If Guild Wars 2 is a HUGE success what will it mean for the MMO market?

[Deleted]

If Guild Wars 2 sells millions of copies and maintains these players. Then continues to sell millions of more copies and attract more players. Fixes any problems that arise with the game and stays attentive to the playerbase. All while releasing regular content and gaining great critical reviews.

If Guild Wars 2 is a HUGE runaway success both financially and critically....

-What will this mean for the MMO market which is in a shall we say....particular state today?

[Larynx]

Diversity in game design.

Publishers will suddenly say, "Oh hey. That actually works. We don't have to be like WoW anymore!" And the developers will worship ArenaNet as their patron deity.

People don't like to put forth large monetary investments in things that haven't been demonstrated to actually work yet. Hence, WoW clones. SWTOR: same basic idea. Rift: same basic idea. Tera: same basic idea. And so on. Yes, these MMOs have one or two neat qwerks that differentiate themselves from WoW, but at the core they're the same game with a different coat of paint.

If one claims the same for Guild Wars 2 however, they are either a troll or ignorant.

[Sentinel]

People may stop playing their current MMO, and existing and future MMOs may take some pointers or ideas from GW2. Not much more than that.

[Deleted]

Other major companies with MMOs working harder for their subscriptions and more free to play (well buy game to play) MMOs.

[Deleted]

We will probably see more buy to play MMOs/lower subscriptions and GW2 copies. I don't think that other companies will think: Hey, they did something new, lets try to innovate some more!

[DrakeWurrum]

Diversity in game design.

Publishers will suddenly say, "Oh hey. That actually works. We don't have to be like WoW anymore!" And the developers will worship ArenaNet as their patron deity.

People don't like to put forth large monetary investments in things that haven't been demonstrated to actually work yet. Hence, WoW clones. SWTOR: same basic idea. Rift: same basic idea. Tera: same basic idea. And so on. Yes, these MMOs have one or two neat qwerks that differentiate themselves from WoW, but at the core they're the same game with a different coat of paint.

If one claims the same for Guild Wars 2 however, they are either a troll or ignorant.

Basically this. What matters is how the industry as a whole will be improved. I'm fairly surprised that NCSoft will be the publisher involved in this, but whatever works. City of Heroes, in a way, was a big change from WoW I guess... in that there wasn't really the standard concept of gear. But it never really "took" I think.

[Noemonad]

Developers may consider the free-to-play or purchase-once-then-play-for-free model to be superior to the old subscription model after seeing how WoW can stomp some pay-to-play MMOs. A push in development away from being very similar to WoW might also occur, and maybe this whole 'holy trinity being destroyed' thing would catch on.

I would like to see it open up new avenues for MMO development.

[DrakeWurrum]

More B2P MMORPGs would be a great thing.

[Fencers]

Diversity in game design.

^Hopefully. But I would also add diversity in business models.

There is a huge amount of stagnation in the genre. Many recent MMOs aren't even iterative of decade old design concepts. Rift and SWTOR, though fun at what they are, are largely generic. What's more their "faults" are sadly & simply endemic of the same poor design of the EQ->Warcraft lineage.

That seems to me kind of terrible waste of $ and opportunity, no? Biggest IP next to Mickey Mouse and a budget with more zeros at the end than I can imagine, yet TOR's woes stem from like nobody on the dev team having the gall to say, "Hey guys, maybe an endless series of dailies isn't fun after all."

Or Trion's admirable & vigorous support of what is perhaps the safest and dullest ho-hum game design short of Call of Duty 19: Operation Shoot Middle Easterners. No one at Trion raised a finger to say, "Guys, gear grinds are kinda terrible." Seriously.

Tera and Secret World to varying degrees don't fair too much better either.

That isn't to say any of the above are "bad games". However, they are largely safe games.

[Beavis]

That's a whole lot of ifs.

Anyway, I doubt it will mean much of anything, really. The market is already trending towards a FtP/BtP model.

[Wysmark]

I simply dont agree that say Aion, Warhammer, Rift and SWTOR were simply WoW-copies anymore than GW2 is.

Sure they borrowed some concepts and ideas, but Warhammer, Rift and WoW dont feel the same, at least to me.


All of the above games had some considerable flaws at release however, which people didnt have patience for and also WoW was fairly quick to implement some of the better ideas in patches.

Lets be realistic. GW2 isnt going to revolutionize the MMO business like Wow did. I'll admit that I dont know a lot because I quickly lost interest in it as none of the features I read about excited me. It may have some different stuff than other MMO's, but...I'm still gonna say that for it to be a huge success then a lot of stars have to align for people not to lose patience. With all the hype that patience may be low...

So honestly I'm just expecting future developers to have a wider source of ideas to copy...thats it

[grandpab]

Hopefully it shows developers that they can try new things and be successful.

[buck008]

I do hope it continues pushing trends away from subscription models. I think people would experiment and try quite a few more of these games if they didn't have to maintain a subscription for each. The microtransaction model has proven to be fairly profitable, and turned around several of the recently failed mmo's from a financial standpoint. That TOR is considering it should speak volumes.

I don't think it will encourage much "outside the box" thinking. Games are expensive to make. Failures hurt a lot more and cost a lot of people their jobs. Like Hollywood, game producers are going to largely go the safe route. So if GW2 succeeds, you'll see people rip off mechanics that work from it. Same as everyone that borrowed from WoW, and same as that game borrowed from its more successful predecessors.

