LOTRO NDA has been lifted.

[Venkman]

Seems like Blizzard and Webzen tied up The9 for a time (they agreed to $35mil for Huxley alone).

MMORPGs are not aimed at the Bratz crowd.

Not LoTRO or the stuff we talk about here, no. But Club Penguin and Runescape hit that market square-on (and are much more successful than ToonTown, which does also hit them), explaining their successes. Maplestory scales to that level though is more successful because of the breadth of age groups it hits.

Expansion talks already?

They need to, for two reasons 1) It's Turbine. People really still think Turbine's success is based on their ongoing story-stuff/expansions, thinking what they did 7 years ago in AC1 still applies to current-state Turbine; and, 2) You don't start working on your expansion only after your launch numbers come in. You need to know how big your live development team needs to be before launch to project how much money you need after launch to pay them. And guesstimating team size is based on projected workload (as you know).

[Soln]

I stil hold by what I also said in that prediction thread:

1.  new games with lots of hype not being stable or complete for most of their first years
2.  WoW capping by 2008
3.  some games like LOTRO getting their act together well after launch and then taking off.

If LotRO actually launches well, stays stable technically, has a growing or at least a stable community and actually provides an expansion or two, then it will "take off".   I didn't know how stable the game seemed to be already. 

[WindupAtheist]

As far as predictions go, we have those carved in stone (What about sticking that thread?).

I'll save you the effort of clicking a link and I'll copy here the LoTRO ones, for December 2007 and December 2008.

December 2007

Lord of the Rings Online

WindUpAtheist: -


December 2008

Lord of the Rings Online

WindUpAtheist: 90k

Huh?  I just double-checked the thread in question, and I never made any prediction about LOTRO at all since it was still under NDA and I had no idea whether it was a shitpile or not.  Just put me down for 300k for 12/07 and 350k for 12/08.

[Arthur_Parker]

Also, there's no point in rushing out an expansion to please the lifetime members -- they already have all the subscription money they are ever going to get from those people.

No that's not what I meant, I have no clue what the time scale for the first expansion is but rushing it would be a very bad idea, I'd expect them to aim for 12 months but they might by tempted to go for the xmas market.  I believe lifetime members never have to pay a monthly subscription, but will have to buy the expansion if they want to use the added content.  Therefore in a game with some (say 15%) of your customers freeloading by being lifetime customers, it becomes even more important to release expansions to get some money from them.

I think a lot of WoW's success is down to being solo friendly pre cap, LOTRO is copying that.  I also think one of the main problems with WoW is how horrible forced raiding is, hence the reason the raid size has been cut to 20 in WoW.  But I don't expect LOTRO to try to compete with WoW for raid content, I think they will end up expanding monster play as their main end game content.

[Falconeer]

Huh?  I just double-checked the thread in question, and I never made any prediction about LOTRO at all since it was still under NDA and I had no idea whether it was a shitpile or not.  Just put me down for 300k for 12/07 and 350k for 12/08.

You did it HERE. In the thread that sprung the official one. November 2006.

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.

[Hound]

  I didn't know how stable the game seemed to be already. 

It is fairly stable in my opinion, it's not a perfect 10 by any means I would say more around a 9 to 9.5 lately. This morning the client locked up leaving the Prancing Pony instance. Most of the server problems have occurred during time when they are intentionally trying to break them, and shortly after the mail system was introduced, which they fixed a couple of patches later. In a normal 3 to 4 hour session I rarely have anything more than a few hiccups in loading data from the hard drive. The hiccups has improved drastically in the last two patches, however out of the blue even out in the boonies soloing during prime time I will get a occasional 5 second WTF where it seemed as if I am not getting any data downstream. I have not noticed that in the last two nights however. Some people were complaining of memory leaks, however I have honestly never seen one on my machine, possibly because I run Cacheman in the background,  and those threads seemed to have died a peaceful death so that must have been fixed now

[Hound]

double post

[Trippy]

Also, there's no point in rushing out an expansion to please the lifetime members -- they already have all the subscription money they are ever going to get from those people.

