General Discussion

In my opinion the main reason for most games who fail lies in oversimplification, in narrowing the game towards once niche too much. That doesnt mean that said MMO really has to close to actually fail. If a failed game is closed is part of the company ideology and of course monetary backing. Now a game is too narrowed down when it aims for ONE target audience only. MMOs who do that almost ALL failed so far.

Some of these narrowed games can be quite big and vast, but usually the defining pieces makes it really appealing for one target group only. Lets take two very different examples, Tabula Rasa and Vanguard.

TR was essentially an online shooter. If we review it honestly, everything else was just decoraton. In the core, what you did 90% of your game time was running around and shooting at things as in a shooter. So it was really interesting only for this one target audience. The rest tried it out a while and left. On top of that, TR had two fundamental flaws, because essentially the developers were unable or unwilling to admit the truth to themselves: the truth that they had created a shooter, and not a MMORPG. Now most people who love shooter prefer to make it as PVP, they dont want to shoot bots. Second, most of these guys dont need a subscription based MMO, they play online for free in TF, CS or whatever is fashion these days. So TR had ONE target audience, and everything they did went totally away from that target group's gaming habits. If you narrow a game down on one pillar, the risk is considerably higher as if you would base a MMO on several pillars.

VG, while being complex, had one defiing principle, when it was designed: they wanted to bring back the hardships of the EQ days. VG was made by EQ devs and geeks, and they thought to base everything fitting for that supposed hardcorish, EQtesque, UO-loving playerbase. For a long time VG was advertised with harsh verbal images. The devs boasted how they loved the corpse runs in underwear and to really cry from the losses of death and long, deadly journeys asf. (Or think how the "No crying in the red circle" of PotBS - backfired.) Now, however hardcorish VG really was is of no importance, but VG NEVER got a chance after that. Both the VG devs and the fans greatly overestimated the number of those willing to endure EQ/UO era hardships today. I know, the official story is, VG was brought down by bugs and performance, but really, I dont think so. I think the bugs and performance issues were more a projection screen for the fundamental flaw: the idea to revive a game concept which like the dinosaures had died out for a reason!

The EQ/UO hardship ideology didnt die out because of some evil scheme or accident, it died out because it was inferior to the accessibilty of other, modern MMOs. Like a man with a sword dies in a war fought with guns. Some things cant be turned back. Once NPCs didnt have that symbol over their head, indicating the quest giver. You had to ASK everyone. Both SWG and EQ2 started that way, and EQ2 added the overhead symbols when WOW made them popular. Now VG was FULL of tiresome timesinks. 90% of all the VG "hardships" werent difficult or challanging, 90% of them were just mere timesinks. And when VG was launched, the vast majority of potential MMO gamers just didnt want such timesinks anymore. SO VG was based on one target audience: the leftover dinosaurs who still accepted such timesinks. Only because of THAT the bugs and performance issues brought VG down. If VG would have been bug free and with good performance it still would not have fared better than AoC.

The same is to say, in smaller degree, the case with AoC and WAR.

AoC was basically oriented for a certain target audience, people who seek to buy Pirelli calendars, people who love gore and boobs. AoC had some good virtues, but essentially a certain audience felt at home, and the rest didnt. Now when you feel at home in a game, you endure a LOT, and the proof that this is so, is SWG. SWG had a LOT of issues, considerably more than AoC, but it was diverse, it offered something for many kind of gamers, and thats why they stayed.

WAR similarly is a certain niche, the niche of the "Planetside" gamer. WAR's only strong side was supposed to be PVP. We always expected PVE to be an aferthought. The PVE world is, even compared to games like EQ2 (thinking how "alive" the game feels), extremely sterile and cold. And when the RVR didnt function, because people vanished in the handfull of scenarios, the game began to fall apart, because the one defining column wasnt good enough.

Games which had a long lifespan, EQ2, DAoC, SWG and of course in the most profound sense WOW, all tired to appeal many types of customers and many play styles. I guess thats WOW's real "secret" of success. It can be played both by the E-sports geek and the gandma. They all have something to like, something to identify with, so even if one part is just so-so, the gamers endure it, because they feel at home, like in that fitting pair of shoes or the comfortable couch. Such games have players and systems where players naturally fit into, many biospheres, if you like, they dont have one, sole system to which everyone has to adapt.

In the long run only games who aim for a complex world built can really survive. Sure, there are some niches, games like EVE or Planetside live in their niche quite well, but they have to be very round in themselves and will never be more than a small niche. In most cases it breaks a game to narrow it down on one defining idea.
 

Originally posted by Elikal

In my opinion the main reason for most games who fail lies in oversimplification, in narrowing the game towards once niche too much.

 

That is the direct opposite of the problem. Most MMos these days just copy the EQ formula, it worked for WoW, so it can work for us! And they produce bland clones that use no innovation, and become easier and easier to rope in the most noobs possible, because only noobs could enjoy games that simple. WoW didn't have to innovate to be a success, why should they? 

I disagree.  I think the reason most mmos fail is because of a poor launch and player expectation.  If you had a poor title at launch, no one who played that game early will come back.  Its also cursed more because if a game shares similarities with another title then those gamers will compare it with that title and if its worse won't come back.  This is the problem we are in now, games are coming out similiar to WoW but gamers who try it no longer like WoW or WoW does a better job considering its been released for 4 years.

Games that had a successful launch then sometimes suffer because of lack of community.  This being noobie areas becoming barren as players race to the high-end.  This happens in all games unless there is a universal city for communication such as Ogrimmar or Iron Forge.

