trash talk – MMO Fallout

It isn’t often I get to pull out the young Bobby Kotick picture. There are a whole host of reasons Bobby Kotick would want to pick up The Old Republic and throw it directly into the garbage, so I will step back for a few seconds and allow you to come to your own conclusions. Because World of Warcraft is hemorrhaging subscribers? Because Activision Blizzard recently had its stock downgraded due to World of Warcraft? Because The Old Republic is the largest MMO release of the year? Or because of the bitter rivalry between EA and Activision? Maybe it’s because analysts predict that not only will The Old Republic steal users from World of Warcraft, the number figures somewhere around 3-4 million departing Azeroth for Tatooine. Don’t rush, I’ll wait.

Bobby Kotick threw a few jabs at Electronic Arts, by pointing out the LucasArts will be taking some of the MMO’s income home as royalty payments:

“Lucas is going to be the principal beneficiary of the success of Star Wars,” Kotick said. “We’ve been in business with Lucas for a long time and the economics will always accrue to the benefit of Lucas, so I don’t really understand how the economics work for Electronic Arts.”

Thank you, Bobby Kotick. I think. Considering that Electronic Arts has had dealings with LucasArts in the past, they know what they’re getting into. Also remember that Bioware has dealt with LucasArts in creating the original Knights of the Old Republic (the second handled by Obsidian Entertainment).

Over here at MMO Fallout, we follow the mantra of publishing and forwarding ego-driven banter, and generally for the sole purpose of its comedic value. Much like how most humorous situations begin with a simple “hey, look what I can do,” the MMO world is no exception to events that begin with high self esteem and end with someone face planting into a stop sign.

When tasked with finding an analogy to describe Battlestar Galactica to Star Wars, the only thing I could come up with was to look at each franchise’s latest foray into media. Caprica, a prequel series to Battlestar Galactica, was cancelled at season one due to low ratings, before the season had even finished. On the other hand, Star Wars: Clone Wars grossed almost $70 million worldwide in theaters, and another $20 million in DVD sales, despite low scores from critics.

So when Bigpoint, the developer behind Battlestar Galactica Online, comes out at the London Games Conference and says that The Old Republic will never be profitable, I can only assume he means to imply that Battlestar Galactica will either perform better, or at the very least become profitable. Given that Battlestar Galactica is being developed on the UNITY engine (Cartoon Network’s Fusionfall as another example) as a browser based MMO, I like to think it can be said that it won’t take much to cover the development costs of this venture into the MMOG realm.

With Turbine taking Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons Online free to play and doing greatly by it, there is an air of elitism coming from the less popular of the free to play ilk toward the companies that maintain subscriptions, like the Grover Dill to the Scut Farkus, the loud annoying toadies who hide behind the guy who can actually put up a fight. What companies like Bigpoint don’t realize when they preach Turbine is that Turbine has infiltrated the free to play cash shop from within and has set the stage into motion that will utterly demolish the existing standard, all the while the very people they are trashing are holding them up like dopes.

What Lord of the Rings has done is they have taken the best of the free to play cash shop idea, namely no up front fees and no in-your-face costs until you’ve leveled up a bit, with a cash shop that sells things people will actually want to buy. But Turbine introduced what can be formally called a price ceiling to the model, where once a player goes over $15 a month, they can choose the flat rate subscription, and get the same content another cash shop grinder might cost up to and over a hundred dollars a month for, for the same flat rate. Not only will they get the same flat rate, but Turbine gives free cash shop points for extras each month.

Bigpoint invoking Turbine is like Justin Beiber invoking Keith Urban. Yes, you are using a popular example to bring up the rest of the genre, almost none of which who can attest to the same success that Turbine has had with Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online. That would be like me invoking Blizzard by saying that none of the free to play ventures hold a candle to twelve million paying players (regardless of whether or not they pay a subscription or hourly rate, they are paying).

But people will tell me not to publish this, as it gives Bigpoint exactly what they want: Publicity, and I say give them more publicity, because publicity exponentially emphasizes the response, and when Battlestar Galactica eventually does take its leap off of the development branch, Bigpoint is either going to make a grand entrance or fall flat on its face.

Bigpoint may think itself cool trash talking a company that could literally drown them in a sea of development money, but as George Carlin once said: