Is WoW an unstoppable train?

Right now? Perhaps, though I haven't really been a part of the community for over a year so I couldn't tell you first hand. Some people apparently do think so… In the future though? I just don't believe it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to pick on World of Warcraft specifically with this post, but it's a proven fact that time has been the dark red line creeping slowly towards the heart of every MMORPG to date. Time allows for competitive growth. Time leads to player complacency and boredom. Time is what makes the present become the past.

I've been checking out MMOG Chart lately and came across this interesting 2008 ION presentation from self-taught MMORPG analyst, Sir Bruce. The presentation is an analysis of MMORPG subscription growth based on some reasonably current data.

Here are some broad conclusions drawn by SirBruce on the state of World of Warcraft (based on historical trends in the genre).

* The MMOG subscription market continues to grow; 16M+ now, 20M+ in 2009 (pred. 2006), 30M+ in 2012
* World of Warcraft to peak at 11M – 12M by 2010
* Most retail-launched MMOGs have an initial growth phase during the first year, followed by 1 – 3 years of a more stable, "mature" subscription base, and then a noticeably and often sharp decline.
* New markets grow subscriptions, but expansions packs mostly cover churn and provide a retail presence.

Based on his charts in the presentation, most of the MMORPGs released prior to WoW saw a fairly large decline in subscriptions. We can assume the majority of these losses became gains for WoW. This just makes sense. It can't be denied, however, that the total number of people playing WoW last year is much larger than the sum of all previous MMORPG subscripions. This shows that WoW introduced many new players to the genre.

Sounds like common sense right? Duh? It's still nice to have the numbers tell the story.

What's to stop the same thing from happening again? It may not have happened with Vanguard, Pirates of the Burning Sea, or Lord of the Rings Online. These games haven't had any noticeable impact on WoW's subscriptions, but that doesn't mean it won't happen eventually.

Age of Conan had over one million beta signups and released over 700,000 copies of their game, which is the largest MMORPG launch to date. They haven't announced current subscription numbers yet, but heck, it's been less than a week. Given them some time. The time is ripe for a new AAA MMORPG and I think AoC will benefit greatly from this. It's only competing against older, established MMORPGs right now, which in my opinion, is better than competing against something new. As I said, time makes people susceptible to boredom. Boredom leads to trying out new things. And trying out new things leads to the dark side of the… Ugh.

Warhammer Online will also be launching this fall and by all rights should be an enormous success. Another delay is bad news for a whole bunch of obvious reasons. Competing directly against WotLK is also bad news if they hope to capitalize on the bored WoW player-base. As SirBruce says, expansions cover churn, in other words, customer attrition. They're a stop-gap measure to keep players from leaving for greener pastures. Competing directly against an expansion trying to keep 11M people playing WoW is just a whole new level of stupid, making bad business sense. You can get high and mighty, saying your game will be done when its done, but wait too long and the strategy will bite you in the ass. Theres a point where you have to compromise.

WoW is the current king but it won't remain that way forever. Heck, Blizzard is already working on another MMORPG and it could be that title that eventually dethrones it. I will eat these words if AoC and WAR aren't immensely successful, because if either of these two titles can't do it, it may take a lot longer than I expected. Still, it is inevitable - and resistance is futile (but strongly recommended if Vivendi wants to keep its shareholders happy).

Source : thegreenskin.com

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AoC downtime

I solved my Age of Conan crash problems by following the advice of a friend and guild mate, who insisted that I buy a sound card, because that would make my computer faster than just using onboard sound. I'm not an expert, but it appears as if my Nvidia motherboard doesn't really have a sound chip, it only emulates one using CPU power. So adding a sound card would free the CPU to do other stuff. I found a Soundblaster Audigy SE for 40 Euro, installed it, and tested that my AoC crash problem when casting a certain spell with sound on was gone.


