(Numbers and games used in this post are just examples. Don’t comment that they are ‘wrong’. Thanks)
As a customer, what does WAR having 100k subs and Darkfall having 20k subs mean to you? What does it mean to the company? What does it say about either game? What can you predict about the future of either based off those figures?
I ask because often, we throw in sub numbers or box sales when we talk about a games success, without any real context. That WAR has more subs than DF means next to nothing for players, because not only are there more DF players per server than there are in WAR, but also because the company behind DF is able to expand with their numbers while the company behind WAR has shrunk to a skeleton crew.
What you can point to is that overall, WAR sold a lot of copies and most likely made some decent money early on (even enough to justify dev costs perhaps?), which if you hold EA stock, is nice. You can also assume that since the servers are still up, it’s making some money under its new structure, so again, nice for EA execs and shareholds.
But for WAR players? All of the above means nothing, because the end result is still the same: no major updates, no major dev work, and most likely, no real future other than to keep the lights on until X% of current players have moved on, at which point the money stops trickling in and you shut down.
Success works much the same way. Both WoW and EVE are without a doubt successful games, both in terms of finances and player acceptance. But what that success has brought to both games has been very different. EVE just launched its 15th expansion, while WoW just had its 3rd. I think you would be hard-presses to find a WoW fan blind enough to argue that both games have received similar levels of expansion and content updates over the last 6-7 years. Now add in the levels of success (EVE at 350k, WoW at 12m), and the scales tip even further.
Of course certain WoW fans are still happy with the content delivery rate, while there are no doubt plenty of EVE fans who think CCP are a bunch of slackers who do nothing but get drunk (partially true?), but overall the results speak for themselves. CCP gets more ambitious when given additional resources, Blizzard does not. Or at least not with WoW; perhaps Titan is going to be 10x levels of awesome thanks to all that extra cash. If that’s the case, well then, thank you WoW fans for funding Titan with your $15 a month, how very nice of you.
Snark aside (for now), what a company considers successful or failure for a game is very different compared to what player’s think, and mixing the two is rather pointless. If we are talking stock advice, yea, I’ll look at that 12m players number. If we are talking gaming advice, I’ll point you towards 14 expansions and expected future plans (among a wide range of other factors, of course).
Hardcore Casual 
I’d just like to point out something you said about WAR not being able to expand compared to DF and all that.
DarkFall has had a very similar experience to WAR. Large amount of sales at Launch, only a small fraction of it’s players remains months later. Darkfall also has not received any major updates, nor major dev works, aside from what I like to call “make-up on a pig”, referring to the graphical update, which wasn’t really important nor did it do anything major.
I’d also like to see your numbers to be able to tell wether DarkFall has more players per server than WAR. I do not wish to defend WAR, because let’s face it, it was horrible, but there’s just too many infos pulled out of your ass in this blog post.
(Numbers and games used in this post are just examples. Don’t comment that they are ‘wrong’. Thanks)
This all depends on the starting point and the break even point of each game involved. We know from various interviews that EVE online almost didn’t make it. It wasn’t until it had 50k subscribers that it’s survival was assured. Prior to that it was heading down the crapper rather fast. Let’s also remember that the initial investment in EVE was probably on the “low” end of the development scale compared to AAA titles (which EVE wasn’t at the time – so it’s break even point was rather low compared to more recent AAA titles).
It’s only been after the subscriber numbers climbed much higher after that break even point that Hilmar was able to start growing the EVE team and the company. The thing is that both WoW and EVE were able to get far enough ahead of their initial investment and operating expenses that they could be leveraged for growth. The problem with operating in a crowded market place (the current situation) is that you need to pull a certain number of customers in. Whether new mmo players or old mmo players from other games is irrelevant. You need to hit and then exceed your “break even” point. If you don’t hit it you’ll be looking at a tabula rasa situation. If you barely exceed it you’ll be looking at moderately un-happy investors since they would have been better off putting their money in a bank since the ROI rate is too slow (they are not loosing money but they are not making much in the way of gains as well). This is the situation where you’ll see teams letting developers go and streamlining things to reduce the operating expenses in order to lower the break even point low enough that the project can continue. MMOs on life support are in this category. They are not going to have much in the way of expansions down the road. Then you have “got high enough to survive and be comfortable”. Most MMO that survives 3-4 years can probably be placed in this category. They hit critical mass to keep going at a reasonable pace. Last but not least you have EVE and WoW and a few others. WoW was a run-away success. EVE has had to fight and scrabble to get to that level, releasing expansion after expansion to keep the growth going. But once it got going it has become self sustaining engine for company growth. The point here is that even a “disastrous” start can be overcome – but it takes balls of steel and quite a bit of time. But in both cases it takes buisness success to ensure the resources necessary for the continued game success.
