World of Warcraft shut down in China

[apocrypha]

The last generation of gamers still runs and staffs most developers.

And the suits who make the money decisions care not one jot about that.

[NiX]

The last generation of gamers still runs and staffs most developers.

You don't make the game you want to play, you make the game they want to play.

[sinij]

the new audience of kids hasn't been trained to hate it.

What is there to like?

You build a game with a paid cheat codes and then you work hard on making sure there are enough cock-blocks that players feel using these cheat codes isn't optional.

The only winner here is corporate greed.

[DLRiley]

Lets review;

* Cash shop mmo's allow little kids to play an mmo without credit card
* Subscription mmo's already have the same cock blocks installed, you either spend the time and hence the sub dollars getting god mode or complain about never reaching god mode.
* Cash shop is the only way to make a generic diku that churns a profit.

-WoW is being being greedy yes, but WoW is effectively competing with itself, so while the endless expansions which they don't need to release and have people pay for anyway considering the gazillion dollars they get in subs "improve" gameplay, it was only a matter of time before Blizzard decides it can take a larger chunk of its sub based wallets. This is not any non blizzard mmo who uses cash shops to survive. Its really the fault of every fucking mmo developer who refuses to compete with WoW and essentially giving Blizzard the monopoly on the industry. And when we have monopoly in any industry the consumer gets fucked royally. The sad part is all this would have been avoided if any of the half a dozen mmo's released posed a serious challenge to WoW's western sub numbers.-

[sinij]

>>>* Cash shop mmo's allow little kids to play an mmo without credit card

If you can process MT you can process subscription fee in exactly same way.

>>>* Subscription mmo's already have the same cock blocks installed, you either spend the time and hence the sub dollars getting god mode or complain about never reaching god mode.

Subscription mmo's provide content that you pay to access. You monthly fee buys access to 100% of it and right to fairly compete.

MT in mmorpgs is like buying frags in FPS, not only it detracts from other player's enjoyment and spirit of competition, it also locks players aspiring to compete in endless bidding war against each other.

>>>* Cash shop is the only way to make a generic diku that churns a profit.

WoW has monopoly on generic DIKU. If you want to make profit you have to innovate or out-advertise them. Hoping to milk subscribers of your unmarketable title in a way gambling establishments do will only end up with your industry regulated like gambling. You can probably get away with it for a couple years, then some asshole gets re-elected on 'think of the children' platform and ATF will be knocking on your (and everyone else) door.

Don't fag it up for the rest of us.

[DLRiley]

I think we disagree. Play and Pay for a f2p is too different categories. Sure the same method of payment is used except one game requires box sale purchase + cc info and another game doesn't, at least not upfront. Allows the kid to bother his mommy about it later while still playing, which for a kid is pretty damn important and is the reason why these games are so popular. 

Again the same cock blocks are installed, in an mmo I don't get my grenades if I don't invest an hour of gameplay, especially if i'm "crafting" them. What "realism and immersion" says that my grenades run out of stock so I have to grind more hours to use grenades. Wait the standard grenades are crap but the special ones require 2 hour time sinks. GG. You replace hours spent with dollars spent and that's all RMT is for most games.

Your a tad wrong I have played plenty of generic mmo's and almost all the free ones are making a profit till this day. Very few sub mmo's can claim that their servers have been up with very little updates to the game for 3-5 years. Aion proves that innovation isn't necessary to sell boxes. The only question is whether people will rather pay $15 a month on a WoW sub instead. WoW's monopoly on generic Diku only applies to generic diku's that cost $15 a month.

[Sjofn]

Is this little derail operating on the assumption than any second now, WoW is going to start selling shit from the Blizzard store that actually matters to the game?

[Signe]

Do they still make Quaaludes?  God, I used to love those things!

[Venkman]

Hoping to milk subscribers of your unmarketable title in a way gambling establishments do will only end up with your industry regulated like gambling.

That too is in the future. But assuming people "resort" to MTX/freemium is based on old thinking that subs are some type of "premium" experience. Not so much. It's merely a legacy business model tacked onto successively more generic derivatives of a singular core concept. It's a panacea for business planners too because it's predictable recurring income.

