Are MMORPGs Designed to Fail?

[HumanJHawkins]

The average person wants a game to be easy. They might not admit it, but if you offer them free Jelly Cakes, they will not turn them down saying, "No. That would make my game too easy and I might get bored." But when the desired level of ease is achieved, they do get bored, interest fades and it is all over.

Case Study: Diablo II... This was/is a sweet game. I know several people who played it. Frankly, it was fairly easy but you could still get too aggressive and get yourself killed. But, being a stand-alone game (typically anyway. I am NOT talking about battlenet games), various cheat software started coming out. Most people who had access to this and who had played for a while, tried it.

The motive, frankly, was not to cheat and win... Everyone I knew had already won several times over. The motive was to see what kind of cool build they could make when suddenly they had infinite freedom to build as they wanted. This led to about a week of really exciting play because it was different. Not better... Too easy in most cases. But different is good when you have played a game for a couple of years straight.

But then it was over. After a week of that, there was nothing left to do. Everyone had played both legit games and cheat games, and they had tweaked their toons to their idea of perfection. There was nothing left to do, and none of these friends have played since.

Back to DDO... Turbine is in business to make money. In order to make money, they have to keep their customers happy. And most customers (vocal forum minority aside) want their game to be pretty easy.

If they see their buddy has a Vorpal longsword, they figure, "I pay the same fees... I should have a Vorpal longsword too." What is Turbine supposed to say? They say what any company wanting to make money has to say... "We'll make it better as soon as we can."

Anyway, what I am getting at is that there seems to be a recurring pattern with MMORPGs that is a lot like the Diablo II example above. People scream for more loot, more power because on an individual basis they want to be the best. But then it becomes a monty haul and the game deteriorates. Then a new game is released to pick up those customers.

Could this be why development and promotion of DDO seems to have taken a back seat to other projects at Turbine? Is this planned ?

Have the business minds at Turbine figured out this stratagy for generating revenue:
1) Release a game at a fairly high difficulty
2) Gradually give players more and more stuff to make them continue to feel powerful until it is simply not sustainable.
3) Let the game slowly die while you work hard behind the scenes on the sequel, which will be <goto step 1>

[Dingo123]

Play Eve-Online.

You want to talk about a hard game to "Win" at.

THERES your game.

They don't dumb down ANYTHING. The ui even comes with a calculator for gods sake.

[Tavok]

I would think an extrodinarally hard game would be around and generate profit for years and years. Think about it, something like the Titan pre-BCB, he was unbeatable. Now multiple that into a whole game. You would be trying to "win" for a very long time. Although, I would assume some level of annoyance would come with not being able to get very far.

There would also be some way for the game to morph into something a bit tougher. So say you beat that one boss encounter NO ONE else has, it changes just a bit so you can't tell your best friend exactly how.

[smodge13]

its a shame, simply because of previous threads, whatever dingo suggests on the forums from now on will never carry any weight.

i think what the op is getting at is an mmo is bound to fail, think of customers like fuel and an mmo a sun, basically fuel goes in and feeds the sun, it cant keep exploding without the fuel, now there is a constant intake of fuel (customers who join) also fuel is constantly being expelled (customers who quit and never play again) and there are those who are fuel constantly within it (those who stay with the game for good "regulars") mmo's generally have a constant intake of customers a few regulars and a few who are expelled.


as the game first starts the intake is a large amount, however as we get late into the games career (ie now) there are more players quitting than there are joining, so the games life is dependant on those regulars who stick around, should regular subscription profit > game cost to keep running, then the game becomes self sustaining look at WoW, they dont get many new players nw, but they do have a firm constant of people who will always play until the game dies, ddo itself has shrunk the servers and costs, so possibly our community is enough to keep the game going without increase in customers.

anyway some ppl may find this just random rambling so feel free to disprove it (dingo being the exception).

in essence
mmo's generally on startup have large intake of players
late in their career they generally have more players quitting than joining
should those regulars who dont quit pay enough for game to make profit then the game becomes self sustaining (look at diablo 2's online players, theres still heaps and it is self sustaining, same as WoW).
however should they not be paying enough then the game is slowly losing money and will eventually close.

[Arnya]

Good analogy, Smodge.

DDo = White dwarf star that can happily burn for a long time to come (Pre-merge it was threatening to become a neutron star)

WoW = Supernova feeding off matter from a local white hole (Advertising/Marketing)

[Quartzite]

There are plenty of people that will be leaving WoW to play Warhammer Online.

I think like all games, MMORPGs have a lifecycle. It only takes so long until the mainstream move on from a game. It's a simple matter of technology and getting bored of the same thing. I played WoW for a long time, and basically, like any other offline game, you get bored of the same combat style, the same graphics, the same types of missions. Even big hit competitive games like Halflife are less popular now than they once were.

