Goblin Squad Member
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I hope with the plan to allow only small amounts of players over time will weed out some of the rude, anti-social people seen in the general population of the games we have now. I know we have to deal with them in real life all the time but I really go out of my way to avoid them. You know the kind I mean. The kill stealing, in your face, rude people that go out of their way to make other peoples game time miserable because they find it "fun".
On the other hand, it would be nice to see a way for the players to dispense justice instead of the generic /report thing.
Just my 2cents for today
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Goblin Squad Member
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Lot of speculation but my expectation for the early enrollment phase will possibly be a golden time to experience PFO, at least, if I may be so optimistic, due to the above and the fact players will be assorted, manageable size, flexibility to feedback to the devs and forge and impact on the development of these systems and communities early on. Sounds like a good package irrespective of less features.
As numbers increase, so incidence of anti-social acts will occur, but if the map splits along the lines of in-game cohesive communities I think this could do wonders for not having to put up with random acts of "internet ahat behavior" this so much or so unexpectedly, if your character is embedded in such a network of other "good reputatation" players and "return business" with other players either 'in-character' friend or enemy. Fingers-crossed.
What we see in most MMOs today is a game design where success for the player does not depend on the interaction of others.
In theme parks today; The player is practically invincible provided they follow the level path laid out for them. Seldom do you ever die, and even more rare do you ever "fail" a quest or an event. There are little to no penalties/setbacks for death.
Group content no longer requires you to get yourself into a group. The game can handle that for you. And at the first sign of someone encroaching on your ego; you can drop group and have the game give you a new one.
It fosters a very disposable/throwaway mentality towards other players - You don't need anybody because the game will always be ready to pair you up with a limitless supply of anonymous lemmings to get the content done.
I'm not terribly worried about those players coming to PFO. I doubt many of them will ever hear of this game. Seems like the industry has a healthy supply of AAA MMORPGs every year to keep them occupied.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not terribly worried about those players coming to PFO. I doubt many of them will ever hear of this game. Seems like the industry has a healthy supply of AAA MMORPGs every year to keep them occupied.
There is always WoW, but the only new AAA themepark title announced is Elder Scrolls Online.It seems like everyone else has learned the lesson of RIFT, Tera, SW:TOR, and others in that is impossible to make money on a AAA title when content locusts will raze and consume everything in the game within a month and then the game becomes a ghost town.
If someone with the content locust style of PVP comes to PFO, I expect they will be in for a rude awakening, especially since those of us who have been in EE will have much more experience in game and be better able to defend ourselves. At the same time as they go about random pking, they will be killing their alignment and reputation, giving them less safe havens and a harder time obtaining better gear and training.
I'm thinking that release will bring a wave of the type of player we have encountered all too often, the immature person that might not be a kid, but act like one. They love PvP, but what they really love is making life miserable for others, corpse camping, kill stealing, Zerg rushing lone players. Most wont hang around once the penalties start kicking in, eventually they will get banned, booted and won't be able to handle the type of PvP that GW does want in the game.
They will be attracted to PFO by it being f2p, by reviews on game sites that advertise it as full time PvP and have looting of players as part of the game.
Not trying to doom and gloom. It'll be the acid test of the anti-griefing systems in the game, as well as testing the reporting>GM intervention>banshillelagh structure. It will also be entertaining for us, watching these idiots get paid back due to their own actions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Looking back at Ultima Online, the red PKers (murderers who could never enter an NPC town for fear of getting guard whacked) always had their own homes to fall back to if they were being hunted. You couldn't affect their house and if they locked the door, they could hide within indefinitely, or even escape by using a recall spell and rune to another location.
In PFO, not only will these bothersome players have to be of the appropriate alignment to seek safe haven in a settlement, but that settlement can be torn down around their ears. Besides the game mechanics provided to quell such behavior, the community itself will wield a mighty big stick. Make yourself a big enough annoyance, and even your PK buddies might toss you to the dogs for fear of losing their settlement to the army that's hunting you.
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There is always WoW, but the only new AAA themepark title announced is Elder Scrolls Online.It seems like everyone else has learned the lesson of RIFT, Tera, SW:TOR, and others in that is impossible to make money on a AAA title when content locusts will raze and consume everything in the game within a month and then the game becomes a ghost town.