But it also has a stratospheric barrier of entry, typing monopolistic situation. This requires innovation. And few have the money to both do all the things WoW did right and to take the risk that there's another ten million people out there willing to play something that doesn't merely remind them of WoW. WAR, AoC and Aion all proved there's a market of expats willing to try something. But their executions have all left enough to be desired to leave those expats still looking.

So why go for the $40-80mil play when you can monetize the $4-8mil one? Especially since today's kids aren't even investing their time the way we do. They don't go from one single-minded focused activity to another. I think the term people use is "time compression"? Basically, there's a few studies that are showing the amount of entertainment being consumed represents more hours of content than the time period in which it's being consumed. It's not multi-tasking, it's just split attention.

And you think this group's gonna sit around for an hour while a bunch of random people go on bio breaks because the two lead healers haven't gotten home from work yet, only then to go on a multi-hour raid that requires they ignore the rest of the world?

Come on.

[sinij]

Future is in casually-accessible subscription-based mmorpgs. Blizzard understand this and slowly but steadily makes sure its Generic-DIKU  more and more casual-friendly. With monthly subscription you don't have to make it grindy, you make a lot more money from players that only occasionally log in compared to players that play 24/7.  Current state of the art is mass appeal to large casual audience, where you get to collect 15$/mo even if they are not logged in as long as they are having fun when they ARE logged in.

The same is not true for MT, you are not getting any money unless they are playing. As a result it HAS TO BE as grindy as users will tolerate. Micro transactions may be palatable in initial interaction, but "more money" pressure from suits will lead to quick devolution into thinly disguised slot machines with every reinforcement/addiction trick used to milk users for more MT.

>> ...it also has a stratospheric barrier of entry, typing monopolistic situation.

Barrier of entry is not a permanent problem. Once market growth sufficiently large there will be plenty of justification to get 100s of millions of venture capital to enter mainstream mmorpg market with your own generic DIKU. Its only currently that investment is somewhat disproportional to audience you get, and only largely because of WoW dominance. Remember, it is only expensive to compete if you have generic DIKU, you can always go after a niche market with much lower initial investment.

>> ....So why go for the $40-80mil play when you can monetize the $4-8mil one?

Why does Coca-Cola sells sugared drinks to everyone instead of Coke to addicts?  Well, first because you can sell drinks to everyone, so economy of scales kicks in. Second, because even if you could legally sell Coke government would get involved with regulations/taxations and your $4-8mil play will quickly gets taxed/regulated into $40-80 mil play... minus economy of scales.



TL;DR:  

ideal subscription-based player - occasionally logs in an has fun
ideal MT-based player - hopelessly addicted 12h/day player that constantly frustrated enough to pay MTs

[DLRiley]

RMT games are the future because they allow developers to make the same games they developing now, for a lot less money, and with greater long term longevity because they are not in direct competition with WoW or each other for that matter. The casual-accessible games are simply not being made. WoW is making their game more casual because they have no desire to concede ground to their competitors, BUT in retrospect WoW is still "hardcore" for many gamers who aren't inherently inclined to play EQ1 without the cockblocks. That group, which is a very large group, is where any future growth in the mmo  industry is coming from but no developer has any idea how to capitalize on it. They either design games too niche for that group to tolerate or miss the mark entirely when it comes to designing for casual players who only have 20-30 minutes of play time (and developers of mmo's have a hard time understanding what play time constitutes for casual players). Considering that no mmo developer on the scene now is capable of expanding the industry in that direction besides blizzard and ArenaNet and the vast majority of consumers do not hold multiple subs to different mmo's how are sub based mmo's the future again?

On a funny note GW2 us f2p past box sale.

[Musashi]

I agree with sinij.  There's no way that non-subscription games make equal money with subscription games given equal relative gameplay.  It is unpossible.  This means that while there is a way to leverage your product into the market with RMT games on the cheap, you will never be able to compete with big budget games who can justify a subscription provided they prove their worth in ongoing content.  So if the goal becomes to make a game good enough to justify charging a monthly fee and thus get mo' money, as seems pretty evident, then RMT games are not 'Teh Futurez.'  They're just part of the future.  They're not even the good part.  They're the part where a few good independent games that wouldn't get made get made, but mostly shit.

