dying. The novelty of persistent worlds wore off and lots are now playing them as offline games (need for solo content kinda confirms it): great for a month, shelf it for good after that. Especially if there's a monthly fee attached.

The WoW exception could make my sand castle crumble but I'm not sure. In a way, I am wondering if World of Warcraft 2, or World of Starcraft would be able to net the same WoW money in a 4 year span. Maybe 25 millions subscriptions at launch, but with shorter average continuous subscription time. That's my worthless and clueless theory.

[Lantyssa]

Alternatively, people are tired of false promises.  If you're going to hype your game, you damn well better be sure it comes close to even mildly resembling it.

[Engels]

Its a little bit of both, I think. Modern MMOs do not have half the depth in them that older ones did at launch, and people immediately see that the new mmo cannot meet their previous experiences, so they ditch them faster than they did in the past.

[Rasix]

In a nutshell: the "MMORPG addiction" is slowly dying. The novelty of persistent worlds wore off and lots are now playing them as offline games (need for solo content kinda confirms it): great for a month, shelf it for good after that. Especially if there's a monthly fee attached.

There's a lot of actual GOOD choices out there.  I imagine there's a lot less sticking around because you can't find anything better to play.  And there's no point sticking around some buggy ass game trying to get its act together when you can play something that offers a similar experience once the novelty of the new game wears off.

WoW and other options simply make it really bad environment to release crap.

[Falconeer]

Neither Warhammer nor Conan are/were crap. They were SO GOOD that people loved them... for 20 days. Seriously, (many) loved.

It just died so early. That is what those graphs say. Not that they were crap, just that they don't last anymore.

[schild]

In a nutshell: the "MMORPG addiction" is slowly dying. The novelty of persistent worlds wore off and lots are now playing them as offline games (need for solo content kinda confirms it): great for a month, shelf it for good after that. Especially if there's a monthly fee attached.

***BZZZZZZZZZZZZT*** Wrong conclusion.

Devs are fucking their own games. Please to be getting with the program Falconeer, this has nothing to do with MMORPG addiction. The bar has been raised, and not necessarily even by WoW. Both AoC and WAR - the two high profile games that make up your entire sample size - are victims of devs committing cardinal sins in the first 4-6 weeks of release. Releasing a game missing content, having a wack leveling curve, nerfs, tacked on mechanics, etc.

Don't blame players when the devs are 100% at fault.

Old developers are simply committing the oldest sins in the oldest ways and hoping for the best.

[Falconeer]

I am not sure about anything of what I said, I am just trying to think.

I wouldn't blame the players, I wasn't. And I agree Devs didn't keep up with the raised bars. Still I am under the impression that a phenomenon (MMOs, Virtual Worlds) that was characterized in its prime by stickyness is just slowly, relatively, losing it no matter what. Multiplaying massively is not so cool anymore and single player games are simply all-around better games. The MMO genre won't ever go back to be niche but I think they could have their average lifespans dramatically shortened.
I could be very wrong, of course. I'm just stargazing..

[Lantyssa]

It's really as simple as people not needing to look past the flaws anymore.  There are options out there now.  Ones which have dealt with the majority of the those flaws and polished themselves well beyond what games at release can provide.

There are more MMO players now than ever, so people aren't losing their interest.  They're just not being given anything worth spending more than a month or two figuring out that what they already have, know, and love is superior.  They want alternatives, or else those games wouldn't be selling over a million copies.  Ultimately though, the alternatives aren't that good in execution.

[Falconeer]

But Lantyssa, looking at subscription numbers, which mean much more than the FAILS or WINS rumored by the vox populi, anything but World of Warcraft, which is a polished turd but still a turd, falls in the above mentioned crap. Money wise all the options you have to flee crappy games like WAr or AoC are arguably made of the same crap.

I mean, we don't have official figures, but correct me if I am wrong, is it safe to say that ALL the existing MMO in the western world, save for WoW, have basically between 100k to 500k active subs, ranging from EQ2 to Warhammer through EVE, Conan, FFXI, CoX, Lotro and maybe EQ1, UO, Lineage 2 and whatnot?

Bottom line: is World of Warcraft the ONLY NOT-CRAP (subscription based) MMO? If so, fuck the numbers, I disagree.

I think humanity attention span is shortening, and that is a bad thing for subscription based videogames.

[Soln]

Schild is correct.  People not only have a higher expectation than 4 years ago for games, they have a higher expectation for any software service.  The novelty of always-on, persistent Internet services is no longer new.  So why should people put up with decisions that waste their time? 

It's hard to blame your customer.  They are the only and ultimate arbiter of your delivery. 

