What evidence do you have for that claim? The belief is that games have introduced F2P and attracted more customers, thus becoming "popular". Whether or not that is the case depends on what numbers you look at over what period of time.
Of course I'm aware that EA released UO. I've lived in Austin since 1990 and have known many OSI and then EA employees. I'm very well aware of EA's relationship with OSI, UO, and even the in-jokes contained within Ultima VII about EA buying OSI.
This is what I was referring to. It's a part of the reason why there is a joke within the industry about EA buying studios and eventually the titles they produce through those studios don't always live up to expectations and/or are pushed out way too fast - see Ultima IX, the canceled Ultima X, and the spectacular failure of Warhammer Online for some high-profile examples that pertain to us.
Do you think they miss UO as it is right now, or do you think they miss what UO was pre-AOS or pre-Tram?
They're not giving it away "because", but I do not think it necessarily means they're wildly successful. It could just be more expenditures from their advertising budget, and they could not have produced a dime of profit yet. It gets back to that revenue versus profit comparison. Does F2P increase operational expense, and can you earn it back and more on top of that?
Hard to tell WHICH interview BC is talking about ... or comments for that matter ... or "where" >this< is a place to return to ...
Well, looking at the numbers...
Name just one MMORPG that's both F2P and that does not have modern graphics. Even if it's a "2D" tile-based game, I want you to name just one.
Not sure on that one. Could go either way. Would entirely depend if they tied classic shard accounts to paying accounts for *perks*.
It requires regular bug fixes, most of the better F2P games I monkey around with, LOTRO, Atlantica: Online etc. don't do regular "updates" they do updates on pretty much a quarterly manner, with monthly bug updates and Store updates, balancing etc....
This is kind of going away, more games are taking the approach of selling access to Top End Gear via a store and locking out access to it through other means.
Roll this into your next area of address and the issue becomes moot.
This is another thing that is changing, more games are giving you access to the areas, but no access to subsystems inside it. Sure you can go kill monsters, but "special" drops from them are gone, so is the ability to quest in those areas excepting cross overs where a quest starts in a fully accessible area but end in limited one, providing you have the ability to complete the quest in the first place.
That's not necessarily true, there have been enough people who have come and gone from UO that may consider F2P an option for them that the 2D client would benefit. New blood...I've met many who came to UO because they liked it's simpler interface over todays "Modern" clients. UO is a mature game, many of use are in our 30's and above.
Actually I think Mythic has the ability and the staff, the work load on a F2P game is probably the same as a subscription game, just the focus is in different areas. More focus on balancing, bug fixes etc. with major updating being broken into smaller pieces like the "Booster" packs it could possibly be something that decreases the stress on the development team.
EA has around 10% fewer employees than this time last year, and any spare BioWare employees are probably working on Star Wars at this point. A few weeks ago during their financial call with journalists and investors, EA announced they were focusing the company on "fewer, better, bigger" titles going forward. Star Wars fits into that. A F2P version of UO does not fit into that.
Full article on Ultima Aiera:
So given the option you just jump in head first with a much anticipated title, possibly dooming it, or would it make more sense to take an aging title, and use it as a platform to work out a good F2P system?
Then why is UO even still running? It's obviously profitable but it's neither High Profile or exceptionally profitable in comparison to other MMO Titles.
Prune it... the UO Site doesn't need 1/3 of the content on it, many Studios rely on Fansites to maintain the information that you find on parts of the UO site. You know kind of like Stratics has...
I'm not saying Graphics don't play a matter in people picking up a new game... but UO has at this time in it's life has so many players that came and left for other titles it doesn't necessarily need updated graphics. If a F2P UO could pull 10% of the people who play on Emulated Servers or those that left to play other MMO's but would play UO as well if it was F2P the potential for additional revenues from Micro Transactions would justify UO being considered as migrating to a Hybridized system alone. Let me give an example...
UO is a very steady revenue stream right now within BioWare, which is crucial given what happened to Warhammer. They are not going to mess around with it too much because nobody knows how Star Wars will be received, and messing around with steady revenue streams like UO is not something they probably want to do given the uncertainty surrounding Star Wars. F2P would introduce uncertainty and require more development resources. Any spare resources (money) that BioWare has is going to be poured into Star Wars.
They just made those statements a few weeks ago - that's why I'm slightly worried. My guess is that UO is probably safe for now, but from what they were stating in the financial call, UO's margin of safety probably shrank since profitability is no longer just enough - EA wants big-profit projects. They acted bold, but their most anticipated games this year are pretty much all sequels to proven franchises. Even their big fantasy/medieval game that's coming out has some big names attached to it in the hopes of drawing people to it (Todd McFarlane still trying to work that EA magic
)The most profitable/better-run studios don't rely on fansites and are doing everything they can to reach out to fans as well as push their other products because having direct contact with their fans is a very valuable thing in this day and age. Companies don't want to let third parties get in between them and their fans.
