Just more evidence of a terrible 2012 in MMO-dom. Continue reading
Filed under F2P …
Kickstander: Path Finding and Kick Starting, Round 2
I remember the mass objection years ago to pay-for-betas, where players refused to consider having to pay money to access an unfinished title, but now it seems almost accepted that Kickstarter MMOs like Pathfinder Online bundle up beta access as a backer reward years before beta actually starts. Continue reading
City of Heroes / Villains: Top 5 Under-Realised Systems
With less than a week to go before City of Heroes / Villains (CoH/V) shuts down, I thought I’d take a look at the five systems that I saw offering the greatest unrealised potential for this title. I’m not going to say that if these systems had been perfected it would have led to CoH/V being bigger than World of Warcraft, but it would have been another hook to bring in and keep interested players. Continue reading
Star Wars: The Old Republic – Our Meeting Was Not a Coincidence
Nothing happens by accident. Unless you are EA releasing a Star Wars MMO. Continue reading
City of Heroes / Villains: NCsoft Says Sale Not Going To Happen, Closure Happening on Schedule
NCsoft issued a statement about the future of City of Heroes / Villains (CoH/V). The TL;DR version is “It’s still shutting down”. The full statement says: “City of Heroes®Players and Fans, We wanted to let you know that your voices have been heard and your concerns have been taken into serious consideration. We appreciate the … Continue reading
City of Heroes / Villains: An End of the World Event
I was surprised to see a large spike in my site traffic today, especially to older posts about how many players CoH/V had. Then I looked further and saw that NCsoft announced its intentions to shut down CoH/V and Paragon Studios. This has taken a lot of people by surprise, given that it seemed that … Continue reading
Eight is Enough: Video Game Payment Models
So let’s look at the payment models available for video games, at least at a high level. Continue reading
The Secret World: Half As Successful As Conan
According to a Google-translated-so-oddly-worded article, Funcom’s The Secret World (TSW) is a flop. It has sold only about half the number of boxes that Age of Conan (AoC) did – historically it appears that around 1 million AoC boxes were shipped at launch for sales of around 800k. So: 400k sold, and no idea how … Continue reading
Star Wars: The Old Republic – The Splinter of the Mind’s Eye for EA
Going back to October 2010 (and through to March 2011) I detailed five reasons why Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWOR) was a high risk MMO. Those reasons where: EA was funding SWOR for the wrong reasons – they weren’t looking to develop a profitable title, but instead create a WoW-level success with a financial … Continue reading
What Can We Learn From Picking Winners?
Having spent a bit of time looking at some infamous AAA MMO failures, it’s worth trying to see what lessons can be learned from them. Continue reading
World Class Villains 