Have you seen EverQuest Next?

[RCBH928]

I just saw some footage of this game and it got me excited. I was wondering of World of Warcraft has something up its sleeves to compete against this game.

What are your first impressions on this game?

Any way, is World of Craft still a huge thing or is it dying slowly?

[MrPopo]

I just saw some footage of this game and it got me excited. I was wondering of World of Warcraft has something up its sleeves to compete against this game.

What are your first impressions on this game?

Any way, is World of Craft still a huge thing or is it dying slowly?

WoW is dying slowly, but every other MMO dies much faster, so Blizzard is still on top.

[isiolia]

It's hard in general for new MMOs to compete against older ones. Content gets added over time, so launching a game with as much to do and see as a 10-15 year old title is highly improbable. They also take a while to really learn, and a lot of players build up friends and such over years of playing.
So even legitimately good MMOs will often launch to good numbers, but see players quickly work through their limited content, and quit to go back to the game they're more familiar with, where their friends may still be. More often than not, that game is WoW.


A lot of what they've shown is not actually new for the genre. The bigger thing would be the (on a technical level) fully destructible world that can change. Problem is, some of that takes a lot of balancing to not just be annoying, or to actually be significantly different from what other games have done already.
Landmark makes me think they've realized the level of content generation they'd need to keep the world supplied with that, and are finding ways to get people to create stuff for them

It could be interesting, but I doubt Blizzard has much to worry about, especially given that they have their own next-gen MMO coming (Project Titan).

[RCBH928]

MrPoPo

Last I heard WoW had like 7m active users , how much down are they? Also , isn't it very dated for today's gaming? The graphics especially look old. Not sure if it is on purpose to make it work faster over the net.

isiolia

I didn't get what Landmark is, is it like object builder for the online world?

[Cronozilla]

Voxel environment MMO? I'll look into it when it's out.
I'm not an MMO fan, outside of the perpetual cost, I just don't like the way the games are structured ... but this is actually making a lot of promises that I like the sound of. As long as they're remotely accurate, I might actually like it.

[isiolia]

I didn't get what Landmark is, is it like object builder for the online world?

So far, what they've announced is that it'll be a product in and of itself, where the focus is more on building things. A lot of it, to me, seems like it's trying to get in on Minecraft's popularity, but they're also including the angle of selling things you make, a la Second Life.

They're also looking at bringing things over from that to Everquest Next. At that point, saving time/money on creating new content could actually be thinking small.

Last I heard WoW had like 7m active users , how much down are they? Also , isn't it very dated for today's gaming? The graphics especially look old. Not sure if it is on purpose to make it work faster over the net.

WoW, is down to around 7.7M users, and peaked around 12M. Few subscription-based MMOs even sustain a million users though, and many are under 500k. Numbers might be down, but they're still well above anything else on the market.

Far as the graphics, it's not so much a matter of making things work faster with low bandwidth, but the simpler graphics can help keep system requirements modest. Especially given how much they can be required to scale.

Blizzard tends to do fairly stylized graphics in the first place too.

[RCBH928]

Wow , at 7m subscribers how is that dying? I did some numbers and it appears Blizzard is cashing around $1b a year!! What a cash cow! The subscription is expensive too , at around $12 a month ends up being $122 a year while a regular game costs $60 or less and you get to resell it .

I do not care too much about MMOs because its just a life sucker I guess...there is no end to it. I think its one of these things where the more you invest time in it the more you get stuck to it , and it gets you into this vortex until you have to wake up.

***************

Maybe out of topic, but do you know the Legend of Mir? Can some one tell me anything about it?

Long time ago , in a land far far away , someone told me that a guy that works in telecommunication had 24/7 internet , whenever one else used to pay by the minute for dialup, and he played this extremely interesting game called Legend of Mir where you live online and interact with others and it was amazing.

Thats just as much as I know about it. It was mind blowing to me for some one who didn't know you could play online.

[isiolia]

It's not dying per se. It is down substantially from its peak subscription numbers.

Even a moderately successful subscription MMO is a cash cow. FFXI is the most profitable FF game thus far, and that has been at 500k or fewer subscribers for most of its life (and I can say pretty confidently they haven't put much of that money into further FFXI development ).

That's why you see so many companies trying to launch MMOs.

The subscription is expensive too , at around $12 a month ends up being $122 a year while a regular game costs $60 or less and you get to resell it .

This comes up a lot with regard to MMOs. Realistically, they're actually a very cheap form of entertainment if you consider the number of hours an active player will probably put into one per month.

I do not care too much about MMOs because its just a life sucker I guess...there is no end to it. I think its one of these things where the more you invest time in it the more you get stuck to it , and it gets you into this vortex until you have to wake up.

They can be, but so can plenty of other pastimes. The main thing that can stand out with MMOs particularly are commitments to other players. Not really different from hosting a pen and paper gaming group, or joining a rec league for a sport, but still.

More recent MMOs have put focus into making shorter or irregular playtimes more feasible. One of the reasons WoW got to the level it's at is because the model it introduced is easy mode compared to the Everquest paradigm that earlier games tended to follow.

Maybe out of topic, but do you know the Legend of Mir? Can some one tell me anything about it?

It's a series of old-school Korean MMOs. Personally never played 'em. I imagine, being a Korean title, it's very grind heavy.

[Menegrothx]

A lot of what they've shown is not actually new for the genre. The bigger thing would be the (on a technical level) fully destructible world that can change.

I'm quite certain Darkfall did that

[Sano]

I am very excited about EQ Next! I don't think it will be a WoW killer, but I do think it will bring EQ players who went to to WoW back to EQ. I checked out the site and it looks amazing.