More Horizontal Progression please

[Zarzak]

What you don't realize, is the popular game is short lived. Until the next "WOW" comes out and everyone leaves and flocks to it because its new and shiny. Now your game is dead. Meanwhile, the "Niche" game still has its same subscribers.

^

These WoW clone MMOs last what 2-3 years before going f2p and dying? So lets average that to 2.5 years (30 months) $15x30 = $450 + say 2 $50 expansion.. $550 per player who stick around start to end?

Now lets look at the games who have kept players around under a sub model for over 12-15 years EQ and XI. (well focus on EQ because without looking XI's content was a bit more complicated mixing expansions and smaller paid content patches)

EQ = original + 21 expansions.

per player
expansions value = over $1,000
sub value = $2,900

Does your average WoW clone bring in a huge influx the 1st couple months that likely make up for the difference? Sure but lets then realize the cost of developing a new MMO vs adding an expansion to an existing one.

Then lets realize that apparently EQ/Xi were good enough to keep a lot of the SAME people engaged for YEARS. Where even the titan of these modern MMOs WoW has a almost 70% attrition rate after the 1st 20 months of playing (since I know someone will bitch below are the numbers). WoW stays afloat by being the equivalent of cigarettes/beer/weed to the MMO world. Everyone tries it then goes looking for something better.

40% quit after a year which goes up to ~70% at 600 days (about 20 months)


http://netgames2008.cs.wpi.edu/slides/chen-wow.pdf (scroll down to the sub time graph)

In regards to SWG:

If servers are shutting down... then its a failure. Whether or not it was huge at one point is really irrelevant. Its failing because its not what an audience wants.

.... after 8 years. I never played it myself but that is longer than most MMOs last these days. We could go through a very very long list of MMOs that actually failed before we ever even talk about SWG shutting down. And sustained a sub model.

Also since you either don't know or like to ignore important details. It failed AFTER being completely overhauled due to a disagreement within the business (as I understand without looking it up Lucas Arts and SOE had disagreement)