Zenimax Forms MMO Division

Maylander said:

You buy a game that constantly evolves, that you will sink more hours into than anything else out there.

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And this is where WoW fell apart for me and eventually caused me to lose interest. WoW does not evolve at all, it's frighteningly persistent. Blizzard keeps adding new end-game and high-level content, which is ok, but the main game stagnates like crazy.
Your character evolves (ie levels up, gets loot, changes appearance - until he looks the same as every other character of the same level with the same special gear) but that's about it.

I understand why it is that way, but it did eventually cause me to cancel my subscription and uninstall the game.

aries100 said:

I just pointed out that Everquest, Funcom's first online MMO-game, and some other MMO-games really don't do that well, financially.

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What makes you think so? What do you mean by "not that well"? Where did you get your numbers from?

Auto Assault had what, about 150-300,000 subscripers?? And know NCSoft? is shutting Auto Assult down (a thing i spotted a while ago over at nma) because it simply isn't profitable enough, e.g. the suits behind the company isn't making enough money...

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I'm definitely very curious to find out where those subscriber numbers are coming from and where the story is coming from that the "suits" decided to shut the game down because it isn't making enough money at 150K-300K subs. And -no offense- but please don't link to the post on NMA that said so but gimme something a little more objective and more official, please .

Personally, I'm quite convinced that you can safely divide the subscriber number by about a factor of ten (15-30K subs) and you'd be much closer to the truth why the game was shut down.
Seriously, no MMO with 150K subs is losing money or even considering to shut down if the company running the game knows what they are doing.

IIRC, Sir Bruce's charts put it around 10k before they shut it down.

Everquest is still putting out Expansions...WoW is so popular becuase its easy (way more user friendly than any other mmo's), its got the Blizzard name behind it.

All this competition will drive better mmo game designs I think. EQ2 has improved a huge amount becuase of the success of WoW.

I myself play MMO's and Single Player RPG's. the MMO's are more a long-term social thing. The single player games I play are just when a new one comes out (rpg's mainly). I think there are huge numbers of mmo players who play for the social aspect.

Loburian said:

I think there are huge numbers of mmo players who play for the social aspect.

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Oh definitely. It's neat knowing that all those people running around are other players, and even though you probably won't interact with most of them, it's nice knowing they're not scripted NPCs (well, save for the bots here and there!).
Being able to strike up a conversation or recruit assistance is a great advantage, and makes gameplay a bit more fun.