MMO Weekly: Subscription And Launches page 2

13 Oct 2009 at 10:14:26 by Jeff Hollis

One of several things that I drew from our discussion was the importance of, of all things, *midgame* content. As everyone already knows all too well, endgame content is critical. This isn't news to any fan of the genre. A lack of endgame content has crippled more MMOs than I can count. However, a number of the games we discussed also had trouble with midgame content, and this caused players to quit long before they ever reached the endgame. Basically, the zones were similar from the first day of play to the level cap, the monsters were basically the same, and there was no real variety in anything as players leveled up. Apparently, some of us got badly bored long before reaching the endgame. This came up several times, referring to two dead games (Tabula Rasa and Hellgate), as well as Age of Conan and Warhammer. Interesting midgame content, apparently, is important in keeping player interest.

Also, it's no big surprise that many games on the above list had a flawed launch for some reason. This seems to piss people off, or at least cause them to write off a game, if they experience a bad launch. Also, a game seems to be fighting an uphill battle, pretty much forever, if the game has a bad launch. This isn't a surprise to anyone who plays MMOs.

The surprise was that a couple of the games *did* have really good launches, but somehow, not many people new about the game. It seems that an under-marketed launch has the same effect on subscriptions as a botched one. Interestingly, more than one of us believed that the 500,000 barrier could have been broken by either one of these games had pre-launch marketing been handled differently.

Consider EVE Online: from a technical perspective, the launch was fine. However, virtually no one knew about it. CCP got utterly screwed in a publishing deal when EVE first launched. No one disputes that EVE is a great game. However, they've been in existence for over six years, but their under-marketed launch hamstrung them. Though they've grown substantially (they started out tiny), they still have 300k-ish subscribers.

LOTRO was another anomaly. From a technical standpoint, the launch was actually fine, and we all agree that LOTRO is a very good MMO. However, the game didn't generate a lot of buzz (though there was some) prior to launch, and marketing seemed to drop off almost immediately afterward. Publicity has been pretty darned spotty since then, and we felt this is limiting the game's appeal. Under-marketing, again, has been a factor since day one.

Is it possible that either EVE or LOTRO could have been a much bigger game had marketing been handled differently? If either game had had a bigger, more highly publicised launch, could they have 700k or 800k subscribers? A million? They certainly are both very good games. This intriguing possibility was brought up, and kicked around pretty good. Of course, we'll never really know.

I'll leave you to speculate, and share your opinions below. And that's all for this week, folks. If you you enjoyed this nonsense, come visit us over at Wandering Goblin. We serve up that kind of tomfoolery each and every day. For now, Ciao!

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