No that's not what I meant, I have no clue what the time scale for the first expansion is but rushing it would be a very bad idea, I'd expect them to aim for 12 months but they might by tempted to go for the xmas market.  I believe lifetime members never have to pay a monthly subscription, but will have to buy the expansion if they want to use the added content.  Therefore in a game with some (say 15%) of your customers freeloading by being lifetime customers, it becomes even more important to release expansions to get some money from them.

Okay I see what you are saying there but still, the best thing that can happen for Turbine is if all the lifetime subscribers stopped playing the game immediately after signing up for the lifetime subscription plan so while it's true that expansions will be the only form of future revenue Turbine will be able to get from those players (assuming Turbine doesn't turn LotRO into an RMT game) it's far better for them to tailor the expansions to the needs of the monthly players and basically just ignore the lifetime players.

[Hound]

to get the same 200 dollars from a regular subscriber at 15 dollars a month would take 13 months. I an not sure how that all plays into effect but you can pretty much bet the lifetime people will be buying all the expansion boxes unless Turbine manages to screw it up royally somehow after release

[WindupAtheist]

Oh well, fine, I'll stay in the <100k camp with Haemish.  Whether it be 90k or 400k, we'll all be laughing at the people who are predicting a million-plus.

[Arthur_Parker]

Okay I see what you are saying there but still, the best thing that can happen for Turbine is if all the lifetime subscribers stopped playing the game immediately after signing up for the lifetime subscription plan so while it's true that expansions will be the only form of future revenue Turbine will be able to get from those players (assuming Turbine doesn't turn LotRO into an RMT game) it's far better for them to tailor the expansions to the needs of the monthly players and basically just ignore the lifetime players.

I think human nature being what it is, someone who has paid for a lifetime subscription will generally be more understanding and laid back than a monthly subscriber.  If you pay monthly, it's in your interest to play as much as possible to get the best bang for your buck and therefore you will exhaust content faster and demand new content faster.  Monthly subscribers also have the well known attitude of "I'm a paying customer do what I want now or else!".  The future of the game and the well being of the company don't matter to a monthly subscriber after they have cancelled their subscription, they might be bitter about something but that's about it.

I could be well off the mark in this but the way I see it, a lifetime subscriber will want the game to be popular and will want the game company to do well.  They have an ongoing investment in the game and will possibly refuse to see things in a negative light for longer, because if they admit the game sucks then they made a bad investment and few people like to admit doing that, even to themselves.

[bhodi]

I could be well off the mark in this but the way I see it, a lifetime subscriber will want the game to be popular and will want the game company to do well.  They have an ongoing investment in the game and will possibly refuse to see things in a negative light for longer, because if they admit the game sucks then they made a bad investment and few people like to admit doing that, even to themselves.

A company using cognitive dissonance? Pretty slick.

[Sparky]

Well I finally got in to the beta and played a while.  In a word: serviceable.  It's a curious mix of the obviously cobbled together (subpar animation, all the trainers/vendors clumped together with apparently little thought and less finesse, dull button mashing combat which reminds me way too much of waiting for your specials to roll over in Horizons) and the well done (engaging quests that thread nicely into each other, lovely scenery, rock solid for a beta).  As others have noted there're a few good ideas in there that others would do well to steal.  It won't draw me away from WoW.

[Phred]

The progressive zone restrictions based on your level I did not like - it's reminiscent of the invisible wall thing again of DDO - but nowhere near as obvious.

What level restrictions? I havent played in a while but I ran a L10 all the way to Rivendale and beyond when I did play. The way mob agro works it's trivially easy to keep ahead of the mobs and not get owned. I really missed WoW's dazed effect there as imo it made the game too easy.

Other things I disliked were rolling on stuff I or anyone in my party mined and the abysimally slow hp and power regen rates, even with food buffs.

My overall impression was that it was an ok game but didn't really grab me. Class design seemed kind of meh too. No real hooks to get me interested in playing any of the classes.

[Phred]

Edit- For those that expect Elvish lore Nazis prepare for disappointment, in 4+ months of beta play I have not ran across any. However if I do I shall PM you their names so you can harass them with leet speak tells.

All I know is that I accidentally said "LFG" and got all kinds of yelled at.

Yeah, well, it's 'LFG... thou' if you are into the lore.

