View From the Road: Not Quite So Massive
- Thread starter John Funk
- Start date
I like MMO's like FFXI, its about 500K members, but because its smaller, the community is really cool, and a lot of people are real fun to just chat with, great game, and I enjoy the job system, not only that, but I like Japans take of fantasy Medeval over that of the western (OH LOOK AT MY HUGE SHOULDER PADS AND SWORD OF UNNESSESARY DETAIL THAT IS ALSO HUGE!) at least, thats what WoW was to me, and people say Cloud's buster Sword is too big and compensating, (yet they boast about their compensations) ANYWAYS before I go and start a massive flame battle over sword size,
Final Fantasy XI has the balance of numbers and quality, its fun, great people, great level system, big world, small threats and big threats, Large party things to do and small party things to do, but its also a challenge, which adds flavor, and unlike WoW, it requires team work and paitience to be fun and entertaining, Nothing like DeBuffing those enemies as my Red Mage, as my group white mage and Black Mage chill behind me, and the ninja, monks, warriors, dragoons all tank the mobs, great fun indeed.
Final Fantasy XI has the balance of numbers and quality, its fun, great people, great level system, big world, small threats and big threats, Large party things to do and small party things to do, but its also a challenge, which adds flavor, and unlike WoW, it requires team work and paitience to be fun and entertaining, Nothing like DeBuffing those enemies as my Red Mage, as my group white mage and Black Mage chill behind me, and the ninja, monks, warriors, dragoons all tank the mobs, great fun indeed.
I am enjoy the MMO verse having as much diversity as possible. I have played every MMO that John listed and the only one I stuck with for any length of time was Age of Conan and even that got boring after 10 months of play.
The only thing I am hoping is that TERA decides to stay niche and not try to compete with WoW because let's face it, no one can compete with that game right out of the box. It has taken WoW years to get as big as it is and it's impossible to lay out that much content at launch..... well unless you have EA/Bioware money. They might be able to pull it off.
The only thing I am hoping is that TERA decides to stay niche and not try to compete with WoW because let's face it, no one can compete with that game right out of the box. It has taken WoW years to get as big as it is and it's impossible to lay out that much content at launch..... well unless you have EA/Bioware money. They might be able to pull it off.
3nimac said:
This.
And I think a big issue is that wow has "shown" players how good it can be. And anything less is never "enough"
I have tried a few other MMOs, and they are often lacking... not in the big departments though. A lot of the MMOs I have tried are lacking in what I view as the basics, Good meaningful game play being the biggest part.
I do not care how small your MMO is, but it better be solid and decent. Don't make 30 levels of game play and give me 60 levels to fulfill.
Don't give me a broken combat system, if "the content is really good"
I do not have all the solutions, but I do see a lot of flaws in how MMOs are made today.
This is pretty much how I've always thought about the gaming industry, everyone has a bad habit of comparing a game to another game of the same type and has high expectations.
People don't really pay attention to the fact that stuff like this is pretty basic business management, "How many copies of the game do you need to sell to break even?" anything beyond that is considered a success, not a big success, but a success none the less.
WoW may not have as many players as people think, but despite that they're still an industry leader for the genre and are still the game everyone MMO dev wishes to be.
People don't really pay attention to the fact that stuff like this is pretty basic business management, "How many copies of the game do you need to sell to break even?" anything beyond that is considered a success, not a big success, but a success none the less.
WoW may not have as many players as people think, but despite that they're still an industry leader for the genre and are still the game everyone MMO dev wishes to be.
all you need a large enough loyal fan base to make more money each month than it takes to run the game and pay the staff. u make a profit each month and use that money to get more advertising and more new comers to the game and your golden!
Perfect example EVE ONLINE. they started out with around 25000 subs and they were a tiny company then. they made a profit each month, expanded and now they have 300 to 500k subscribers. (for such a niche game that is impressive as hell and its 7 years old!)
Cater to the ones that care and more will follow! (the proverbial "If you build it, they will come") you dont need to be pulling down a BILLION dollars a year to be a success.
Perfect example EVE ONLINE. they started out with around 25000 subs and they were a tiny company then. they made a profit each month, expanded and now they have 300 to 500k subscribers. (for such a niche game that is impressive as hell and its 7 years old!)