ESO was announced publicly after being in development for 5 years. A year ago you might have said "the only AAA MMO announced is GW2" (TERA was a NA&EU localization of a year-old Korean MMO) and here we are now awaiting ESO. I have confidence in the industry to capitalize on the MMO market during a forecasted lull between titles. I don't doubt Blizzard will let the lid off Titan either at this year's E3/Blizzcon or next (they already announced D3 will launch on PS4, which shows they're once again releasing console titles).
I don't think publishers are losing money on these games either. zenimax gained funding in the order of 300 million dollars to launch a studio that will produce ESO, and future titles. If a firm has 300 million to blow on a start-up dev studio, be assured they feel like they'll see a return on that investment. This is the HUGE misconception gamers seem to have with this genre. Not dethroning WoW does not mean failure in the realm of profits. Yes, you see a lot of theme park MMOs have a TON of people play at launch, and then quit in the first 3 months. That doesn't mean the company lost money. And it doesn't mean other companies will stop making these games. In most cases, you're probably looking at profits for just the initial launch. Sell 1-2 million units at $60 each? You just made back your investment. Now it's time to ride subscriptions as far as they go for more money, and when that slows, convert to f2p to bring in a massive surge of new players who will finance you with micro transactions.
Publishers finance games to make money, not to make the game that will "kill WoW". WoW has ~9.5 million subscribers. That alone is a HUGE demographic. Even larger is notion that today; there are more people who have played WoW and quit than there are current WoW subscribers - meaning there's over 10 million people who belong to the MMO market, but currently are looking for the next WoW to play. It is INSANE to NOT make another MMO for that market if you're a massive publisher like EA or Activision. All you have to do is sell 10% of that total market on your game, and you've sold (at minimum) nearly 2 million units. You don't even need to retain subscribers beyond the first month of sales.
When you read about these dev studios that made the flop MMOs shutting down; you can claim we'll see an end to the theme park shuffle. Cureently: Mythic is still in business, BioWare is still in business, TRION is very much in business(massive MMO&TV show to be joint launched this year), ArenaNet is very much in business. FunCom is still churning out MMOs. Last year, the only MMO developer to shut down was Paragon Studios (City of Heroes).
/food for thought
It's nice to see developers make games for gamers. Ryan wants a small meaningful community that will grow, and I think that's great. Mark Jacobs left Mythic to start up another dev studio that he feels will create a true successor to DAoC (not that Warhammer crap that had EA's fingerprints all over it). He has stated that his game isn't made with everyone in mind. That it will appeal to those who played and loved DAoC. These games might not be popular, but they will host a niche community - I think the only people who get that are the pre-WoW era MMORPG/RPG players. Meanwhile, the lowest common denominator will be reading about the next big hype over at IGN.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of the main things PFO will have going for it is the core community that will be developed from EE onward. This community will set the societal tone, which will go a long in dealing with the type of player who doesn't care. The slow ramp up and relatively small populations is going to be a huge deal in retrospect, methinks.
In addition, naturally, we have the various other design elements that support community-minded play, and consequences for actions.
I would say that PFO will have one of the best chances for surviving the initial "unruly mob" of any MMMORPG in recent times.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not terribly worried about those players coming to PFO. I doubt many of them will ever hear of this game. Seems like the industry has a healthy supply of AAA MMORPGs every year to keep them occupied.There is always WoW, but the only new AAA themepark title announced is Elder Scrolls Online.It seems like everyone else has learned the lesson of RIFT, Tera, SW:TOR, and others in that is impossible to make money on a AAA title when content locusts will raze and consume everything in the game within a month and then the game becomes a ghost town.
If someone with the content locust style of PVP comes to PFO, I expect they will be in for a rude awakening, especially since those of us who have been in EE will have much more experience in game and be better able to defend ourselves. At the same time as they go about random pking, they will be killing their alignment and reputation, giving them less safe havens and a harder time obtaining better gear and training.
Agreed, but you left out the systems GW will have in place to boot such people out if they are disruptive to the community and game. Someone who comes to PfO and starts random PKing will likely find themselves booted from the game rather quickly (these types rarely read the player agreements and such), so 95% of the problem will be solved within a day or two of them showing up. Oh they will b!*$@ and cry how they paid $X to join and got banned by GW so quickly, but had they just read the DO's and DON'TS for PfO, they wouldn't even show up thinking that kind of behavior is allowed. Note that this isn't about players who PvP with reasons, just random PK types who enjoy messing with other players (aka Griefers).