But that was all I did in AoC last night, because then the European servers had a server maintenance downtime for 8 pm to 1 am scheduled, in preparation for the Euro launch on the 23rd. I really don't understand why all this downtime always has to be scheduled during prime time. And I've read the US early access period was even worse, because it was only 3 days, and of that time the servers were up only 48 hours, with one downtime scheduled the evening of the last day. I so hope that once the game is launched everywhere, the maintenance window is moved to mornings, local time. I find scheduled server maintenance starting at in the evening or late afternoon unacceptable for a MMO.

Source : Tobold

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Warhammer Online takes you to school with Scenarios 101

The official Warhammer Online site is a cornucopia of goodness. If you're not watching the production podcasts, Paul's video blogs are fantastic. If you're more in a text mood, there are zone previews and developer diaries to page through.

Their most recent addition to the site is over in the "special features" category, a continuation of their ongoing class in WAR: Scenarios 101. These pieces run down the rules and layout for the many and varied Realm Vs. Realm scenarios Warhammer Online will ship with. EA Mythic's answer to the WoW Battleground phenomenon, they're going to offer some of the game's meat and potatoes PvP combat over the course of a player's gameplay lifespan.

The newest 101 feature is all about the scenarios named Grovod Caverns and Reikland Hills. The caverns is a 'capture the flag'-style game, but with a twist. Flags and bases are up on a series of platforms, all connected with walkways. Every time a flag is captured, a walkway gives way; this changes the dynamic of the scenario's very surface, and forces players to adapt and change their strategies as the match progresses. Reikland, meanwhile, is a 'king of the hill'-style game that requires players to capture and hold a position for a few minutes at a time. The catch is that one of three 'hills' will be available at any given time, and the newest hill will overlap with the oldest one for some time. It's great to see how Mythic is planning to shake up some PvP assumptions with these maps. Source : massively.com

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Officers' Quarters: Jerk message of the day

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
I've spent the past six weeks talking about raiding, so I think it's time to get away from the topic and talk about something less drama-ridden, like the guild message of the day feature. What could be more straightforward and less controversial, right? Well, as this week's e-mail reminds us, no part of leading a guild is completely free of incident.
Would rather not name the guild but it's on Bronzebeard EU. Only the Guildmasters (of which there are 10) can set the message of the day. Despite this security, an offensive homophobic message of the day appeared one day. I'm afraid I didn't see it as I wasn't online while it was up, but when another Guildmaster saw it, it was immediately removed. No one owned up to it and no one could think who would do it, so one Guildmaster (a friend of mine in real life) logged a complaint with Blizzard to try and find out who set this message.
He spent a couple of weeks chasing an answer but in the end they said that who set the message was private account information that they would not give out to someone else (great cop out isn't it :) ). And there we are stuck! A couple of guildmasters left for more hardcore raiding guilds, so maybe, hopefully it was one of them . . . but I guess we'll never know. Can you think of anything that could be done to avoid this or controls to avoid this kind of offensive message?
The only way to avoid this situation is to make sure the people who have access to the GMoTD are trustworthy and responsible people. If your own officers prove that they aren't, then the guild leader can actually modify the permissions so that only he or she can change the message. But there is no built-in censorship to this feature aside from the one that sits in everyone's interface panel, and even then I don't know if the profanity filter actually affects the GMoTD.
Since you (perhaps wisely) didn't specify what the message actually read, it's difficult to judge the severity of the situation. A lot of guys who are otherwise mature adults sometimes joke around in a way that could be construed as homophobic, but typically no offense is meant. It can be good-natured smack talk, but it can also go too far and get truly offensive. Since another officer went to the trouble of contacting Blizzard about the message, I'll have to assume it's the latter.
Even though this person wasn't "caught," I'd say the officers should meet with one another and ask the offending party to step forward. Based on your e-mail, they may have already done so. However, it's entirely possible that none of the officers know who did it. If an officer's friend or roommate snuck onto the officer's machine while he or she was AFK, then that person could have changed the message with no one the wiser.
More important than who did it is how the officers respond to the situation. An apology should be made to the guild's membership. It should also be communicated that effort was taken to look into the matter, even if the results were inconclusive. If members were upset by the message, they need to know that the officers weren't passive or dismissive of the insult.
In the end, it's not necessarily a huge deal and shouldn't be made into one by extended periods of finger-pointing. Sometimes overreacting to a situation can be just as bad as not reacting at all.

