Earlier this month, Star Vault released their Annual Income report for 2011. There wasn’t much in the document that we didn’t already know from last year, but at one point the company lays out what it refers to as Mortal Online’s “greatest risk.”
Star Vault’s greatest risk is a lack of demand for its product. An insufficient market risk the company’s earnings and ultimately the financial position. Risk is an inherent part of all business and continuously examined, and the highest priority. Based on each individual situation later approved measures to limit the risks.
In the past, Henrik Nystrom has admitted that Mortal Online’s steep learning curve, less than user friendly atmosphere, and hardcore PvP atmosphere were the biggest factors for Mortal Online’s lack of widespread appeal. In the first quarter of this year, however, Mortal Online’s sales sharply rose 50% in February, and the developer enjoyed a subsequent rise in revenue in profits for the appropriate quarter (Q1 2012).
Star Vault’s second quarter releases should be out by the end of the month.
Earlier this month, Star Vault released their Annual Income report for 2011. There wasn’t much in the document that we didn’t already know from last year, but at one point the company lays out what it refers to as Mortal Online’s “greatest risk.”
Star Vault’s greatest risk is a lack of demand for its product. An insufficient market risk the company’s earnings and ultimately the financial position. Risk is an inherent part of all business and continuously examined, and the highest priority. Based on each individual situation later approved measures to limit the risks.
In the past, Henrik Nystrom has admitted that Mortal Online’s steep learning curve, less than user friendly atmosphere, and hardcore PvP atmosphere were the biggest factors for Mortal Online’s lack of widespread appeal. In the first quarter of this year, however, Mortal Online’s sales sharply rose 50% in February, and the developer enjoyed a subsequent rise in revenue in profits for the appropriate quarter (Q1 2012).
Star Vault’s second quarter releases should be out by the end of the month.
More news from the Star Vault…vault. The financial details for Star Vault’s first quarter have been released, and it appears the trend may finally break. Back in February, Henrik Nystrom announced a 50% increase in sales and an 80% increase in user activity. During the 2011 interim report, Star Vault revised its projection of breaking even in 2011 to a new prediction that the game would break even in the second quarter of 2012.
According to Star Vault’s reports, the number of monthly subscriptions increased slightly compared to the fourth quarter. The sale of licenses increased 68% from last quarter. Even with the increase in sales, Henrik notes that the game could still be friendlier to new players, which the company intends to accomplish with the release of Awakening in Q2 2012.
It is important to emphasize that the expansion includes enhancements and additions that we hope will appeal to the wider audience. Among other things, it will be easier to get into the game for new players. The expansion will also lead to the constant will be something interesting to do in the game, although it would not be interested in playing conflicts and / or war.
Henrik also mentions Mortal Online appearing on “major gaming platforms.”
According to our assessment, we, following the launch of “The Awakening”, to meet the standard requirements that exist for a game to be approved on the major gaming platforms.
More news from the Star Vault…vault. The financial details for Star Vault’s first quarter have been released, and it appears the trend may finally break. Back in February, Henrik Nystrom announced a 50% increase in sales and an 80% increase in user activity. During the 2011 interim report, Star Vault revised its projection of breaking even in 2011 to a new prediction that the game would break even in the second quarter of 2012.
According to Star Vault’s reports, the number of monthly subscriptions increased slightly compared to the fourth quarter. The sale of licenses increased 68% from last quarter. Even with the increase in sales, Henrik notes that the game could still be friendlier to new players, which the company intends to accomplish with the release of Awakening in Q2 2012.
It is important to emphasize that the expansion includes enhancements and additions that we hope will appeal to the wider audience. Among other things, it will be easier to get into the game for new players. The expansion will also lead to the constant will be something interesting to do in the game, although it would not be interested in playing conflicts and / or war.
Henrik also mentions Mortal Online appearing on “major gaming platforms.”
According to our assessment, we, following the launch of “The Awakening”, to meet the standard requirements that exist for a game to be approved on the major gaming platforms.
As an avid fan of the sandbox genre, I would love to see Mortal Online evolve from the money-losing machine that it is today to a powerful name in the industry. Who knows, maybe in a few years Star Vault will be powerful enough to make my death look like an accident. Sandboxer.org has posted a chat in which Star Vault CEO Henrik Nystrom talks about his vision for Mortal Online, not just the developer hitting more sales but the game eventually doing well enough to compete and even succeed Eve Online.
