MMO Roundup: RIFT open beta, SWTOR profitability, and more
by Alex Ziebart 
Feb 8th 2011 at 9:00AM
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RIFT's open beta starts Feb. 15 If you've wanted to try out RIFT but haven't been able to get into the closed beta, mark Feb. 15 on your calendar. In addition to the open beta, any dungeon boss that dies by your hand grants you a chance to win a Nvidia graphics card as well as an in-game prize pack. |
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EA aims at a half-million subscribers to make SWTOR profitable "It's a big bet, but it's the right kind of bet to make for EA." These are the words of BioWare's Ray Muzyka, responding to a conference call to EA investors in which the company admitted that Star Wars: The Old Republic will need to pull in at least 500,000 subscribers to become profitable. This is substantially less than the 2 million subscriber mark that industry analysts previously predicted. |
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Five mobile MMOs that are not Pocket Legends When looking for an MMO to play on the go, the first one you'll find is Pocket Legends. It's the most recognizable for certain, but what if you're looking for something else? What other options are available? |
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Massively Speaking episode 133 Massively Speaking returns this week with Beau Hindman joining Shawn Schuster and Rubi Bayer for some discussion of the week's news. Topics include the newly announced Guild Wars 2 Guardian profession, RIFT's sixth beta event, Vanguard's fourth anniversary and more! |
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Massively's streaming schedule Have you ever wished you could see a game in motion before you decide to try it yourself? Do you enjoy watching WoW Insider's weekly live streams? All week long, Massively streams the hottest MMOs around. This week you can see DC Universe Online, Allods Online, Runes of Magic, and more. |
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Massively's Week in Review: Spite or cynicism? Don't let WoW Insider do all of the talking when it comes to Massively's best content of the week. The Massively staff themselves have picked out what they think is the best content their site has to offer in their own weekly roundup. |
Filed under: MMO Roundup
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Alexran Feb 8th 2011 9:10AM
As a gaming analyst, I've slowly realized that the thing that the top two MMOs have in common (WoW and EVE) Is that they both have mac clients. Mac gamers cling desperately to MMOs like this, and they make up a pretty dedicated portion of both games subscription base.
I'm going to get yelled at and called an idiot for this statement Im pretty sure, but mark my words. SWTOR will fail lest they throw together a CIDER port, or spend a few months doing a quality port.
araquen Feb 8th 2011 9:55AM
Unfortunately, Bootcamp is a very successful way of getting PC games on a Mac. Granted, you have to invest in a flavor of Windows OS, but I have been running WoW through Bootcamp and it absolutely performs better PC side than Mac side on my Mac Pro. :(
Most game developers will just tell Mac users to get Bootcamp and Win7.
I don't see this changing until Apple actually pays attention to Open GL, which they won't because Steve Jobs hates gaming (he's come right out and said it - Steam had to rub Apple's nose in Open GL's lackluster performance before the company even considered updating the code, and even then it was a p!$$-poor attempt at best).
quickshiv Feb 8th 2011 12:16PM
Alex I'm not yelling at you but for someone who claims to be an analyst that is pretty much the definition of a straw man argument. The straight truth is in the grand scheme very few people have mac desktops/laptops. Somewhere between 6-10% depending on where you get your information. Assuming that the same percentage of pc users play MMOs as Mac users you would only be growing your player base by 6-10% by adding MAC compatibility. Would the extra cost be made up in MAC subscribers? Possibly, however, if you use the same amount of money in game improvements and marketing you would probably have a much higher ROI.
zweitblom Feb 8th 2011 12:20PM
"I'm going to get yelled at and called an idiot for this statement Im pretty sure"
What is it with the persecution complex so many apple users display?
Alexran Feb 8th 2011 1:05PM
@zweitblom The persecution complex comes from web forums. Mac gamers are constantly berated and told to get a windows box, or to partition their harddrive. It's pretty funny though considering all the money Steam/Valve has invested in mac gaming. They would not have done what they did if they thought mac gaming had no future.
Also, @quickshiv, the numbers you quote are largely irrelevant. THe dedication from the mac community in WoW and EVE are like none other. In almost every forum ever, you have someone posting things like "I just got a mac, are there any cool games?" And the first post is usually "Try WoW!" or "EvE has sweet graphics! Give it a go!" Those games are very important to mac gaming and both have a significant portion of mac gamers, all of whom contribute heavily to the subscription base. Like I said, My argument is atypical enough that windows fanboys will tear it apart and use out of context numbers, but that won't change the truth behind it. Mac users should be heavily considered when coming up with a new MMO and trying to get it to "stick". There aren't that many good, AAA mac games out there, and the few one's that do exist are highly prized. Blizzard knows this., and its why they'll always have the fiscal upperhand compared to its windows only competitors.
cpenney Feb 8th 2011 1:59PM
The problem with Rift isn't that it's a "clone". Cloning things like key-bindings is likely a good thing. The problem with Rift is that I'm not seeing a really compelling innovation that makes me want to play. I tried Warhammer for the RvR and how it was integrated with leveling. That's what got me to buy it. The PvE failed so I came back, but you get the point. Rift has a neat classing system and I like their implementation of public quests as taken from Warhammer, but there's really not much else.