[DLRiley]

The only problem is the only sub based game making greater than RMT dollars is WoW. The problem is current developers of sub based games are making RMT money while spending 3 times as much on development. The problem is your assuming that developers will eventually learn how to make good games that are on par with Wow and hence capable of competing for sub dollars in the next few years, where all signs are pointing to the exact opposite, at least not for a very long time. The mmo industry isn't no where near learning how to develop games with game design principles the gaming industry learned 20 years ago. At best it has learned how to sell boxes and insure the first 10 hours are marginally interesting but beyond that?

[Venkman]

>> ...it also has a stratospheric barrier of entry, typing monopolistic situation.

Barrier of entry is not a permanent problem. Once market growth sufficiently large there will be plenty of justification to get 100s of millions of venture capital to enter mainstream mmorpg market with your own generic DIKU. Its only currently that investment is somewhat disproportional to audience you get, and only largely because of WoW dominance.

This was an assessment in 2004, and back then people didn't think there were millions of new people waiting to play what was already a tired formula. Then yes, WoW came along and opened the market up for more people. But also at the expense of the existing games (and most that followed, in fact). It's not like WoW added 13mil people in the U.S. At best they brought in 150% more people here (and then another 150% more people in EU) than which were already spread across the numerous MMOs that existed then. Their larger success was being a western-developed game that did serious numbers in eastern markets.

Five years later, probably half a billion in total development and marketing chances taken, and the unforgiving truth that there aren't millions of more people willing to pay subs for a diku on PC, plus the general belief that the PC market is dead and the relative lack of MMOs on consoles... I really think the big-budget subs-based MMO market has at best incremental growth ahead for it.

Which leaves small-budget and non-subs models to explore. Which, again, are both far less risky and more appropriate to the dabbling playstyle of todays kids market.

Remember, it is only expensive to compete if you have generic DIKU, you can always go after a niche market with much lower initial investment.

Which is the world in which Eve, Fallen Earth, GW, HG:A, and PotBS exist. This is not the big vanguard by which future millions arrive on the backs of future tens of millions from VC. This is just normal business as usual.

It's also where LotRO, WAR, AoC, SWG and the CoXs exist, but that wasn't really their goal

[Musashi]

But is it really a fair comparison if nearly all the major AAA examples just happen to be piss-poorly executed, bug-ridden piles of shit?  If what you're saying is that you can get away with that using a free-to-play RMT model, then you're probably right.  But I don't think that makes it the rule for the future.

Yea, I'm assuming someone can come along and make a game as polished as WoW.  I think it's a fair assumption.  Someone will.  And that someone will charge a monthly fee and make a lot of money.  Way more money than those who tailor (one might say gimp) their game in the way necessary for RMT.  Other someones will follow suit.  Yea, there's no room in this category for poor execution.  People who are willing to pay a monthly fee expect the WoW bar.  But it's not as if it's impossible.  It's just hard.

[Lantyssa]

Neither subs nor RMT makes for an inherently better game.  The design philosophy, execution, and ability to read the market properly are all that matter.

You can get crap both ways and it's possible to make a thriving game both ways.  The problem is we've seen very few well executed designs of any nature.

[sinij]

Here something to think about:

How long would WoW remain 'new and fresh'? Sooner or later number of ex-players (or people that want to be ex-players) gets large enough that comparable title can surpass WoW. EQ was undisputed Generic DIKU for many years, but regardless of how much effort you put in developing expansions its does get old. Time is not on WoW's side. Blizzard knows this and working on WoW2, but they are by no means guaranteed to succeed, just like Sony did not succeed with their post-EQ titles.

[Numtini]

How long would WoW remain 'new and fresh'? Sooner or later number of ex-players (or people that want to be ex-players) gets large enough that comparable title can surpass WoW. EQ was undisputed Generic DIKU for many years, but regardless of how much effort you put in developing expansions its does get old. Time is not on WoW's side. Blizzard knows this and working on WoW2, but they are by no means guaranteed to succeed, just like Sony did not succeed with their post-EQ titles.