Hound said what I would have if I had thought of it.  It's very laid-back.  WoW has that urgent tribal music or the general air of persecution, but LotRO is actually pretty relaxing.  It's convenient that the landscape is pretty, too.  Too bad about the avatars and loot, though, but it's a lot easier to patch that in than a graphical update.

I got several "FOAD" tells for not saying LFF (looking for fellowship).  I shit you not.  It was friggin' ridiculous.  Also, the people who freaked out over "duelling" so Turbine renamed it "sparring." 

Those same ppl got really pissed off when I pointed out the channel name was lfg as well.

[Hound]

The progressive zone restrictions based on your level I did not like - it's reminiscent of the invisible wall thing again of DDO - but nowhere near as obvious.

What level restrictions? I havent played in a while but I ran a L10 all the way to Rivendale and beyond when I did play. The way mob agro works it's trivially easy to keep ahead of the mobs and not get owned. I really missed WoW's dazed effect there as imo it made the game too easy.

Other things I disliked were rolling on stuff I or anyone in my party mined and the abysimally slow hp and power regen rates, even with food buffs.

My overall impression was that it was an ok game but didn't really grab me. Class design seemed kind of meh too. No real hooks to get me interested in playing any of the classes.

you're good dude. I got pwn'ed 3 times as a level 30 or 31 trying to make it into Rivendale the first time and that was trying to stick to the road and avoid mobs.

[Endie]

Oh well, fine, I'll stay in the <100k camp with Haemish.  Whether it be 90k or 400k, we'll all be laughing at the people who are predicting a million-plus.

Given that nobody predicted a million-plus for either date, the comedy will be limited.

[CmdrSlack]

Oh well, fine, I'll stay in the <100k camp with Haemish.  Whether it be 90k or 400k, we'll all be laughing at the people who are predicting a million-plus.

Given that nobody predicted a million-plus for either date, the comedy will be limited.

Falconeer, I didn't like to predict figures for LOTRO as I was in the Beta under NDA, and me saying 1 million after hating DDO would have looked a bit weird.
So I'll give mine now if you don't object.

LOTRO December 2007
1 million

LOTRO December 2008
1.5 million

[Endie]

Oh well, fine, I'll stay in the <100k camp with Haemish.  Whether it be 90k or 400k, we'll all be laughing at the people who are predicting a million-plus.

Given that nobody predicted a million-plus for either date, the comedy will be limited.

Falconeer, I didn't like to predict figures for LOTRO as I was in the Beta under NDA, and me saying 1 million after hating DDO would have looked a bit weird.
So I'll give mine now if you don't object.

LOTRO December 2007
1 million

LOTRO December 2008
1.5 million

I thought Falconeer refused to take those figures from Arthur?  My link was to the "absolutely final super competition" post.

That said, if it tanks then Andar, for one (20k prediction?!?) can laugh at Arthur in a friendly, non-competitive manner.

Edit:  hohoho look at this spaz from that thread:

World of Warcraft
Endie: 4.1 millions

[Falconeer]

Considering that the price for that competition is absolutely nothing, me accepting or refusing new bets is useless as a flashlight with exhausted batteries in a dark room.

I thought it was fair to shut the door at january 31st, and so I did. Predictions will carry on with the thread anyway, even if not "officially" ranked.

[WindupAtheist]

I'm sure this has been asked elsewhere, but how hard of an Asian push is Warhammer getting?

[Yegolev]

Sounds filthy, keep me posted.

[HaemishM]

I think that as the number of pedestrian titles increases, you'll see more new players.  WoW obviously did that, and I don't see how a WoW-too type game can't do the same. 

Because it isn't WoW. Warcraft/Blizzard had an installed base of rabid computer game playing fans, many of whom had played Diablo online. Lord of the Rings Online doesn't. The fact that it isn't a complete trainwreck is why I think 100k is a reasonable number, and should be considered a success.

[CmdrSlack]

I think that as the number of pedestrian titles increases, you'll see more new players.  WoW obviously did that, and I don't see how a WoW-too type game can't do the same. 