Wild Colors Feb 8th 2011 2:04PM
@Alexran
Macs are a very small percentage of the hardware base. However, they are owned primarily by the wealthy given their cost. This is a group that tends to have money to burn on things like games. This means that, once Apple started putting in discrete graphics cards in 2008, Valve thought it was a good proposition to work on updating OpenGL (and work on convincing Apple to push the updates) in order to position itself as the primary AAA game provider for Mac owners.
That said, OpenGL is still about two full generations behind DX11. Further, the Mac user base is still a relatively small percentage of the players of any given game. This means that new studios, like Trion, that can't afford to create clients for both would be fairly foolish to create an OSX client instead of a Windows client.
Porting a game is a big investment. You need to rewrite huge portions of the graphics engine, and a fair chunk of the game engine itself. Doing it well is not simple or easy, and can't be done in spare time over a few months. Only the true giants like Blizzard have the money to do it. The more realistic option is to do what CCP did with EVE...create an OSX client after a few years if you have the revenue to do it (EVE launched in May 2003 and the first official OSX client was released in November 2007).
Ice Feb 8th 2011 9:11AM
SWTOR news is another reminder to people who only think other MMOs are "flops" if they are not nearly .. near wow numbers.
No, you dont need to have 10 million subs to make game profitable. No, having 1 million subs wont make MMO flop.
Will SWTOR kill wow? No and they never claim it will. Fans maybe do but fans are not devs and PR. Can SWTOR be success? Easily yes, but for how long..remains question.
naughtyzoot Feb 8th 2011 10:57AM
As long as it's nothing like Galaxies it'll be OK :D
Eros Feb 8th 2011 9:38AM
Gosh stop talking about the other MMOs in the MMO Roundup post!!!! /Sarcasm
JT Feb 8th 2011 9:48AM
Wow, never thought I'd reminisce about the good ol' days where we saw the image of Deathwing with a speech bubble on every other post....but here I am, reminiscing.
I just don't really like Rift's styling, and I'm getting kinda tired of seeing it all the time.
(The Jaina one is kinda meh too, for the record.)
chris Feb 8th 2011 9:50AM
I can't wait for that RIFT crap to tank so we can all stop talking about it. I was in the beta, nothing new and nothing better, crappy animations and "off" graphics. It will kill only itself.
Frase32 Feb 8th 2011 11:09AM
@Chris, it's fine that you don't like it. I don't understand the off graphics comments though. What didn't you like about them?
Here are some side by sides. I think it shows two things, how nice the Rift graphics and art style are and how dated the WoW graphics look. WoW, art style are still TOP NOTCH, the fact that they can make me play the game with how terrible the models look is a testament to their use of color and art style.
http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp188/Mordib/Rifts/ogreattack.jpg
http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp188/Mordib/Rifts/doomguard.jpg
Here is a Fire Rift, looks beautiful.
http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp188/Mordib/Rifts/firerift.jpg
Jorges Feb 8th 2011 12:11PM
Maybe he doesn't have a good enough machine to run it. RIFT is playable with the low renderer and in low settings with the hight quality renderer. But most if not all of the eye candy is lost if you play it like this, and it starts to look much like WoW.
I was always a defender of WoW's "outdated" graphics, since they're in a "cartoonish" format. So they won't easily get outdated. Fast forward 3 years later and I have to say: WoW graphics are really outdated now. Using pretty water, sunshatfs and dynamic shadows does make it look better, but it's not enough.
You already updated the engine to DX11 Blizzard. Time to do something about the oudated player and NPC models! A little bump mapping and normal mapping would be nice too!
carebear Feb 8th 2011 12:33PM
It's okay that Chris finds other MMOs threatening to his life that is WoW and feels the need to lash out at them. That's his choice.
Carson Feb 8th 2011 9:38PM
Rift's looks good in a screenshot. The animations are pretty poor though (common with less experienced developers).
ubergrendle Feb 8th 2011 10:03AM
4.0.6 for Wow is essentially a 'fix all the broken stuff we launched' patch; there's really nothing new or meaningful. Given how dead the end game is at the moment, blizzard better get cracking on a really good 4.1 patch with new zones and content to play -- double threat of SW:TOR and RIFT finally represent solid threats to Blizzard. Cataclysm has been a very disappointing expansion so far, i doublt they'll keep people subscribed all the way through to their next expansion.
Ant Feb 8th 2011 10:26AM
Aka "WoW is going to completely die once SW and RIFT launch" Rift is a WoW clone and the way EA and LucasArts run their games, it's going to crash.
Frase32 Feb 8th 2011 10:39AM
Ant, calling a game a clone of another game that came before it is such a hollow point of view. Yes, Rift took a lot of elements of WoW and implemented in their game. Is that bad? Is it lazy developers? I don't know, perhaps you should ask Blizzard the same thing about taking a lot of elements of Everquest and implementing them in WoW.
WoW is a great game. It was a better game during it's Vanilla and TBC days, but that is just my opinion. I still sub to WoW and I still play WoW. Doesn't mean I have to hate on every other MMO on the market.
TwinCitiesKnick Feb 8th 2011 10:42AM
Totally disagree about WoW endgame. I'm fairly casual in my raiding, but really loving this tier. Fun fights, fun mechanics, and challenging, even pre-heroics. Once we finally finish off Cho'gall and move onto Nefarian and Al'Akir, heroics seem like a great challenge too. Far from a dead endgame, in my (admittedly casual) opinion.
Looking forward to RIFT too. Seems like an interesting change of pace, and I'll be interested to see how it holds up and develops over the next year once its endgame takes shape.