Make that one burger, big and juicy.
- Free To Play: do I need to say? We already know of Star Trek Online and more titles will no doubt follow in its footsteps. Sony Online Entertainment has shifted its development direction to free to play, CCP has DUST 514 coming on to the Playstation 3 and Vita as a free to play (with mandatory deposit?) and more we haven’t heard from yet. Aion is going free to play in Europe and possibly North America. Chalk this one up as guaranteed.
- WAR Will Die Like Galaxies: When Star Wars Galaxies shut down, John Smedley noted that the closure was a deal between Sony and Lucas Arts to not renew the license after it expired, coinciding with the release of The Old Republic (coincidentally). I have a feeling that the same will happen between Mythic and Games Workshop whenever the WAR license expires. I’m not saying that it will happen in 2012, but I have a feeling that Warhammer Online shutting down will coincide with Warhammer 40k releasing.
- Mists of Pandaria Sells Millions, Trashed: World of Warcraft’s expansion will hit the top seller list for months after launch, but given the recent trend of gamers trolling metacritic, the expansion’s ratings will take a plunge as players rate the game zero because Blizzard are worse than Stalin and their game is easier than Cooking Mama.
- Neverwinter Will Sell A Lot of Lifetime Subscriptions: And most of those will be sold to jaded Champions Online and Star Trek Online account holders who will shamelessly trash the game and Cryptic for forcing them at gunpoint to preorder the most expensive package despite them not enjoying Cryptic’s two past titles. One of them will send me his account details so I can enjoy Neverwinter for free.
- I’m Going to Get Sued: Call this one a hunch, and something I really hope I’m wrong about.
- The Number of MMOs Shutting Down Will Spike: 2010 was a major year of MMOs shutting down, and I have the feeling 2012 will be similar in quantity.
- TERA Will Have A Similar Launch in the West: Overseas, TERA is being heavily criticized for a myriad of issues, including lacking end-game content. My optimistic side says that many of the issues will be fixed by the time the game hits state-side/Europe-side. The part of me that has played every MMO released in Asia years before the West says otherwise. I’m expecting heavy server mergers in TERA’s forecast.
- Guild Wars 2 Will Not Be The Messiah: Sorry Guild Wars fans! The game is going to do great, don’t get me wrong, and will be no doubt be operating for years to come with plenty of expansion packs. That being said, it isn’t going to change the industry any more than Guild Wars did, and it certainly won’t be NCSoft’s top performer, nor will it kill The Old Republic, drop a deuce on Bill Roper’s lawn, or punch Richard Garriot right in the Ultimas.
- Planetside 2 Will Not Spur Competition: Planetside 2 doesn’t have much competition when it releases hopefully in 2012. Tribes Universe is still in no man’s land of development, and World War 2 Online isn’t competing with anyone. I don’t count MAG as competition because the titles operate on two separate consoles. We all thought when Planetside got old that other companies would pick up the slack. They didn’t, and probably still won’t. And finally…
- Action MMOs Will Be Slammed As Clickfests: I’m specifically referring to games like TERA, because the people who complain about MMOs relying on hotbars seem to be the same people trashing companies that take a more action-based approach for being dumbed down and button mashers as well.
MMO Fallout 