So who else is looking forward to TOR?

[Robert Maxwell]

I have a feeling that the $300 Million number is way off base.

I sure hope so, otherwise whoever set the budget for this thing was insane.

All MMO's are big gambles whether they're directly competing with WoW or not... APB completely brought down Realtime Worlds, and they were going after the GTA market not the RPG'ers.

I also don't think it's necessarily correct to use KOTOR sales... a single player RPG... to extrapolate MMO sales (and it's also not that relevant to compare it to sales of an FPS). It really is two completely different markets. In the single RPG space, KOTOR was very successful relative to the market.

I was looking mainly at the built-in KOTOR fanbase, which appears to consist of roughly a million people. But you're right, people who enjoyed a single-player KOTOR game may not be into MMOs at all. I was just trying to define the franchise's popularity.

I like BioWare and I like the KOTOR games. I don't want to see them fail.

 

[darthraidr]

MMOs are less of a gamble for a company if you have other games to keep the company afloat. Realtime Worlds put all their eggs in one basket (two if you count MyTown, or whatever it's called). it was a very risky move and didnt work out for them.

MMO development requires a big team, it's costly, and to have your company only work on that one project, to have it bomb is to sink your company. and it only gets worse the longer the development goes.

 

[ichab]

Which makes one ask "Why even bother making an MMO in the first place?" A single player game is much cheaper to make and once the game is released there's maybe a couple of patches needed and then you're done with it. If it wasn't for the MMO aspect, this game would have most likely been released already.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Which makes one ask "Why even bother making an MMO in the first place?" A single player game is much cheaper to make and once the game is released there's maybe a couple of patches needed and then you're done with it. If it wasn't for the MMO aspect, this game would have most likely been released already.

Recurring revenue is the Holy Grail of the software world. In corporate software this is achieved through support contracts--people you pay you so much per month or per year for support and you're required to sign up on an ongoing basis.

For games, there really isn't anything like this except MMOs. Rather than focusing entirely on making new games, Blizzard can get $15 a month out of several million people. Once you have an established MMO you're getting that recurring revenue from, you have a more comfortable budget and can afford riskier one-off games (or take a long time to develop them, like SC2.)

The problem for MMOs is that they require such a huge up-front cost and have ongoing maintenance costs that only become financially viable above a certain number of subscribers. So, if your MMO isn't a hit and you budgeted it with the expectation that it would be, you're in deep shit.

 

[SPCTRE]

Recurring revenue is the Holy Grail of the software world. In corporate software this is achieved through support contracts--people you pay you so much per month or per year for support and you're required to sign up on an ongoing basis.

For games, there really isn't anything like this except MMOs. Rather than focusing entirely on making new games, Blizzard can get $15 a month out of several million people. Once you have an established MMO you're getting that recurring revenue from, you have a more comfortable budget and can afford riskier one-off games (or take a long time to develop them, like SC2.)

The problem for MMOs is that they require such a huge up-front cost and have ongoing maintenance costs that only become financially viable above a certain number of subscribers. So, if your MMO isn't a hit and you budgeted it with the expectation that it would be, you're in deep shit.

Don't forget the huge potential revenue that Blizzard is only now ever so slowly starting to exploit - micro-transactions.

Micro-transactions offer virtually pure profit as the variable cost per transaction approaches zero, with fixed cost degression taking care of the rest.

 

[ichab]

Which makes one ask "Why even bother making an MMO in the first place?" A single player game is much cheaper to make and once the game is released there's maybe a couple of patches needed and then you're done with it. If it wasn't for the MMO aspect, this game would have most likely been released already.

Recurring revenue is the Holy Grail of the software world. In corporate software this is achieved through support contracts--people you pay you so much per month or per year for support and you're required to sign up on an ongoing basis.

For games, there really isn't anything like this except MMOs. Rather than focusing entirely on making new games, Blizzard can get $15 a month out of several million people. Once you have an established MMO you're getting that recurring revenue from, you have a more comfortable budget and can afford riskier one-off games (or take a long time to develop them, like SC2.)

The problem for MMOs is that they require such a huge up-front cost and have ongoing maintenance costs that only become financially viable above a certain number of subscribers. So, if your MMO isn't a hit and you budgeted it with the expectation that it would be, you're in deep shit.

As far as I know, world of warcraft is the only mmo with millions of subscribers. The majority are lucky to maintain 100,000 to 200,000 subscribers. Seems to me that the chances of getting a million subscribers is as difficult as winning the lottery.

 

[SPCTRE]

As far as I know, world of warcraft is the only mmo with millions of subscribers. The majority are lucky to maintain 100,000 to 200,000 subscribers. Seems to me that the chances of getting a million subscribers is as difficult as winning the lottery.

Actually, there are several MMORPGs out there besides WoW that have accumulated +1 million subscribers: Aion, Lineage, Lineage II, RuneScape.

Lineage I and II have recently dropped below the 1 million mark, though.

Aion currently has a whopping 3.5 million subscribers in Asia.

 

[Rincewiend]

LOTRO probably has atleast a million thanks to it using a known property(LOTR)...
And it's a fun and good game to boot...
Don't know about Everquest I & II though...

 

[SPCTRE]

LOTRO probably has atleast a million thanks to it using a known property(LOTR)...
And it's a fun and good game to boot...
Don't know about Everquest I & II though...

These are all well below the 500k subscriber mark, currently (LotRO ~205,000 / Everquest ~100,000 / Everquest II ~110,000).

WHO peaked at about 800,000 in 2009 and has since dropped to a measly ~95,000 subscribers.

[ Source: http://mmodata.blogspot.com/ ]

 

[ichab]

I've never liked a MMO to date so am not holding my breathe but hopefully it will be good. The problem with MMO's for me are how much of a grind they are due to being so repetitive.

I agree. Mmos do tend to be boring repititions of the same thing. Judging from the videos I've seen,it seems this game is trying to have more to their quests than "go collect 10 hides and return to me."