However, until they get banned, it'll be somewhat fun to show them that PfO players aren't going to take that kind of abuse, especially when they set themselves up with Attacker and Killer flags.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...Agreed, but you left out the systems GW will have in place to boot such people out if they are disruptive to the community and game. Someone who comes to PfO and starts random PKing will likely find themselves booted from the game rather quickly (these types rarely read the player agreements and such), so 95% of the problem will be solved within a day or two of them showing up...
Hm. A free to play game. I wonder how many different emailboxes I can pick up?
Oh, and each new character I get after being booted from my old email account starts out approximately equivalent in power to the most powerful character on the server? Sweeeet...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Oh, and each new character I get after being booted from my old email account starts out approximately equivalent in power to the most powerful character on the server? Sweeeet...
I hadn't considered Being's excellent point.
PFO will be a griefers dream. Free to play. Player generated content to destroy. A mild power curve where relatively new players aren't that underpowered.
Don't tell the goonies about this...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being, where was it stated PfO would be a F2P game? I've only seen remarks by GW that indicate it will be a game with a paid subscription. Also, GW can always use IP addresses to block unruly "gamers". Not a perfect system, but better than using one based upon email accounts.
I would strongly urge GW and Paizo not to make PfO anything but a paid subscription game. then if some idiot wants to drop $15.99 ($19.99?) every time he/she gets kicked out for not adhering to the rules, let them. They last a couple of days and GW rakes in the money from the dimwitted crowd.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being, where was it stated PfO would be a F2P game? I've only seen remarks by GW that indicate it will be a game with a paid subscription. Also, GW can always use IP addresses to block unruly "gamers". Not a perfect system, but better than using one based upon email accounts.
I would strongly urge GW and Paizo not to make PfO anything but a paid subscription game. then if some idiot wants to drop $15.99 ($19.99?) every time he/she gets kicked out for not adhering to the rules, let them. They last a couple of days and GW rakes in the money from the dimwitted crowd.
From Kickstarter Community Thread: Subscriptions & Microtransactions
MMOs are a bit different than most video games because they have substantial ongoing operational costs in addition to the cost of their development, and so they require that players continue to pay to play the games after they're released. Pathfinder Online will be no different.
There are two ways that most companies operate the business of their MMO; either subscription or microtransactions.
Pathfinder Online is going to allow players to use both systems. If you wish to pay a flat monthly subscription that's automatically billed to your payment method, you'll be able to do that. Or, if you want to pay as you play in smaller incremental amounts, we'll enable you to do that as well using microtransactions.
During Early Enrollment we'll only have the subscription system available. It will take time to develop and test the components that we'll eventually have available for people to purchase using microtransactions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As far as I can tell you only have to use microtransactions when you want to train.
If you don't need to train to be approximately equivalent in power to the strongest player on the server, then you have all you need to grief anyone as long as you have enough pals or don't run out of email accounts.
What might be different is if you associate credit cards, but you could hope security has that locked up tight as a drum and they cannot associate credit cards.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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ESO was announced publicly after being in development for 5 years. A year ago you might have said "the only AAA MMO announced is GW2" (TERA was a NA&EU localization of a year-old Korean MMO) and here we are now awaiting ESO. I have confidence in the industry to capitalize on the MMO market during a forecasted lull between titles.
The industry knew about Elder Scrolls for most of those 5 years. The same for GW2 while it was in development. And Star Wars. And RIFT.
It's almost impossible to "hide" a AAA Theme Park MMO team because they're so big, and because people move around so much in the industry.
There are no AAA Theme Park games in development that are not known to the insiders.
There is a question about Titan. I know enough people at Blizzard, and enough people I know know people at Blizzard, that I've heard about a number of projects under development there, including World of Starcraft, World of Warcraft 2.0, and a wholly new IP built from scratch. Over the past couple of years I've come to the conclusion that Titan is not a product per se - it's a development initiative to come up with a new Blizzard game franchise. All of those projects are likely connected to Titan - it may simply be a horse race to see which game matures fast enough and has a good enough business plan to justify betting the company on it.
Blizzard is unique in that it kills its own children in the cradle. This is a very hard thing for a studio to do, but Blizzard has done it multiple times. They understand that sunk costs are gone and not recoverable and that if a project is not making progress it is better to kill it than keep spending money on it. So the idea that they'd fund multiple large teams in the hope that one of them would get a success is completely believable to me based on what they're generating in terms of profit.