I don't think it's a bad thing, though. If games didn't lose popularity, there would be no incentive for developers to make new games. I do think MMOs have a longer lifecycle than offline games- partially because of content patches, and partially because they are community based. No-one likes moving to a new game and leaving their established friendships behind. But overtime people do move on in life. Much like forum-based communities, or regular chat-room groups. Internet communities are dynamic and eventually they fade away. But old MMOs still have some hardcore loyalists that stick with the game through thick and thin. Usually it is for the community more than the actual game. And for the sense of nostalgia and sentimentality.

[captain1z]

the question: "are all MMOs designed to fail?"

the answer: Yes

you cant please everyone all the time. Give a homeless person $20 a day, in time he will complain that it is not enuff to live off of. Give him $100 more and in time he will say the same. Take it all away and he will say you robbed him and you are a bad person.


Most things are great when they are brand new, MMOs shine for about 1 year before they start to see a real decline (i.e. people getting bored)

Then its up to the devs to "make it new again" without damaging whatever it is that peolpe liked about it in the 1st place.

As peoples tastes change and they run away looking for the new shiny toys, as improvements and expansions become fewer and farther between; the life of an MMO can be sumed up in one phrase.....................


"All good things must come to an end"

[captain1z]

their size can be a disadvantage as well.


- they permaban tons of people weekly for lots of reasons (gives them lots of bad PR and basicly turns away people before they even decide to pay)

- their servers get hacked in large numbers, massive attacks have lead to some people being able to hi-jack a portion of the server and create a new one where people play by a different set of rules. One such server gives its players X 1000 xp , letting you level your character to 60 in 1 day.


refering to the previous analogy - some stars burn bright for a time only to explode in a supernova often without warning (see - SWG)

DDO will eventually go away but it will happen slowly and we will all be left remembering the great play experiences we had before it was all over. We will not be in a situation where the player base has destroyed a part of the game and the devs in an effort to fix it destoy whatevers left.


Despite the minor falling outs we all (turbine and players) have, I see this community is very close knit due to our smaller size and we respect the game and each other enuff so as we would not attempt to destroy it or maliciously cause damage that would ruin it for all of us.

DDO is a lot less like the sun and more so like the north star. You cant see it in the daylight but at night it shines brightly amongst all the other stars.

[Ironik]

Umm. I hate WOW, but it's got like 100 million subscriptions.... and its still growing. Why? I don't know...

But I was talking about how much money that game generates for blizzard. Say...

15 * 100 million = 1500 million (1.5 billion)

1.50 billion * 12 (months) = 18 Billion dollars per year. <---- THAT IS RIDICULOUS

Of course that's not completely accurate because they aren't all active and some people probably do the extended subscriptions at a discount... but that's an insane amount of cash flow.

But whatever.

DDO is awesome, it'll be great until it is no more.

[Sydril]

Umm. I hate WOW, but it's got like 100 million subscriptions.... and its still growing. Why? I don't know...

Least Common Denominator.

[Istivan]

All things we purchase are designed to eventually 'fail'.

Electronics have a life expectency of 2-3 years. If they last too long the company makes no money on new product being sold. If they do not last long enough they make no money on return customers due to dissatisfaction.

You have to look at any MMO in the same light. They have to be very good and very well marketed to get started. This draws the new customers. Has to be quality to maintain long term players. And eventually has to end to gain new revenue from new product.

Some games Ultima Online, WoW and I am sure there may be others, have had success from being a good product that can be expanded upon (store sold expansions) to maintain long term appearance when really they are simply a long line of new products.

DDO has yet to make us pay for any modules. This gives the appearance of dieing because new sales are not as apparent without the marketing machine going nuts.

We have a quality game that gives hope for a long future primarily for those of us that continue to play. In order for new players to come or old players to return they may have to look into UO and Wow's marketing machine and sell 'expansions'. So like those games DDO won't have a long life as much as it would have return customers to buy the new product.

[CSFurious]

your analogy is illogical because WOW has, at the minimum, 1,000,000 players (very conservative estimate)

if this game has 50,000, i would be absolutely amazed

WOW can afford to lose some people to Warhammer, Age of Conan & such, Blizzard has plenty of money

i do not believe that DDO can afford to lose as many players as WOW can

There are plenty of people that will be leaving WoW to play Warhammer Online.

I think like all games, MMORPGs have a lifecycle. It only takes so long until the mainstream move on from a game. It's a simple matter of technology and getting bored of the same thing. I played WoW for a long time, and basically, like any other offline game, you get bored of the same combat style, the same graphics, the same types of missions. Even big hit competitive games like Halflife are less popular now than they once were.

I don't think it's a bad thing, though. If games didn't lose popularity, there would be no incentive for developers to make new games. I do think MMOs have a longer lifecycle than offline games- partially because of content patches, and partially because they are community based. No-one likes moving to a new game and leaving their established friendships behind. But overtime people do move on in life. Much like forum-based communities, or regular chat-room groups. Internet communities are dynamic and eventually they fade away. But old MMOs still have some hardcore loyalists that stick with the game through thick and thin. Usually it is for the community more than the actual game. And for the sense of nostalgia and sentimentality.