Titan Delayed

[Aeni]

Not sure if this was reported here, but ...

Blizzard delays unannounced MMO until 2016, resets whole project (exclusive) | GamesBeat

I find it ... interesting.

[Etra]

Re: Titan Delayed

Think they noticed how badly FPS MMOs are doing in the market and are changing their game entirely based on that. By the time Titan 2.0 comes out, WoW will be... not even on its last leg... on its last stump. It's a good strategy. Adapt and take your time, especially when your competition (Square-Enix) seems to be capturing your current market.

[Taskmage]

Re: Titan Delayed

Is SquareEnix capturing the market? MMOData.net hasn't been updated for nearly a year, but at the time WoW's closest competitor was Aion with ~2.4M subs. FFXI never broke 600k even back in the day. I wouldn't expect to see XIV "capture" the market with its tarnished brand when SE wasn't able to take more than 10% of the market even at its peak in the pre-WoW era.

[Etra]

Re: Titan Delayed

When I was browsing the WoW forums, it looked like an FFXIV forum. That was a month or so ago, though. Not to mention, WoW lost all those subs (1 mill?) last year and they're only losing more. Also, I was thinking in terms of p2p games in the Western world. I'm betting most of Aion's market is still Asia.

[Taskmage]

Re: Titan Delayed

They're down to 8M according to Aeni's article, but considering the only other Western MMO to break into seven digit subscription numbers was The Old Republic, they're still an order of magnitude beyond their nearest subscription-based competitor. Other than Korean MMOs, a game is doing well to maintain a player base of 300-500k.

No question WoW is declining rapidly, but it's hard to see that as other games taking market share away from it. When WoW lost 2M subs between 2010 and 2012, the total number of active subscribers to all MMOs combined also dropped by 2M.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Titan Delayed

Also, I was thinking in terms of p2p games in the Western world.

So what, just WoW and EVE online? Because I don't exactly see FFXIV making a dent in either of those player bases.

[Icemage]

Re: Titan Delayed

I think what we're seeing is MMO fatigue. At one point in time shortly after the release of WoW there were over 100 MMOs in development. Now? There might be a dozen, and the conventional wisdom is that all but a few will likely fail.

There's still going to be a core of MMO players, but I think we've seen that while there are certainly plenty of the hardcore MMO types, the pool of players is still finite, and divided amongst the various MMOs in existence. Most of us here on this forum fall somewhere into the category, even if some of us have "reformed" and drifted away.

Blizzard obviously didn't like the way their project was going and didn't think it would capture much of the player base. What I think they've (hopefully) come to to realize is that WoW captured some lightning in a bottle. It's not quite the sort of impermanent hype-train like the Wii was, but the game has only one direction to go: down. How slow or fast, hard to tell, but as they add more and more content, they're going to either lose veteran players who are either bored or unimpressed by that new content, while they continue to make it harder to bring in any new or lapsed players who feel intimidated by all the things they have to accomplish before they get to be "one of the crowd". Add to that the people who just wake up and realize that they could be doing other things with their time, and you end up with a formula for slow decline for all MMOs.

Also regarding Square-Enix: I'm still bearish on their chances long-term in the MMO space. They've demonstrated repeatedly that they don't understand any of the dynamics of the market even when the MMO business was a boomtown, and now that it has started to settle down the only thing they've done so far is throw good money after bad by trying to "fix" FFXIV.

Sure, FFXIV's problems were legion and needed fixing, but its biggest problem is that the MMO space just doesn't need yet another hack and slash fantasy MMO. There's tons of them already, so any new entries into the market will have to poach users from the other existing games; even with the Final Fantasy name attached, that's not a good place to be, especially after so many MMO players were burnt by FFXI.


Icemage

[Etra]

Re: Titan Delayed

...especially after so many MMO players were burnt by FFXI.

Most people are fickle. When it finally comes time for whatever it is, they'll buy it / try it out no matter what company put it out and whatever their past was.

Just look at Mal and the xbox.

[Icemage]

Re: Titan Delayed

Most people are fickle. When it finally comes time for whatever it is, they'll buy it / try it out no matter what company put it out and whatever their past was.

Just look at Mal and the xbox.

Sure, but my broader point was that they're not providing something that people can't already get. If a Final Fantasy die-hard wants to play a FF MMO, FFXI already exists (and it doesn't help that FFXIV cribs so much from FFXI, including character designs). If they want a fantasy MMO of any sort, there's tons out there (WoW, Aion, Tera, Everquest 2, etc.).

Absolutely there's going to be some people that are going to say "Oh, I'm burnt out on this game, maybe FFXIV will scratch my itch better", but they lost a huge chunk of those people with the initial launch of FFXIV, and there's nothing really unique about the game to convince someone to pay to play it. It's just... an MMO with Final Fantasy in the title, and that's a problem.

I suspect Blizzard came to the realization that Titan's development was turning into "It's an MMO made by Blizzard" as its only unique selling point and was forced to start over as a result.


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: Titan Delayed

You must really want me to stick an Xbox One *way* up in there huh Etra :3

[Etra]

Re: Titan Delayed

You must really want me to stick an Xbox One *way* up in there huh Etra :3

Deep.

[Malacite]

Re: Titan Delayed

[Aeni]

Re: Titan Delayed

MMOs are alive and well, thriving quite well in fact. Let's all adjust our expectations of platform and the kinds of games that are being developed as MMO. Facebook is a very large platform and is a conduit for various ways for these games to be played (Web browser, app and even via sms/mms/internet messaging) Games include Card-type, social linking and various complex schemes which can involve account activity and even individual-marketing (attention whoring) MMOs are a huge business over in Southeast Asia (SEA) and is growing elsewhere around the world (Latin America, South America and even parts of Africa and the Middle East) While MMO fatigue might be setting in here in North America and in Europe, emerging markets are seeing exponential growth.

So, MMOs have also changed over time, with a simple formula.

1. Bring in investors, whether VC or entrepreneurs.
2. Develop a compelling product, but one that is just enough to get the job done (This is the anti-thesis to Blizzard's mantra, "we won't ship until it's ready").
3. Market it as free-to-play (important distinction, if you look at how other pay-to-play systems have fared, like Tera and soon Rift).
4. Profit.

Micro-transaction is such a guaranteed money-maker that many financiers have long criticized Blizzard and Square-Enix for not having made that transition. However, as Yoshi-P stated before, Blizzard and Square-Enix invests their own money into their development, so they are not pressured to produce subscription numbers and money-traps. However, eventually, the suits "upstairs" will give in to those expectations. Afterall, they still have shareholders they need to please.

Whether or not F2P games are actually good for MMOs from the standpoint of game development is a controversial topic, but there's no real controversy where it concerns the business end of things.