First of all, you have to consider Eastern Vs Western Markets, MMO shelf life, box sales, pre-orders and sub fees. Then balance that against salary for coders, programmers, quest / lore folks, character class balance people, customer service, tech supports and upper echelon people.

Would look something like, aion, knows they have a 22-24 percent MMO market share (wow has a 66) but 4.5 million subs at 15.95 a month with 2.5m pre orders and a western / EU Launch.

But it takes 1.5-2.5 years to get into profitability.

Wow shocked us and increased subs thru almost 6 years now, passing its shelflife .. and why?

They had a good product, they made an MMO for the people (masses) not a niche product with a big name (like LOTRO ect) marketed it aggressively, rest spready by WOM (word of mouth)

Ideally, to succeed you need to time your release, Aion will do well western markets initially because wow players are restless …. however aion is a pvp centric game, people are axing pre-orders and its western shelf life might not make the 2.5 year cut for an mmo …. Western gamers hate “korean grind fest and pvp centric games”

We want PVE, lore, a game that offers a smooth experience, customized characters, detailed quests, lots of gear options and graphics, pvp options that are meaningful, but not a center part of the mmo. We want balanced stats, and not nerfs or abilities or gear that give x while taking away y … we want to see our characters progressively get stronger given out time and money investment.

We want crafting options and lots of it (and meaningful) we want main jobs and sub jobs (not like GWs something like FF11) and a new gimmick …. like tank / healer / dps archtypes are fine … but have it so a healer is a B almost A class DPS’er as well, and tanks throw out impressive damage ….. and the pure DPSers or hybrid specs wreck havoc each with their own niche …. none of this overlap BS blizzard threw at us!

If you want to bust open the market, you need a game that offers sustainability, beta tested, nearly bug free with lot sof options … great story and I mean something like 12-14 classes at launch, 1000 point customized character feautuers, high server populations, the ability to solo and group .. and choose the mo focus …. PVE particularly, and base your game on that, don’t switch to apease the lower pvp population and nerf your classes ….

This is what is eroding wow … along with the casual overhaul from the vanilla wow days .. raid groups of 12 seem to be the magic number .. 25 might be a little much, I would launch one 12 man, 8 mid and 6 on the low end with parties making up of 4 max … that way guilds can run multiple events, not get upset with gear because ff you read this, there will be a ton of it and another thing .. dont flood your game with purples … an established loot system!

Make the just rare gear hard to get and most comon end game, a tier up very hard to get and 1-2 upgrades past that, with the final having a drop plus solo effort plus x. Immerse us, make us feel like we have a world to explore and cant wait to get home and log on ….

Also RMT … for little bonuses .. maybe guilld houses and player houses … expanded features, name changes … server xfers ect .. its a huge cash influx.

Lastly factions, most games do good vs evil (or similiar) wow alliance . horde – aion elyos vs asmodes ect … make 3-5 factions, make various worlds even for 1-2 each and a couple end game places where they all meet. Have a good archtype, and nuetral, an evil, and hell make a genre of class that is on par with the enemy NPCs …

Mounts – flying world – I mean it has to have it all, but in a new fresh and dynamic way … Its hard for me to explain here … I am actully a market research analyst and avid gamer here in Manhattan …. I have tracked this and picked winners and losers for a very long time. (and very accurately)

There is room to develope a new MMO, and new brand but you cant get greedy and mistime it, launch it with not enough content or beta testing, not market and hype it, not go thru the pre-order process ect … it needs to be polished and feel like a luxury mmo .. (not like bargain budget LOTRO for example with their band aid nerfs and bridges the size of tooth picks lol) or cartoon graphics wow with casual feel .. or pvp centric aion that will piss a lot of western gamers off when they relaize pve is an after tought haha!

Learn lessens from games like Ragula and Warhammer that launched too early with too many bugs that didnt catch on main stream … or stubborn genres like FF11 online that never adapted …

You could even take another whole direction and make a FF tactics type MMO too that would do well and not cost a whole lot to develope either … but thats another thought.

Startgate … I am sorry niche market at best, and people will lose interest to Studio 38s new MMO, Aion, the hardcore wow population, KOTRO MMO, Diablo 3, star trek, starcraft, Champs and ff14, lest we forget blizz plans a next gen MMO too announced at blizzcon and other sin the pipeline.