I'm wondering if Cataclysm isn't an attempt to completely "reboot" the game and effectively create WoW-2 within the existing WoW. As much as I've followed, the are doing to their world what EQ2 did to Norrath. But they're keeping it within the game rather than creating a second one.

[Sheepherder]

The last generation of gamers still runs and staffs most developers.

And the suits who make the money decisions care not one jot about that.

You don't make the game you want to play, you make the game they want to play.

Just saving these gems, for the next time a developer has a Vision^tm.

[DLRiley]

EverQuest had competition, WoW does not. Time may not be on blizzard side, but it isn't on the side of people who still haven't managed to compete with WoW. Ultimately blizzard only has to worry about launching the next blizzard game, everyone else barely poses a challenge to WoW existing playerbase or have the ability capitalizing on the ex players. If blizzard actually improves on its current design, which blizzard has shown competence in doing so unlike SOE with EQ, than blizzard will continue to dominate until someone makes a genuinely better game. Which may not happen for many many years. In the mean time, developers who can't compete with WoW due to their incompetence can make f2p games that play exactly like failed sub based games with a lot less money behind it and significantly more profitable.

If the best the mmo industry has manage to due in the face of WoW is sell large numbers of boxes at launch, than those same developers will either have to explore the rmt model and cease being relevant due to debt. If your predicting some new developer will come in, throw a real game at the mass market, and sell and retain a lot of boxes while doing so. Than the answer is obviously yes it can happen. But there is admittedly a large gap between 2009 and whenever that company may appear. The ceiling for failure for a sub based game post launch will keep getting higher as time goes on.

[sinij]

Real problem with the industry is that everyone is trying to be WoW.

STOP TRYING TO CLONE WOW YOU UNCREATIVE FUCKS!!!!

Accept that you need 100s mil to dethrone WoW, if you have money go for it, if you don't - don't even think about it. Find a niche and develop for it. Surprise, WoW does not appeal to everyone.

You should be aspiring to be EVE, not failed WoW with RMT in it.

[Venkman]

That might have been true in 2005 and 2006 when we were still receiving games scoped and designed before WoW showed them what it takes. But nobody is trying to out-WoW WoW now anymore than they were trying to out EQ then. Well, ok, maybe nobody except Alganon. Regardless, companies are merely following the evolutionary path of innovation along these vectors:

• People want to play an humanoid avatar
• People play on PCs
• People come from other MMOs which all share conventions
• People want to solo
• People want to trade.

That's not WoW. That's not even EQ. These are just well-worn conventions everyone thinks they can do better delivering. But they can't just do that either, they need to be different in some form that WoW is lacking. So they try PvP, flying, whatever.

What is lacking is true invention. But the costs are too high to let the few truly creative who could see it through their time in the sun. So investors (VC, management) aren't willing to take the risk with unprovens. And that was true when the global economy was (thought to be) good.

But is it really a fair comparison if nearly all the major AAA examples just happen to be piss-poorly executed, bug-ridden piles of shit? 

In this post-WoW era, it's not nearly as bad as that. All of the post-WoW games have failed to retain even their box sales, but all for different reasons. The bigger problems continue to be a game that doesn't match the marketing, or raw incompleteness. But we're way beyond the days of a game not working at launch. And let's not forget that WoW had its own problems in the first year, mostly in terms of completeness and server issues.

[sinij]

No, industry keeps vomiting buggy/incomplete titles and expecting it will turn out better.  You have playerbase size of UO's initial population that willing to tolerate it, and only if underlying gameplay warrants it,  everyone else writes game off second time they crash or fifth time you send them to Kill 10 Rats during starting experience.

[UnSub]

You should be aspiring to be EVE, not failed WoW with RMT in it.

A title that crashed and burned on release due to its buggy and unfinished state? In which case, plenty of MMOs get step one correct.

[apocrypha]

You should be aspiring to be EVE, not failed WoW with RMT in it.