Source : WoWInsider.com

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Runescape Community

Most RuneScape players speak English. Players who speak languages other than English tend to gravitate to servers populated by other players who speak the same language. Some worlds have larger numbers of players who speak Spanish, Dutch, French, German, or other languages. It is not uncommon, however, to see many languages on the chat screen throughout RuneScape. A German translation of RuneScape has also been released, while a French version of the game is in production.

A set of official forums is provided by Jagex on the RuneScape website. On the forums, members are able to participate in game discussions, play player-made forum games, arrange to buy or sell items, post suggestions for further game improvements, vote in polls and otherwise interact with the community. Free players can read the forums, but posting is reserved for paying members.
Unlike many MMORPG official forums, the Games like RuneScape forums have very limited features. User profiles do not exist and a user cannot set an avatar, signature, or separate display name. Users cannot use text formatting, post url address links, nor display images. A topic is automatically and permanently deleted after it surpasses the fiftieth page, so during busier times of the day, a topic can be deleted as quickly as a few minutes unless it is constantly "bumped".

Players can submit email questions to any non-player character in the game. Selected letters are answered in a monthly update called Postbag from the Hedge. This feature began on 26 September 2005 and has since become one of the most accessed pages of the site. Beginning 24 September 2002, players could submit questions to the RuneScape gods; however, this feature was discontinued on 9 December 2004.
Players can also submit original RuneScape related artwork, some of which is displayed in a gallery on the RuneScape website. Media featured have included sculpture, comics, drawings, and paintings.

Many Games like RuneScape fansites have been established by players, none of which are supported or recognized by Jagex. Although in the early days of RuneScape the official website had a links page which listed several fansites, this is no longer the case. In order to provide players with an alternative, official site to get the information they want or need, Jagex introduced the Knowledge Base, which offers information on gameplay, the main RuneScape rules, and account security.
Jagex discourages the discussion of fansites within the game or the official forums - and a rule specifically prohibits sharing web addresses. At least one major fansite has criticised Jagex for not recognising fansites' contributions to the development of its game.


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Why Mythic thinks Warhammer should be your first MMO

It's always interesting to hear the reasons people don't play MMOs. The time commitment is a common and very valid concern - as is the boredom of the grind, the sameness of the games, and the meaninglessness of the avatar's story. Patrick Klepeck of MTV Games offers up a new reason, noting that the freedom of exploration often lauded by MMO fans is (to him) a significant drawback. Warhammer Online's content director Destin Bales responded to Klepeck's apathy with two words: public quests. At the MTV Multiplayer site they have a great description of the PQ Bales used to show him what the genre has to offer. A hydra attack on a Dark Elf sea vessel tops off the event, a setpiece battle we also touched on in our WAR update from a few weeks back.


Another recent rundown on EA Mythic's in-development title is available from Gamespy; they offer players unfamiliar with MMOs their own intro to the genre, with a description of the newbie Dark Elf and Dwarven areas. Despite some reservations that the game's new player area doesn't highlight many of Warhammer's standout features, writer Miguel Lopez was impressed with the 'sense of place' the starter zones impart. Says Lopez: "[WAR] quest areas don't seem to be places that wandering monsters simply arbitrarily inhabit; at least in the two areas we checked out, there was a definite rhyme and reason for mob X to be patrolling site Y. The effort to build the environments like this go a long way toward negating one of the most common criticisms levied against MMOs: that they feel like static wax museums inhabited by staid 3D models."

Source : massively.com

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