I think that whatever they announce will look a lot more like Destiny from Bungie than World of Warcraft. They're looking to a post-PC era, where the opportunity to interact with a franchise will be much larger than one person on one computer. The games that evolve for the post-PC era aren't going to look like World of Warcraft and they're not going to be AAA Theme Park games.
Which is why, to the best of my knowledge, there are no AAA Theme Park games in active development at any studio with the resources ($100 million+) to fund one.
I don't think publishers are losing money on these games either. zenimax gained funding in the order of 300 million dollars to launch a studio that will produce ESO, and future titles. If a firm has 300 million to blow on a start-up dev studio, be assured they feel like they'll see a return on that investment.
They raised money in a bubble against a business plan that had yet to be disproved. After the market failure of Star Wars and the business failure of 38 Studio, nobody is investing in AAA Theme Park MMOs or new companies to make them.
Let's do the math.
Let's assume (conservatively) that Zenimax spends $150 million to make Elder Scrolls. They'll spend between $50 million and $100 million to market it., so the all in budget is $200 to $250 million. (Funny how that come close to the rumored $300 million they raised ....)
Let's imagine they sell 2 million units of the base game with a gross margin of $40 (about industry average). That's $80 million.
Let's assume they charge $15/mo for a subscription. Let's assume that the average paying player does 4 months in the game.
2 million * 4 months * $15 == $120 million.
That's $200 million in revenue, from which you have to subtract the operating costs of the game and the development team. Those costs are likely to be $50-$75 million a year.
Let's do a best case scenario: $200 million in up-front costs + $50 million in operating costs for one year, less $200 million in revenue == $50 million in losses.
Since no AAA Theme Park since World of Warcraft has ever grown in its 2nd year, and most suffer a catastrophic collapse, it's likely that there is no long-run for Elder Scrolls, and that after the population crashes, Zenimax will massively downsize the team and try to make costs rational with revenues resulting in something eking out a 10-20% profit on $50 million in annual revenue - essentially guaranteeing that the net present value of the business is a loss.
This is the unfortunate business logic that is now affecting the AAA MMO market and why nobody will fund one. It turns out that there simply isn't a way to take and hold 10% of World of Warcraft's player population. There's just a series of releases, spikes, declines, and stagnation.
RyanD
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ESO is pretty. Graphics and scenery look great, too bad the game is set up like a Wow clone. For me it'll be like Rift. Beta for however long it takes for them to release
The game too quickly, play for a month or so post release then wander off, too bored to continue.
Heck I didn't even make it until release before I bailed on SW Tor.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Not to blow sunshine at the CEO, but that's why I love how this game is being developed. For years, I've said game companies need to stop trying to "Out World of Warcraft" the namesake. The people behind WoW are very good at what they do and deserve credit for having done it so well. But I've also said someone needs to make games that cater to niche markets. They won't be as huge at launch, but especially if you involve the players in some small part of the development - let them know you listen and want much the same as they want in the game - you'll create a phenomenally loyal player base. Once you have that, word of mouth/blog/forum/etc. will intrigue others enough to try it and thereby add to your base. The fact that players personally invested in this particular niche, invested enough to say it with up-front cash, will be the same people setting the community tone before the population grows to unwieldy proportions, is simply sauce for the goose.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not to blow sunshine at the CEO, but that's why I love how this game is being developed. For years, I've said game companies need to stop trying to "Out World of Warcraft" the namesake. The people behind WoW are very good at what they do and deserve credit for having done it so well. But I've also said someone needs to make games that cater to niche markets. They won't be as huge at launch, but especially if you involve the players in some small part of the development - let them know you listen and want much the same as they want in the game - you'll create a phenomenally loyal player base. Once you have that, word of mouth/blog/forum/etc. will intrigue others enough to try it and thereby add to your base. The fact that players personally invested in this particular niche, invested enough to say it with up-front cash, will be the same people setting the community tone before the population grows to unwieldy proportions, is simply sauce for the goose.
Exactly what I have been thinking for years. It's great to see.
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Goblin Squad Member
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SW:ToR might have made it had they done some things differently. I think they were right to make so much single-player content but they should also have made more party content.
Their spaceflight simulator should not have been a rollercoaster with guns and missiles. Their PvP should have been much more open world.
I wasn't satisfied with their crafting system, and believe they should have taken a cue from SW:G on that.
