The problem with MMO's shutting down

[VirtualLarry]

I've given up. I hardly play games anymore. (Got other stuff to do now too).
If there ever is another game that is a bit like some older games, I will give them a try. Those are still produced. But in very small quantities. Nowadays it is not about producing a good game. No. It's all about selling expansion packs, adding in-game purchases, etc. And as long as the idiots are buying, it won't change. Too bad. Yet another industry down the drain.

Yep!

 

[Thebobo]

I was there when Asheron's Call II folded it was heartbreaking for many. I had being playing EQ and then went to AC2 for a year and when it folded back to EQ lol.

 

[bystander36]

I was there when Asheron's Call II folded it was heartbreaking for many. I had being playing EQ and then went to AC2 for a year and when it folded back to EQ lol.

I enjoyed AC 1's open ended builds, though there were definite issues, but I felt AC 2 was a bit stale. Every class auto attacked with some bonus skills tacted on. Casters that usually relied on spells, still relied heavily on their weapon damage. It was just odd to me, and felt like their idea of balance was to make all classes almost the same.

 

[Craig234]

I was there when Asheron's Call II folded it was heartbreaking for many. I had being playing EQ and then went to AC2 for a year and when it folded back to EQ lol.

I watched AC 2 close also though I barely played it (the first time - then it came back and closed again).

And yes, a lot of people really liked that game, it was sad.

 

[TechBoyJK]

But to play devils advocate, it's a bit different on a regular retail game than a Free To Play game. Microtransactions are the only source of income on F2P games. I've played my share of them and it never ceases to amaze me how many F2P players don't seem to understand this. There's a lot of players who genuinely believe they shouldn't have to pay for anything and seem to take a special pride in avoiding spending even a single dollar on the game. The catch is there has to be a balance. Yes, some games excessively milk this and make it impossible to play without spending large sums of money. But then you have others where you can be competitive while spending little or no money on it but then players refuse to spend anything because they don't feel like they're getting their money worth. I don't envy MMO developers for that dilemma. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I really like the Path of Exile model. It's F2P with microtransactions, but everything is cosmetic. Want your boots to be on fire and look cool? $5. Want to be get really good and beat other players? Get good and beat them.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

I really like the Path of Exile model. It's F2P with microtransactions, but everything is cosmetic. Want your boots to be on fire and look cool? $5. Want to be get really good and beat other players? Get good and beat them.

It's interesting too, because there cosmetics really aren't very compelling. But they keep cranking out free expansions so somebody must be buying them. I suppose selling bank slots helps too, but there's ultimately a cap on revenue from that.

I think the only hopes for MMOs are Crowfall, DAOC2, and Pantheon--and none of those are without their own issues.

 

[Majes]

It's interesting too, because there cosmetics really aren't very compelling. But they keep cranking out free expansions so somebody must be buying them. I suppose selling bank slots helps too, but there's ultimately a cap on revenue from that.

I think the only hopes for MMOs are Crowfall, DAOC2, and Pantheon--and none of those are without their own issues.

It works in Path of Exile because the game is so incredibly good. Players pretty much have to spend 10 bucks or so for stash tabs, and if you spend 10 bucks you may as well buy a $25 or $30 supporter pack that gives you the same points plus a few cosmetics. Then you find a skill that you enjoy and realize you're going to spend 500 hours using it, may as well use those points to make it better looking. Then the 3-4 month league ends and you're totally up for doing it again. Just think of it this way... A new gaming studio's first F2P game ends up being more successful than Diablo 3.

Marvel Heroes content wasn't as good. Their updates weren't as good and they lacked player competition and a player economy. They actually had a really good plan to get players to pay $ but it was pretty obvious that the item diversity was to fill up stash tabs, not to provide in-game depth. PoE is simply a lot better at everything unless you love Marvel.

Now currently I'm concerned about Hex... I backed it on Kickstarter and I've got a seriously large collection of cards. The game isn't currently in any danger, but Hearthstone beat it to market, controlled the CCG player base, and while Hex has much better single player content, and a good PvP structure, Hearthstone has some single player and probably better PvP... So Hex will die at some point.

 

[Thebobo]

I really like the Path of Exile model. It's F2P with microtransactions, but everything is cosmetic. Want your boots to be on fire and look cool? $5. Want to be get really good and beat other players? Get good and beat them.

I loathe micro-transactions. Especially when they added them to the EQ which I had played for a long time. Back in the early days illusions and other stuff were rare, you had to put the time in and earn these items. Now all you needed was $$ so what was the point to play, there were fewer wand fewer quest so I left shortly before they went FTP.

I started playing Rift and then they went FTP W/MT as well and I left shortly after that.

 

[TechBoyJK]

I loathe micro-transactions. Especially when they added them to the EQ which I had played for a long time. Back in the early days illusions and other stuff were rare, you had to put the time in and earn these items. Now all you needed was $$ so what was the point to play, there were fewer wand fewer quest so I left shortly before they went FTP.

I started playing Rift and then they went FTP W/MT as well and I left shortly after that.

RIFT goin F2P actually brought me back in and I was really surprised at how well it was. I never felt compelled to spend money.