Now, Eve Online has an estimated 450,000 subscribers (plus PLEX traders), so the goal may seem a bit off in the distance. Mortal Online’s Awakening expansion will bring with it drugs. What kind of drugs, you ask? The illegal kind, more illegal than a Pepsi machine in a grade school hallway.
We await Mortal Online’s next expansion with anticipation.
I love sandbox MMOs and nothing gives me a better feeling than having a good discussion around what the genre needs to evolve. In the past, I’ve used this website to discuss my discontent with the fact that sandbox MMOs could be so much more but often devolve into random death matches with extensive crafting systems implanted. A lot of this stems from the freedom and punishment system, what the developers allow players to do and what players can expect to be “punished” for doing. For the sake of this conversation, I am not referring to bug abuse or exploits, but intentional systems that are purposefully planted to create gameplay.
Here at MMO Fallout, I adhere to the basic process that the community reflects the game, it isn’t a coincidence. So if you have a game where resources can be drained permanently (Wurm Online), you will have players dedicated to draining those resources if only to ensure that no one else can have them. If your game centers around player vs player combat, than you will form a community of gankers and player killers. And, of course, if you create a world that is completely safe you will end up with high-end characters who may have never figured out basic features.
By implementing features in a game and then telling players that they are expected to not engage in such activity, the activity itself simply becomes more appealing to a wider base. Ren and Stimpy fans will know this as the big red button effect.
That being said, sandbox MMOs are all about having a certain level of freedom above and beyond other games, and that level of freedom opens the door for people to act like jerks. Let’s go back to the resource drain conversation: Say you wanted it to be possible for players to deforest an area in order to construct buildings in the new fields. How do you stop a clan of people from griefing and deforesting large portions of the map for little more than “giggles?” The answer I get from developers is “we let the community police itself.”
I can’t say this enough: The community doesn’t police itself. No one is going to stop Tom over there from deforesting the neighborhood, and odds are no one will come to the defense when Tom heads over to the newbie zone in full top-level gear and starts a genocide of new players. I’ve played far too many free for all sandbox MMOs to know that this community policing never happens. In Eve Online, players have a measure of built-in defense in the form of high security space with NPC guards. For MMOs like Mortal Online, you are either in 10.0 (highest security) or 0.0 (lowest), there is no middle ground.
There are many ways to deal with our lumberjack Tom. A system of fatigue can make it prohibitive for a small group to deforest an area. Allowing players to take ownership of land and situate NPC guards to keep out specific players known to grief, having only certain trees able to be uprooted, or making the replanting of trees just as easy as the destruction. This goes back to the original problem, however, of requiring a developer willing to implement systems more complicated than solving all of your problems by stabbing them.
Some MMOs solve this with automated prison systems: Become a notorious criminal and you will eventually be caught and thrown in jail, where you will be forced to do menial repetitive tasks in order to be released. Just recently I talked about the plan in Dominus to allow players to put bounties on gankers, going as far as allowing the player to keep reissuing the bounty as long as he can afford to pay for it, and selectively choosing who is allowed to take on the bounty.
Preventing lumberjack Tom from deforesting an area with his cohort of griefers is a much more difficult task than punishing someone for killing too many newbies, and I’ll admit that my ideas presented above may not be reasonable when experimented in an actual sandbox MMO. But if a developer wants to put in a system by which players can theoretically drive a species to extinction, or deforest a zone, or deplete an area’s resources, they need to have some sort of system in place to compensate for when such an event occurs, because it will happen without a doubt and when players feel that they are unable to do anything about griefing, the number of players griefing will increase and the grieved will simply quit.
And I don’t want to imply that our Tom character is always a jerk, or a bad person. MMOs by nature attract players who strive to do the impossible, often for no reason other than to say that they were able to do it. Everquest created a dragon that could not be killed, players worked tirelessly to try and kill it. World of Warcraft placed its bosses in open world environments, players managed to rope them into major cities.
There is a middle ground between freedom and regulation that sandbox MMOs need in order to survive, which is why more structured titles like Eve Online have gathered more than 350,000 subscribers and on the opposite end we have games like Mortal Online and its inability to profit, and Earthrise bankrupting its developer.