They did much of it right. The ip was ideal. The Hero engine was better than I feared but could have been improved.
I was okay with it through beta and was in live right up until I finished ME:3, pre-patch. I was shocked by what I saw as a betrayal of the story line. The pacing was correct and the story was building very nicely to a suitable climax and then somehow somebody cut it off with a cleaver right at a logic puzzle. The team did an admirable job of plastic surgery but the plot line and pacing don't lie. They have masterful storytellers and I could not buy that the plot originally ended there.
That was it for me with Bioware. Can I forgive what I see as a betrayal of the storyteller's art? That would be almost like asking me if I would take my ex back. How could I trust them again?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I tried SWToR. Having grown really tired of theme park games, it seemed even more on rails than others (Rift was my last subscription game). If you're a total Star Wars fan and wanted that much story content, I suppose it would seem like a good game, but for someone who wants to make their own story-lines, their own events, and focus on player interaction, SWToR felt like I might as well have been playing a single player game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I tried SWToR. Having grown really tired of theme park games, it seemed even more on rails than others (Rift was my last subscription game). If you're a total Star Wars fan and wanted that much story content, I suppose it would seem like a good game, but for someone who wants to make their own story-lines, their own events, and focus on player interaction, SWToR felt like I might as well have been playing a single player game.
Exactly. I love Star Wars and loved the game and story of ToR. I bought a six month sub, and played through every storyline basically as a single player game. I wanted KotOR 3 and basically got it, although I would have been happer with it if it were just a single player game. I didn't renew when it went free to play and I'm pretty much done with it now.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being, where was it stated PfO would be a F2P game? I've only seen remarks by GW that indicate it will be a game with a paid subscription. Also, GW can always use IP addresses to block unruly "gamers". Not a perfect system, but better than using one based upon email accounts.
I would strongly urge GW and Paizo not to make PfO anything but a paid subscription game. then if some idiot wants to drop $15.99 ($19.99?) every time he/she gets kicked out for not adhering to the rules, let them. They last a couple of days and GW rakes in the money from the dimwitted crowd.
From Kickstarter Community Thread: Subscriptions & Microtransactions
MMOs are a bit different than most video games because they have substantial ongoing operational costs in addition to the cost of their development, and so they require that players continue to pay to play the games after they're released. Pathfinder Online will be no different.
There are two ways that most companies operate the business of their MMO; either subscription or microtransactions.
Pathfinder Online is going to allow players to use both systems. If you wish to pay a flat monthly subscription that's automatically billed to your payment method, you'll be able to do that. Or, if you want to pay as you play in smaller incremental amounts, we'll enable you to do that as well using microtransactions.
During Early Enrollment we'll only have the subscription system available. It will take time to develop and test the components that we'll eventually have available for people to purchase using microtransactions.
Well, that isn't a F2P, as you would still need to buy time via micro-transactions in order to skill train, and without doing that I doubt many would-be griefers will be able to do much griefing since players who buy time (thus XP) will have the skills needed to defeat them. If they do buy some time and grief, they still get kicked and are out the $ they did spend, even if it doesn't amount to much. Those that continue to do so will just be handing $ over to GW, so win for GW and win for actual players, as those who would grief by paying for time would be handing over money they never get to make much use of, while it can go into making the game better.
F2P would mean being able to play and skill up without ever spending any money, at least as the current definition goes. Any F2P MMO on the market may make it attractive to buy items and such, it isn't necessary to play the game and advance. What Ryan describes there is you pay a monthly subscription or you pay for a week of training. No pay, no play. I can live with that so long as anyone akin to those Being suggests get shut down fast, as promised, and are out their money. How long before they grow tired of handing money over to a game they can't succeed at doing their goal, griefing, gets to be too much for them and they move on to real F2P theme-park games? I am betting it won't be too many times before they seek a less financially costly way of screwing with people just because it amuses them. Things stop amusing people if they keep losing money. Whether it is a paid subscription for a month, or a paid for week, they still will loose money when GW's systems kick in to boot them. I also doubt they will last long enough to amass enough in-game gold to us it to buy time codes.
I truly feel Ryan is on top of any such negative behavior in PfO, and a lot of juvenile mentality people will find PfO not worth their time or money to use as a griefing platform. For this Ryan gets a +2 in my book.
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Man, It's always nice to see Ryan post about insider perspectives on the industry.
