Rayne said:
This is where you lost touch with the point i"m making. I"m not saying that I think that no one should make a fantasy mmo because "WoW trumped everything". I"m saying its foolish to try so directly, because Blizzard will continue striving to make thier game even greater. They"ve got one helluva head start. I think that an as of yet unheard of IP would stand a greater chance of success by providing a different type of game that is as polished and well executed as WoW. Do I think its impossible to develop a fantasy game of that calibre? No. But I think that with the subject matter being what it is and the various ways its already been used, its just "less likely". I think that using a different subject matter (other than fantasy), would allow a more "forgiving" chance of success by providing a different experience of equal calibre from a different perspective. Especially for an unfamiliar IP.
With what Curt and his team have riding on this, I hope i"m mistaken. Because if I am, it means another huge title for the mmo genre. But if i"m right, its another example for investors to use as an excuse to avoid funding high quality mmos.
Not that this has any reasoning behind it, to what we are doing, but let me ask you an "investment" question since it appears you are part of, or understand very well, the VC and investment community.
What would be riskier to you?
1) Investing in a company creating it"s very own IP, with two recognized (world wide) artists who"ve proven they can build IPs from scratch successfully, globally, in a genre that has about, let"s say, 100 million known gamers with the largest titles sporting between 10 and 20 million users(total guesswork number but let"s play along) with a Development team led by people who have done nothing but succeed and prove time and again they can build and ship games, from team concept, to gold master...
Or
2) Investing in a company creating it"s very own IP, in a genre such a sci-fi, wild west, from scratch with the largest known sub base of any types of this game being in the 2-500k realm? Same team, less the artistic folks who"ve already done it?
1 is about 10 million times less risky and I PROMISE someone here is going to argue 2 is the potential bigger home run, but I disagree. Someone "going outside the box" and creating this new cool wild west MMO is not going to suddenly bring 10 million new MMO players to the market is it? The biggest selling movies, novels, toys and other stuff of all time sits pretty squarely in fantasy no? 2 might be a bigger hit from an investment/return standpoint but that would only be if you did it on the cheap, and DID bring millions of new gamers to the space to pay 14-20 bucks a month to play. You still have to monetize the far east, which is way harder then people can imagine.
Fantasy is what it is because it"s ingrained in all of us to some degree. It starts when we"re young, think Dr Seuss to Mother Goose, it"s all about the fantasy and imagination, and it goes from there. Sci-fi, Wild west are all "alternate realities" more than Fantasy imo.
I don"t get what you mean by "try so directly" when speaking of competing against Blizz/WoW. If you are making a fantasy MMO you can"t help but compete, but there is zero reason the companies cannot co-exist, and get along simple because the more players we ALL bring into the space the better off the genre and games are. The folks at Blizzard are top notch, I"ve told them that, and will continue to do so, and the lessons they"ve helped us learn have been invaluable and money saving, but that"s what industry leaders do, they set bars and then you watch the pack and see what happens. Most fall by the wayside, just hoping to cross the finish line, others see the pace, and reset their bars.
One of the main problems I foresaw coming here when I did was just how far out we were from doing or saying anything about what we are making. If we can"t talk in depth about the industry then players are going to think we are hyping ourselves to make ourselves look great it could turn bad fast. I am VERY proud of our team, it"s pretty damn incredible the talent we"ve assembled here, but as a team we"ve done nothing. I get that and you as players do as well.
My problem, as Moorgard will tell you, is that I wear my heart on my sleeve in pretty much all facets of my life and I am all about NOT keeping things under wraps. This industry frowns on that and I am working on it, but in a few places we will be different I can assure you. We WILL be up front and visible to our customers, even more so when we screw up, which we will, but above all else we will be accountable, internally and externally.
I came to these forums because, flames aside, there is some decent discussions that happen here and I am keenly aware of the fact that while there are 100 million or more MMO"ers, about 1 half of 1 percent of you are actively posting on forums. That being said I believe if you DON"T take the publics temperature and listen now and then, you miss TONS of potential valuable insight and feedback.
Long rant over....
