I previously said that massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) don’t have the future they once did. Time to elaborate on that. Continue reading
Tagged with Age of Conan …
Warhammer Online: Time for a Reckoning
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is closing down in December of this year. It’s a MMO that never lived up to its potential or its pre-launch hype. 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 – SWTOR vs. WAR!
… 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
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
Star Wars: The Old Republic – The Risk in Being Too Big
There is a risk in being too big. Although the modern cliche is “too big to fail”, it is a term that originally referenced companies who were saved by Government money because their collapse would have resulted in unbearably devastation on the economy around them. In a short period of time, it seems this saying … Continue reading
City of Heroes / Villains and LEGO Universe Go Free-To-Play
Both City of Heroes / Villains and LEGO Universe have announced that they are heading towards free-to-play / freemium payment models in the near future. This adds them to a list that has swelled recently to also include Age of Conan and Fallen Earth. This highlights to me perhaps an unexpected impact of the F2P … Continue reading
Insert Coin To Continue: Perfect World Buys Cryptic Studios
Atari has sold Cryptic Studios to Chinese online game developer Perfect World for €35 million (US$50.5m), pending the final factors of the deal coming together. I’m sure it will, which is why they announced it, so Cryptic’s ownership will be transferred over and thus Cryptic will continue under its third master after NCsoft (sure, not really … Continue reading
IP Less-Than-Freely: MMOs Based on Licensed Properties
With the news that Jagex and Hasbro have signed a deal to do a Transformers MMO (guess all that Mech-based development wasn’t a waste then, Jagex) I was reminded of all the other MMOs based on popular nerd properties that have been indicated as “in development” but have had varying levels of success. And by … Continue reading
How Many Players Bought Champions Online At Launch?
Massively.com recently asked the question about how important subscription numbers are to consumers. On an immediate level they probably aren’t vital, but longer-term they point to a game’s survival and potential to be a success. This is especially true for MMOs launched since 2008 – their typical active player numbers have seen sharp declines since … Continue reading
World Class Villains 