Because it isn't WoW. Warcraft/Blizzard had an installed base of rabid computer game playing fans, many of whom had played Diablo online. Lord of the Rings Online doesn't. The fact that it isn't a complete trainwreck is why I think 100k is a reasonable number, and should be considered a success.

It might not do the same numbers as WoW, and my prediction is in the 450k by Christmas ballpark.  However, that 450k will largely be pulled from people new to the genre as well as people who come over and stay.  I'm just as sick of dikus as the next jaded person who has been playing MMOs since 1999 or earlier.  Heck, the fact that my experience in the EQ guide program didn't kill my love of MMOs entirely is testament to something.  Not sure what, but it can't be good.  The thing is that there's lots of folks out there who I don't think have the same background as the "older" posters at sites like this one. 

Those are the people they're making these games for.  They hope to capture people like us, but if they designed games with the jaded old guard in mind, they'd not be making games.  Basically, they're the ones who aren't totally sick of diku gameplay and they're the ones that are most important to capture because they bring new people with them.  Our friends are already sick of us trying to lure them into MMOs.  Those people's friends aren't as wary yet.

Edit -- for some clarity, although this post still needs more.

[Falconeer]

Edit- For those that expect Elvish lore Nazis prepare for disappointment, in 4+ months of beta play I have not ran across any. However if I do I shall PM you their names so you can harass them with leet speak tells.

All I know is that I accidentally said "LFG" and got all kinds of yelled at.

Yeah, well, it's 'LFG... thou' if you are into the lore.

Hound said what I would have if I had thought of it.  It's very laid-back.  WoW has that urgent tribal music or the general air of persecution, but LotRO is actually pretty relaxing.  It's convenient that the landscape is pretty, too.  Too bad about the avatars and loot, though, but it's a lot easier to patch that in than a graphical update.

I got several "FOAD" tells for not saying LFF (looking for fellowship).  I shit you not.  It was friggin' ridiculous.  Also, the people who freaked out over "duelling" so Turbine renamed it "sparring." 

Those same ppl got really pissed off when I pointed out the channel name was lfg as well.

2 days old news. From the official update news of the LoTRO client:

Meneldor and Brandywine are now open! Until further notice, LFG will be disabled.

 

Are they serious or they just forgot to use /green?

[HaemishM]

Basically, they're the ones who aren't totally sick of diku gameplay and they're the ones that are most important to capture because they bring new people with them. 

Basically, the naive dumbass demographic. That is a large one.

[Venkman]

The thing is that there's lots of folks out there who I don't think have the same background as the "older" posters at sites like this one. 

Those are the people they're making these games for.  They hope to capture people like us, but if they designed games with the jaded old guard in mind, they'd not be making games.  Basically, they're the ones who aren't totally sick of diku gameplay and they're the ones that are most important to capture because they bring new people with them.  Our friends are already sick of us trying to lure them into MMOs.  Those people's friends aren't as wary yet.

I personally think they're already here. And in WoW for the most part. That LoTRO borrows much of the conventions of WoW (which borrowed much itself) is a good thing to drag people a) to a new game; and, b) to a popular lore. And yea, because it says "Lord of the Rings" and because the artwork style they've been using in adverts mimics the Peter Jackson movie stuff, it should at least capture some not already in the genre.

But for the non-jaded MMO players out there (and here), there's already good dikus to be enjoyed. What new does LoTRO bring to the table? Aside from the EQ2-collections-thing-on-steroids and a view into Tolkien's world that looked better in the movies (no fault on Turbine's part, I think they've done a great job), not much.

So to me it's not about being jaded about MMOs or dikus. It's about whether LoTRO has the appeal to pull people into a new time sink, and keep then. Pull, yes. Retain? Depends on how they tweak the gameplay in the coming months. It's just not that exciting. Solid, stable, servicable are all good qualities. But they don't pull and retain the attention for long, no matter the lore.

[Hound]

So to me it's not about being jaded about MMOs or dikus. It's about whether LoTRO has the appeal to pull people into a new time sink, and keep then. Pull, yes. Retain? Depends on how they tweak the gameplay in the coming months. It's just not that exciting. Solid, stable, servicable are all good qualities. But they don't pull and retain the attention for long, no matter the lore.