[Lantyssa]

Games such as EQ2, CoX, and EVE did not have the benefit of launching with a million boxes sold.  They're solid games now, but don't get the launch hype.  LotR is doing pretty well for being a post-WoW launch.  AoC and WAR have major issues which pushed their initially high population away.  It's not attention spans.  It's the shoddy work.  People don't have to tolerate it anymore.  They shouldn't have before, but their options were limited.

These are social games, too.  It is vital to hold entire guilds of people.  The more that trickle away during the launch period, the hard it gets to keep the ones who want to remain.  But that critical mass isn't going to stick around if they have an option which more or less provides the same experience without all the hassle and annoyance.  Game devs really need to learn a bit more basic psychology.  They seem ignorant of grasping the simplest concepts.

[Soln]

I would also add that people who don't show up to a game within an existing guild seek out a determinate, fun, stable social group.  And if the game does not lend itself to creating one then it's doomed.  If people are mostly leaving, or if the game is so skewed that it's only people at the cap with tier5 gear (or whatever) who are in guilds and they are not recruiting than that also kills retention.  New people will not stick around to grind and feel alienated.

It's not just the hurt of seeing a leveling cap or mastery far off in the distance that makes people leave.  It's the genuine fatigue of realizing that they won't be able to belong to a stable group that will guarantee them access one day to all the content in the game. 

[WindupAtheist]

I'll go ahead and champion the obvious truth that no one really wants to admit to. It's all down to World of Warcraft, and this genre is property of Blizzard Entertainment until someone else proves otherwise. We can put on our MMO connesiure berets and talk about how WoW isn't very original, and how we want a classless virtual world with meaningful blah blah blah, but none of that shit really matters. It's polished, it's content-rich, and if the design concepts aren't original then at least they're consistent. More importantly, if you're one of the people it brought into the genre for the first time then it's all new to you anyway.

If all those MMO newbs were willing to put up with stupid bullshit from the likes of Funcom and Mythic, it wouldn't have taken Blizzard to get them into the genre in the first place. That's why new games are doing big initial box sales and then flatlining. A bunch of WoW players are looking for a different fix, finding it beneath their Blizzard-spoiled standards, and schlepping back off to WoW while only the masochists who've been around since UO/EQ/DAOC/whatever stick around.

[Lantyssa]

I think that's what I'm saying, so I'll admit to that truth.

[Soln]

if the design concepts aren't original then at least they're consistent.

I think that's an important point -- execution, "polish".

[WindupAtheist]

And "consistent" meaning Blizzard understood it's own rules, knew basically how people would play and what would happen, and was cool with it. There wasn't any vibe of "OH CRAP THIS ISN'T GOIN HOW WE PLANNED, START CHANGING SHIT" coming off them.

[Ratman_tf]

I mean, we don't have official figures, but correct me if I am wrong, is it safe to say that ALL the existing MMO in the western world, save for WoW, have basically between 100k to 500k active subs, ranging from EQ2 to Warhammer through EVE, Conan, FFXI, CoX, Lotro and maybe EQ1, UO, Lineage 2 and whatnot?

I think that is safe to say. Those are the type of subscription numbers you can expect from a non-WoW game.

Bottom line: is World of Warcraft the ONLY NOT-CRAP (subscription based) MMO? If so, fuck the numbers, I disagree.

I think humanity attention span is shortening, and that is a bad thing for subscription based videogames.

Just because the rest of the world doesn't share your enthusiasm for X doesn't mean anyone is right or wrong or that the sky is falling. It just means that they don't share your enthusiasm.

[Falconeer]

I am not saying the world is broken because Age of Conan doesn't have millions of customers. You missed the point.

[UnSub]

In a nutshell: the "MMORPG addiction" is slowly dying. The novelty of persistent worlds wore off and lots are now playing them as offline games (need for solo content kinda confirms it): great for a month, shelf it for good after that. Especially if there's a monthly fee attached.

I disagree.

Both AoC and WAR offered inferior experiences to WoW (and other, more established MMOs) so people went back to the place they could get quality (or all their friends are, or where they already have a lot of stuff they like, etc). The fact that both had such large numbers at launch indicates there are a large group of players just waiting for the next enjoyable MMO, but when they log on and find more of the same then they don't last past the first month.

And the monthly fee has to be tied into new free content delivery. That has to be delivered regularly to encourage players to hang around and see what comes next.

Also, a lot of MMOs are successful without needing 11M subs. WoW is not the rule. WoW is the outlier. Devs need to realise that WoW was successful not because it cost $55m (or whatever), but because the money was spent on the right things. There is a reason why other studios are spending the same amount (if not more) of money on their AAA MMOs and not achieving 1/10th of the audience WoW has (or, if we take only sub-paying NA / European players, 1/5th).

