???? what are the selling point for TOP mmo's now days??

[Elexia]

the tl;dr list:

1. Advertise everywhere, annoy everyone with banner ads on every site and tV channel possible.
2. It's a "Standard MMO" so nothing truly unique, something you can pick up and play because it's like every other MMO ever.
3. Easy content, easy reward systems as this hooks and keep people, especially the casual player base that doesn't have time to invest into an MMORPG, so everything has to be fast paced and rewarding equally as fast.

Anything else depends on the MMO itself like what series it comes from, but the general reason MMOs sell is usually the 3 points above, but as we seen, sticking to that also kills off your MMO quickly too.. so it's a self-destructive cycle, your MMO will sell, but people will get bored of it just as quick and you start to bleed subs and eventually die.

[Bluewhite]

What sells a MMO is not the same as what makes the players stay. As far as I know TOR sold pretty well but lost subs pretty fast. I guess what sold that game was the Star Wars franchise and what they were trying to do with the story, everything was voiced and you could choose good or bad paths through your story. Party members also had a chance to influence the outcome which was pretty cool. But other than that the game felt like a singleplayer game most of the times.

People like to say that TOR bombed because it was a WoW clone and I don't think it was a WoW clone at all, reasons read the above again. IMO it bombed because there was nothing to do once you finished the story except some Heroics and that the game felt like a SP game in a MMO world.

So what sells? Could be the name, could be new and unique ideas (which doesn't always work). The most important thing to ask is what makes people stay?

I think ppl need to stop measuring a MMO's success with the amount of subscriber they have. Nowadays majority of gamers no longer dedicate their life to 1 single game, and would rather play different games and keep trying something new. To keep ppl staying, a strong playerbase is pretty important. WoW is probably the last MMO that can be this successful in gaming history.

[Wolfie]

There isn't anything too specific, besides having a solid early-mid game, pretty game, easy to pick up/intuitive play style, and being bug free.

Advertisements and true free trials (as in, download game/client free, play free for 10-14 days) really help. The whole model of "pay for the full game, THEN you get 30 days free!" is floundering right now.

[Twiddle]

as topic!



What are they really? that even make Yoshi tell the dev-team to play their games too, For that to make FF14 :ARR better. Since Yoshi goal is to make FF14: ARR an world class mmo.


(P.S FF14 1.xx is my 1st mmo)

Not to hard of a question.
- Race variety
- Job/Class variety
- Crafting variety
- Item variety
- Compelling story
- Compelling content
- Fair effort vs reward
- and so on

Thing is each person has a different opinion on each point, and from what i see no one is willing to compromise. And considering a game can not please everyone some will love it, some will hate it. Like asking "what makes a top plate of food good"? depends what you like to eat!!

[Xatsh]

only 2 things really sell a game.

1) Brand Recognition (why XIV sold ~600k copies with horrible marketing and abysmal beta)
2) Advertising (TV, Website, Email, Playable demos which most companys call open beta)

And really only 4 things keep players playing a mmo

1) Performance (How well the UI works, Lag issues, Server issues, those kings of things)
2) Game Play (Is it fluid, is it fun, does it have some content for every play style, is the story good, does it draw you in)
3) Community (does the community play a part in the game or is it solo unless doing a raid. More community the better)
4) Content (Are People beating the game? or is there enough content to keep everyone happy. Run out of content go to a new game)

The difficulty is the 2nd 4, getting people to play a mmo is easy as crap just expensive... even for XIV:ARR with 1.0 failing if SE dumped a few 100 mill into advertising on all the channels globally they could break 1-2mill subs easy, keeping them is hard.

The extreme casual,casual, mid core, and hard core players all want drastically different things.
-Some players want a game they can log into and just play for any amount of time feel like they made real progression and had fun. Some people want to feel a deep sense of accomplishment by completing a lengthy quest that few can accomplish.
-Some people want guild vs guild competition for endgame, some want everything instanced to prevent it.
-Some want to focus on PvP only and PvE only to get better gear for PvP. Some people really really hate PvP.
-Some players thrive on progression of characters, some wish you just stated at endgame and there was no lvling.
-Some players play 40-60+hrs a week, some play 3-10hrs a week.

