General Discussion

Keep in mind that i don't have very well grammar with english.

In a few words sandbox mmorpg's are not dead, no matter what people tell you , they are not.

A industry always has niche and mainstream mmo's.  There are times , mmo's are omost mainstream, that time is now unfortunately .  In 1997-2004 , there was allot of choice in mmo's. Sandbox and linear . 2004-2008, there are allot of mmo's that are mainstream.

The reason why is that since WOW has brought the genre to more mainstream audience , most of these people who started with WOW , probably don't even know that sandbox exist, that you can build a house or affect a world.  Most of these people do not know that niche also exists. They look at that shiny layout of that box of the game, it looks cool , so they buy it or everywhere they see advertises , marketing or on tv ( world of warcraft) and think: hey, that looks cool, so they play it.

It's how industry goes .

That's the reason why niche products do not sell as much as mainstream, even if niche has allot of quality, a great game, if people have not heard about it, they will not buy.

But that does not mean niche dies, it is ofcourse how industry goes.  Niche will always perform less in financiel success.  Those smaller companies who produce more innovative products and games that are more complexer, more work putted at ( as a hobby)  will have a better playability for those who buy it. Those companies put more effort in the game, then in the marketing, but if it is a good game, then it will sell good but it will sell as a NICHE. Niche does not mean fail, the opposite , it can be a success. It entirely happens how and what it is.

In mmo-land. Sandboxes are more and more getting niche while linear simple mmo's are the more mainstream products. However, it does not mean sandbox is dead, it isn't. Smaller companies and maybe in the future  , bigger companies will create these mmo's and they will mostly do.

You just get them on a lesser scale.

100 mainstream products, 10 niche products.  Out of the 100 mainstream a few succeed, out of the 10 niche products a few succeed.

Earth rise, fallen earth , mortal online, WELL, EVE , ( gw2??)  World of darkness are all in development , EVE not but it is also a niche but that niche is doing fairly well. Now against world of warcraft, they don't do well but it's not there competition. WAR and AOC have there competition against AOC in the mainstream arena while EVE will have to do against the upcoming mmo's that are more complexer who range in the same audience spot as eve. 

EVE has nothing to fear from WOW nor does WOW have from EVE. They are both completely different and both totally attract other audiences. WOW attracts the masses while EVE attracts, yes a niche.

Niche = not a failure.

Mainstream = not a failure

Mainstream can be a failure

Niche can be a failure.

They are both the opposites of each other most of the times.

That is a reason why we will get sandboxm mmo's, just on a lesser scale. If sandbox are glorious successes , then we get more of them, but until then, we just have to wait and have a bit of patience.

Hi shadenis, thanks for your post. I'd like to add one or two things, too.

First I'd like to add that WoW brought the MMORPG genre to a much bigger audience. It is easy to understand, easy to use and easy to computer hardware, too. Today WoW isn't just a game anymore. It's a huge social network. And this is maybe the biggest issue for new contenders. I now many players who tried other games, and actually liked them, but returned to WoW in the end. Why? Because their friends still played WoW. Add to this that human nature likes to stick to well known things. It's always easier to keep things as they are ;-)

Next is that developing games these days costs a lot. And by lot I mean a lot. In contrast to most offline games MMORPGs are not develop-then-throw-on-the-market-and-forget-about-it games. Thus R&D costs are way higher. Not to forget all those administrative costs like GMs, server farms, networking infrastructure, help desk and so on.

So if you want to enter the MMORPG market today you better make sure you have access to huge amounts of $$. Yet even if you have the money there's still the social network problem.

Personally I feel that a MMORPG contender needs to addess the following points at least:

• Be unqiue
• Accessible
• Strong, strong, strong community support
• Strong tools that help to make friends easier
• Fluid gameplay, fluid animations, fluid SFX
• Some kind of a buddy program (invite a friend and get X)

I agree, just because a game is catering to a niche market doesn't mean it's dead, hell I've been going on for over 2 years in DDO and it's not dead, just caters to a niche market.

Originally posted by woeye

Hi shadenis, thanks for your post. I'd like to add one or two things, too.

First I'd like to add that WoW brought the MMORPG genre to a much bigger audience. It is easy to understand, easy to use and easy to computer hardware, too. Today WoW isn't just a game anymore. It's a huge social network. And this is maybe the biggest issue for new contenders. I now many players who tried other games, and actually liked them, but returned to WoW in the end. Why? Because their friends still played WoW. Add to this that human nature likes to stick to well known things. It's always easier to keep things as they are ;-)

Next is that developing games these days costs a lot. And by lot I mean a lot. In contrast to most offline games MMORPGs are not develop-then-throw-on-the-market-and-forget-about-it games. Thus R&D costs are way higher. Not to forget all those administrative costs like GMs, server farms, networking infrastructure, help desk and so on.

So if you want to enter the MMORPG market today you better make sure you have access to huge amounts of $$. Yet even if you have the money there's still the social network problem.

Personally I feel that a MMORPG contender needs to addess the following points at least:

• Be unqiue
• Accessible
• Strong, strong, strong community support
• Strong tools that help to make friends easier
• Fluid gameplay, fluid animations, fluid SFX
• Some kind of a buddy program (invite a friend and get X)

I would agree with this, these key points are very important.

But you also have to see:

A mass company wants to produce as many income as possible, in order to do this, they use a formula that works well.

A smaller or medium ( most of the times, mass companies rarely create awesome games, well sometimes finance the company, it all depends who they are )  will mostly create better games that are more challenging or that are games that are put allot of work into and a bit lesser in the marketing.

It all depends but mostly innovative and the good games do not come from the mass companies. EA , take two and activision and sony are deffo no great in my eyes, they have made some good games but also made crappy games and are mostly catering to the mainstream while bioware, SEGA and others can create more better games.

It all depends, it all depends what they want of course. But all i am saying is , sandbox = not dead, just on a lesser scale. Same goes for hardcore RPG's ( witcher , BG series , fallout series , Icewinddale etc. )  FPS , adventure, RTS etc.

Sandbox MMO's are dead. Most countries have made them illegal. In addition to that, the developers of WoW have taken out a contract on any development team making a sandbox MMO. They won't even make to Alpha without having an "accident" if you know what I mean.

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Originally posted by gillvane1
Sandbox MMO's are dead. Most countries have made them illegal.

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I took that as a joke...

Go Fallen Earth!

Yea I took it as sarcasm and/or a joke myself.....

Originally posted by ladyattis

 

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Originally posted by gillvane1
Sandbox MMO's are dead. Most countries have made them illegal.

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Can you cite a source? Because the last time I checked EVE is not illegal in any country to my knowledge, not even China has outlawed it (they just asked for a politically correct (for them) version). So, your claim that sandbox games are illegal is baseless.


-- Brede

 

Did you read the next sentence? Lol