Last year I made a number of predictions about the MMO market for 2013. Time to pay the piper… and unfortunately he collects with interest. Continue reading
Tagged with Warhammer: Age of Reckoning …
Ruminations: Bullet Run, Wizardry Online and Camelot Unchained
Two things I wanted to quickly cover: Bullet Run, Wizardry Online and SOE; then Mark Jacob’s Not-DAOC Camelot Unchained. 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 – 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
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
Three Isn’t The Magic Number – Warhammer Online
One bit of common criticism I’ve seen about Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR) is that its PvP failed because it had only two sides, not three. Mythic’s Dark Age of Camelot had three realms and reputedly had some of the best PvP experiences of the MMO genre; meanwhile, Mythic’s WAR only had two opposing sides … Continue reading
The First One Million Customers
I’ve noticed a trend worth commenting on in Western MMOs. It is only based on limited data points, but it’s worth codifying. The trend is: If you launch a AAA MMO in Western markets, you are going to attract about 1 million players at launch. My evidence: Age of Conan shipped 1.2 million boxes at … Continue reading
EA To Slash Staff; Starts By Cutting WAR Down
As part of its third quarter financial announcements, EA has posted a significant loss and has indicated that up to 1500 jobs are going to be cut. The full cuts won’t be made until April 2010, but some studios were hit quicker than others, including Mythic, developer behind Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR). There are … Continue reading
World Class Villains 