MMO Roundup: Last week on Massively
by Alex Ziebart 
Nov 9th 2010 at 3:00PM
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The Top 10 weird staples of every fantasy MMO No matter how unique fantasy MMOs try to be, they all somehow manage to fall into the same tropes. Head over to Massively and read their Top 10 fantasy staples list. How many of them apply to your favorite games? |
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Undead Labs: Current MMOs are "barely even games" Undead Labs has a new game designer, and he's come out swinging against the established MMO format. Richard Foge, who previously worked on God of War, SOCOM and Guild Wars, says he "loves the idea of MMOs" but isn't satisfied with the current market. |
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Bigpoint CEO says The Old Republic will never be profitable As a high-profile MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic is proving itself to be a big target for attack. Bigpoint, the German game developer that's working on Battlestar Galactica Online, stepped up to take a swing at the as-of-yet-unreleased title. |
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Square-Enix working hard to "regain trust" with players and investors It's been a rocky couple months for Final Fantasy XIV. Due to extensive feedback from the playerbase and mixed reviews, Square-Enix extended the free trial period for new players to a full two months -- a rarity in the industry -- as the company worked to shore up FFXIV's weaker points. President Yoichi Wada recently stated during a money report that the company is doing all it can to improve the situation: "We're quickly working on reforms ... We'd like to put our full power into regaining trust." |
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Warhammer Online reveals the classes of the Skaven Players were excited when it was first announced that Warhammer Online would at last feature playable Skaven, even though it was stated that there would be certain limitations. A new document about the creatures has recently gone up, with both fiction to explain the presence of the creatures on each side and a breakdown of the abilities they will bring to the battlefield. |
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Star Trek Online may go F2P yet -- if you play Champions, that is Cryptic's Jack Emmert spoke recently about the potential future where Star Trek Online goes free-to-play. It isn't guaranteed to happen, but the company is keeping a watchful eye on how the recent free-to-play switch impacts Champions Online. Emmert also hints at a new, upcoming title from Cryptic. |
Filed under: MMO Roundup
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Revynn Nov 9th 2010 3:10PM
Clearly, Bigpoint's CEO does not have first-hand experience with the selling power of the Star Wars franchise.
matiaid1 Nov 9th 2010 3:14PM
Clearly, Bigpoint's CEO is a successful troll.
Hal Nov 9th 2010 3:30PM
He may or may not be wrong regarding subscription models vs. microtransactions, but there is a good point in there: That $100M price tag means Old Republic has a high hurdle to get over for profitability.
Vladeon Nov 9th 2010 3:40PM
BigPoint CEO: "Listen Bioware, I'mm'a let you finish and all but SW:TOR will never be a profitable franchise. Ever!"
Peter Nov 9th 2010 3:52PM
I doubt the new star wars game will be profitable.
The first star wars game fell apart quickly. Titles with huge IPs like Warhammer, AOC and Star Trek have also fallen apart quickly. AOC only cost 40M to make, and they ended up writing off a loss of 25M. Star Wars is costing over 100M to make. (remember, box sales mean very little since about 80% of the sale prices goes to other people, not the developers).
Star Wars is a great IP. Bioware is a great RPG maker. Unfortunately, they are now owned by EA, the same company that pushed in incompetent people to lead Warhammer and they have done the same thing with Star Wars. Many of the decision makers are now Bioware people.
I'd bet on this loudmouth, Star Wars will get alot of initial sales because of the IP, Bioware and just hype. But the gameplay looks lackluster and dull and will bore most current MMORPG players. AOC sold 1 million boxes and still lost 25 of 40 million... do the math to see how many boxes they will have to sell to recoup the 100M+ they spent on star wars.
matiaid1 Nov 9th 2010 3:49PM
i personally would like to bay a monthy subscription fee that includes eveything than to funk around with the microtransactions. Maybe it's just 'cause i have bad memories from it.
Revynn Nov 9th 2010 3:54PM
A high hurdle, to be sure, but to say it "will never be profitable" is fairly exaggerated, IMO. There's an entirely seperate market that SW:TOR is appealing to besides MMO gamers, and while there is certainly overlap, there will also be a number of people who buy and play SW:TOR just because it's a Star Wars game. And the Star Wars market is . . . . HUGE.
Mostly, this just sounds like trash talk from one mmo-based-on-existing-sci-fi-francdhise developer to another.
Not that it really makes any difference to me either way. Unless Bioware does something really, really, really stupid (like, redesigns the combat system to resemble Dance, Dance Revolution), then there's little chance that I won't be at Gamestop on Launch day to get my copy.
Kemikalkadet Nov 9th 2010 5:07PM
@Peter
Remember that with MMO's, most of the profit is made on recurrent payments; Subscriptions and micropayments, the box sale makes up a tiny percentage of gross income. AoC lost so much because they had terrible player retention, largely attributed to the state the game shipped in. It was hyped up an obscene amount and sold a load of boxes on launch, when people realised the game was totally unfinished a lot of them left and didn't bother with the game again. From what i've heard now though, it's a pretty decent game and is chugging along, albeit with a much smaller playerbase.
As for SW:TOR... spending 100m on the dev of a new MMO seems pretty insane given the success rate of titles in the industry, and as past examples have shown, haing a strong IP is no guarantee of a successful game. It'll be a surprise if they get that into the black any time soon.
RogueJedi86 Nov 9th 2010 5:59PM
People need to see what this really is. The CEO of a company who only makes microtransaction-based MMOs is feeling threatened by the next huge MMO that looks to be subscription-based. He's simply sniping at the competition. "Don't get a subscription for that super awesome Star Wars game, spend $5 on a Cylon outfit in my BSG MMO!"
I notice he didn't even mention WoW, even though WoW is proof that the subscription-based system works. WoW easily became profitable, and so can TOR. Imagine if TOR got as successful as WoW, that $100 million budget would be made up in a month, and it'd be turning a profit in 2 months. That's being extremely generous, but it's a far cry from "that game will never be profitable". So like I said, he's just sniping at the next big guy in the industry, while he's secretly mad that he's a little guy. BSG Online will never get the kind of media/gamer attention that SWTOR will and he's just jealous.
shadcroly Nov 9th 2010 3:21PM
Yay November FFXIV update! 8D
Gotta love how on-the-ball SE is this time around with player-developer interaction.
Trilynne Nov 9th 2010 3:26PM
Yes... yes it is all WoW, all the time! :P
(I know, I don't need to read this particular column, etc, but I've been dying to say that, so neah! xD)
Amaxe Nov 9th 2010 3:29PM
I never thought of the Skaven as using tech, though perhaps the miniature game has passed me by (my experience was the original pen and paper game from the 1980s).
Tirrimas Nov 9th 2010 4:16PM
Reading all this makes me glad I chose WoW to support.
Hollow Leviathan Nov 9th 2010 5:35PM
While I do play a lot of other games besides wow, the idea of playing multiple MMOs seems a little silly to me. If I'm dedicating enough time to WoW that I regularly read a news/blog, how would I have enough time for another massive time sink of a game instead of nice short single player experiences like Serious Sam and Torchlight?