I would love to see Eve Online’s structure translated to a fantasy-themed MMO.
Here at MMO Fallout, I’ve developed a pet peeve over the distinct difference between being hacked and having an account breached. Hacking requires some amount of technical prowess to accomplish, such as exploiting a vulnerability in an sql database to retrieve a list of passwords, or in the case of NCSoft back a couple of years, using an exploit in the client to log into a random person’s character and steal their items. When someone breaches an account by way of keylogger, guessing the password, or having access to an account with higher privileges, the account was compromised, not hacked.
In the case of Mortal Online, yesterday a player obtained access to a GM account and went wild on the server, deleting structures and altering some player’s accounts. It’s important to note that the person was not able to access payment details, and apparently the extent of the damage was destroyed assets, some players had their passwords changed, and some players were banned.
So Star Vault, as they announced, had a “security breach,” but the company was not hacked as some outlets are reporting. I just want to reinforce this difference because with the recent hacking at Steam, Square, Sony, etc, the announcement that a company has been hacked is just another fear of one’s credit details being stolen.
Here at MMO Fallout, I’ve developed a pet peeve over the distinct difference between being hacked and having an account breached. Hacking requires some amount of technical prowess to accomplish, such as exploiting a vulnerability in an sql database to retrieve a list of passwords, or in the case of NCSoft back a couple of years, using an exploit in the client to log into a random person’s character and steal their items. When someone breaches an account by way of keylogger, guessing the password, or having access to an account with higher privileges, the account was compromised, not hacked.
In the case of Mortal Online, yesterday a player obtained access to a GM account and went wild on the server, deleting structures and altering some player’s accounts. It’s important to note that the person was not able to access payment details, and apparently the extent of the damage was destroyed assets, some players had their passwords changed, and some players were banned.
So Star Vault, as they announced, had a “security breach,” but the company was not hacked as some outlets are reporting. I just want to reinforce this difference because with the recent hacking at Steam, Square, Sony, etc, the announcement that a company has been hacked is just another fear of one’s credit details being stolen.
Star Vault could use some good news going for it. After the web hearing just a few days ago where Henrik announced that only five permanent employees remain with the rest filled in by contractors. In an announcement on Aktie Torget, Star Vault has reported an increased interest in Mortal Online. Sales of licenses have increased 50%, and CEO Henrik Nystrom has made the following statement:
“We have the last month, noted a number of interesting positive trends regarding nyköp, gambling activity and to some extent, extensions of subscriptions. Game Activity – players that typically have been logged on Mortal Online per day – has increased significantly by about 83 percent and is an indication that players enjoy the game. The increased activity also makes the game more fun, more vibrant and there are naturally pleased with the increased number nyköp and – albeit marginally – increased subscription renewals.
The positive trend can be explained with our upgrade of the so-called Territory Control, which I think many players have been curious to try while waiting for our next expansion, “The Awakening”. It’s been a good start to 2012 and now we are working on with our future expansion, “The Awakening” that we expect to add further appeal to Mortal Online. “
You can find the entire (short) announcement below.
Sweden’s Aktie Torget Exchange has posted a web hearing with Star Vault CEO Henrik Nystrom, of which you can find the full translated version below. For the sake of brevity, I have compiled some of the more important points.
If you didn’t catch Star Vault’s Q3 2011 finances, the company reported that they had reduced staff without offering an exact figure. In the first question of the hearing, Henrik directly addresses this topic:
5 people are employed by Star Vault, then we have a team that works in the form of project employment/freelance when there is a need for it.
As he has done before, Henrik discusses why the game has faced its population issues, particularly with regard to the experience new players have upon joining, that the existing community must be helpful to new players who seek assistance, otherwise they may not return.
When asked about how long he expects Mortal Online to survive, Henrik likened the game to MMOs that have survived for over a decade. He also notes that Star Vault expects Mortal Online to break even and start profiting in mid 2012. Publishing with LeKool to bring Mortal Online to China should result in some results this summer.
Star Vault’s long term goal is 50,000 subscribers, a goal Henrik sees as reasonable. The average demographic for Mortal Online is the 18-20 male crowd.
MMO Fallout 