Some good points. I predict two groups of customers. Fans of the PJ movies (not Tolkien scholars), and people who are on their 5th WoW/EQII alt and are ready for a change of pace. The game is hitting the best sellers lists at EB Games, Best Buy, and Amazon.com 8 weeks before release so it is already selling some boxes. The question is though can Turbine keep the players interested once they hit 50.

The game is not appealing to old jaded farts who think that the next MMORPG down the line is going to come up with some magical new class or race or somehow make pushing a series of seven buttons challenging and somehow appealing again. I am going to purchase it simply because I am tired of EQII, never cared for the Warcraft world and think that watching TV after the wife goes to bed is about as much fun as a colon exam. Will I go back to EQII eventually, damn if I know.

[Falconeer]

This is the third part of the interviev to Lord British about Tabula Rasa, but it's actually about the market.
I could put it in the Tabula Rasa thread, or in the Vanguard Thread, but I think it fits better here right now.

VE3D: Ultima Online is ten years old now this fall. That game has amazing longevity. With the current generation of MMOs, what are some of the things you feel need to be in Tabula Rasa in order for it to have a chance to enjoy the kind of longevity UO has had?

Richard Garriott: Let me back up and tell you how I feel about this whole genre, the MMO genre. First of all, any MMO that has ever in its life gotten over the 100,000-player mark is still here. All of them. You would think that competition and new games would ultimately peel away those players and somehow it does not. In addition, it's not the same people playing [the game] all those years—all these games have a churn where new people come in.

Early on, one of the big things we talked about is when and where is market saturation for these online games. People thought we were near market saturation, since we began before we made U.O. Before U.O., the biggest online game in history had 15,000 players. So when EA was doing sales projections for it, "since it's Ultima and you [Garriott]," they said, "maybe we'll give it 30,000." Well, 50,000 people paid to become beta testers on U.O.! Then when it launched, it sold out immediately of its first run of 100,000 copies and became the fastest-selling PC game in Origin history. So, we thought, surely there can't be anything bigger than that. Then, of course, EverQuest comes out and beats that. Then all these other games keep coming out, many of them getting past the 100,000 mark…then, of course, WoW.

Just after U.O. launched in the states, NCsoft launched Lineage in Asia. When we met the folks at NCsoft, we had heard of Lineage, didn't really know much about it, looked it up on the Web and saw that these guys were ten times more successful than we were. So we figured they knew what they were doing. With [Korea having] a population of 50 million, let's say [Lineage] had half a million [subscribers]. That's already an unheard-of depth of market penetration…We decided to merge our companies almost immediately. By the time we finished all the lawyer work and paperwork, they were up to a million subscribers! Each year that went by, we though surely they'd reached saturation.

[At this time, Robert Garriott, Richard's brother and business partner, joins us.]

Robert Garriott: In the last 30 days, Lineage 1 had five million accounts. When Lineage 2 was coming out, we thought, "Oh gee, that's going to cannibalize the market." And so Lineage 2 came out and Lineage 1 actually grew! [Lineage 2 now] has almost the same number of subscribers as Lineage 1! So now about one in every ten people in Korea has a Lineage 1 account. And about one in every ten people in Korea has a Lineage 2 account! So that's one out of every five people in the country of Korea has an account—about one of every two families. It is so mass market in Korea, Taiwan, China—the real question is when [are online games] going to reach mass-market in the U.S.? Even with the numbers WoW is showing and we're showing, it is so far from mass market in the U.S., there is tons of room for growth. The real question is, how are we going to grow it, not if there's enough room to grow it?

Richard Garriott: So, we started this question with, what are games going to need to do to be successful in this next round? Even before online games, for the ten real successful games there may be in a year, there are hundreds more failures during a year. Unfortunately, the same thing's true for online games—and they take a lot longer and they cost a lot more money, and so the downside risk to successful online game development is phenomenally big.

So, that does two things: One, it tends to make people a little more conservative the way they approach things; and so in my mind that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that you then won't succeed. I think that a) you have to be bold; and b), you'd better be right. And those are a very difficult pairing of things to put together. So I think that's why you'll find the people who're succeeding are pretty experienced developers. There aren't very many big online games coming from the green upstart community—who often does have a really great idea, but they have to have the financial acumen, as well as the development experience, to sequence their risk items to nail the innovative features they need early. And then only after that follow up with the quantity they need to make one of these big MMOs.

