MMOs in a "disposable society"
As long as quality content gets provided the climb of players (or subscribers) goes on for quite a while. Look at WoW for example. It started dropping only around Cataclysm. Quite a few years into its cycle. Of course as time goes on old MMOs get updated. Hence them getting a sequel every 5 to 10 years. It’s mostly because of how fast the gaming industry was changing. If to compare it to TV shows imagine a silent TV show releasing constant episodes for 3 years, suddenly one with sound comes out. Soon after all of the TV shows have sound, except for yours.
I was with WOW for the first 6 years, but don’t you think there was
very little competition and more loyalty back then? In fact, IMO that
game was one main reasons MMOs became so big (one of).
I cant help but feel that an ongoing, developing world with longevity is
being replaced with the mentality of the topic of this post. Perhaps it could be
the MMO market becoming more business profit related, than hardcore, passionate
gamers behind the scenes?
The MMO market (and indeed all of entertainment) has ALWAYS been about making money, let’s not pretend there was this “pure” era that has somehow been lost over the years.
I was with WOW for the first 6 years, but don’t you think there was
very little competition and more loyalty back then? In fact, IMO that
game was one main reasons MMOs became so big (one of).I cant help but feel that an ongoing, developing world with longevity is
being replaced with the mentality of the topic of this post. Perhaps it could be
the MMO market becoming more business profit related, than hardcore, passionate
gamers behind the scenes?
I don’t think MMOs are so big. I think they’re still considered niche games by most gamers…unless you happen to love MMOs.
And I think, long term, WoW did more to hurt the number of people playing MMOs than helped it. I’m relatively sure there are as many people (maybe even more people) who can’t stand WoW as those who like it. And I know several people who’ll never play another MMO again, because they didn’t like WoW-style MMOs (and that’s all there have been for the most party anyway).
The problem is not what you state OP but something similar.
It has been the reason for WoW’s decline in subs and has been a trend in gaming that is more or less recent (something of the last five years).
It’s rate of consumption vs content creation.
As technology improved for gaming so did the quality and quantity of expansions, content patches for games like WoW etc. This also brought a long a negative effect or rather an unavoidable effect. The more content a developer pumps out the more the players will demand new content. In essence, gamers are becoming spoiled. Where in the old days it was extremely common not to see any new content in online games for months if not years it would now be unthinkable to the average player. Developers have brought this on themselves. The quest for money has created a community where players can never feel fully satiated with MMO content because they always hunger for more. This actually stimulates boredom.
Eventually, the rate of consumption caught up with the ability of developers to pump out new content and thus demand has exceeded supply to put in to economical terms.
This is why you see so many people raging here on these forums about this game having a poor amount of content and/or no end game. And it is true. Compared to what MMO’rs are used to and have been spoiled with this game really does not deliver and thus player expectations are all effed up. This is a downward spiral where 99% of the MMO gamers is caught up in. There is no real way to combat it either.
Anet, and even Blizzard, will never again be able to live up to player expectations and demand of content. Combine that with Anet’s rather modest budget compared to gigants like Blizzard and it seems like a recipe for disaster. That’s why I feel that from a business point of view the best solution is indeed to make new games because for a f2p game the money indeed comes from box sales. Thats why I feel LS is not the way to go (although I do love it unlike most people here) for GW2. This game would be better of taking the GW1 approach and simply releasing regular expansions and living with the fact they cannot appease all players or keep them as active players. Not with such a small budget and because of the consumption vs creation thing. Gemstore ofcourse is some nice extra money but even if half of that money (180mil since release) was used for funding GW2, which I very much doubt, it still would not be enough to provide the content people so desire.
Finally there is also the matter of all the bugs. People here seem to think Anet is incapable of producing bug free content. In reality it’s not all that bad at all. The problem arises from the overall lack of content, which stems from lack of money. When you produce only a small amount of content the bugs play a much larger role. WoW patches are filled with bugs (that do get patched out quickly) however there is so much content people don’t seem to care for it as much. However if more than half of your total content is bugged thant it starts raising a few eyebrows. Anet is not to blame though. They get unreasonable deadlines and their stakeholders don’t really give a kitten that the content is not polished and is released prematurely becuz the devs would need more time. The gemstore money is still made so to the stakeholders its all good.
A good example is Diablo 3. One of the most criticized and universally agreed upon blizzard fail when launched. Nowadays a very good game, it was a total mess when it launched. People called it the flop of the century. However from a business stand point it was among the top 3 most succesful games of ALL TIME. So much money was made with that game, enough to fund another dozen years of WoW expansions.
If there is a bottleneck in the development process, I suspect it’s more terms of manpower and only so many hours in a day more than money at this point.