[Pennilenko]

I am not saying the world is broken because Age of Conan doesn't have millions of customers. You missed the point.

You really should listen to everyone. They are not the ones missing the point. When some dev team releases a game that doesnt have any crushing bugs, and said game doesnt punch you in the nuts constantly, we will have another newer generation WoW.

[Falconeer]

Missing the point is mentioning my enthusiasm.

[Ratman_tf]

Missing the point is mentioning my enthusiasm.

You are (AFAICT) asking if people are becoming less stuck to games.
This is nothing new. People have been jumping ship for the next shiny since EQ came along and bitter fans made fun of UO.
AoC was the next shiny. People came, people played. The difference is that now they have other games to go back to. WoW, EQ, UO, Eve, Maple Story  . The bar is raised in that people are more likely to go back to a game that has already stuck to them. WoW is the big hulk in that department, but not always.

Your enthusiasm is apparent from your posts "Why? This is a great game! Why?"

Maybe the answer is that the general gaming populace doesn't agree that AoC is a great game, and stickiness won't keep a person playing if they aren't having fun.

[Falconeer]

You are (AFAICT) asking if people are becoming less stuck to games.

Yeah. Not "games", though. Just subscription based MMORPGs.

This is nothing new. People have been jumping ship for the next shiny since EQ came along and bitter fans made fun of UO.

Agreed. But my point is they are doing it faster and faster. I think every single MMO you play, regardless the quality, drains some of your love for the genre, and your First One (or WoW) sits at the top of the pyramid as the one you played the most. Everything after that is Chasing Amy.

WoW negates this theory? We'll see. Only if, as I said, the next Blizzard MMO (an automatic bar-raiser) will be able to top WoW in average subscription time per account (not total subs, which will obviously happen).

[Typhon]

Agreed. But my point is they are doing it faster and faster. I think every single MMO you play, regardless the quality, drains some of your love for the genre, and your First One (or WoW) sits at the top of the pyramid as the one you played the most. Everything after that is Chasing Amy.

WoW negates this theory? We'll see. Only if, as I said, the next Blizzard MMO (an automatic bar-raiser) will be able to top WoW in average subscription time per account (not total subs, which will obviously happen).

Because the new MMO game mechanics aren't significantly different.  It doesn't take someone 3 months to realize this simple formula:  shit that had become tedious in a previous game + new-game bugs/wonkyness + new shit that sucks = buh bye!

Edit: wow, I didn't read my post at all on the first pass, making it completely unreadable, sorry.  Fixed it

[Numtini]

Agreed. But my point is they are doing it faster and faster.

MMOs are a religious experience, they are based on faith. Faith that the devs will fix the problems. Faith that there is something worth playing for in the long term if you get tired of the game in the short term. People are getting more adept at figuring out when a game isn't going anywhere and at that point they go back to WoW, which is a game that is going places. It's about faith in the future.

WoW presents something that is fun in the short and long term right now. It's real and you can touch it. WoW has made us all atheists. MMOs can no longer sustain themselves on faith that the fun will be patched in later.

[Falconeer]

Lovely analysis, Numtini. For real.

Now if only I could spot the fun in WoW 4 years after launch...
You know what is the only perk of World of Warcraft in my opinion? It's just so easy to join.

[Redgiant]

Why jumping ship is happening sooner and in higher numbers than, say, 1999 (EQ1) or 2001 (DAoC) days:

1. Lower general population intelligence and cooperative attitude (i.e. there are way too many complete asshats nowadays). This I blame on the general accesibiltiy and rise of the Net, whereas back in the day you were very unlikely to encounter an 8-year old griefer - just the occaional 20-year old one. There were so few jerks that it was easier to ostracize them out of guilds, and since most games were more cooperatively geared towards group and guild-friendliness, those left out of the mix couldn't really do as much alone and would quit or move around.

On Veeshan in EQ, and on Nimue in DAoC, the populations were strong, dedicated, helpful and if someone with the mentality and assinine attitude of your basic WoW retard were to show up in-game, they would be summarily ignored and never include in anything going on.

Congratulations, easy access for all means eternal Chuck Norris Barren's chat.

2. The WoW perfect storm. it is hard to determine which came first, the asshat crowd in (1), or a game to cater to the asshat crowd in (1). But it happened. And that gave us the very polished short bus we know today. WoW lulls you into complimenting it on its polish, expanse, population, and sheer magnitude, but at its heart is a game for the least common denominator player today, not what we used to see in the "old days" of UO, EQ or DAoC.

