If MMO Fallout were a physical entity, I’d have a lot more fun searching through its records, what with the shelves of documents and that ladder on wheels I’d get to ride around. Going back to the earlier days of Aion’s coverage, I discovered an announcement that the MMO had hit the three hundred thousand preorder mark, along with a reminder that it’s all about the retention rate.
So it comes as no surprise that NCsoft is reporting record profits over the past quarterly report. Profits are up over one thousand percent, while sales are up nearly one hundred percent. Unsurprisingly, Aion made up 48% of those sales. Surprisingly, however, Lineage and Lineage 2 are still selling very well, at twenty seven and twenty percent respectively.
NCsoft’s rebound is very welcoming to the gaming community, especially after the company’s net income plummeted 50% in quarter 3 of last year, shortly before Aion was released, and even more so as NCsoft attempts to suppress the memories of Tabula Rasa, whose failure hit the company hard this past year.
So good work NCsoft. Keep being who you are, and keep that sweet sweet cash flowing in.
I think I’ve directly spoken of Roma Victor once on MMO Fallout, not because of any malice towards the title, but because the only newsworthy piece I came across in regards to the title was the act of crucifying cheaters. And much like any other image I find, it was subsequently beaten and overused for lame comedic effect (my apologies to the players Cholo, Vondum, Germanikus, and any others in the image).
Roma Victor is an odd game set in 180ad, just before the fall of the Roman Empire. Players begin as slaves and eventually move on to fight for either the Roman or Barbarian side of the war (go with the Barbarians, they eventually win). Roma Victor is a levelless game, instead choosing to use a skill tree that, like Darkfall and Runescape, is raised by training that skill (Woodcutting raised by cutting wood).
Unfortunately, not unlike that family member you never visit, my next news article in relation to Roma Victor is not only a sad one, but also fairly confusing to myself. Roma Victor will be shut down in an announcement that, yes, came out last month, but has taken me a little while to decipher the stages of shutting down, which I have submitted here:
On May 5th, account registration will be activated.
On November 5th, No donations or payments will be accepted.
May 5th 2011, Roma Victor shuts down for good.
If you play Roma Victor, at least you have over a year to say goodbye. If you haven’t had the chance to try Roma Victor, you have until May to set up your account. Roma Victor has no subscription fee, and runs solely off of voluntary donations and microtransactions.
The path Roma Victor walks down is the same one that will be traveled by the latest incarnation of Myst Online, that small video game communities run solely around donations do not make for a sustainable, let’s not even think about profitable, business. The developer team is readily admitting that Roma Victor hasn’t been profitable for a long time now, with a small community and no monthly fees. The decision is to slowly wind down Roma Victor in anticipation for Roma Victor 2, that will attempt to fix much of the company’s woes.
Current players will find all of their stuff imported into Roma Victor 2 when it hopefully releases next year, but if the announcement is anything to go off of, it is very possible that RV2 may never see the light of day. More on Roma Victor as it appears.
The celebration at the end of Return of the Jedi likely can’t compare to the fanfare being celebrated by practically every gamer who has ever uttered the phrase “World of Warcraft sucks.” Earlier today we learned from the big boss man himself, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, that World of Warcraft has been stagnant for two years: Keeping stable at the 11.5 million mark. According to Morhaime, who was responding to an investor’s call, a third of new players quit before level ten I need to go back to remedial math. It was one third of players stay after level 10, not the other way around. Two thirds quit by level 10.
World of Warcraft has been stuck in a power struggle between two government agencies fighting for authority over the games market in China, where the game and half of the worldwide subscribers have been stuck in a period of limbo between online, offline, and NetEase occasionally losing the ability to sign up new customers. Earlier this week, Netease was forced to suspend registrations for a week after it was found that they are still not operating World of Warcraft with a license.
Despite issues in China, what this boils down to in many gamers is the mythical peak many have spoken of for years: The day World of Warcraft stopped growing. For those of you keeping track, this peak actually happened two years ago, December 2008, when Blizzard first reported 11.5 million subscribers.