[Spl4sh3r]

If its a huge success publishers will most likely try to merge Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft in some way for future games.

[Kouki]

I simply dont agree that say Aion, Warhammer, Rift and SWTOR were simply WoW-copies anymore than GW2 is.

Sure they borrowed some concepts and ideas, but Warhammer, Rift and WoW dont feel the same, at least to me.


All of the above games had some considerable flaws at release however, which people didnt have patience for and also WoW was fairly quick to implement some of the better ideas in patches.

Lets be realistic. GW2 isnt going to revolutionize the MMO business like Wow did. I'll admit that I dont know a lot because I quickly lost interest in it as none of the features I read about excited me. It may have some different stuff than other MMO's, but...I'm still gonna say that for it to be a huge success then a lot of stars have to align for people not to lose patience. With all the hype that patience may be low...

So honestly I'm just expecting future developers to have a wider source of ideas to copy...thats it

These "Features" you speak of are core game design, that fosters a wild living world where players are happy to play with and encouraged to play with one another.

Examples, In Past mmo's ppl can steal mining nodes and monster kills,

In Guild wars2 The Mining and Herb nodes are used by all players seperately.
When it comes to monsters and events you gain bonus exp for helping kill something another player is on, you also gain exp and loot based on copper silver gold rating on your participation in any nearby event.

This continues to several more Core Gameplay mechanics that will foster a positive living world where players enjoy spending time with each other.

[Xalzel]

The thing is, if GW2 does mange to kill WoW (won't happen, KILLING WoW would take YEARS. The most that GW2 will do would be to start the bleeding of WoW) than that dose not mean GW2 will take it's place. It is not something where dethroning a game makes everyone come to you and makes you king. It would just open up the market and different MMO's would show up. There would than be 2-3 large MMO's surviving off different gimmicks that set them apart. Then a MMo that can combine these gimmicks into one game would become the new KING of MMos'.

[Kouki]

The thing is, if GW2 does mange to kill WoW (won't happen, KILLING WoW would take YEARS. The most that GW2 will do would be to start the bleeding of WoW) than that dose not mean GW2 will take it's place. It is not something where dethroning a game makes everyone come to you and makes you king. It would just open up the market and different MMO's would show up. There would than be 2-3 large MMO's surviving off different gimmicks that set them apart. Then a MMo that can combine these gimmicks into one game would become the new KING of MMos'.

No one said it would kill wow.
They said what if its a giant success?

[Arrowstormen]

Even for people who ain't fans of GW2, it would be sad to see it fail, since it would send the signal that "that game that tried to be different failed, so let's just continue down the WoW Road with RIFT and SWTOR."

The subscription fee part is also important. The MMO market doesn't have too many people, mostly because of the time dedication and subscription fee. Not all MMOs have subscription fees, I know, but the ones that don't, doesn't get much spotlight then, because I can't name one that's worth mentioning to my friends.

A good, strong MMORPG, without a subscription fee, that can be bought for the same price as Skyrim and stuff, could potentially get more people into the MMO genre.

[oplawlz]

Hopefully it would diversify the market, as others have said. There is absolutely a place in the market for traditional trinity gear grind gaming. People still love it, some gamers are bored with it.

Ultimately the success of mmo's is determined by a mixture of end game activities and a leveling process which doesn't feel like a job. GW2 seems to have found a clever way to attack the problem, and how successful they are over the first 8 months after launch will determine the overall impact their ideas have. If they are a raving success it's fair to say we'll see a stream of poorly done copies which will fail horrible until someone else manages to innovate to the degree which Anet has.

---------- Post added 2012-06-30 at 07:02 PM ----------

The MMO market doesn't have too many people . . .

What? What is your point of reference? Not many people compared to . . . the population of the world? Just one mmo claims current subscriptions at 10 million . . .

[Arrowstormen]

The thing is, if GW2 does mange to kill WoW (won't happen, KILLING WoW would take YEARS. The most that GW2 will do would be to start the bleeding of WoW) than that dose not mean GW2 will take it's place. It is not something where dethroning a game makes everyone come to you and makes you king. It would just open up the market and different MMO's would show up. There would than be 2-3 large MMO's surviving off different gimmicks that set them apart. Then a MMo that can combine these gimmicks into one game would become the new KING of MMos'.

"If you love MMOs, you would want to check out Guild Wars 2, and if you hate MMOs, you REALLY want to check out Guild Wars 2."

As I said, GW2 could potentially bring in new people to the MMO genre, so it wouldn't try to suck on the MMO players that is playing WoW, but add players. Most recent MMOs like RIFT and SWTOR had the current MMO players as their target audience, like RIFT with their "We are not in Azeroth anymore" slogan, and had a subscription fee, and grinds, which meant they actively competed with WoW in both the time and money of the MMO consumers.

Without subscription fees, people could "play" more MMOs at once, so there would cease to be a MMO King, like you don't really call Skyrim the RPG King or Battlefield 3/Call of Duty Whatever/Whatever of Whatever the Whatever Pew Pew FPS Game King.

What? What is your point of reference? Not many people compared to . . . the population of the world? Just one mmo claims current subscriptions at 10 million . . .

Compared to other game genres. Around 20 million people or so are MMO players. That isn't too many.