Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Temporary respite

As the wife continues to deal with the pain of a large laproscopic surgery (large, as in, the amount of movement, shoving of internal flesh, etc, to place a piece of mesh inside the body, leaves one in severe agony, and drugged beyond all compare), I have but a fleeting moment to comment on the past few days of news..

WAR announces they have 300k subs. My data still holds firm that no MMO is worth the effort. Yes, this may be profitable, but is this really what EA wanted? I do not think so. Based on this number, I am hard pressed to place AoC at no more than 100k. They have had an upswing since the merges, and Famine (Funcom CM) just reported on the MMORPG forums that they plan trials and free returns soon, which could increase this a bit more. But, to think it has anymore than that would be ludicrous.
My theory that no MMO today can get a million scrips is still solid at least. The efforts of the developers is just "Lets get one out" whether it is good or not. I expect 2009 to be even worse with no major title release...and to anyone who thinks Star Trek or Champions Online will be a hit...lol at you.

So Hellgate has already died. No news on Hanbitsoft's discussion of a Free 2 play model. Make sure to check out Scott's last day report on Pumping Irony.

LOTRO proves that if you advertise it, they will come. In a massive surge, Xfire numbers for LOTRO have spiked placing the game at #11 yesterday (this will change after today). This is the highest the game has ever placed on the Xfire chart (launch saw it go no higher than 14). But, hey, tell people they can win prizes, and anyone will do anything.
All I know is people still prove that LOTRO is a nice casual (and sleepy) game.

Ok, off to care for the wifey...CYA.

2 comments:

unwize said...

Turbine hosted their dev chat on Xfire yesterday, and the occasional dev chat is now pretty much the only way the EU players can get their questions answered. That probably goes some way towards explaining the spike.

Ardwulf said...

LotRO has to be benefitting inordinately from the fact that the current promotion is targeted at XFire users specifically.

I really think that both WAR and AoC had a shot at the 1 million number, but both Mythic and Funcom fumbled the ball in various ways. I think you have to have every single variable falling in your favor to do it, and that didn't happen in either case. LotRO didn't make it because its gameplay just isn't enaging enough, even though Turbine seemed to do everything else right.

Best wishes to the wife on a minimal downtime and speedy recovery.