How do you make a game for all the people when the wants and needs are polar opposites. Going into the middle will piss both groups off. Casuals will get you higher subs but it will be more volital, hardcores will get you less subs but tend to be stable as long as they are kept busy. Meaning Casual mmos you tend to see the mass fall out subs 70-90% sub losses in 1-2yrs but they break a mill, hardcore focused mmos never break a mill but hold 70-80% of their subs longterm.

NO mmo on earth has ever made a mmo for everyone, and the WoW model only works if there is ungodly amounts of content... which is financially unreasonable with a new mmo. NO new WoW style mmo has ever truly succeeded, many are still going but only with 10-20% of their original sub base.

And to really answer the OP's question on what are the selling points now days. Gimmicks are the selling point, which is why most mmos fail hardcore.

Examples:
Aion: It is a WoW style mmo but you can fly
Tera: it is a WoW style mmo but with action combat
SWTOR: it is a WoW style mmo but with lightsabres and voice overs.
RIFT: it is a strait up WoW clone with a new story line and better job system.

Nothing really new outside the gimmick and story line honestly. GW2 is the only exception and that game is sorta solo only to a degree, the group PvE in GW2 is pretty horrible. I pray GW2 style is not the future.

[Cedri]

Two words people, Housing System.

[Shougun]

What I usually see in ads (the big ones usually have ads of some type even hitting tvs lol like WoW):

Epic fights (non boring fights)
Lots of content
Vast world to experience (usually means many zones and races)
Great story with you at the epicenter
Amazing art (I hate WoW cartoon graphics (GW followed)... not because of the low pixels, the game is old (WoW), I just dont like neon coloring schemes lol)
Belong to a community

All MMORPGs can have that, with the job system SE is in a unique position - if they do any ads that arent cinematic they should try to sell that in the video somewhere.

I think SE has a lot of "betters" already then most MMO's, they just have some gaps in systems coming together specially in the itemization and combat. (Which they are obviously working on, so good news lol).

[Orophin]

JP mmo's dev's have a long way from other world class mmo that are out at moment, is good idea to learn from the best.

Because obviously FFXI wasn't successful.

What sells a MMO is not the same as what makes the players stay. As far as I know TOR sold pretty well but lost subs pretty fast. I guess what sold that game was the Star Wars franchise and what they were trying to do with the story, everything was voiced and you could choose good or bad paths through your story. Party members also had a chance to influence the outcome which was pretty cool. But other than that the game felt like a singleplayer game most of the times.

People like to say that TOR bombed because it was a WoW clone and I don't think it was a WoW clone at all, reasons read the above again. IMO it bombed because there was nothing to do once you finished the story except some Heroics and that the game felt like a SP game in a MMO world.

I think you're right about this. From what I understand (I never played it) TOR had great storyline stuff, but once you ran out of story modes to play, that's pretty much it. The endgame was either non-existent or uninteresting.

I also haven't played GW2, but I hear mixed things about this game as well. A friend of mine plays it and really likes it, but at the same time he complains that it took hardly no time at all to level up. It also seems like once you've gone through the main story and capped out, the only thing to do is do PvP. This isn't a big surprise considering it is a rather PvP focused game.

Just my opinion, but I think ARR is going to cater to more casual players but at the same time have challenging content for the midcores and hardcores. They don't need to have subscription numbers like WoW to be successful. They just need to develop a game that people will want to play for a long time. This will make the game profitable and worthwhile to continue running.

[Elexia]

Because obviously FFXI wasn't successful.

Of course it wasn't. It didn't have 12 million subs. Everyone abandoned it after the first 3 months, it didn't have it's own real conventions or anything.

It was as unsuccessful as it could get.

Clearly.

[hrdndv]

I think it is fairly clear that GW stunk in the long-term. Only WoW has shown staying power. Why? Because of the same things everyone is saying about it: being the first, it has had time to remove the worst bugs and add the most content. The events in WoW make for fun play. It has harder stuff and easy stuff so the entire player base is busy. You only get bored with it after a year or two. The only new and unique Multiplayer Online games I see coming up are FFXIV-ARR and ESO (Elder Scrolls Online). ESO looks like it will have huge content so it is likely to hold players for a very long time. Some players don't like it because it is a dark story with depressing graphics. FFXIV has a light story with beautiful graphics. I think these two will put considerable pressure on WoW. NextGen could be anything. Startrek? Harry Potter? I think FFXV might have a foot in the door for the best NextGen game. Want to wait to 2020 to try it out???