The only way they get business success is if enough players consider their game good enough to keep playing. The “enough” part is where the problems arise. Set the bar high enough and not even if the entire population of wow switched to an other game would that game survive. But that’s a business mistake, not a player mistake.
Comparing EVE’s 15 “expansions” to WoW’s three, whilst ignoring WoW’s content patches, is such an unlikely oversight that it might almost lead the reader to believe that perhaps you don’t like WoW, and are not being entirely impartial in your analysis.
Impossible!
But lets play, list the number of significant (EVE-sized) updates to WoW after it broke the 1m sub mark. Over/Under 15? Go!
Okay, let’s play. WoW broke 1m subs three months after launch. All but one of their significant updates were after it broke the 1m sub mark. 20 major WoW patches to EVE’s 15, and one of EVE’s “significant updates” added asian faces with slightly different stat packages.
Longer than three months, and not even Bliz would call those 20 patches expansions on EVE’s scale. Plus $120 vs $0, 12m vs 350k, etc.
Now, if you still believe Blizzard delivers content on-pace with CCP, ok. Everyone has an opinion.
WoW averages (2) major content patches a year and (1) major expansion every 2 years. On the whole, I feel that’s comparable to EVE.
I would say the content patches are comparable to SOME (but certainly not all) of the EVE expansions. However, when you throw in the depth and scale of the WoW “for fee” expansions, I think they come up to an even playing field.
That said, you get more for less with an EVE expansion due to the sandbox nature of the game. The introduction of new ships, for example, has a much more lasting impact than the introducing a new raid dungeon that will be obsolete in 6-8 months.
And before you chime in with the whole “graphic” upgrade thing, I think that’s a red herring. Blizzard does upgrade graphics but they take a more iterative approach making minor updates with every content patch.
Is it enough? Probably not. But then, despite how pretty EVE’s ships might look if you get the chance to zoom in — the only thing I ever see in that game are red boxes.
Now — all that said, I agree with your main point. Financial success has less to do with the quality of the than many players believe. It doesn’t fix a flawed idea (Warhammer). And it doesn’t speak to greed or how a company manages reinvestment into the product.
My feeling is (and always has been) that Blizzard operates WoW like a bloated cash cow. That iterative approach is wasteful, expensive and time consuming.
Compare that to the efficiency in using limited resources wisely (Darkfall). That’s what I really admire about Aventurine. They are doing more with much less. As much as WoW? Maybe not — but there are doing almost as much with 1/500th the budget.
Sometimes that can trump greed and wasteful mismanagement.
The players can not be successful if the business is not. You can’t blame them for putting business first.
I do agree though that it seems that those who invest in MMO’s are not very familiar with them. I guess those who play MMO’s don’t make enough money to become investors themselves.
That, or those who play MMO’s know better than to invest in an MMO.
BREAKING NEWS FLASH!! Syncaine feels that EVE is awesome and that WoW sucks!! Story at 11. Oh wait…
I don’t know why you’d think that WoW has less expansion content than EVE. I’d imagine that Blizz spent more making Cataclysm content alone than CCP has spent on EVE, ever.
I guess it depends on what you mean by content (game assets vs. player game-time). A single zone in Cataclysm (that WoW players will blow through in five or six hours) probably involves as much time generating “content” as an entire EVE expansion or two, in terms of assets or content-creator-hours. On the other hand, something that’s fairly cheap for CCP to create(a new Titan, for instance) could consume EVE players for months or years.
WAR has a very nice CGI intro, DF does not. WAR cost 100+m, DF did not. From a business standpoint, those numbers matter. For a player though? Not so much. You watch the movie once, then set it to never play again. That Mythic spent 100m does not make RvR more fun, right?
Spending and content generation and quality are not directly related. My guess is Wintergrasp cost more to make than a WAR RvR zone, yet which would you rather play for themepark PvP?
Fiscal success of a game means a small number of things to players, but are fairly important.
1)Long term viability – MMOs are about progression and persistance, if the future is in doubt, neither of those things matter.
2)Playmates – more money coming in usually means more players playing, so the massively and multiplayer aspects that also define the genre are met.
In the terms of Darkfall/WAR/EVE, the actual number of players is less important than sparisity (or abundance) of available player interaction.
Also, your opening disclaimer made me shake my head, it’s no different than saying, “I’m going to punch your mother, but don’t tell me I’m out of line, I’m just doing so to demonstrate proper martial form.” That’s what a punching bag (hypothetical figures) are for. Yes, I get that real-world examples provide “better” resonancy with a reader. No, I don’t think you were foolish enough to believe that your responses wouldn’t follow that particular thread instead of the ACTUAL point of the post.
