Apparently in China a MMO called Dungeon and Fighter is 20% more popular than World of Warcraft. In itself not all that surprising until you watch a video of actual gameplay. It looks and plays like side scrolling beat-em-up from the earl '90s. I liked those games just fine...18 years ago. The appeal of an MMO with that playstyle completely eludes me. This is a clear case of different strokes for different folks.
To me this is also a good illustration of why it's idiotic to argue that one MMO is "better" than another MMO in any sort of objective sense. To (minimally) several million gamers Dungeon and Fighter, an MMO with almost laughably archaic gameplay by our standards, is more fun than any western MMO available.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
"Gateway" MMOs
A lot of industry insiders have argued that World of Warcraft has been good for the MMO industry because it expanded the overall market. The idea is that players start with WoW, and eventually get bored with it and start looking for a new MMO fix. In other words, WoW is a"gateway" MMO. On the surface this seems pretty reasonable. Certainly WoW has a much higher profile than any previous MMO. And the market has clearly grown in the past four years.
At the height of the "golden age" of MMOs, EQ had roughly 500K subs and DAoC (the most successful competitor of the day) had roughly 250K subs. I'll be generous and pretend that UO had 200K subs at that time. So that gives us a total market of around a million subscribers in mainstream MMOs when EQ was king. In the post WoW era, there are very clearly more MMO gamers. EVE and WAR have roughly 300K subs these days, and FFXI is still hanging tough at 500K subs (amazing). Those three alone have more than a million players. Even without doing any ass math (i.e., math using numbers pulled out your butt), I think any reasonably informed observer would agree that the total non-WoW MMO market is at least several times bigger than it was before WoW launched.
However, I think we would have gotten here with or without WoW. The Korean market and the explosion of micro transaction MMOs have obviously been huge boosts to the industry. Even ignoring those factors, I think there have been several other "gateway" MMOs over the years that haven't gotten much credit. MMOs that reached out to new markets and have a gentle initial learning curve.
Everquest Online Adventures never had many subs, but it was a first MMO for a very high proportion of users. When Sony shipped the modem for the original PS2 it came with a demo of EQOA. That got a lot of console gamers to try an MMO for the first time. City of Heroes likely expanded the market by moving out of the fantasy genre. It also remains much more rewarding at low levels than is typical for an MMO, you will feel like a badass within the first hour of play. This has to be better for new users than the tepid starting pace of most MMOs. More recently, LoTRO seems to have attracted a lot of new MMO fans due largely to the IP. Almost everyone I meet in game is either a EQ era MMO vet or a new MMO user. Those who cut their teeth on WoW almost always seem to revile it.
Which brings me to my last point in this rambling post. I find Syncaine's ongoing tirade against "WoW tourists" more than a bit pretentious. However, I think he is right about one main point. The majority of WoW players that try other MMOs don't like them as much as WoW. The vast majority of MMOs aren't as fast paced as WoW, have much steeper learning curves than WoW, and don't run as smoothly on a low end PC. While I have zero hard data to back this up, I strongly suspect that the bulk of players that get bored with WoW leave the MMO market altogether. Assuming that's true, WoW isn't really a gateway to other MMOs. It's more of a separate market from other MMOs operating in a vacuum. WoW is neither helping nor hurting the industy at large. I suspect that the real "gateway" MMOs are modestly successful MMOs that appeal to previously untapped markets (e.g., LoTRO and CoH) and ftp MMOs with a lot of younger users (e.g., Runescape and Club Penguin).
At the height of the "golden age" of MMOs, EQ had roughly 500K subs and DAoC (the most successful competitor of the day) had roughly 250K subs. I'll be generous and pretend that UO had 200K subs at that time. So that gives us a total market of around a million subscribers in mainstream MMOs when EQ was king. In the post WoW era, there are very clearly more MMO gamers. EVE and WAR have roughly 300K subs these days, and FFXI is still hanging tough at 500K subs (amazing). Those three alone have more than a million players. Even without doing any ass math (i.e., math using numbers pulled out your butt), I think any reasonably informed observer would agree that the total non-WoW MMO market is at least several times bigger than it was before WoW launched.
However, I think we would have gotten here with or without WoW. The Korean market and the explosion of micro transaction MMOs have obviously been huge boosts to the industry. Even ignoring those factors, I think there have been several other "gateway" MMOs over the years that haven't gotten much credit. MMOs that reached out to new markets and have a gentle initial learning curve.
Everquest Online Adventures never had many subs, but it was a first MMO for a very high proportion of users. When Sony shipped the modem for the original PS2 it came with a demo of EQOA. That got a lot of console gamers to try an MMO for the first time. City of Heroes likely expanded the market by moving out of the fantasy genre. It also remains much more rewarding at low levels than is typical for an MMO, you will feel like a badass within the first hour of play. This has to be better for new users than the tepid starting pace of most MMOs. More recently, LoTRO seems to have attracted a lot of new MMO fans due largely to the IP. Almost everyone I meet in game is either a EQ era MMO vet or a new MMO user. Those who cut their teeth on WoW almost always seem to revile it.
Which brings me to my last point in this rambling post. I find Syncaine's ongoing tirade against "WoW tourists" more than a bit pretentious. However, I think he is right about one main point. The majority of WoW players that try other MMOs don't like them as much as WoW. The vast majority of MMOs aren't as fast paced as WoW, have much steeper learning curves than WoW, and don't run as smoothly on a low end PC. While I have zero hard data to back this up, I strongly suspect that the bulk of players that get bored with WoW leave the MMO market altogether. Assuming that's true, WoW isn't really a gateway to other MMOs. It's more of a separate market from other MMOs operating in a vacuum. WoW is neither helping nor hurting the industy at large. I suspect that the real "gateway" MMOs are modestly successful MMOs that appeal to previously untapped markets (e.g., LoTRO and CoH) and ftp MMOs with a lot of younger users (e.g., Runescape and Club Penguin).
Thursday, April 2, 2009
April 1 in LoTRO
For April fool's day Turbine added a new chicken play quest. In this quest you actually have to run across the moors (the PvP zone of LoTRO) as a chicken to get a new title. As you can imagine, chickens don't hold up well when attacked by level 60 creeps. This led to fun side games emerging on some servers, where freeps took it upon them selves to defend the chickens from creeps. All in all a brilliant April fool's event from Turbine.
Unfortunately, the quest proved so popular that the last "gag" for the day wasn't too funny. The servers crashed and were offline for something like 12 hours. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the forums.
I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get to try out the new quest when I got home from work. However, in the grand scheme of things I don't think it's that big of a deal. Hell, there are some MMOs that get taken down for half a day every week just for maintenance. I suspect that the main reason the unexpected downtime was so apocalyptic to some players is that LoTRO has such a good track record with stability so far. We've gotten spoiled.
Unfortunately, the quest proved so popular that the last "gag" for the day wasn't too funny. The servers crashed and were offline for something like 12 hours. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the forums.
I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get to try out the new quest when I got home from work. However, in the grand scheme of things I don't think it's that big of a deal. Hell, there are some MMOs that get taken down for half a day every week just for maintenance. I suspect that the main reason the unexpected downtime was so apocalyptic to some players is that LoTRO has such a good track record with stability so far. We've gotten spoiled.
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