 

[Thebobo]

RIFT goin F2P actually brought me back in and I was really surprised at how well it was. I never felt compelled to spend money.

Well that is true, the implantation was done a lot better than EQ. There were other reason as well that contributed to me leaving.

A lot of ex EQ folks from my guild were going to play EQ next and form a guild again, now maybe Patheon if it EVER comes out 😛

 

[Craig234]

Rift did a lot right, but their 'community team' is terrible.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Rift did a lot right, but their 'community team' is terrible.

I never really used the forums or got too involved in pvp.. nor did I buy much, so I didn't really engage their CT at all. I mean.. It's a F2P game that launched years ago I'd assume their CT is probably volunteers or interns at this point.

 

[Craig234]

I never really used the forums or got too involved in pvp.. nor did I buy much, so I didn't really engage their CT at all. I mean.. It's a F2P game that launched years ago I'd assume their CT is probably volunteers or interns at this point.

Oh, no, it's paid people who run the forums.

They just don't do it well.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Oh, no, it's paid people who run the forums.

They just don't do it well.

Hey, at least they're Trion.

 

[Jaskalas]

Don't rely on licensed content to begin with. Or have a 1-2 year phase out period, and make it known to the public. I like those ideas. But if the developer itself dissolves under poor leadership and mismanagement? Little one can do to protect from that.

 

[Craig234]

The dev going out of business? A plan for low-cost maintenance mode.

 

[JSt0rm]

your digital goods have no value. Buy enough to support the game if you like it but not enough that its like a gambling addiction. When its gone its gone. You paid what you thought the games value was to you. If some whale decided that was 1,000 per month then so be it. But doing that is an artificial way of boosting a product because nobody will maintain that level of spending. Everything is horrible.

 

[XavierMace]

The dev going out of business? A plan for low-cost maintenance mode.

And who's paying for that in this fantasy land?

 

[DaveSimmons]

The dev going out of business? A plan for low-cost maintenance mode.

That takes money away from trying to make the game better and to market it to be more successful. No small company can afford to do that, and the monsters like EA just don't care.

 

[Craig234]

And who's paying for that in this fantasy land?

The remaining player base, with a far smaller expense.

 

[Craig234]

That takes money away from trying to make the game better and to market it to be more successful. No small company can afford to do that, and the monsters like EA just don't care.

How does it take money away from anything?

The alternative is the dev goes out of business and closes the game. If there was revenue to pay for developing and marketing it wouldn't be a "dev going out of business".

 

[XavierMace]

The remaining player base, with a far smaller expense.

I'm getting the distinct impression that you have no idea what it takes to keep servers up and running.

 

[Craig234]

I'm getting the distinct impression that you have no idea what it takes to keep servers up and running.

I'm getting the distinct impression you did not post facts on the costs.

 

[XavierMace]

I'm getting the distinct impression you did not post facts on the costs.

A single even half decent VPS is going to run you over $400/mo. You're not running an MMO off a single server, even one with almost no players. Let's call it 3 servers, just for giggles. That's $1,200+ a month. Just for the servers itself. Who's going to maintain those servers? Who's going to fix them when they go down? You're looking at $200/hr or more for SysAdmin level consulting. Let's call it 4 hours a week for patching and pretend nothing will ever go wrong. That's another $3,200/mo. That's already over $10/mo per player based on Marvel's player count at the start of this conversation or over $80/mo for Fallen Earth. How much of their player base do you think are willing to chip in to that extent? The whales aren't going to stick around for this. Plus you usually have to pay a year in advance.

But, let say you manage to get the players to cover those monthly bills. How is the money being retrieved? How's the money getting to the vendors? The vendors aren't going to accept bits of payment from 50+ people. So somebody's going to have to be "in charge" of all this and be on the hook if the players stop paying. Are you willing to be that person? Do you think all the players are going to be fine with sending monthly payments to some random dude on the internet for the promise of keeping a dead game alive?

Or are we still operating on the basis of the developer keeping this running as a public service? Let's say you find somebody who's got the skill level to handle ALL the technical issue and can handle all the money aspect of it. He's going to expect a salary for this. Even in a low cost of living area, you're looking at least $60k/yr. Or are you expecting some employees that have been moved to some other project to do this in their spare time?

All that just to keep the game running in it's current state. How long are people going to keep playing it with no content updates? No holiday promo events, no new characters/classes? Or are you expecting further dev work to be included too? What about support? Website?

 

[Craig234]

Googling around doesn't have a lot of info on the costs but two comments were:

"Maybe you need a more humble system to only serve 50k concurrent players and your tech is good enough to serve 10k people per box (that would be pretty elite). You end up with a one box shard and a game server that can expand to 5 shards, on demand.

So, if you use machines that normally go for $100 per month and get a bulk discount of even 50% , that would still be 5 x $50 servers or $250 per location with maybe 5 in the US and one in Europe at $1500 per month, for this example."


"500 concurrent users could probably be hosted (depending heavily on the nature of the gameplay of the game) at less than $1000 a month. I'm assuming a single one of your servers can run 50 users concurrently (optimized, and depending on the nature of the game, they could handle more), and so you'll need 10 servers running 24 horus a day, 30 days a month, at an Amazon.com-hosted price of $0.120 an hour"