"Population Crisis" and MMOs

[Aster]

I found this article today and thought it was a good read. It is focused on why WoW dominates the market, and where the growth avenues are for game makers. I especially liked Ralph Kostner's advice to game designers:

"If I could give any advice to a startup MMO developer," he laughs, "it would be: 'Stay the heck away from building another WoW!' One of the interesting things that's happened to the market is that we've had many, many WoW-style games, and the gameplay hasn't evolved dramatically. It's been streamlined, but it hasn't changed anything fundamentally. And one of the things we really don't want in this market is having it come to being a battle of polish. That's a bad place to be.

"But now," he laments, "the vast majority of the market is held by the EverQuest/WoW-style games. Large budgets aren't going to other sorts of virtual worlds, and there are a lot of other sorts of virtual worlds to be made. And after seeing the market failure of Jumpgate or Auto Assault, or any of these more niche-targeted games, it breeds conservatism. So if I were going to give advice to a developer, I would say: why don't you make a truly kickass virtual world environment - make it a game or whatever it is, but make it something else. Bring in a new market!"

The article also mentions browser based games - specifically Dofus, MapleStory and Runescape, and highlights Kostner's builder/publisher site, Metaplace.

 

[Vorthaaa]

Yeah... there's no innovation at all. It's very very very very sad.

 

[Dor of Sonoma]

Yeah... there's no innovation at all. It's very very very very sad.

I beg to differ, sir! I would like to present Pirates of the Burning Sea as evidence to the contrary.

While it is undoubtedly a 'niche' game at this time, it is chock-full of the innovative goodness made possible by its independent development team (Flying Lab Software).

If you are interested in further information, here are some handy links:
Pirates of the Burning Sea Home Port
PotBS Stratics
Message of the Day
and (of course our forum here: PotBS General Discussion

 

[al-Maroc]

POTBS isn't innovative at all.