Jait said:
I wish most MMOs the best of luck. Any improvement is a bonus for the entire genre. But this is a step backwards....and sideways now that I think of it.
A Vanguard failure could be a blessing in disguise for the MMO industry. Here is how I see it...
WoW is obviously the current undisputed king. If you want your game to compete with and beat WoW, you are going to need: 1) A WoW-like budget, 2) A WoW-like development schedule, and because of 1 and 2 and the danger of risking $50+ million dollars, you"ll be forced to have 3) WoW-like game design. There is the possibility that some game will dethrone WoW, but it"s much more likely WoW will peter-out as the playerbase gets bored over the years and yearns for something new.
In other words, to compete with and beat WoW, you have to match or outdo Blizzard at "being Blizzard" and that"s a very hard thing to do. And as their track record shows, they develop fun, polished and (relatively) bug-free games due to quality developers, proper budgets, long dev cycles, and (probably) effective management. Vanguard and EQ2 were caught off guard by WoW"s success, but it will be interesting to see how something like LoTRO does competing with WoW.
To my original point of a Vanguard failure being a blessing for the MMO genre, if Vanguard succeeds (even though I wouldn"t classify them as a direct competitor to WoW in terms of gameplay), it will reinforce the idea that you need 5 years and $50 million to make an MMO. That will limit creativity since it will be too costly to risk making anything else except WoW clones.
Does anyone here think that CCP could have gotten the funding to make Eve from an EA or Ubisoft given it"s relatively complex gameplay and high learning barrier?No, they"d force them to make WoW in Space.
A Vanguard failure will hopefully mean that developers and publishers will let go of the notion of competing directly with WoW, and instead focus on smaller budget, niche MMOs. I"d rather see that $50 million spread across 5 MMOs that have the freedom to knowingly make design decisions that will limit potential sub counts, instead of choices designed to appeal to the greatest number of people. When they are multiple successful and profitable MMOs with subcounts ranging from 100k to 500k, designing "for the good of the game" might actually mean for the good of the game, instead of for the good of the bottom line.
Think of what could be designed if the developers knew they only needed to attract 100K subs.Such a game could also easily break the $15/mo. ceiling for sub fees too. These are the games I"d be willing to pay $20 or $30 a month for, games that have a design that appeals to me.
Some examples:
- A pure raid based game, with no leveling up. Your first encounter in the game is an ass-raping boss, not a_moss_snake_01. Practically every dollar is spent on encounter design.
- "EQ1.5" (or perhaps VG as it was originally intended). A hard, group based game.
- A pure magic or pure melee MMO. An MMO with a complex magic system
- A perma-death MMO
- A MMO where not everyone has equal opportunity for accomplishment, and/or player decisions can actually impact other players (a quick example might be guilds fighting to crown their leader king, who can then make certain decisions the losing guild must obey like paying a tribute)
- A quest based MMO that isn"t dependent on kill/collect/camp style quests, but actual brain teasers and in-game/out-of-game research
- A MMO not based around killing, but entirely around questing, crafting, and politics
- Standalone MMOs that could be "linked together" - i.e. CCP provides Eve while another company provides FPS and RTS combat that can be integrated. (FPS assualts on larger ships, RTS battles for planets).
My points are being made from the abstract, and not from any personal desire to see Vanguard and the people behind it fail.