So yes there is an opportunity … but most people have no idea what the bulk of players want, what makes us leave an MMO and what really matters …. it’s sad really but thats the present MMO climate.

I really enjoyed the read – especially some of your suggestions.

Quests aren’t bad, they are just overdone, and people need to see them for what they are. Too many people think quests are the opposite of a grind, or the savior from the grind, but that is simply not the case.

Daily quests are an absolute abomination. I quit WoW completely within a few days or weeks of their implementation.

The biggest problem with quests is the way it kills socialization, organic play of the game, and exploration. That kills the wonder of MMOs, and destroys the all important social aspects.

Also, your posts are even longer than mine (not to mention much better informed). Thus, I can come here and not only be enlightened and entertained, but also feel succinct and concise. Win all round.

Thank you for your kind comments Ysharros! Let me just say that I just recently discovered your MMO blog as well. I must say that I’m really enjoying your thoughtful and insightful articles. Your blog is like discovering a great TV series on DVD — I’ve got lots of good reading ahead of me now

*cheers*

Part of the reason we are all feeling quest fatigue is the introduction of daily quests back in the Burning Crusade expansion. For me this is when the whole notion of quests really jumped the shark in WoW.

I went back to WoW last December after having unsubscribed back in 2005, and when I first encountered daily quests that was my exact reaction — well, I may have thought “WTF?” Since I hadn’t followed WoW that closely after leaving, I hadn’t heard of these and when I did, it just struck me as really odd. I already have to do a bunch of daily routine tasks, not only in RL but *also* already in games (especially an altoholic like me — inventory management is *my* daily quest)… it boggles the mind.

However, as I recently read elsewhere (http://mikedarga.blogspot.com/2009/03/make-cheating-part-of-your-game.html), stealing gold-seller business is a pretty good explanation for those too.

Also, your posts are even longer than mine (not to mention much better informed). Thus, I can come here and not only be enlightened and entertained, but also feel succinct and concise. Win all round.

He really cares and made good observations, I think he really got it that a story needs to be delivered differently in a video game, walls of text being a no-no and so on. It still makes me go crazy when he says people don’t want to read anything. I think it is more because all what quests are about is go there, kill that, as he said himself. You do not need that much text for that… or collection quests.

I unfortunately miss the part where he says “Now we need to get away from quest-guided content delivery”.

@Longasc: There IS a difference between guiding and forcing players though, and WoW is, as Kaplan mentioned, a medium in which they are trying to tell a story of sorts- and he is wise enough to acknowledge that, “[They] need to stop writing a fucking book in [their] game, because nobody wants to read it.” That in and of itself is a huge step in the right direction. A Virtual World and an MMO are two clearly distinct things in my mind, and Kaplan wants WoW to be an MMO, where a story is told with you as the champion, not a Virtual World where you live life.

WoW didn’t become a single-player game because it was a developing Virtual World, it happened because it was getting further from a Virtual World. If you play Neverwinter Nights or Oblivion, or any other standard single-player RPG there will be a “world” around you but you’re guided through it in the form of storytelling.

I wrote an article about expansions not being what MMOs need but now I understand that Virtual Worlds need to be expanded instead of extended- while MMOs like WoW NEED to be extended because you run out of story, and I think it’s fair to say that an actual storyline is Blizzard’s goal, whereas with a Virtual World the developers may include lots of fun lore-oriented events and content, but they do not have a single grand master-story they are trying to tell.

Perhaps the optomistic idealist in me just HOPES that this is what Kaplan is getting at, but if it really is then I could see WoW as having incredible potential still, but in a way I haven’t really been thinking about MMOs.

I would also like to point out that my sister who, may the Good Lord bless her soul, is a bit of an eccentric LOVES WoW for the fact that it is, in many ways, a lot like a book. She revels in reading all the quests and exploring every nook and cranny of their world. Someday I may want to go back and try to play WoW through her perspective, but I find that I am very much focused on finding a good Virtual World for my online game, not a story-based MMO (if that all made sense ).

Jeff Kaplan delivered his speech. He is really all focused on guiding players by the hand through the content.