Per MassivelyOP:
[The] majority of the work we have done is about EverQuest Next and is co-owned by Daybreak,” the letter said. “We look forward to the release of EQN.”.
If that one bolded line is all the MMO genre gets from Storybricks, I think we can all agree it was worth it. Well played.
If there is one thing I still regret about Darkfall, it’s AV not making the now-gone MVP forums public after they did away with the program; a lot of good ideas and discussions all gone because I don’t think AV knows how to update or manage their forum software. More to today’s point; one of the ideas thrown out that had a good amount of backing was the idea of seasonal servers that would reset and could be ‘won’ based on different point systems. That sound familiar?
Imagine if AV had beaten Crowfall to the punch with one of their major features? Classic AV though; get a good idea, sit on it, and then end up going with something else (worse) instead. Moving past that little bit of amusement, lets talk the idea itself.
The biggest and most obvious fact is that everyone who plays an MMO on day-one loves it (bugs/crashing aside). There is just something about that ‘new world’ feel that works, and I think anyone who has played an MMO day-one can relate. Crowfall being able to replicate this feeling, especially with random geography on each world, is huge.
It’s huge for current players getting a built-in motivator to kick it up a notch, and its huge for former players and potential new ones as it gives everyone a ‘start this day’ indicator similar to the launch of an expansion.
The downside is perhaps similar to eating candy, maybe too much of a good thing isn’t that great? Right now I don’t see that being the case for me personally (the start of a new Civ game is always enjoyable for me, even after dozens of games), but the MMO space is a little different, so we will see.
The other downside is the counter-effect; when you know a world is set to end, only those truly invested in the ending (likely the winners) will stick around. Everyone else will likely be long gone, and so I can see worlds ending not in a final epic battle, but in days or weeks of cleanup by the winners. And if the cleanup time is lengthy or a pain, I can foresee even winning to be more grind than reward, and that overall would be a huge problem (think EVE null territory battles; some epic fighting, then a bunch of structure grinding).
I’m curious to see how Crowfall handles things in this regard, but overall I still like the general idea for the game.
Square Enix, in announcing 4m players, continues to troll all of us with their use of the term ‘registered accounts‘ in a world where F2P exists and the Turbines of the world announce number of characters created as an example of success.
As stated before, for whatever reason Square uses ‘registered accounts’ instead of subscribers, but they mean subscribers. So 4 million before the release of the game’s first paid expansion is rather historic; only WoW ever hit that mark, and if we are tracking growth since release, the chart for FFXIV looks very similar to WoW in 2004-2006.
With the expected sub dip for WoW coming ‘soon’, the question comes up once again; when will FFXIV have more subs than WoW? I think the safe money is just after the launch of the expansion, especially if it launches during one of the many and very long content lulls that WoW is infamous for, that FFXIV continues to show is more Blizzard being lazy than any real constraint in terms of content delivery pace/quality.
The other interesting question is at what number will WoW officially be dethroned? It dropped to 7m or so subs before, but perhaps it drops further this time around? Will the number be 6.5, 6, 5.5? What will FFXIV be at after the expansion? I’d put my money on the number being around 5.5-7 million. I think WoW will drop rather sharply, and I think a lot of those players, if they haven’t already, will head to FFXIV.
Either way, interesting times. FFXIV in many ways is a modern vanilla WoW; fitting that the ‘WoW-killer’ will be a game that is, in many ways, WoW’s best version that it itself has moved away from that their own expense. There is a very solid lesson in that for the genre, so I’m all for it.
(Stats and writeup by Delpez)
Supreme Cream! vs. Red Scorpion
Brilliant war, with the result in the balance right until the end (literally, according to the log seven attacks were completed after time ran out!) The clans were equal in strength – we edged them in average TH level, while they were slightly ahead in experience level.
Tobold being Tobold, and while this isn’t “CCP is going bankrupt this year” levels of deep thinking and expert analysis, still worth making note of for later.
Going to put the full text after the break in case Tobold goes on to ‘Gevlon’ the post later.
CoC released an update today, focused around clan wars. Clans can now gain XP, with perks unlocking as you go. There are also a number of ‘quality of life’ changes like being able to opt-out of a war.
This post is mostly for Supreme Cream members; should we go to war 3 times per week? Thinking start wars Monday noonish, Wed night, Saturday morning. So battle days would be Tuesday midday->Wed midday, Thursday night->Friday night, and Sunday morning-> Monday morning.
Ideally we get all 50 members opting in, but so long as we have at least 40 (so up to 10 people opting out per war), I think that would work well. I want to get us up in ranks so we unlock the perks asap, as a number of them sound very helpful (loot bonus, troop discount). Comment away, even if it’s just a simple yes/no.
Quick recruitment note: While we are at 50 members, there are a few potential open spots due to ‘compliance’ issues. If you have a decently developed TH7+, and are active and willing to learn/improve, apply in-game to Surpreme Cream! mentioning the blog and I’ll get you in.
Don’t you wish someone :cough: could have said in the past that Fantasy EVE would be something a few people might be interested in? Bet that guy’s blog is an awesome read…
Self-pats aside, the Crowfall Kickstarter is live, and perhaps will be fully funded by the time I hit publish on this blog. The money is rolling in fast, really, really fast. Again, funny how the ‘niche’ that is more ‘hardcore’ PvP-based MMOs works when you give people something above terrible to wallet-vote towards.