I have no doubt Titan will eventually be one of many projects being worked on internally at Blizzard. I recently heard David Brevik in an interview detail the same process shortly after Diablo 2 in regards to a squeal. He spoke about there being many projects, and when some of the leaders of those projects left Blizzard, they continued their work to release games based on those projects. One of them became Torchlight, another has become David's new ARPG: Marvel Heroes.
I see AAA as a relative term - highest $ bracket invested into a project. If the top end of that spectrum scales back, it's still the top end. Even if games have to be more practical, you're still going to have hype/marketing thrown behind proven or popular franchises/IPs. MMORPGs might be on the decline, but there seems to be a grey area that is emerging from the MMO market. I'm noticing more hybrids from FPS and ARPG games. Trion has an FPS/RPG MMO coming out that identifies with the 'Borderlands crowd'. Planetside2 recently launched. Marvel Heroes looks to be an ARPG in an MMO setting. There always seems to be a way to tell gamers "Hey, you haven't played a game quite like ours. It's going to be awesome. Pick it up!". Heck, Activision doesn't even have to pretend their CoD games are different. Those things sell millions every 12 months.
@Ryan, do you have any idea how much Blizzard made of D3's RMAH? I'm genuinely curious because Blizzard gave players the ability to earn real money playing their game - and took a cut of every transaction. If you ever wanted to theory craft a way to monetize a massively multiplayer game in a manner that gamers want; giving them the ability to earn real money seems like it would be a big draw. So why hasn't this become the new go-to model for MMOs? People do it anyway; sell items, characters, accounts, game currency... It seems smart to open it up and make it available to all in a safe/hassle-free way.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm pretty excited about PFO....I did miss the KS and am one of the many people looking to get into the next wave of "contributions" to get in as early as possible. (Yes, early contributors should get in first, and I am OK with that.)
I have played games like these for decades (just recently finding the original modules with the original D&D Starter set from the mid 70's-In Search of the Unknown...pretty cheesy, but fun to read thru even now...and this is before many sided dice. You had to cut the chits out of a sheet and drop them into a Dixie cup to "roll").
Played UO from 99-06, WoW from 07-10, then many came fast, SWTOR, GW2, Conan, LotRO....am playing EVE now and love the openness, but am at a huge disadvantage, as the game has been around 10 years and the lines are drawn..have been for years. Don't want to start so far behind. Fun, but moving on.
Which is why I am so infatuated with PFO, even so late to the party. Ryan brings years of game expertise, and inside knowledge of what made EVE so successful. Lisa has been in the industry for decades, making the same games I have been buying for decades. I am pretty jazzed to see what they are cooking up, and am hopeful their anti-greifing tools will keep the turds away while we all have great fun.
(NOTE: I am ok with people RPing evildoers. Am considering one or two myself just for variety....but not to greif noobs or otherwise cause unfun for others. My bad guys have five kids to feed!)
I tried SWToR. Having grown really tired of theme park games, it seemed even more on rails than others (Rift was my last subscription game). If you're a total Star Wars fan and wanted that much story content, I suppose it would seem like a good game, but for someone who wants to make their own story-lines, their own events, and focus on player interaction, SWToR felt like I might as well have been playing a single player game.
What did it for me was the single player aspect, translated into a MMO. What I mean is I started a character (when I got into beta) ran him up to about L15, decided I didn't like the class so I rolled another and ran him up to the upper 20's, decided I wanted to try another class so rolled another character. By the time I ran him through the same quests I had already done 2 other times I was just bored. Their lame excuse for space combat, I honestly thought it was a joke and would change... I never did heh.
That's when It finally dawned on me that theme parks were no longer my thing
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CEO, Goblinworks
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I see AAA as a relative term - highest $ bracket invested into a project. If the top end of that spectrum scales back, it's still the top end.
No videogame genre has ever "scaled back" in the sense you're discussing. Anyone who makes anything less expensive than the $100+ million projects is going to be laughed out of the room if they try to call it a "AAA MMO".
MMORPGs might be on the decline, but there seems to be a grey area that is emerging from the MMO market.
Nobody in the industry thinks MMOs are on the decline. They're the wave of the future. They just won't look like World of Warcraft, or represent a $100+ million pre-revenue investment in a theme park.
Remember that in Asia, the MMO is utterly dominant. Those companies are going to continue to fire projects our way until they connect. There are huge cultural differences that need to be bridged, but eventually there will be a "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and then the doors will be blown open.