Most of the people you are talking about didn't up and leave because they decided $10 or $13 a month was too much, they left because they were pissed at changes EA was making to UO, or their communities no longer existed, or a myriad of other reasons that had nothing to do with cost, and those reasons are exactly why they aren't going to be willing to jump back onto EA shards.
You did read the entirety of my post, I hope, since you quoted most, if not all, of it. The term "regular" means "predictable frequency" in amongst its many definitions. As I indicated, quarterly updates would be the best approach, with a semi-annual approach being the maximum distance.
In some games, it isn't even a feasible approach, but certainly there are still games where it is viable and makes some level of sense. And, while I see the Top End Gear thing as a valid experiment, I'm willing to bet it does/would die swiftly in a fantasy MMO like WoW, EQ, or UO. Selling top end gear sort of defeats some of the purpose to playing the game in the first place.
You could combine just about any of them together... it doesn't become moot that UO's quest system is a mish-mosh of several different systems presently, and that they function in a manner counter-intuitively to the way pretty much every other quest system in the world does. 2D, EC, it doesn't matter, the quest system needs a mass overhaul, which was really my point in that part.
Okay, but really, it's the same thing. Whether or not you put a shiny gate up and say, "There's something special in here, and it only costs $9.99 to see what it is..." or you drop an item on a mob and when they loot it, the item appears in its backpack with a note saying, "Unfortunately, your account does not have access to this level of content, but for just $9.99, you can have this glorious item, and we'll even hold it for you for the next two hours so that if you do upgrade your account, it'll appear in your mailbox!" (which is my personal take on how to market the 'you can look but you can't touch' method of "BUY ME BUY ME BUY ME" content), it's still a limitation that can only be circumvented by buying the premium content.
The point of my commentary wasn't really a point for point on how UO compares to other games, it was more of a point for point on (1) why it can't succeed given UO's development model, (2) what needs to be fixed before they could even consider it, and (3) use examples that would make sense in terms of UO's game world.
Doubtful. There are people who have come and gone, but let's be honest here... while UO has some nostalgic portions to it, most have moved on to bigger and better games. And... let me clarify too that I'm not (nor have I ever) advocating a complete overhaul of the 2D client interface... personally, I think whatever is put in place should be -- from an interface standpoint -- available in the more immersive 2D interface form, and also (though I hate it, I recognize that some like it) the more grid-like WoW based system. I would say that while the EC's macro system is more powerful, it could use a better, more intuitive setup... but I do think that it's perhaps the ONLY thing in the EC that is FAR superior to the 2D client, and would see that dominate.
In totality, Bioware Mythic has the staff... Bioware Mythic is also busy with SW:TOR, and Mythic itself is still scrambling like mad to figure out why UO is outpacing WAR, and DAoC is still blipping along on life support. What we do know is this: EA's clearly not tossing financing onto the UO heap to grow the game, and UO's current development team wasn't able to do a booster without dropping every other aspect of the game (contrary to assurances that they could do just that), and certainly couldn't even release that booster without rushing it out the door, rushing it out poorly, and taking far too long to fix post-release issues with it.
Well, and way off in some other thread, which I somehow forgot to mention here, is that the ONLY way to do housing would be under some sort of subscription model. The trouble is that you then either risk losing customers permanently by putting in a "no exceptions, your account is not paid for, your house goes bye-bye" hardline stance, or you risk the very same thing that goes on right now where there's a grace period to allow honest customers to keep houses when they hit a hardship or a credit card issue or whatever, but which is abused by some (though we have no true idea of numbers) percentage of the playerbase.
I've long thought that the biggest threat to UO was irrationality on part of EA. It's been proven to me time and time again in smaller ways; one day, unfortunately, it may be proven in a big way. A company has daily obligations to meet; power bills, payroll, etc. Steady income flows help them accomplish this when they are otherwise losing money.
Housing is definitely something you'd have to charge for. The problem is, if you charge F2Pers for housing, you've already lost many freesharders.
It sounds to me like they are doing the opposite - relying on the big and proven titles. It may seem risky on the surface, but there are some franchises or potential franchises that become so big, that their continued success is all but assured as long as they throw enough money at it.
L.O.R.D. wasn't free to play - somebody (BBS sysop) had to pay Seth Robinson a license for it to run on the BBS.
Oooh, ok, I misread you then.
I will fully admit that I may have misread what their intentions are, but it seems like from the list of games that EA is releasing this year, their biggest titles are either sequels, movie tie-ins, or have an automatic fanbase, which plays right into their "fewer, better, bigger" mantra. It's like a novel with Tom Clancy's name on it, or a new Star Wars movie - it maybe horribly written and have horrible dialogue and awkward love scenes, but it's going to make money.
Out of the titles they are shipping this year, only a couple are new and original IPs and not sequels/movie tie-ins or are heavily tied to past successful IPs. Kingdoms of Amalur is actually just being published by them, and is not owned by them but it has some key former EA people backing/designing it. Bulletstorm and Shadows of the Damned are probably their biggest and only unknowns. Shadows of the Damned seems to be made more for the Asian market than US/Europe, but even it has the creator from Resident Evil co-developing it and that's a guaranteed fanbase.