For me the best part of the kickstarter is it doesn’t come across as promising to be everything to everyone. The goal here isn’t to create an ‘accessible’ ‘mass market’ MMO. This is a game aimed at a niche (people who like MMOs for the sake of playing an MMO, not logging into an sRPG with global chat), that will build on the core ideals of the MMO genre before the genre went into the toilet and became a series of poorly-disguised cash-grabs and F2P failures.
Which is not to say Crowfall is guaranteed to be amazing. It could very well suck if basic stuff like combat or progression is poor. Making an MMO is hard; making an EVE-like MMO has shown to be impossible for all but one studio. But my money, quite literally, is on the team behind Crowfall to get it right, or at least more right than most others.
Now the wait begins, though hopefully alpha does hit this summer, which isn’t THAT far away.
The words success and failure are tossed around often when talking about MMOs on blogs, especially here. And usually, someone will ask for a definition of success/failure, so here goes. Note that this ONLY applies to MMOs, not games in general.
To me there are three general categories of success for an MMO, which I’ll call ‘suits’, ‘devs’, and ‘players’.
Suit success is simple; did the investors or company behind the MMO make money? Was a profit turned? And was that profit a good return-on-investment? The tricky part of suit success is we generally can’t say if something was a success or failure unless it’s an extreme. WoW is a success, The Sims Online was a failure. But almost everything else is some shade of gray. For instance, SW:TOR likely hasn’t made back its original cost + ongoing expenses, and EA generally trying to distance themselves from the title on earnings calls is telling, but we can’t definitively prove SW:TOR is a failure, only make an educated guess based on what we know. Another odd example is Warhammer Online. The game is shut down, but (at least according to Mark Jacobs, who at this point I don’t think has anything to gain by lying) WAR was profitable overall. To a suit, WAR was a success.
Dev success is defined by whether or not the devs still have a job working on said MMO, and the rate of content being generated. This is a bit of a sliding scale metric. A game like LotRO has lost most of its devs, but it still has a skeleton crew updating the cash shop, so while not a ‘it’s shut down, everyone is fired’ failure, LotRO is heavily towards that end. WoW or EVE have kept their teams employed for over a decade, with steady and consistent content, so obvious success. This metric is important because unlike other genres, an MMO is only getting started at release, and ideally should be going strong for years, so keeping the core team around, interested, and paid is critical. Layoffs are a clear indicator of failure here, as are cutbacks in content delivery (no more expansions, patches being rolled out slower, etc).
Finally we have player success, which can roughly be identified by “are people playing?” and “are people playing the MMO they expected to play?”. The first one is easy, if your MMO is gaining players, that is success. If it’s losing players, that is failure. If an MMO has achieved a stable, supportable level of players, that is also success. Growth is always nice, but if you set out to build a niche MMO, and you hit and retain your niche such that the dev team is paid and providing updates, that is indeed success.
The second part of player success is more interesting IMO. An MMO changing drastically (UO Trammel, SWG NGE, sub->F2P switch) is almost never good for the players who bought into the original version, so for all of those players said MMO is a failure, even if a second group comes in and enjoys the newer offering. This can also apply to pre-release hype (GW2 manifesto) vs post-release reality (GW2 itself); while what was ultimately delivered may work for some, failing to meet the expectations you set is to some degree failure.
A fourth factor, or perhaps wildcard, is time. How long is it fair to judge an MMO? For instance, EQ1 was a huge success all around in the first few years of its existence, while isn’t by some metrics (player retention, original ‘vision’) anymore. Is it reasonable to say EQ1 is a failure? That sounds a bit crazy, but why can’t all MMOs be judged related to WoW and EVE, two titles that remain successful by all measures, and are as relevant today (if not far more so) than they were at release? If you loved EQ1 back in the day, would you not still love it today if it had been properly updated and kept relevant? Isn’t that a core feature of the genre; constant updates? “Getting old” shouldn’t be something that happens to successful MMOs, should it? And if indeed ‘getting old’ is acceptable, then after how long? A year, 5, 10? If a game is awesome for everyone who plays it for three months, and then everyone leaves, is that three months of awesomeness enough to call that MMO a success by player standards?
Ultimately what I hopefully have gotten across with this post is that when the words success or failure are used around an MMO, it’s usually more of a personal opinion or partial view than a definitive and unquestionable fact. Very few MMOs are all-around successful, while very few are also outright failures.
But it’s also horribly boring to always write in shades of gray, or have to pre-empt everything with “I don’t like this, but others do, so that’s cool too”. So with all of that said, SW:TOR blows, LotRO is a failure, WoW ‘accessibility’ was a horrible mistake (ok, that is a fact) and EVE is the greatest MMO eva!
The slow and public execution of EQN continues.
But don’t worry, dumping the software to help you make “strong AI” doesn’t mean you aren’t committed to “strong AI” huh?
What’s next, firing the art team but reassuring all the fans that EQN is still going to be gorgeous? Maybe taking the entire sound department out to the parking lot and returning to confirm that EQN is going to sound amazing?
Keep doing you Smed, keep doing you.
(Stats and writeup by Delpez)
Last time we met these guys the clans were well matched, and the result was our first draw. It looks like they’ve progressed much faster than us, because this is a mismatch comparable to the Mexico 2.0 war. As always, here’s a breakdown of clan strength based on TH and experience level. I’ve included Mexico 2.0 as a reference.
Hardcore Casual 