There is a whole generation of kids coming up in the west who see virtual worlds as a natural part of their lifestyles. They're going to continue to seek out those experience as they age out of Club Penguin and Habbo. They may not have much time for elves & orks Tolkein fantasy tropes but they're absolutely going to be a huge market for virtual gaming environments.
Bungie's Destiny is going to be a $250-$500 million project over 10 years, and it's clearly an MMO (plus a post-PC environment integrated with social media and mobile). That's what the top end of the field is going to look like.
@Ryan, do you have any idea how much Blizzard made of D3's RMAH?
I have no data, but the industry generally considered Diablo III a limp squib. It did not gain the kind of long-term play that Diablo II enjoyed. In the end I think that it's monetization model was not of any meaningful note to a company that makes $60 million a month from World of Warcraft.
I do think it was a part of a larger monetization experiment, and I do think that the result of that experiment will resonate in future Blizzard games. But in a sense, they're just catching up to what the Asian publishers have been doing for a decade. It is clear that the model of getting paid for buying and selling virtual goods is the long-term future of the business model in this space, and the idea of getting money from transactions between players is an obvious part of that. The RMT auction business was at one time more than a $100 million/year business and they were taking 5-10% off the top of that; and that market was based on EverQuest so it's been around a long time.
There's a lot of people of a certain age who think this is all a travesty, a short-term blip, and a mistake, but they're wrong. They're the same crew that thinks seeing a subscription game convert to F2P is an indication that the game has "Failed", when the conversion may be the thing that finally turns a failure into a success. Unless you've seen some of the eye-popping results from the publisher side, it's easy to dismiss these conversions. But trust me, the industry "gets it" and is focused on tapping that system in the future.
I think Blizzard has been genuinely surprised by the poor reaction to both Diablo III and StarCraft II. Both franchises had investments much, much higher than that given to similar products in other studios and I'm sure that there is a lot of head-scratching going on trying to figure out what went wrong. Blizzard hasn't created a NEW hit IP in a long time. Maybe the people with the magic touch are gone. Maybe the magic touch was time dependent and that time has passed. Maybe, like every game studio, they're just reverting to the mean - they'll have some failures, some mediocre stuff and some hits, unlike the time when I was told, as a licensee of Diablo: "We made the #1, #2 and #4 best selling PC games of all time and we don't want to hear your opinion about how to make those games better", they will decide that maybe they do need to listen to some outside voices. Time will tell.
RyanD
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is sense in the Asian model of turning a whole game into microtransactions where the customer only buys what that customer actually wishes to use and leaves the rest of the offerings there on the table. I racall thinking about this while arguing for the plain old subscription model and against the F2P model.
The fear was that F2P allows just anyone in without even the minimal filtering we thought subscriptions provided. Turned out subs don't filter very well anyway.
I have to ask: when you say the 'post-pc market' what does that look like in your mind? Tablets, or something more?
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Goblin Squad Member
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"We made the #1, #2 and #4 best selling PC games of all time and we don't want to hear your opinion about how to make those games better"
Yeah. As a customer, I always appreciate the "You'll play our game and like it!" response to issues with their product.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Valandur
This is the same for me. There is a MUD I play where there is not an end game. There are creatures of various levels in the game but there is not raid where you get the epic items. The fun of the game comes from interacting with other players and the storylines in the game. Its popular enough that people have been playing for 20 or more years.
Iv been playing for just over 10 years, and this is for a game thats all text.
Its refreshing that GW is looking at making systems that are fun to play and encourage people to interact.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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@Being - It means that you have a device on your person at all times and you may wish to interact with the game via that device at any time. And the game world may reach out and interact with you on that device at any time as well.
I'm not saying that we port the game to run on a bunch of different platforms. I'm saying that there's a mode of interaction that's appropriate for someone with a smartphone. There may be an enhanced mode of interaction for someone on a tablet.
Most MMOs have text chat. Most MMOs have Guild Chat. Does any MMO have a chat client that runs on your smartphone so you can be a part of Guild Chat when you're not logged in? This technology is ancient. Yet as far as I know, none of the mainstream AAA Theme Parks let you do this.
Some games (EVE, I'm looking at you) have incredibly rich markets. Does anyone have a Bloomberg style app for those markets that runs on a smartphone or a tablet? Can I place buy and sell orders like I can on Fidelity?
