Jumpgate is still alive and well, though not really “big”. ;)
I’m sad to see it die, but everybody who plays the game (like I did until a couple of weeks ago) saw this coming. Anytime a developer says “We can’t do X (where X is a nice feature/bug that really needs to be fixed) because we don’t have the resources”* (the E&B devs have been saying this for months), expect the game to be shut down soon.
This was my first MMOG that I both played and liked well enough to keep playing. While I’m sad, I’m a lot wiser for the experence.
*Among other things. EA also mostly removed the main message boards that they hosted, and mostly relied on a fansite to host messages. Dev response to questions got fewer and fewer, and mostly consisted of the above statements
Let’s be real, E&B sucks.
It’s not a matter of genre. E&B won’t close because it’s a space sims, but because it’s a crappy game.
About WoW. If it reaches 350k it is a success. It will be the second most popular mmorpg out there. DAoC is at 240k and it’s the direct competitor of WoW. EQ doesn’t give out infos on subscribers from more than a year and I’m more than sure the playerbase has decreased terribly. UO is at 220k. These are the known and confirmed numbers.
Remember that WoW is going to be a whole different matter. There will be an open beta test. Everyone will play and will have an opinion before paying for the box. If it does things right it could be a huge hit.
So, if it’s a very good game as I expect, I think it could reach 350k right at the start. From there it will depend only on what devs will do. It depends on the endgame, both PvE and PvP high-end content. If they keep doing things right and they are able to improve on DAoC’s PvP they could hope to break the 400k roof in a year. And so on.
But considering the open beta the exact result of WoW will depend EXCLUSIVELY on the game value.
About E&B, as a player, I’ll just make sure to not spend my money on another mmorpg published by EA. They killed UO’s potential and from there they just made glaring mistakes based solely on stupid marketing visions. I will applaud when UX:O will go the same way, while UO is agonizing toward a slow death.
Let’s be real, E&B sucks.
It’s not a matter of genre. E&B won’t close because it’s a space sims, but because it’s a crappy game.[/quote]
Well said. I also have a hard time seeing E&B as a “sim”. It’s more of a point-and-click action/adventure title than a sim. ;)
Where is this information stated, Hrose?
-Walt
What? The open beta?
It has been announced in one of those weekly Q&A session by the PR manager Katricia if I remember correctly.
I’m not able to search the official statement but here’s one of the latest posts from Katricia about the open beta:
http://www.battle.net/forums/wow/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=1409905#post1409905
The drop of the NDA and the open beta are two healthy and brave decisions coming from Blizzard. Positive signs for now.
EA has really been trimming the fat lately, consolidating Westwood and Maxis, getting rid of E&B… What do they know that we don’t know?
They just announced: 420k
This feels like The Sims. Where damn are coming from those players?
You’d be amazed at how many people own multiple accounts. I owned 2 myself when I played the game - namely because I prefered to solo, and 2 boxing a cleric was a lot simpler than finding a group because of the hours I kept.
Once I got to the point where I felt like no longer developing my character and instead just raid I went back down to 1 account. I know of several people on the server I played on that had 5 to 7 accounts and they would sit there like zombies paying the game non-stop and player auctioning their loot to make a lively hood.
According to the mini-faq posted about the closing, “Electronic Arts does not have any plans to sell the source code for EARTH AND BEYOND.” However, “If you are currently an active Earth and Beyond subscriber, you will be eligible to receive a free copy of Ultima Online (UO) or The Sims Online (TSO) if you are over the age of 13.” I’m sure that will make all the players absolutely thrilled.
So…which MMORPG is going to be next on the chopping block?
Anyone here play Horizons? I started recently and even though its enjoyable in some ways, I have to think its very close to being axed. The population seems to drop daily, and the people behind the game cant resolve basic technical issues.
olaf
I’m sure it will. Because all 3 of those games are, you know, so much alike.
About Horizons, it probably mostly depends on the relationship Artifact and Atari have. If Atari’s just selling the boxed game, Artifact may figure out how to keep the game running with a limited subscriber base. If Atari’s footing the bill for the server farm and bandwidth, there may be a point at which the continuing ROI doesn’t make sense for them.
The launch of EQ2, Lineage 2, City of Heroes, UO:X, Dragon Empires, and possibly World of Warcraft and Middle Earth Online this year will put a lot of pressure on these existing MMO games with marginal subscriber numbers. I’d expect to see some defection from older games to newer ones.
No question, it’s going to be MMO carnage time very soon. The only question is, how bad will it be? Will games like CoH expand the market, or will they all compete for a declining share of the same player pool?
