Is the dumb money on MMORPGs?

[Sandman]

Big media firms are rushing to copy the success of online games like World of Warcraft, a conference has been told.

Millions of dollars are being spent trying to emulate the massively multiplayer online game, experts at the Game Developer's Conference said.

"We are going to have so many failures it is going to be unbelievable," said Mark Jacobs of Electronic Arts.

The panel also predicted that non-gaming MMOs such as Second Life would be prevalent in the short term.

Speaking at the San Francisco event, Mr Jacob, who is currently working on Warhammer Online, said: "There is going to be a lot of corpses, rubble all over the place.

"There is so much dumb money. Mass media is coming in and saying we want to be just like WoW."

Full story.

An MMORPG crash sounds feasible, although I'm mainly just posting this because I love the phrase 'dumb money'.

[Proteus_MST]

I more like this phrase

"There is going to be a lot of corpses, rubble all over the place.

[Quillan]

Is anyone surprised by this? I would be shocked if they are. There's an old saying "Imitation is the sincerest form of television", and TV has been doing this for decades now. Reality shows, medical shows, cop shows, lawyer shows, anytime someone comes out with something original and successful the others all copy it. It happens in every medium. Now that MMOs have become very successful, everyone tries to make on to get the subscription revenue. There are only so many people who can play, and most of them will fail.

[DrSpike]

Well it's already happening so it's hardly an amazing prediction.

[snoopy369]

I love how they cite WOW as the reason for all of this. Apparently "Everquest" didn't make their radar...

[Asmodean]

Does anyone have some links to some studies regarding success criteria for MMORPG's?

Such as how many subscribers a game needs to be profitable, given X, Y and Z etc. etc.

Would be interesting to read, as so many people are looking to WoW, but surely you can have an MMO with even a quarter of the subscribers that Blizzard have, and still call it a success.

Asmodean

[DrSpike]

You can make money with a relatively small playerbase. AC2 was making money right up till the end with around 10k subscribers.

However, the real question is how quickly can you make enough to cover massive up front development costs.

[Jon Miller]

10k (player base) is enough to run the servers but not enough to do proper expansions or really fix the game

JM

[Makahlua]

Well we gamers knew EverCrack from the start, but it never really made it's way into pop culture the way WoW has. And there is no copying it, the 'dumb money' are going to get cleaned out if they try. It's a unique combination of pre-existing cult franchise + years of letting the earlier MMO's refine the gameplay for them. I would be quite shocked if someone managed to get something else off the ground that was near as succsessful

ETA: I mean they couldn't keep a -Start Wars- based MMO going, fer crying outloud! (Though that may just be because SOE sux... )

[Jon Miller]

that is because they screwed it

they and FFXI had a decent player base before

JM

[Jon Miller]

I Think the only ones who can do amazing are the ones with material... Warhammer or LOTRO are the current ones that might make it big

the rest are just for games, smaller market

JM

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Makahlua
It's a unique combination of pre-existing cult franchise + years of letting the earlier MMO's refine the gameplay for them.

The point about the franchise is well made. It can't carry an MMO by itself indefinitely (SWG!) but between MMOs that have been well constructed it makes all the difference.

In Blizzard's case there was also already a massive playerbase of fans from D2 & WC3, and even SC to an extent.

[Dis]

am I the only person who does not like these types of games? wtf is the point? I suppose it's better when you play with friends. but even playing with my brother I wasn't all that interested.

[Kassiopeia]

I played WoW with two of my friends in the same guild but I managed to get rid of it after six months. I really hope that the desire to be like WoW is a fad and that one of these days we'll get MMORPGs that are actually interesting and fun to play instead of being a grind. Of course WoW didn't invent the grinding sort of MMORPG, but it popularized it and used an existing fan base and mythology to make it one of its kind among MMORPGs in size. Guild Wars is pretty much the pinnacle of the nongrind right now with its PvP where success is based on skill rather than time spent playing. The PvE wasn't much to write home about, though.

It's like Mark Twain's old wisdom, Huckleberry Finn got people to paint the fence for him when he started charging money for it. It's as boring and monotonous as work, but since you're paying for it and it's supposed to be a game you're doing it all day long and convince yourself it's fun. I felt disgusted with myself and wondered where all those hours had gone once I realized just how ridiculous WoW's gameplay was.

[Makahlua]

It's not just you, I know quite a few people who wouldn't go there if they were paid to I've demo'd a number of them, but the only ones I ever played for pay were UO for about 4 years and WoW for about 6 mos.

The point? I dunno really, other than geeky bragging rights that mean squat in the Real World? I think I stayed with UO for so long because it wasn't level based; I could not play for a week and yet still be keeping up with my guildies. I fell in with the right guild and that gave me a larger pool of people to play with; no coincidence that my leaving was as the guild moved more into SWG and Shadowbane, leaving us with less than a dozen active in UO. Got to be rather boring and lonely

So yes, it is better when you have friends; I quit WoW because all but one friend had stopped playing after the inital fun wore off. Bastards ( ) dragged me back in for a month back in Oct, but got out as soon as I can - that game sucks your life away ...

ETA: Also! No game offers a 'fun' way to level up a crafting skill, either(at least that I've seen. Someone prove me wrong!). It's all 'grab a ridiculously large amount of materials, to the exclusion of decorating your house/room in your bankbox; setup macro to save you from an RSI and read a book at the compy while it runs'. Whee. Fun.