Farmville showed us one mode of asynchronous Sim game that works with social networks and mobile devices. Many MMOs have significant Sim type elements that are hard to manage in a 3D avatar-centric world. Why not have a whole different interface, on a different platform, for managing those kinds of game systems?
When a major event happens, how do I know? If my fortress comes under attack, does the game send me a text message or email? If my buddies are looking for a certain character for a group event, can they tell me to log in and join up? Why is there so much useful social activity that stops at the perimeter of the game client - when we know that essentially all the customers have devices in their pockets that could be used to engage them at need?
That's the kind of thinking that needs to be updated for a post-PC world.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So a tone rings on your phone when your in-game shop door is opened by a customer, signalling you to log-in and appear through the curtain leading to the back room.
You could browse the auction house on your phone to get the best deals before most people even get home.
The buying and selling trends of player crafted widgets could be downloaded into an Excel spread sheet and your Blackberry's usual stock ap could provide next month's widget sales projections.
Your settlement walls register damage and the sentry auto-sends a text to all the settlement members like calling out the militia.
A thief picks your backdoor and your NPC valet contacts ADT. Okay, this one is a little silly.
I guess I'm old fashion. I don't want my game calling me. Sounds a bit too reminiscent of "War Games" with Matthew Broderick, when the computer called him to continue their game of nuclear annihilation. When I'm ready to play, I'll let the game know.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ryan
Hmmmm, post-pc and FTP looks to me like a great way to spam advertisements. I log in my FTP character, send messages to every one online, bam.. out go emails and text messages! I know they will get baned and you can set your on settings to not receive emails or texts, but that defeats the purpose. How do you defend against these abusees ?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Dario
Oh I agree. This is a great idea. Especailly if it can be automated and some one doesn't have to actually be in game to tell you. If your settlement has the proper buildings and system in place, automatic notices are sent. That would have put a stop to the midnight relic raids in DAoC lol. I am just worried about the abuse the spammers would use it for.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ryan Dancey You keeping blowing me away with visionary ideas!
@Misere I believe Ryan Dancey's method will work in regards to creating a crystal seed of players, that as a culture are conducive to fun into the game and slowly adding to it. So as the new people come in, they adopt the culture that was seeded.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think with KS and EE requiring a sub, that the player base will be really into the game and not the usual ftards that plague the other MMOs. This player base will be established and enjoying the game, recruiting like minded individuals to our game. All-in-all even with the FTP, our player base will remain the more mature type.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As far as Post-PC goes, Fallen Earth released the Companion App for smart phones that gains access to certain parts of the game that not only allows you to chat in-game but to use the auction house and other cool things. Check it out: Fallen Earth Companion App
Adding something like this to PFO would go a long way to keeping everyone connected and involved in the game, even when not in front of a PC.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Most MMOs have text chat. Most MMOs have Guild Chat. Does any MMO have a chat client that runs on your smartphone so you can be a part of Guild Chat when you're not logged in? This technology is ancient. Yet as far as I know, none of the mainstream AAA Theme Parks let you do this.
The (free) iPhone/Android app for WoW has Guild Chat and PM's, and access to the Auction House.
And as said, the RIFT one also has chat (both also have other functions).
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Goblin Squad Member
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... If you don't need to train to be approximately equivalent in power to the strongest player on the server, then you have all you need to grief anyone as long as you have enough pals or don't run out of email accounts. ...I'm not quite sure how you got that idea. It's been stated a number of times that a new character won't have much chance against one that's been around for any significant amount of time much less an old timer. What has been said is a number of new characters will have a chance at defeating an older character. Of course if the older character has better equipment and more importantly friends that's going to be considerably harder.
By new character I assume they mean a few weeks old, not one created an hour ago.
If the company of "newer" characters have spread there skills with one specialising in healing, one in anti-buff spells, several in DPR damage dealing etc etc AND the characters are alts of experienced players with good PvP combat experience with their main - it seems quite reasonable that 4 or 5 newer characters may take down a solo character with say 6-12 months more training experience.
On the other hand if its just 4 or 5 generic fighter types with similar skill sets played by totally inexperienced players who have only combated NPC monsters before ... I suspect they may all die.
Never under estimate the importance of the players experience in PvP, many people can build awesome toons on paper but until they get a few months of Pvp under their belt that theoretical knowledge does not translate to success in game.