An MMO *reduces* the fee?!Everything gets more expensive in time. Game box prices and monthly subscription fees are no exception, with the odd exception being either
free downloads or
no monthly fee at all.
But today marks the first time I'd ever heard of a game
reducing it's monthly fee without all but removing it.
Per
this press release (which I first read about at
MMORPGDot.com), Nevrax is reducing the monthly fee of the game from $16.99/mo to $8.49/mo. Yes, effectively halving the fee.
This is good news for a game that's otherwise a somewhat mediocre success.
I sort of liked the game when I played it last summer. It tries to blend fantasy and sci-fi, and does so within a rather compelling graphics engine. In fact, on that, I was initially attracted to the game at E3 2004
because of the graphics engine. The game booth was tucked rather out of the way in Kentia Hall, being presented then by the Themis Group (publishers of Escapist Magazine and all around market research company). At one point the avatar they showed was getting chased by 1, then 10, then over 100 mob spiders, all with no framerate reduction at all.
As a technology, the engine was enough to get me to check out the game.
The other innovative feature I liked was the "brick" concept of spell and skill building. Effectively, every ability in the game is based on a sum of parts. These parts can include one for damage, another for distance, another for cost, and things like time to cast, chance of resist, and so on. These blocks can be ripped apart and recombined to iterations of the same spell or completely new spells altogether. The early abilities are very basic. But later into the game, more complex abilities come along with more building blocks.
This isn't truly open-ended, since everything seemed to be based on finite tables. However, even with this restriction, it
still was very unique in a genre otherwise dominated by static spells one could buy or acquire as drops.'
Unfortunately, these two features did not make up for server performance problems, a rather lackluster interface, a somewhat bland style to the game, and, probably most importantly, the fact that it went to market when World of Warcraft and Everquest 2 did. Launching alongside these two juggernauts was going to be a problem, game performance aside.
We're not yet at a stage where new MMORPGs need a license or a brand. However, we
are at a point where launching a generically-themed game from a previously-unheard-of developer requires specific timing to prevent launching with hype-driven titles from established companies with deep marketing budgets.
I think Nevrax knew this, or at least Themis certainly did, as they
originally had planned to launch a month or so after E3 2004. However,
they stalled because of stuff they found out at the show (and I'm sure other things), thus delaying the launch to a point when EQ2 and WoW were in full hype mode, and were unlocking their Beta periods.
We've all heard that old expression about success being based on "Location Location Location."
Well, I've long been convinced that Location is a point in
Time as well.
With the two huge other games well established by Christmas 2004, the coming expansions to the existing games, with the influx of
new games, including a few with major licenses, and with the continuing issues that plague Ryzom, I personally feel the game is somewhat doomed to mediocrity, at least in the short term.
This doesn't mean it can't be a success of course, and it's not like Nevrax isn't still working on it (
all evidence to the
contrary). And I have no idea what they need in terms of players or money. Further, it's with
examples like
these that I see a fairly traditional solid relationship between the developer and the community. The size of the game does help here, since there's simply less noise and more direct focus.
However, I do wonder if the game will be relegated to Asherons Call 2 status, a place a relatively small group of people absolutely love until the company can no longer justify keeping it open. At the same time, I wonder if they'll need to pull a Funcom and radically change their business model in order to stay afloat (though its harder to advertise in an alien fantasy setting...)
But really, I will always wonder how much of that has to do with when it launched.
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