Number one I agree with on the “server are up / milk mode / heavy dev” levels. But one step further, have we seen that more money = more dev work? And then, does more dev work = more content? My stance is that, with WoW in particular, this is not the case. At 12m subs, far more than anyone else, they don’t bury people in terms of content delivery. CCP vs Bliz should not even be a DEBATE in terms of content, but it is.
Number two is very limited in themepark games. Servers cap out around 3-5k actives last I heard, which is easy to achieve even for ‘failed’ games like WAR. For EVE it of course matters, since it’s one ‘server’. In that case having 50k or 350k subs matters. For WoW players it’s just more/less servers listed, and what exactly does that do for you other than split your buddies.
Disclaimers are fun. Most people don’t follow them (see Ob as the extreme), but that’s part of the entertainment as well. Mention WoW, and you need to bring out the drool cups to keep everyone dry.
CCP vs Blizz isn’t a debate in terms of content. CCP has very little. Most of its updates have been functional improvements, the majority of which have been paralleled in WoW either since launch, in patches, or through the add-on system.
The majority of the content added to EVE has been PvE, and all but the underwhelming “epic story arcs” have been procedurally generated. It’s anemic, comparable perhaps to City of Heroes’ police scanner missions. The capital ships were a truly exceptional addition, but the majority of new ships are palette swaps with altered stats, and even those come only a small handful at a time.
WoW has expanded functionality in its PvP system, starting with the implementation of a reward system and battlegrounds on through vehicular siege combat and the cross-server arena system. The inscription profession and glyph system are at least the equal of salvage/rigs. I believe they were the first to have free flight in a DIKU-style game.
Beyond such things, WoW has deliberately constructed content the likes of which EVE has no equivalent. The amount of time that goes into a single WoW expansion cycle is greater than the entire development history of EVE. Yes, the questing content is consumed in a short time frame relative to the length of the expansion cycle, but that doesn’t degrade the time investment required to provide that style of content, which Blizzard satisfies.
Yikes…
Oh, I have absolutely zero disagreement with you about the relative amount of work::money ratio that Blizzard has. Of course, that’s in part because of the obscenely high money side of that comparisson.
Perhaps people are missing the point because of the extreme differences in games chosen to compare content development. Look at EQ2. It was released at relatively the same time, has had six boxed expansions, three adventure packs, and God-knows how many substantial patch updates (Halas, etc…). All things considered, EQ2 has far less subscribers (read: revenue coming in) than WoW.
Quite correct; there should not even be a debate about content delivery between CCP and Blizzard. When CCP consistently delivers balanced 25 man PvE raid content we can start comparing, until then what they’re doing is providing and extending a toolkit for their players.
Nothing wrong with pouring tools at the players; this is merely a matter of taste. Some people want tools for good PvP, some people want good PvE – and this can’t be just tools, but has to be tested, balanced and refined for a long period after release.
It’s an apples and oranges comparison. Blizzard spends a lot of money keeping AI driven endgame interesting and balancing PvP. CCP spends theirs keeping PvP interesting. The difference in cost and effort is astonishing, which is in no way unique to MMO’s, but a problem for the whole computer game industry.
Most game AI sucks, and working around the limitations while maintaining an interesting game is hard. CCP hardly tries, and I wouldn’t call their PvE at all successful in this regard. Blizzard succeeds somewhat. Hopefully this is an area where true innovation can take place.
If by expansion you mean “content gamers have to pay for” then say so. You seem to be calling every named patch from EvE (and Darkfall) an expansion, but ignoring that Blizz adds raid content regularly without requiring payment or attaching a name to it. EvEs latest ‘patch with a name’ added ::drumroll:: a char creator and an NPC race!!! oooo ahhhh…
Yeah right.
All Blizzard does is delay content that ought to be in the expansion box. Take WOTLK for example. When it was shipped, there was no Lich King, there was no Uldum, but at least the Lich King already was advertised to be in WOTLK. They added them later in a free content patch, a free patch you already paid for with WOTLK, but had to wait quite a few month to access it.
And you fail completely in understanding EVE.
WoW offered FOR FREE in the last 3 months a complete makeover of the world including new quest lines and revamped instances, revamped combat mechanics that affected every class in the game, improved landscape graphics, and flying in old world zones that didnt allow that before. ALL FREE and without a name attached so its fanboys can claim it as an expansion. But if you bought the expansion you got entirely new zones, quests, instances, as well as 2 new races and a new profession.
If Blizzard released content the EvE or Darkfall way they could have broken the last 3 months worth of assets up into 20 named patches.
If you take out the old world revamp patch from Cata in terms of value, that $40 box you paid for is a total ripoff. You don’t want to go down that path here.
Everyone knows about Warhammer, Wow and Eve online. Not many people know about Darkfall. You go on Eve online and like 1% of that player base knows about darkfall. Darkfalls problem is that not many people knew about darkfall when it came out or even now.