I don’t think I need to remind the Blizzard Trolls out there that stagnant or not, Blizzard still has 11.5 million subscribers. Let’s not try and count the chickens before they’ve evolved from primordial soup, Blizzard could lose millions of their customers tonight and still have more paying customers than a great portion of the other big name MMOs in the market, combined.
Considering World of Warcraft, and each of its expansions, has dominated the PC market for five years running, it seems reasonable to chalk this up to the ratio of people who have not purchased WoW is going down to those who have purchased WoW. I myself have a copy of World of Warcraft and the Burning Crusade in my PC library (I have 68 hours clocked in on Xfire). Essentially, we’ve reached the point where the number of people coming in is matching or just barely exceeding the number of people leaving.
Blizzard is expecting a spike in returning users when Cataclysm releases, but one truth holds firm: World of Warcraft will begin the decline one day. It may not be this year, it may not even be the next two years, but it will decline. The only thing that can kill WoW is WoW itself, or another Blizzard MMO. For the moment, however, Blizzard is doing just fine for themselves, and unlike Arthas this king will not be going anywhere any time soon. So put the noise-maker away, World of Warcraft may be old enough in MMO terms to start having its midlife crisis and run around town naked, but it can still make you squeal like a pig with one hand tied behind its back.
Cryptic wants to change. They want to stop being the company known for poor communication with its players, and they want to stop this cycle of rushing patches untested. The employees are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore!
Bill Roper and the team had a lot to say in the State of the Game today, and made a lot of promises of rehabilitation. First, Cryptic is taking the first step: Acknowledgement. In the SOTG, they talk about the recent bugs appearing due to a recent change in the game’s coding in the kitchen sink patch. Furthermore, Cryptic is readily admitting that there was not enough playtesting done in both internal QA and through the test server, in order to rush the patch out. Taking the blame is great, but what is Cryptic really doing to improve conditions?
Foremost, Cryptic is looking towards improving communications between developers and players. The communication begins with bi-weekly question and answer sessions, followed by an ongoing blog by the Game Masters, detailing plans for the game. Monthly developer chats will take place in Cryptic’s IRC channel, and the State of the Game will now be released bi-weekly. An overhaul of the Champions Online website will bring in more fan screenshots, fan art, and ways to stalk your favorite developer.
Boy do I have egg on my face, and that egg is not part of Denny’s free Grand Slam. I’ve often said that although Cryptic has communication issues on the little things (timer resets, feedback, etc), they generally get the picture when an issue becomes big enough. When Daeke announced that the next expansion, Vibora Bay, would be a paid mission pack, the community went, in all fairness, completely ape-poop.
Well Cryptic fans may rejoice, and Cryptic trolls may move on to their next talking point, because Cryptic has an announcement to make. After wading his way through the legion of hate mail, “I quit” emails, and piled on (actually constructive) feedback, Bill Roper and the team have decided to make Vibora Bay, now known as Champions online: Revelation, free to all players.
Revelation is expected mid-March, with more information on the way. All we know currently is that the expansion is a “full fledged expansion pack,” and will feature a storyline full of heroes, villains, new areas, powers, and gameplay mechanics, and maybe even a love interest for your hero (Just kidding).
If Cryptic can stick to this twelve step program, there are good things in Champions Online’s future.
Cryptic wants to change. They want to stop being the company known for poor communication with its players, and they want to stop this cycle of rushing patches untested. The employees are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore!
Bill Roper and the team had a lot to say in the State of the Game today, and made a lot of promises of rehabilitation. First, Cryptic is taking the first step: Acknowledgement. In the SOTG, they talk about the recent bugs appearing due to a recent change in the game’s coding in the kitchen sink patch. Furthermore, Cryptic is readily admitting that there was not enough playtesting done in both internal QA and through the test server, in order to rush the patch out. Taking the blame is great, but what is Cryptic really doing to improve conditions?
