jvd said:
Which is why I can't say the game is a true success. Because in this game its numbers + time on market.
500k subscribers is great but next year or the year after when ps3 comes out whos to say that the game just wont drop off the face of the earth ?
Two years is plenty of time to see how a game develops and make determinations. Take some of the 2nd generation examples: DAoC I label as a success as it's been able to build to over 200k and keep it (I think it's ~250k right now), launch some expansions, and are continuing with making major changes the players have been wanting, thus increasing it's appeal; Anarchy Online, meanwhile, had rapid growth in the beginning, then a massive exodus, and though they've managed to release two expansions and gain back some players, it's never been to any major degree--which I can safely say is not a
success whether or not it gets labelled as "failure."
Take a look at all the MMORPG's that have dropped out or remained inconsequential; by the two-year mark, their place has pretty much been determined long before. If you're looking at a healthy game after two years, the situation is really not going to change THAT wildly to somehow dip them into "failure." Can you see FFXI burning off ~400k players in the near future? And heck, even taking a look at their financials is telling at this point: say they've averaged 200k subscribers over that period of time--at their pricing it amounts to about $3 million a month (plus extra profit from addition characters and if the average is in fact higher, minus the free trial period and--of course--the operational costs all MMO's carry). But a baseline $70+
so far for a game is trivial?
ITs doing good now . But i nthe future it might not do well.
Yeah, and who buys Doom II or Myst any more? Damn non-successes!
Just like swg. Its doing well now but to be a success we have to look at it at the 4 or 5 year mark. Because that is the standard set for mmorpgs.
It's not a "standard set," because the industry is too young. It's not a "standar set," because when do we base "standards" around only the longest-selling and most-popular products, and anything else that hasn't reached their numbers or time-on-market yet we'll hold off on, despite all trends? (The relevant one in this case being "name the MMO that has tanked itself after posting good numbers even after just one year's time?")
You're picking your own arbitrary numbers to judge by, which is fine--we all do it, except your overall opinion seems to be just
too arbitrary. In my wanderings I ran across an amusing
site that has been tracking MMO trends (and hopefully with make a new version for the last half-year or so currently unaccounted-for) for a while now, and certain things are easy to see. Games that aren't going to get to 100k show that pretty quickly. Games that make it past 100k show no huge, unrelenting drops; when they "level off" there is some gradual sway up and down, but their established popularity seems to be enough to keep the games stable. Considering your trepidation seems to come from expecting certain games to tank rapidly, then I'm happy to report that it would be very trend-defying.
(Especially for any game that has a solid license to support it as well.)
Anyway as for my numbers those are for febuary and they are pretty good numbers.
True enough, but I was presenting it not as any sort of detracting factor, but as a correction for your information, which seemed to be pretty far off for official announcements. It could have applied to the numbers you gave for SWG as well, but I've since been able to find other
confirmation of that one (which similarly contradict your other numbers), and it was close to what I was expecting anyway.
uo announced the highest subscriber rate ever a few months ago. That would put it over 280k . The nubmers i have heard were 301k also becuase of the influx of enb players that got that or the sims 2 for free cause of the game closing
"A few months ago"
was the February announcement I linked, with EA saying 225k subscribers, so the time you're thinking about would have had to be earlier. UO broke 250k in
early 2003 but dipped some after that time, and I don't recall seeing any reports that showed off any large spikes in-between. And since both 275k and especially 300k are "landmark" subscription levels, I would have expected some kind of official announcement or mention in an interview of some sort, and I can't find that. (And a 75k+ growth since February's announcement to now would be
totally unprecedented for a well-established MMORPG that's been fairly level for years, and something to really crow about. Since I also can't see any reason FOR it to have jumped that huge that quickly, I'm forced to remain entirely skeptical of that number.)
Offhand, I can quite easily say any game to break 200k subscribers (at least, subscribers paying the $10-15 monthly charge we're expecting) is most certainly a success, and until
one example shows such a game can actually collapse to an inconsequential level, I think they will remain good-performers for years. We've gotten a lot of fear-mongering in regards to all the new games coming out that would "steal people" en masse from older games, but what have we seen so far? New games that don't amount to much, new games that succeed
while old games continue trucking as well... Even Asheron's Call, which only for a bit hovered over 100k, has only shown slight decline. (This past year's numbers I'm not too sure about, so that's subject to change--MS certainly hasn't been saying much about either since the AC2 fiasco, and Turbine is busy trying to salvage what they can now.) And even if it has, that will have been an end-curve to a game that evened off four years ago and was in slow/steady decline (with an expansion spike) since.
SWG and FFXI entered, and yet EQ and UO and DAoC remain fairly unaffected. Lineage 2 and CoH and WoW and EQ2 will somehow detonate strong games rapidly? Haven't we heard that fear before?
Offhand, I don't think we've hit a critical saturation point yet, let alone a tumultuous level where already-strong games have to worry about massive exodus and total failure. The more popular games have already shown their resiliance over time, despite hundreds of thousands of players subscribing to other new games--even posting more growth. I can see slow and steady decline, sure, but for games above a certain level that's still bringing in a ton of revenue and gives them a lot of time to react.
