Comments on: Links and mini-posts for the weekend

By: Kring

Kring — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 08:38:24 +0000

> The problem with FPS, and with Titan if it turns
> out to be a FPS, is that the game activity
> basically consists of putting your mouse cursor
> over a tiny fast moving and erratic dot and
> clicking.
>
> Some of us simply are not good at that.

How is that different from raiding? Raiding is also the only real end game activity end you’re either good at the dance or not.

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 15:44:39 +0000

If I recall correctly, RIFT was said to have cost $50M to develop (and some of that is for development of the game systems that will be reused for other games). They’ve been reported to have sold close to 1 M subs (this is not the trial accounts number, but actual physical+digital box sales). If they’ve retained 450K, then they could already have earned back the development costs and be raking in big profits now.

The comments I get from them in interview, while of course slanted, tend to make me think they’ve come in well over their internal targets. I suspect they didn’t expect Cataclysm’s “own goal” on subscriber retention.

By: Bronte

Bronte — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 12:53:00 +0000

Sometimes I get the sense that Firefall is Blizzard’s secret test for the Titan market. I have no evidence to support this, but the developers are ex-WoW developers, it uses the same over-arching mechanics and its a casual MMOFPS…

Am I being paranoid or do you think there could be some truth to that.

Also: the walls say hi.

By: Stabs

Stabs — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 08:12:22 +0000

Before free to play messed up all the metrics Eve Online was solidly second with 330K subscribers.

If Rift has stabilised at around 450K and isn’t continuing to lose people then they’ve done extremely well. In fact the best sustained success since WoW in 2004.

By: Stabs

Stabs — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 08:09:03 +0000

The problem with FPS, and with Titan if it turns out to be a FPS, is that the game activity basically consists of putting your mouse cursor over a tiny fast moving and erratic dot and clicking.

Some of us simply are not good at that.

I tried and really liked World of Tanks. However I’m poor at the basic gameplay. They could not have possibly dressed it up to suit me better but I don’t play much because I’m not good at it.

This gameplay is only casual to people who have done a great deal of it or who have grown up with it. It’s actually an acquired skill that people who lack experience of the genre are awful at by comparison to the vets and no amount of window dressing makes up for the gulf in basic ability.

So we come down to what the word Casual means. If by “casual” you mean gamers who aren’t mmo gamers then FPS may draw them in. If by “casual” you mean people who don’t consider themselves gamers at all but like messing about with interesting stuff online FPS is a closed door.

By: Nick Smith

Nick Smith — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 07:49:59 +0000

Losing only 20% is a miracle number compared to the vast majority of MMOs. These guys have been releasing at a vast rate since launch anyway – the advantage of being near bug-free at launch is an ability to focus on cool new stuff…

By: Azuriel

Azuriel — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 07:38:48 +0000

Not to bash on Rift or anything, but it is interesting to see how many updates they are putting out despite the sub numbers having peaked at 600k and then fallen to ~465k (per MMOData) in the months since launch. Is this fever pitch just the way these devs roll? Is it reactionary? Would *any* number of patches and hotfixes conceivably retain more players?