3. The rise of soloing in a MMO game. The second M is for Multiplayer, not Masturbation. AoC and WAR both suffer badly from player isolation experiences, unless you happen to already be in a decent guild from elsewhere. They draw you in with the carrot of soloing everything so you don't have to depend on others. News flash: that *is* what made EQ and DAoC so popular and fun to log in every day, to adventure with existing and even new friends made in-game. Everyone felt a shared sense of "we need to support each other" since you had to group for so many reasons: difficulty of content, safety in RvR/PvP, lengthy travel to give the world a realistic dangerous feel to making long trips.

Today's WoW-like games want you to just solo, until suddenly you are at the end-game and suddenly you need to be in a giant guild to see the best end content. You grow your characters in a vacuum, instead of learning to cooperate and help each other as the source of the fun. And when you are max level, the fun tends to stay with a game where everyone simply enjoys the wide variety of interactions with other friends and enemies and not just loot whoring all the time.

In WoW games everything from badges and tokens and rewards and ... are all pretty much PuG/solo efforts where you just use some strangers to do something, then drop group. The social interaction in WAR, for example, is little better than playing Diablo II with a bunch of people you don't know, who don't say a thing, and no one cares who each other is to play with them again. Sure, guilds and some people are more than that, but I am talking about the overall game pulse as compared to back when it was definitely the norm not the exception.

4. The fall of immersion. Boy, there are a lot of things that contribute to this problem. it isn't necessarily the lack of full roleplay, but when people go around talking about Chuck Norris and all the other stupid crap you are constantly bombarded with, it makes the game a circus in your mind no matter how hard you try to tune it out. Instead of immersing youself into a game, you more or less just tolerate the game to get lootz and check off quests. Roleplay servers don't enforce anywhere near what they would have to to even approach a REGULAR server from years ago. I guess players just were better at self-policing and maturity (see (1) also).

The use of Vent, TS, etc somewhat contributes since it further reminds you how non-immersive and fake all the avatars and their motivations are. We all know it is an illusion, but it is an illusion we want to stay unbroken as much as possible. Of course, people who are more loot whore than explorer/socializer don't mind this, but it kills those of us who are. Hearing the guild leader mutter, "I need me a beer and a smoke" isn't exactly gthe image of a battlelord Orc Warrior now is it?

Travel times have made the worlds seem so much smaller even when their actual zone sizes may have gone up. WoW at least makes you notice how large an expanse you are flying over, but insta-portals should compliment the slower means of seeing and appreication the world size, not completely replace it.

It used to be that your character mirrored your own tendency to be helpful, social, cooperative, generous. Playing a game was a way to do those things that maybe you couldn't find or do in real life. Well, nowadays forget all that. Selfishness, min/max greediness are king, not realm pride, social interaction.

Remember how much fun it was in Lower Guk, even the camps, avoiding trains, getting yoru turn at the Lord, etc? Or how you felt when you finally made it from Qyenos to Freeport by running at low levels? Or in DAoC when a Call To Arms went out as 100 Mids attacked 5 different Hib keeps, while the Albs made a pact to hold us at our border forts? Or secret relic raids? That was an accomplishment to gather and rally together in pretty large numbers to do that. Your avatar was truly a projection of yourself, or vice versa. Now it is largely a clinical exercise in running Quest Helper or following Jame's Guide and just slogging through a bunch of crap you know you need to do for the level treadmill, but the journey and socializing doesn't even matter anymore to people; it is keeping up with peers, loot whoring to brag or be better than the next guy, and generally not caring if you miss out on anything as long as you get to max level.


*** Okay, so I rambled. I am just sick as hell of seeing shinier games tech-wise that don't hold a candle to the old games in terms of true "massive multiplayerness".

P.S. - If you aren't old enough, or for whatever reasons didn't play MMO games back in the late 90s/early 00s as they matured, in particular UO, EQ1, DAoC or maybe AC1, then you honestly won't understand why I harp on the issues I do so much. But those that did, will get it. It isn't a slight on anyone personally, it is simply something you cannot understand if something like WoW is your main reference point. As cliche as it sound, "you had to be there".

The strongest of bonds older games used to emphasize are replaced with Skinner box reard treadmills. Obviously as WoW proves there are more poeple willing to be rats in a simple repetitive maze, but that doesn't make it right for those of us who aren't the rats.

[Falconeer]

Who are you talking to?

Basically anyone here at f13 was definitely there.

[Triforcer]

I love Vanguard

I summarized your post for the children.  Also:  I disagree. 

[Tarami]

I wasn't there, but those bitter tears are just so delicious. 

[Falconeer]

I wasn't there