CoH and WoW will bring some new gamers into the MMO scene. I don’t see the other MMOs doing that, however.
I think there’s a pool of disaffected former MMO gamers that the new games can draw from as well as the pool of existing subscribers in other games who will try something new.
I do think the business model of expecting subscribers to play month after month isn’t as solid as it used to be. I bet the newer games won’t have the retention of the older games.
Between these only WoW and, perhaps, Dragon Empires are valuable and could have an impact on existing mmorpgs.
Lineage 2 will cannibalize the same old first Lineage, EQ2 isn’t going anywhere. City of Heroes and UO:X don’t seem in a good shape nor are going to compete directly with existing mmorpgs and MEO, well, it’s Turbine.
Horizon isn’t in a good shape also. It will probably agonize for a year or so before they’ll pull the plug. Perhaps I’m too optimistic.
And those are just my opinions.
Curious why you think City of Heroes isn’t in good shape. That doesn’t match anything that I’m hearing (and I have a number of good sources in the beta).
I don’t see there being a lot of longevity in City of Heroes unless they do something about the point and click tedium. I’m hearing the same complaint from hundreds of beta testers day in and day out.
EQ doesn’t give out infos on subscribers from more than a year and I’m more than sure the playerbase has decreased terribly.
You’d be wrong. EQ continues to grow, and grow, and grow, and grow.
Want to know why?
Bigger carrots. It’s ALWAYS bigger carrots, and that’s what I loved about EQ.
Look at how EQ has evolved. The original release gave us a fairly large world where everyone was equal, and everyone was pretty much the same. This created the fantasy fanbase.
Kunark gave us characters of slightly different power levels (same class/level) and also gave us more levels. Old world content becomes more accessible due to higher levels and better equipment affording casual players more things to do without the time sinks “uber” players (like me) put into the game.
Velius did the same thing. Now kunark challenges became trivial to people like me, but fun and challenging to people that haven’t put as much into the game.
About this time there were sooo many level 60’s and content was trivial pretty much from the start. This kept in a lot of people that were going to quit, created a LOT more higher end guilds due to there being more content to go around, and an easier gear progression path (west wastes!) so people could feel like they were getting stuff even if it wasn’t very much.
Luclin was a loot heaven. Easy to get too easy to kill relatively fast spawning creatures in the shissar temple. Something like 18 smaller bosses that a large enough group of friends could do an open raid on. Velius was now opened to nearly everyone because luclin gear (with it’s resists), aa points, and the Great Melee Patch made the Temple of Veeshan ssooo easy. Also, the heaven of loot known as Vex Thal kept every single uber guild playing just for those items.
Planes of Power was the next big one. This one took my guild a LONG time to finish. It was very, very hard working through the elemental planes. Then it was very VERY hard working through the plane of time.
As time passed, a lot of the lower zones were opened up to everyone. As droppable gear proliferated from the elemental planes (amazing player made armors and bows that were great quality and droppable), more and more people could get to a higher part of the game. Smaller guilds could take on higher challenges. Vex Thal was basically open to any group of 40 people that wanted to spend a few hours each camping for shards to get keys to the place. Still good loot by most standards.
See the trend so far? As one thing opens, everything below it gets a little easier. Additively, MORE and more people can see better and better stuff. EQ recycles it’s carrots! Guild A finishes time as Guild B gets into it, meanwhile Guild C is doing tier 2 planes bosses, Guild D is doing Vex Thal, Emp and Seru, Guild E is doing the Temple, family guild F is doing dragons. Everyone has something to do, because the content is given to us at almost the same rate we can eat it up.
This is why EQ is the most popular among westerners, and why it will continue to be so until somebody does a better job at doing what they’re doing. The single focus of any MMO after release should be getting out more content. Bug fixes are nice, balancing is nice, but there should ALWAYS be another expansion in development. ALWAYS. Never, ever ever let the player base believe that what they have is all they have. More and more things to do. Higher levels. Better gear. Harder challenges. Having one expansion making the ones before it easier.
That’s the key. That’s how it works. Now everyone get to work.
EverQuest might have 400,000 subscribers 10 years from now. The new graphics engine should go in soon and every new bit of content forward will look like a 2004 game. SOE may even redo some old zones for the new engine.
The only game that has a chance of matching EQ for content is WoW. Blizzard’s big enough that I expect them to churn out new content constantly.
It seems like EQ has a new expansion coming out every week with like 10-20 new zones. Wonder how many zones the game has now…200+?