The Secret World "Should've Been More Commercial"
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Seeing as the "non commercial" parts of it were the only things that made it in anyway interesting I somehow doubt that removing them for "safe" design would have done anything other than make it fail harder.
The game sounded interesting but you scared me off with the Base price + Subscription fee + Cash shop. I don't care if it only sells cosmetic items, I like cosmetic items and if I am paying a subscription fee then I better have free access to everything in the game.
It also sound like it would have been better as an RPG than a MMO, maybe a Co-op one if you needed the multiplayer but as it is you entered one of the most difficult markets to make a high budget game work in and then you used the worst possible pricing model I could think of.
The game sounded interesting but you scared me off with the Base price + Subscription fee + Cash shop. I don't care if it only sells cosmetic items, I like cosmetic items and if I am paying a subscription fee then I better have free access to everything in the game.
It also sound like it would have been better as an RPG than a MMO, maybe a Co-op one if you needed the multiplayer but as it is you entered one of the most difficult markets to make a high budget game work in and then you used the worst possible pricing model I could think of.
Pretty much my reaction as well (minus the beta). I saw this game and thought "oo an interesting setting in the real world with mythical creatures n shit, looks like fun!" Then they said how the pricing worked and I thought "Should have made it free to play and lived on the cash store". After trying the game to see if I liked it, making a character and getting into thr world, I would probably have spent some money in the store to get my character how I want to look and stuck with it for a while. As it is I will not even try it.Kopikatsu said:
Try to be an optimist: 1. Tornquist should have some free time soon; 2. Funcom is going to be looking for a cheap way to re-coop costs and old IPs are an easy route to money (hell, they could probably finance the whole thing through Kickstarter); 3. One would think that third time is the charm and there will be no more Funcom MMOs.Dalisclock said:
Not only is this disappointing to hear, I can't help but that it is inherently wrong. Part of the reason so many MMO's fail is *because* they try to be more commercial and 'familiar' (which lats face it, is slang for "Being more like WoW"). The problem with that is that no one can out-WoW WoW. It's been the king of the hill for years, it has a stupidly large fan-base, and more importantly, its devs have had years to perfect and dictate the formula most other MMO's are still doing their best to simply mimic.
I mean... really. Look at Star Trek Online and The Old Republic. Both of them tried to be fairly traditional, familiar MMO's and neither of them came close to even touching WoW's market. If STAR TREK and STAR WARS can't out-WoW WoW, then no IP can.
The only way for an MMO to survive these days is to not be WoW. You have to do something different, do something unique, bring a new experience to the table. There's a reason a game like EVE Online is still going strong years and years down the line while TOR and Star Trek Online are already in decline so soon after coming out. Whether you enjoy EVE or not, they did try to do their own thing and they stuck with it.
There's PVE and "quests" in EVE, like more traditional MMO's, sure, but they are a very minor part of the game (the part most everyone hates, to be honest). The reason EVE Online has stayed around and stayed fairly strong is because the main game content, the the player interactions, the in-game drama created by real people, PVP, the politics, the scamming and the real-world levels of cruelty to your fellow man, creates an atmosphere and experience that other MMO's just don't have.
You can't really go straight at a giant like WoW, or COD, or Halo these days... you gotta come at them from the side. You gotta do something different, something that will grab people's attention and make them give another franchise a try. If you just come at them with more of the same, they are going to stick with the more well-known and more polished product.
I mean... really. Look at Star Trek Online and The Old Republic. Both of them tried to be fairly traditional, familiar MMO's and neither of them came close to even touching WoW's market. If STAR TREK and STAR WARS can't out-WoW WoW, then no IP can.
The only way for an MMO to survive these days is to not be WoW. You have to do something different, do something unique, bring a new experience to the table. There's a reason a game like EVE Online is still going strong years and years down the line while TOR and Star Trek Online are already in decline so soon after coming out. Whether you enjoy EVE or not, they did try to do their own thing and they stuck with it.
There's PVE and "quests" in EVE, like more traditional MMO's, sure, but they are a very minor part of the game (the part most everyone hates, to be honest). The reason EVE Online has stayed around and stayed fairly strong is because the main game content, the the player interactions, the in-game drama created by real people, PVP, the politics, the scamming and the real-world levels of cruelty to your fellow man, creates an atmosphere and experience that other MMO's just don't have.
