… and Age of Conan, for that matter. EA announced during their earnings call that Star Wars: The Old Republic had sold over 2 million boxes and had 1.7 million subscribed players, beating EA’s internal projections. A lot of sources took that at face value as a great result, but was it? Let’s look at … Continue reading
Filed under MMOs …
How Many Players Did City of Heroes / Villains Have Before Launching Freedom?
In the rush before Xmas, I missed NCsoft’s investor relations release for the Q3 2011 period. NCsoft is unique among MMO developers in that its quarterly earnings releases include a breakdown of revenue collected from each of their key titles in that period, making it very easy to track how a title is performing. Although … Continue reading
Star Wars – The Old Republic: And The Final Price Is…
In my previous examination of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the development budget from various sources ranged from the probably too-low US$80m (plus US$20 for advertising) through to US$300m. The LA Times has indicated that SWOR’s development cost sits at US$200m, while analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen & Co. suggested that EA’s “total all-in investment … Continue reading
City of Heroes / Villains: The Killing of Statesman, And Where We Go From Here
Back in December, Paragon Studios spoilered their own story when they publicly announced that Statesman would be the one to die in the “Who Will Die?” signature story arc. That Statesman is apparently dying in part 5 of what I believe to be a 7 part story arc raises my Eyebrow of Cynicism +3 – … Continue reading
Looking (Again) At MMO / RPG Quest Types
A long while ago I looked at the types of quests that MMOs (and indeed, even single player RPGs) are limited to and came up with 10 different types. However, over time I’ve thought that the list was incorrect in a number of ways, especially since it didn’t consider the ‘reverse’ version of each quest … Continue reading
Reading the MMO Tea Leaves for 2012
In previous years I’ve spent a lot of time reviewing and writing up a year’s worth of Massively.com / other MMO sites news articles. Although this is very useful from an information point of view (particularly the “oh, I’d forgotten about that” articles) it takes a very long time. So, this year I’m still doing … Continue reading
Reviewing My 2011 MMO Predictions
Time to see how right I was back when I wrote the following predictions about how things would turn MMO-wise in 2011. F2P titles continue to enter the market and other existing MMOs are likely to join them. Warhammer Online is a distinct possibility, as are titles in the position of Vanguard and Fallen Earth: … Continue reading
Star Wars: The Old Republic – Not Failing Isn’t Always A Guarantee of Success
We’re on the downhill run to Star Wars: The Old Republic’s launch. Soon the hype will be over and the hard part – delivering MMO services to paying customers – begins. I saw a report that stated industry analysts saw SWOR as a “little risk of failure” title. In some ways this is because if … Continue reading
The Single Player RPG Versus The Massively Multiplayer RPG, Round 47
It happens with a frustrating reliability: a single player game RPG (you choose if the ‘R’ stands for ‘role’ or ‘roll’) is released that contains a large world to explore and threads of emergent gameplay, leading to a large number of people wonder why they don’t see the same in the massively multiplayer online space. … Continue reading
The Party Was A Bust: The Short Life of Playboy Party
Back in May 2009, I wrote an entry that covered the announcement of Jolt Online’s Playboy MMO and how no-one cared about it. Following that article, I’d kept half an eye on the (now offline) official site because I was interested in seeing what actually happened with the title. And I waited. And waited. And … Continue reading
World Class Villains 