Foremost, Cryptic is looking towards improving communications between developers and players. The communication begins with bi-weekly question and answer sessions, followed by an ongoing blog by the Game Masters, detailing plans for the game. Monthly developer chats will take place in Cryptic’s IRC channel, and the State of the Game will now be released bi-weekly. An overhaul of the Champions Online website will bring in more fan screenshots, fan art, and ways to stalk your favorite developer.
Boy do I have egg on my face, and that egg is not part of Denny’s free Grand Slam. I’ve often said that although Cryptic has communication issues on the little things (timer resets, feedback, etc), they generally get the picture when an issue becomes big enough. When Daeke announced that the next expansion, Vibora Bay, would be a paid mission pack, the community went, in all fairness, completely ape-poop.
Well Cryptic fans may rejoice, and Cryptic trolls may move on to their next talking point, because Cryptic has an announcement to make. After wading his way through the legion of hate mail, “I quit” emails, and piled on (actually constructive) feedback, Bill Roper and the team have decided to make Vibora Bay, now known as Champions online: Revelation, free to all players.
Revelation is expected mid-March, with more information on the way. All we know currently is that the expansion is a “full fledged expansion pack,” and will feature a storyline full of heroes, villains, new areas, powers, and gameplay mechanics, and maybe even a love interest for your hero (Just kidding).
If Cryptic can stick to this twelve step program, there are good things in Champions Online’s future.
Free Realms is a browser based MMO aimed primarily at the tween market, a relatively small niche also occupied by Cartoon Network’s Fusion Fall (which you may remember is set to go free to play this year). What Free Realms does for its market is take the usual MMO grind, and throw it out the door. Yes, the game does have grind out the wazoo, but Sony did their best to make the grind as least apparent as possible. Each “job” has its own goals and methods of reaching said goals, that varies so widely that you are unlikely to not find a class in Free Realms that doesn’t suit your tastes. Cook’s gather cooking ingredients and cook, all in its own mini-game, and all of the other jobs function as you would expect them to (racer’s race, soccer players play soccer, etc).
So I give a lot of praise on MMO Fallout for Sony’s games, which judging by Sony leading the “Company I’ll Never Buy From” poll, not to mention the feedback I get on such praise, a vocal community disagrees with. One thing I have hit Sony for in the past is their ability to lie like a Senator: What they say isn’t technically a lie, but can’t be reputed through normal means, like “the freshest produce in the West!” or “Fair and Balanced.”
SOE Press, on behalf of its Free Realms title, published an announcement that the fledgling MMO had hit eight million registered users. Eight million sounds great, until you factor several questions:
How many actually played the game? Before Dungeon Runners shut down, its small development team noted that somewhere around thirty percent of the people who registered an account for the game quit before they even downloaded it.
How many are paying? For every account in a freemium or item mall title that pays, there are countless more that do not. For games that are force free players to watch advertisements, those ads generally make up less than 10% of the title’s final income.
How vocal are they? I’ve seen games with small communities that fill up their forums with all forms of discussion. Likewise, one simply has to take a look at Second Life, whose forums are shutting down because, out of the millions of players, about 700 know the forums even exist.
Most importantly, how many of those accounts are active? Reports like this are akin to the sign outside of Mcdonald’s that says “Over X Billion Served.” The sign isn’t referring to today, or this week, this year, or even this decade, but how many people have enjoyed a delicious sawdust sandwich over many years.
So eight million, when you break it down, is meaningless when put in the terms of Sony’s aim: talking about how many people play their game. Although it doesn’t tell us much, what it does tell us is enough to run wild with and speculate with. Someone might ask, why don’t they just announce the number of active accounts rather than an inflated number?
That is an easy question: Because the number of active accounts is nowhere near eight million. This isn’t to say Free Realms is low quality, but that they simply need to accept the fundamental rule of any MMO: You can expect a good retention rate to be around half. Even if Free Realms has just about two million accounts active, Sony is still likely floating around the top of the free play MMO genre.