You can't really go straight at a giant like WoW, or COD, or Halo these days... you gotta come at them from the side. You gotta do something different, something that will grab people's attention and make them give another franchise a try. If you just come at them with more of the same, they are going to stick with the more well-known and more polished product.
Definitely have to agree that their main fumble was the business model, not the game design itself.
Seeing a friend play around on it I think I agree that it's a shame they didn't try to implement the ideas into a single-player RPG.
Why handicap yourself in trying to make a game with a sense of narrative focus indefinitely long?
Either way, it's disheartening to see creative ideas fail. I wish Mr. Bruusgaard well.
Why handicap yourself in trying to make a game with a sense of narrative focus indefinitely long?
Either way, it's disheartening to see creative ideas fail. I wish Mr. Bruusgaard well.
What? NO! It's good that you deviated! Deviate more!
As bad as it is, I have to admit the problem had to do with the release time and the fact that there's a monthly fee. The game was released around the same time hype for Guild Wars II was strong, which not only had alot of attention, but had no monthly fees. As a result, who's going to invest monthly in an MMO when another more hotly anticipated one with no monthly cost is coming out down the road?
As bad as it is, I have to admit the problem had to do with the release time and the fact that there's a monthly fee. The game was released around the same time hype for Guild Wars II was strong, which not only had alot of attention, but had no monthly fees. As a result, who's going to invest monthly in an MMO when another more hotly anticipated one with no monthly cost is coming out down the road?
I was so interested in this game until the pricing model was released too...
Heck if they dropped the subscription I'd probably still pick it up.
Seriously, as much as I love games like Guild Wars 2 I would stop playing them if they decided to charge for the game, for subscriptions AND for ingame content.
You got greedy, basically that's what screwed you over. That and subscriptions in general turn off more or less everyone, Yes WoW can still do it but that's because the people who play WoW have either been doing so for years and/or all their friends play it, you can't have that kind of pull with a new game.
Heck if they dropped the subscription I'd probably still pick it up.
Seriously, as much as I love games like Guild Wars 2 I would stop playing them if they decided to charge for the game, for subscriptions AND for ingame content.
You got greedy, basically that's what screwed you over. That and subscriptions in general turn off more or less everyone, Yes WoW can still do it but that's because the people who play WoW have either been doing so for years and/or all their friends play it, you can't have that kind of pull with a new game.
I think Bruusgaard needs to stop giving these public interviews. He's basically playing out the five stages of grief for the press.
As others have said, the whole pay-to-play MMO genre is tanking. Even WoW's expansion sales figures haven't been up to snuff, and it's the warhorse next to GW2's white knight. Lucasarts has tried twice with Star Wars MMO's, and both have been middling disasters.
It's not that it wasn't commercial enough, but it was exceptionally ill-timed. They have to have seen what GW2 offered - an incredible character/class process that practically ensures no two players will have the same loadout of skills, attention paid to the story and alternate choices, an incredible amount of content and constant updates - all for $60. This is why the industry wants to go completely pay-to-win - they're at a loss with the conventional model, and have just decided to throw all their chips on the table to see what sticks.
As others have said, the whole pay-to-play MMO genre is tanking. Even WoW's expansion sales figures haven't been up to snuff, and it's the warhorse next to GW2's white knight. Lucasarts has tried twice with Star Wars MMO's, and both have been middling disasters.
It's not that it wasn't commercial enough, but it was exceptionally ill-timed. They have to have seen what GW2 offered - an incredible character/class process that practically ensures no two players will have the same loadout of skills, attention paid to the story and alternate choices, an incredible amount of content and constant updates - all for $60. This is why the industry wants to go completely pay-to-win - they're at a loss with the conventional model, and have just decided to throw all their chips on the table to see what sticks.
From my perspective it didn't take enough risks. I played a beta weekend for TSW one weekend after the beta weekend for GW2 and all I could think of was how static everything was and how annoying first-hitting and groups of people waiting around for a boss spawn was.
Yep; same here. It also could have done wonderfully as a single-player game with a couple tweaks. The kind of deviation from the 'norm' is exactly what we need right now, not more of the same. 'Guaranteed' money on old ideas is not a way to promote progress in an industry that is trying to grow and evolve.Kopikatsu said: