The fragmentation of the MMO industry

[Deleted]

"Does anybody believe we will ever have another mmorpg that has 12million people playing in one month together? "
My feeling is that it wont happen not any time soon atleast ..

That's a good thing!

It's much better to have the players dispersed across all the MMOs.

[schippie]

That's a good thing!

It's much better to have the players dispersed across all the MMOs.

I partially agree, the reason is WoW for me gave a new meaning to the word:

"Massively Multiplayer Online"

I mean the idea that 12 million other people would be playing the same game, is kind of amazing. And if it all would be games with 800k people playing.. for me that feeling dies out then, i mean there are so many normal games that have 800k players. It simply would feel odd, as if the Massive feeling would be gone.

While you never see those people granted only like 10-20k of them. It still to me would feel odd purely because of the new meaning WoW gave to that word.
Ah well will see, guess to me with WoWs death it would be time to find other games and not other MMORPGs. Stuff like planetside etc.

[Deleted]

I'm an MMO player that just doesn't play MMO's right now, reason why? The current batch of MMO's just doesn't cater to my playstyle. I've tried alot of games and they have all disappointed me, I just don't like games with level & grind.

Give me old-school UO anyday of the week over the current batch of games.

[bbr]

Take those numbers with a big grain of salt, a lot of them are guestimated from incomplete data.

UO?
Well yeah,. It's fun to see it's still active, but i know from firsthand experience that a LOT ( well over 50% of the playerbase ) runs with 2 accounts or more.
Much like how EVE online is getting it's numbers.
The actual number of "active players" is significantly lower.


UO was certainly unique,. still is.
But, EA ruined it for many.
Lord British was awesome, back when he still played. (richard garriott, google him)
EA has since been pooping out expansion after expansion full of hot air and pixel crack, never really adding much.
We're all used to that by now though - just look at the sims.
It's the main reason I try to boycott them and their antics as much as possible whenever possible.

One of the only 2-3 people that could have drawn me back into having a look at the current state of the game has sadly passed away a few years ago. http://rrvs.blogspot.nl/2012/06/grea...le-gaming.html
Alas, he will be missed greatly.

[Shinzai]

Someone should make a RavenMUD MMORPG. I'd pay for that.

[jmarsiglio]

Very well said, ive been thinking about the state of the MMO genre ever since SWTOR claimed they were going f2p. I believe we are finally reaching a point in the mmo market where we will no longer have a "king", just a bunch of niche mmorpgs that cater to their specific market.

Plus with a crap ton of the really popular mmorpgs being f2p as well, it means there are more choices for players and they can jump around easier than if they have to pay a sub every single time. Here are some think i believe need to happen for the market to become really competitive-

1) Blizzard has to either announce how many subs they have in the west/east and not all together

2) Warhammer online needs to go f2p with an expansion of some sort to bring back the pvpers

3) WoW needs to continue to lose subscribers and fall around the 5mil mark (total)

4) TSW/TERA need to go f2p, and ArcheAge should launch f2p.

5) SOE needs to bring Vanguard up to speed on things with its new f2p model

I believe that if these things happen, good things will come to the mmorpg market and all us consumers will enjoy the spoils. I believe that WoW should find its market (hence why they lose more subs) and carter to it, just like other mmorpgs. Warhammer desperatly needs an expansion to liven things up and go f2p.

Maybe they can go f2p with the freemium thing like if you are a free player you~

1)Cant Do dungeons
2) Have a limit of 10 Scenarios a day
3) Gold limit of 10g
4) Can only access the chaos/empire maps
5) 5 characters max
6) No access to the scaven
7) Cosmetic options limited
8) Cannot operate rams/seige weapons

Plus they need an expansion that adds~

1) At least 2 new races with 8 new classes
2) More max level dungeons (grant no xp)
3) Dynamic pvp events
4) Keep or "tower" sieges in T1
5) New citys to siege
6) Increase level cap (too bloated at 40 atm)
7) Smooth out graphics in older maps
8) New combat mechanics.


If Mythic did this, i believe Warhammer would grow to about 500k subs and hold strong there.

I don't understand why they don't... I really enjoyed Warhammer Online, and obviously you did/do too Trial gets boring though when restricted to T1, I ended up just farming and made something like 1000g haha.

[Noobkiller]

The problem with the MMO Industry these days are 3 major fundamental problems:

#1 - Lack of hardcore players, or lack of content and features hardcore players want.

#2 - Casual players are widely dispersed among many MMOs now going F2P, which is fragmenting the MMO industry.

#3 - Lack of player and property rights when it comes to virtual property, also a lack of due process and thorough investigations.