I think WoW was a 1-note game designed to appeal to a casual gamers market.  Is it appealing to most seasoned mmo players?  On these forums you can tell not so much.  Does it involve pop-cap games popular with grandma?  I don't see any such element.  Even WoW was niche, its just that niche represented a wide audience.

I enjoyed the read & there are some good points ..

Originally posted by Cleffy

I disagree.  I think the reason most mmos fail is because of a poor launch and player expectation.  If you had a poor title at launch, no one who played that game early will come back.  Its also cursed more because if a game shares similarities with another title then those gamers will compare it with that title and if its worse won't come back.  This is the problem we are in now, games are coming out similiar to WoW but gamers who try it no longer like WoW or WoW does a better job considering its been released for 4 years.

Games that had a successful launch then sometimes suffer because of lack of community.  This being noobie areas becoming barren as players race to the high-end.  This happens in all games unless there is a universal city for communication such as Ogrimmar or Iron Forge.

I think WoW was a 1-note game designed to appeal to a casual gamers market.  Is it appealing to most seasoned mmo players?  On these forums you can tell not so much.  Does it involve pop-cap games popular with grandma?  I don't see any such element.  Even WoW was niche, its just that niche represented a wide audience.

Sorry, but I think there is an entire list of myths.

First, WOWs launch was far from perfect. Several fundamental parts were added a long time after launch. Just take the PVP penality it got and compare it to the ruckus about the same problem in AoC now. The majority of those who love WOW and stayed came to the game about a year later. It didnt skyrocket to 11 millions in a few months. It was in better shape, but really not that much better than say EQ2 or LOTRO, who DIDNT get 11 millions subs. That just doesnt explain those proportions. When one MMO gets SO many more, it has to be more than such simple explanations.

Second, to some degree it is invitable to "copy" WOW features and any game which doesnt is doomed. WOW shaped game habits and some things were just the most functional thing, like the UI or the symbol over a quest giver. It established norms, some norms it only popularized when they existed before, like the radar. Those are functional standards a new MMO cant fall behind, or it has to make such a leap ahead as none of us can imagine it at the moment, just as we werent able to really forsee 2008 MMOs in 2003 or so. Think of WOW like the invention of the first car, compared to the horse carriage. Sure there are many brands of cars, Ford, GM, Mercedes, whatever, but they all have to adapt to certain basics to share the same road, and as with cars, at some point only a few people use horse and carriages.

Third, sorry but calling WOW a niche game is re-defining the word niche. You are free to do it, but it does not change the content of what I say, it just would force me to use another word or a complicated explanation of something everyone really understands. Niche = a small percentage of the MMO gamers and one special target audience. Non-Niche: a greater percentage of the MMO gamers and open to various target audiences. Now you can re-define the word, but we dont get one step ahead with that.

One basic assumption I make is, that neither UO nor EQ were really more difficult. Difficult is a term which implies the need of trained skills. A type of games to which that applies would the Tekken or Soul Calibur for console. They base the skill of the character 100% on YOUR, the player skills. In a RPG this can never be the case, even if AoC tried to bring it in a bit, the vast part STILL is the characters skill and only a bit yours. The reason is, that a MMORPG has ONE and ONLY one way to penalize failure: the loss of time. In whatever form it comes, loss of XP, of gear, be it the downtime of EQ where you had to wait between each fight for the mana to regenerate, it was always and only a timesink. Thats the only skill you really need. Usually all uber gear or rare stuff is bound to time sinks: raids, faction grind, whatever. The time sink is the only real enemy in any MMORPG, and THAT is the one part in which UO and EQ really were much more demanding. And ppl accepted it, because there was no other, they didnt knew better. Its simple as that.

The thing were UO and EQ WERE better is the complexity, not the difficulty. As described in detail above.

tabula rasa is/was not a shooter.  its a typical rpg grindfest with a shooter veneer and interface.

if you were both a shooter fan and a former player of tabula rasa you would see that your aim didn't really matter, and dodging didn't really matter.  it was all based on dice rolls.

imo, that's why it failed.  it didn't appeal to rpg fans cuz it had the illusion of being a shooter.

and it didn't appeal to shooter fans after they tried it and saw that shooter skills didn't matter.  just another grindfest.

if it had the balls to go all out and have REAL shooter gameplay, i'm sure it would have done ALOT better.  i know *i* for one would have been subscribed most of the time, but i never bought it cuz it was just another RPG grindfest.

another big fact is that for the first years of its existence, alot of work and manhours went into making a completely different game which was almost entirely thrown away, and they started from new again.  so they had to have twice as many subscribers to be profitable.

i think you are very wrong about them needing to appeal to a broader market.  they need to spend less time and manhours trying to appeal to everybody, and have a much less expensive and more focused game that appeals MORE to a specific niche, and does that job very well with no compromises.  then they aren't competing with WoW and the other hundreds of typical MMORPGs.   they will have almost 0 competition.

tabula rasa was unfocused and for all its surface appearances and hype, was just another MMORPG.  different enough in ways that made existing MMORPGs uncomfortable, but not nearly different enough for any other audience to like it.

people keep saying why pay a subscription for an FPS  when FPS games are free.

there IS no FPS set in a immersive virtual world populated with hundreds or thousands of players. 

THAT would be something worth paying for.

don't bring up Planetside.  there's nothing immersive about their "world". 

just random looking desolate & unpopulated terrain and bases that all look pretty much alike