Myst Online makes me pine for the better days of MMOs, particularly one that has a developer equivalent of the Child Protective Services act, as I would have called it to take Myst Online to a better place ages ago. Myst Online has seen more cancellations and revivals than any title on the list, despite raving reviews the title has taken just enough of a beating not to leave a permanent bruise, but to keep it coming back for more abuse. Each time the title ends up shutting down due to a dearth of subscribers, only to transfer over to a new host and start the clock all over again.
But this new incarnation of Myst by Cyan Worlds may be a step towards enlightenment. First of all, the company has removed the subscription that has held the game back in previous lives, while moving the project towards an open source position. All of the ages are back in the game, and although there is no subscription, the developers have kindly placed out a tip jar in order for players who would like to donate.
How long the donations will sustain the latest incarnation of Myst is anyone’s guess, but you can expect MMO Fallout to be there to cover it.
Back in September, I mentioned a report by Tentonhammer that Sony is currently working on yet another Star Wars MMO. All we know about the title is that it is set in the Clone Wars universe, will be developed on the Free Realms engine, and is a casual browser based game that will likely have a freemium model (free portion with option for subscription/item mall). The above picture is the final evidence we needed, apart from an official announcement, that the game is indeed being worked on. There has yet to be an official statement by Sony Online Entertainment, mind you, although this slipup is a high indicator that an official announcement is on its way.
When Clone Wars is released, there will be three Star Wars MMOs on the market. Granted each title is likely playing to a different audience, I can’t help but get the feeling that one of these three titles is going to be pushed out of the market by the other two. If Star Wars Galaxies is any indicator, both the pre and post NGE versions, the Star Wars IP is one that has yet to be fully implemented in an MMO form, so the player actually feels that they are in the Star Wars universe, rather than a sci-fi shooter that looks suspiciously like Star Wars.
More on Clone Wars as it appears. Would you play a casual Star Wars MMO (cue cheap shots at Star Wars Galaxies) set in the Clones era?
Back in September, I mentioned a report by Tentonhammer that Sony is currently working on yet another Star Wars MMO. All we know about the title is that it is set in the Clone Wars universe, will be developed on the Free Realms engine, and is a casual browser based game that will likely have a freemium model (free portion with option for subscription/item mall). The above picture is the final evidence we needed, apart from an official announcement, that the game is indeed being worked on. There has yet to be an official statement by Sony Online Entertainment, mind you, although this slipup is a high indicator that an official announcement is on its way.
When Clone Wars is released, there will be three Star Wars MMOs on the market. Granted each title is likely playing to a different audience, I can’t help but get the feeling that one of these three titles is going to be pushed out of the market by the other two. If Star Wars Galaxies is any indicator, both the pre and post NGE versions, the Star Wars IP is one that has yet to be fully implemented in an MMO form, so the player actually feels that they are in the Star Wars universe, rather than a sci-fi shooter that looks suspiciously like Star Wars.
More on Clone Wars as it appears. Would you play a casual Star Wars MMO (cue cheap shots at Star Wars Galaxies) set in the Clones era?
There are many things you can, and likely do, say about Mythic Entertainment and the MMO Warhammer Online, but one aspect you cannot criticize the company for is effort and a desire to please their community, even if they don’t always get it right. Not too long ago, Mythic announced the the 1.3.4 patch for Warhammer Online would streamline the scenario system, that ended up with plans to remove almost three quarters of the scenario maps. Reaction to the news was, shall I say, negative.
But, Mythic announced that they are going back to the drawing board as to how scenarios will be streamlined, and would like your input into the matter. The company has been watching both the North American and European forums and in-game feedback systems, and is taking as many thoughts as they can on the matter. There will still be a few of the inactive scenarios removed from the game, but not nearly as much as before.
If you currently play WAR, leave your feedback here (not here, in the link. Mythic likely doesn’t know this website exists). Players looking to get into WAR are always welcome to try out the unlimited trial, level one to ten free forever!
MMO Fallout 