Robert Garriott: A good way to explain it is, in the single-player box business, which we spent about 20 years in, it took about 15 years before it really became a big-company business. For a long time, small upstarts could in their garage develop really good box games. In the online space, that has happened about twice as fast. In the late '90s, it was kind of like that. But now, cheap MMPs are costing 20 million and expensive ones are costing 30-plus, so it's no longer a garage-shop business. It very quickly went into big business.

Richard Garriott: But now to get into the feature set, World of Warcraft is the end of the first generation. World of Warcraft did a great job of refining the first feature set that lots of games had presented before it—which was perfect for Blizzard to do, because they do a great job of refinement…it's their hallmark in my mind The great slot-machine mechanic of carefully sequenced reward cycles, the really nicely unified user interface, the really great job of art direction. But…most of the features you see in it are things you've seen in previous generations, just done really nicely. So if you're going to stick with that feature set, there's really no point in continuing.

I think consumers will be tapped out for that feature set and are looking to move on to something different—what I'm hoping they'll see in Tabula Rasa. In the previous generation, network latency was expected, so we didn't do action RPGs, we didn't do very detailed storytelling, because no one really knew how to do it in a multiplayer setting. We just avoided a lot of innovation just to take advantage of all the really big ones. But I think you're going to see a whole new wave of games, not only what we're doing with Tabula Rasa. As we go look at other developers, we're considering working with or even competitors, this new wave you're seeing will bring to the table much more compelling gameplay than this current plodding generation of online games.

[Endie]

Robert Garriott: ... So now about one in every ten people in Korea has a Lineage 1 account. And about one in every ten people in Korea has a Lineage 2 account! So that's one out of every five people in the country of Korea has an account—about one of every two families.

Robert Garriot does not understand set theory.

[Calantus]

Lol that is a pretty big gaff.

[Endie]

Lol that is a pretty big gaff.

Orrrrr... it is an intentional application of Second Life Economics.

[Arrrgh]

The gist of some posts above seems to be that this game is meant to appeal to people who like Tolkien, but they need to own a beefy PC on a fast net connection and never have played another MMO. That doesn't sound like a huge group.

[Endie]

The gist of some posts above seems to be that this game is meant to appeal to people who like Tolkien, but they need to own a beefy PC on a fast net connection and never have played another MMO. That doesn't sound like a huge group.

I like Tolkien, own a beefy PC on a fast net connection and have played many MMOs, but I'm still intent on moving from beta to subscriber.  I have only played 2 dikus in the last three years for more than a trial month, and only one of those for more than two months (guess which).  They bore me on the level of mechanics.  But I like the backstory in this case.

I mean, I've played FPSs for, what, 12 or 13 years now?  And they bore me too.  But a decent storyline, or the fact that my friends are all playing can still make me play the latest FPS for a while, no matter how dreary the highly derivative mechanics are.  Diku, fps, rts... they're all just advancing by tiny increments.  Those who claim that the latest iterations of CS, Doom, Quake, Halo or the rest are fundamentally radical or inventive are lying to themselves.  But HL stands out a bit, along with some CS mods, in that at least it has a decent storyline working there.  Same old genre, but a bit of fiddling with physics and a decent story and I'm interested.

In any case, F13, and specifically the smallish number (10-12?) of positively feral and hugely outspoken anti-diku posters, is not a representative sample of, say, the millions and millions of WoW subscribers who happily dole over their money month after month.  As such, market size is not really Turbine's problem.

It's a truism: WoW showed that same-old-same-old mechanics done right with a popular backstory are fine.

[Nyght]

I like Tolkien, own a beefy PC on a fast net connection and have played many MMOs, but I'm still intent on moving from beta to subscriber.  I have only played 2 dikus in the last three years for more than a trial month, and only one of those for more than two months (guess which).  They bore me on the level of mechanics.  But I like the backstory in this case.

Ya, this is me as well. Not sayin I expect to play it for very long. I have not stuck with any DIKU more then about 3 months that I can remember but I'll buy a box and give it a go.