A title that crashed and burned on release due to its buggy and unfinished state? In which case, plenty of MMOs get step one correct.

That's one way of looking at it.

Another way is that EVE is a title that, despite a rocky start, has had continual support and development from a dedicated team and has seen it's subscriptions rise every single year for 6 years.

[Sjofn]

How long would WoW remain 'new and fresh'? Sooner or later number of ex-players (or people that want to be ex-players) gets large enough that comparable title can surpass WoW. EQ was undisputed Generic DIKU for many years, but regardless of how much effort you put in developing expansions its does get old. Time is not on WoW's side. Blizzard knows this and working on WoW2, but they are by no means guaranteed to succeed, just like Sony did not succeed with their post-EQ titles.

I'm wondering if Cataclysm isn't an attempt to completely "reboot" the game and effectively create WoW-2 within the existing WoW. As much as I've followed, the are doing to their world what EQ2 did to Norrath. But they're keeping it within the game rather than creating a second one.

I kinda suspect that's exactly it. It will certainly make the entire game feel newer, even to people like me who have been playing it for ages and leveled a lot of alts over the years. I'm looking forward to it. 

[UnSub]

You should be aspiring to be EVE, not failed WoW with RMT in it.

A title that crashed and burned on release due to its buggy and unfinished state? In which case, plenty of MMOs get step one correct.

That's one way of looking at it.

Another way is that EVE is a title that, despite a rocky start, has had continual support and development from a dedicated team and has seen it's subscriptions rise every single year for 6 years.

I don't disagree that the support and commitment CCP showed helped make EvE succeed. However, I also think that 1) being a very unique offering, 2) being able to buy the title in a fire sale and 3) going worldwide on a single server all helped a lot. It would be difficult for another MMO to ride the same kind of factors to the same kind of success.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Is EVE's live team roughly the same people as who developed it initially?  It seems that compounding the problems of biting off more than they can chew and releasing too soon, many AAA MMOs suffer from having their development team gutted the day after launch day (or even before in the case of CO).  EVEs success at turning around a dismal launch may have been at least partly enabled by having retained all the knowlege and skills learned from the school of hard knocks that the original developers had gained.

Or is it only Sony that shoots itself in the foot (after inserting foot in mouth) this way?

[Numtini]

Didn't CCP effectively buy Eve back from the company they developed it for at a huge discount though?

[Draegan]

AOC, WAR and Aion have proven that there are 800,000 to 1 million people willing to try a new MMOG.  What each game has proven is that you can't be:

• Broken and Incomplete (AOC)
• Terribly Designed (WAR)
• Unimaginative advancement curve (Aion){/li]
  

Aion managed to be complete and fix all of it's content, it was also well designed from a content perspective.  However it's "unimaginative advancement curve" (code word for shitty grind) outside level 20 (imo) was shit.

Even at level 25-30 and 30+ the time per level wasn't that much when compared with other games.  It was what you were doing.  However, from what I've heard, 40+ is just rediculous. 

Anyway, there is room for a new diku game, the people making them just can't be clueless, no talent fucks.

[Ingmar]

Has Aion actually proved anything failure-related yet? I was under the impression that it is doing a much better job at short-term retention than either AoC or WAR were, at least? (I haven't tried it myself, the NCSoft pantygrinder heritage was enough to keep me away.)

[Fordel]

There was some absolutely ridiculous GoldSpam during the first week or two, but I think they managed to keep it almost under control now.

[WindupAtheist]

No one will really "compete with Blizzard" until and unless someone else who also has bags of money, dynamite intellectual property, and a long tradition of quality decides to make an MMO. Basically until (as Schild has often said) someone at Nintendo wakes up and greenlights a Pokemon MMO.

None of the current crop of MMO also-rans have it in them. At all.

[sinij]

Blizzard mmorpg is a culture of derivative mediocrity, as such the only thing they have going for them is stability and 5 years of content accumulation.

Lack of innovation is what will ultimately kill WoW, lack of polish from competition is what keep WoW running for now.

[Lantyssa]

People have been saying that for years.  Still hasn't happened.