Well, freesharders won't go away even if UO:F2P were to launch with a new, high quality client... there are downloads available (and discs ad nauseum) for old clients, and really, some people (not a large a group as some tend to claim) think that the 1994 UO graphics are the only way to go.
Well, not to say I would think a model that ignores the potential of bringing back freesharders is a wise one, but the model needs to also be broad enough to bring in new players (hence a huge focus on all of the issues that would need to be addressed first).
I don't know as I'd agree with that, at least in a better run UO world... meaning that if development, marketing, et cetera were more than a skeleton crew. I think you could do F2P very well with Ultima, but it can't be done half-assed, and definitely not mostly-assed as the situation is likely to be (not calling any of the Devs asses, just reiterating that the structural overhaul to the game is beyond -- IMO -- their current capabilities).
Well... here's the thing. I think you could do housing in a manner that allowed for both models to work. Certainly, you can't get around housing being one of the main commodities that sets UO off from most other games. Now, I know games like Runes of Magic (I think that's its name, pardon if it isn't) do instanced housing, and so they -- even free -- give you a base model to play with, and then you can pay for upgrades. You could actually do a similar type thing with UO, and virtualize it. You could tie it directly to someone's bank, for that matter.
Well, let's be honest... if you put out a quality product that receives frequent updates, and has a strong development team behind it... you can get away with a subscription fee because people think they're getting good value for the money.
What if it flat-out sucks, though....Which I suspect, rather strongly, that it will.
That's just it - with such a low price for UO subscriptions to begin with, it would be hard for them to work out pricing.
I know you're kidding, but I would love to be a fly on the wall if the EA CEO tried to tell investors that EA's new $300 million+ MMORPG is going ot launch as F2P. It would be funny to hear somebody telling a CEO to think about polishing up their resume.
The Clone Wars stuff is apparently doing really well and is liked by a lot of fans, as is the associated merchandising (Lego, video games, etc.). I think the Star Wars movies are going to be re-released in 3D starting later this year or next year as well. I'm of two minds about the Star Wars MMORPG though.
I agree that UO is critical to EA, at least spiritually, from the point of view of having been the first.
The subscription MMO model has been dying right before your eyes for years now. World of Warcraft is making money with it, but World of Warcraft came out six years ago and is only one game.
I think I addressed a lot of your other points with a post I made to somebody else, but I'd point out that we already have a system for this in place, within the game - it's called UOGameCodes.com
WoW brought in $2 billion+ last year. For reference, EA as a whole brought in just $3.5 billion last year. That's all of those EA sports games, Sims stuff, etc., combined.
That's because those games failed and/or sucked in one way or another that had nothing to do with F2P or subscriptions costs.
They publicly crowed about how much money they brought in, not how profitable they were.
The MMO market in general has been staggering around because of ****-poor decisions made by management and designers.
That argument still doesn't hold much if any water...
Without putting too fine a point on it, it's not the subscription model that killed any of these games. It was, in fact, the games themselves (or the teams behind them, if you will), and a lack of fun game play that was open to a wide enough audience to attract subscribers.
Well, I've avoided saying it, but I guess I have to now. First and foremost, UOGameCodes.com would have to go, and a professional entity capable of handling an F2P model without the kinds of horrible experiences that have been rampant in UOGameCodes.com for years without much by correction would have to be implemented.
They can, and do, but part of their additional income issue I suspect is that, since UOGC is an outside vendor, Mythic's sharing some of the pie with them, and therefore, is charging too much for stuff that they could see a higher return on at a lesser price. Consider the bookcases... they're $3.25 US per bookcase. That's a bit silly. Mark 'em down to an iTunes $1.00 per, and someone might spend $10 on them to do a room or give out as gifts. Conversely, I think you'd see far fewer people willing to spend $32.50 on bookcases.
They never approach these things as a way to grow a team (sadly), but rather as ways for them to capitalize on the playerbase through existing resources. Which wouldn't be bad if their existing resources weren't already spread so thin.
Well, let's be honest, this is sort of a question of reducing the subscription rate for no real point. No one's going to try out UO -- as it presently exists -- just because there's a reduced subscription rate for the game. And extending the trials wouldn't get more players. It doesn't take someone three months to determine whether a game is worth paying for or not. Heck, the longevity of a single-player console game isn't even 3 months.
Well, truthfully, the only reason I see housing as the pivotal issue in an F2P model is that if you don't control housing via subscription, you end up with tons of free accounts and no housing space.
Well... if by "The Old Lands" you mean Trammel, yeah, I think a lot would. No model would work requiring play in Felucca (unless, of course, it was an SP or Classic ruleset).
While UO is, in some areas, a lot more complex that many people think, the reverse is true too... because of poor development results, people tend to give UO way too much leniency in the "this would be difficult to accomplish" department. Some things are perceived as difficult simply because of repeated failures to successfully implement stuff that many people perceive to be (and in some cases, rightly so) easy to accomplish.
Thing is, we don't know, truly, if the games have seen a huge profit out of this.