Also remember that problem #1 is affiliated with problem #3, but problem #3 is long overdue and I think the government needs to get involved and give players more rights and regulate the MMO industry. But, right now the government does not consider a $500 sword from WoW or any other game to be a virtual asset due to the publishers policies regarding intellectual property. I think it very stupid that any game company out there can just ban you for whatever they want, they don't even need to prove it, like if you spend $500-$1000 on an MMO and get banned because it wasn't your fault your account got hacked or something. This is the prime reasons hardcore players like myself are turned off by subs and the big greedy MMO publishers. Someone needs to stand up and fight their BS policies and sue their a$$es. Btw, I know you can sell items in D3 for real $$$, but the problem with it is it's now considered an asset or an income after you sell something for real $$$ that you need to report to the government even though it's not your intellectual property to begin with, or else you could find yourself in an FBI or IRS office facing Tax Evasion charges which is a felony.

So I gave up on playing hardcore with subs because of the unregulated MMO industry, and now I am just a casual player that is seeking out good F2P MMOs so I don't have to put up with the legal BS that the big greedy game companies put in their policies.

[Alilei32]

What other MMO has 9 million subscribers?

What other MMO lost 25% of its players during a single Expansion? I can understand losing maybe 10% due to burn out but dropping 1/4th of your playerbase is a massive loss. If a company lost 25% of its customers heads would roll.

---------- Post added 2012-08-13 at 12:30 PM ----------

"Does anybody believe we will ever have another mmorpg that has 12million people playing in one month together? "
My feeling is that it wont happen not any time soon atleast ..

12 million people isnt really a lot if you think about it. I mean Maple story has like 120 mil playing it or something ridiculous like that. The problem is the only way to get that many players is be a F2P game. the F2P is the future of MMOs its just a matter of when WoW goes to it. They already have a cash shop because you see those stupid mounts everywhere and they make a ton of money just from faction and server changes so I could see WoW going F2P.

The problem is WoW wants to be for everyone and when you try to do please everyone eventually you will lose everyone. Because you cant make everyone happy. Nerf classes becuase they are too strong in PvP and the PvEers cry. If you buff PvE classes then PvPers QQ that certian classes are OP and destroy everyone. If you make raids and 5 mans too hard then the casuals cry but if they are too easy then the hardcore players cry. They need to pick a niche already and concentrate on that. Thats how a 13 year old game like Everquest is still doing quite well and has full servers. Does it have 9 million players? No but who cares because their players enjoy the game because there is a lot of content to raid during each lockout period and obviously theres money being made because they still pump out expansions. They picked hardcore raiders to cater too and it has paid off in that most of their players stick around. Im willing to bet 90% of the people still playing Everquest have been doing so for at least 10 years. What percentage of WoW players do you think are still around from Vanilla?

[Blackmist]

It's not that MMOs are shrinking, although the subs market is shrinking, I'm sure.

It's that other games are invading the MMO space. Where has the idea come from that for something to be an MMO it must have a persistent world, and be 3rd person fantasy game. EVE isn't. Day Z isn't. Last time I played CoD it felt like an MMO, in terms of how much fucking grinding it wanted me to do, unlocking shitty scopes and such.

Many do have a deep seated need to fill bars and make numbers go up. That is now being provided by just about everything on Xbox Live. Couple of years ago, your reward for getting better on those games was just to be better. Then they added levelling, unlocking gear, online shops, multi-player PvE (CoD has those), PvP. In short, everything an MMO has. It's just the underlying game is something different. Something that more people seem to enjoy.

You can say those games lack the RPG element, but people that role play are really a minority. Even smaller if you discount all those that use it for cyber sex...

[Alilei32]

I would love to see a GTA MMO. I think that would turn out awesome. I mean people have beat the fantasy theme to death and then some and the sci-fi theme doesnt seem to be as popular. So why not try real life?

[vicious796]

Yahoo! actually did a bit on this today. http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged...223042438.html

I believe the fragmentation of the MMO market is a culmination of things. First, the core "hardcore" age-group is getting older and adding responsibilities to their plate. Second, more and more people are refusing to pay subscriptions when there are free alternatives. Third, there are simply more games than there were before and it's very easy to just drop them for another at any point in time. Hell, I tried 3 different free MMOs this weekend and never gave any of them more than 10-15 levels of my time before deciding the playstyle wasn't for me.

[Shinzai]

I would love to see a GTA MMO. I think that would turn out awesome. I mean people have beat the fantasy theme to death and then some and the sci-fi theme doesnt seem to be as popular. So why not try real life?

APB tried that, it died almost at launch.