Cater to the ones that care and more will follow! (the proverbial "If you build it, they will come") you dont need to be pulling down a BILLION dollars a year to be a success.
Dofus is quite large really, with subscribers reaching millions...
...in France.
The English contingent is much smaller, and as such much less known. It might not be one of the smaller ones, though the subscription fees are much lower than usual (about less than half), and it just keeps trundling along quite nicely.
Though, to be honest, saying it has millions of subscribers is probably wrong, as quite a lot of people multi-account, the game even has features that help you run a few characters simultaneously.
...in France.
The English contingent is much smaller, and as such much less known. It might not be one of the smaller ones, though the subscription fees are much lower than usual (about less than half), and it just keeps trundling along quite nicely.
Though, to be honest, saying it has millions of subscribers is probably wrong, as quite a lot of people multi-account, the game even has features that help you run a few characters simultaneously.
a bigger subscriber base doesn't mean it's a better game. I've played several MMOs. EQ, EQ2, RO, WoW, Atlantica, city of Heroes. Perfect Worlds just to name a few. and if there's anything I've learned is often times the more numbers there are, the more assholes there are. and most people play MMOs for the community. the community can make a brake a game. thankfully they make it easy to just up and block the people you don't wish to deal with.
EQ feels empty because it has too many servers. America could make it buy with it's RP server, PvP server and 3 maybe 4 PvE servers. they should take a tip from the smaller games like Thang.
When you get right down to MMOs, like any other genre....and cars is if it's right for you. You don't like EQ2? don't play it. don't like WoW? don't play it. Don't like MMOs? Don't play them.
the biggest complaint i hear with most mmos is the battle system and if you haven't notice. most of them are the same. Atlantica being the only one I've played that has a truly unique battle system in MMOs (note I said in MMOs). But I agree. Numbers of subscribers don't make the game. kind of like box office sells don't make the movie.
EQ feels empty because it has too many servers. America could make it buy with it's RP server, PvP server and 3 maybe 4 PvE servers. they should take a tip from the smaller games like Thang.
When you get right down to MMOs, like any other genre....and cars is if it's right for you. You don't like EQ2? don't play it. don't like WoW? don't play it. Don't like MMOs? Don't play them.
the biggest complaint i hear with most mmos is the battle system and if you haven't notice. most of them are the same. Atlantica being the only one I've played that has a truly unique battle system in MMOs (note I said in MMOs). But I agree. Numbers of subscribers don't make the game. kind of like box office sells don't make the movie.
Quite surprised you didn't mention EVE Funk, since the last time I saw its numbers it was one of the few MMO's actually growing in subscriber numbers. Its also fairly well known, as far as i'm aware, since they do loads of online advertising. Considering they started at the same time as WoW and the sub base figures were "around 25k" when it first launched, and now there reporting nearly 300,000 accounts (last time I checked), admittedly, most of those are multiple accounts, since I hardly knew anyone in EVE who didn't run a second account, but its still a 7 year old MMO that is bringing in new subs year on year. Kind of bucking the trend so to speak.
Though I suppose one of the reasons its sub base is steadily growing is because there is no game out there that competes with EVE for sandboxy MMO atm, and its kind of in the same situation as WoW atm, whereby anyone who launches a game like EVE will have to have try to compete with nearly 7 years of experience and community built up, as well as the 7 years of content and history, which in EVE, or any sandbox MMO, is imo more important than it is in "themepark" MMO's, since its been player created.
Though I suppose one of the reasons its sub base is steadily growing is because there is no game out there that competes with EVE for sandboxy MMO atm, and its kind of in the same situation as WoW atm, whereby anyone who launches a game like EVE will have to have try to compete with nearly 7 years of experience and community built up, as well as the 7 years of content and history, which in EVE, or any sandbox MMO, is imo more important than it is in "themepark" MMO's, since its been player created.
There are a lot of cool,fun-to-play free mmorpgs out there as well...I had played the mmorpg Soul of Ultimate Nation last month...and it was a fun game with more than enough players to have some good playtime...even the graphics and animations looked better than some of the popular mmorpgs out there, and all this for free!!!!