90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months - Kotaku Comments

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

The Maginomicon — Thu, 22 May 2008 09:10:17 MDT

Now what they need to do to make this "70 per cent of organisations [with] established [private] virtual worlds" work is to create a universal standard avatar medium.

I vote Mii v2.0 ^_^

The Maginomicon

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

Kaljin — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:14:05 MDT

Basically, games fail because they all think up of an idea, and then the boss goes "LETS BE LIKE WOW", not realizing that niche has already been filled...by WoW.

Kaljin

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

bobtheduck — Mon, 19 May 2008 01:23:18 MDT

@Sullyville: And then came Myspace... I know, speaking the unspoken... But most people on here won't get what you said, I guarantee it.

bobtheduck

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

Sullyville — Sun, 18 May 2008 08:53:28 MDT

90 percent of Facebook clones die off too.

Sullyville

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

dekaneas — Sun, 18 May 2008 08:03:52 MDT

One reason that most MMOs die soon after the first couple of years is that most of players cannot afford paying more than one subscription fee.Think that most MMOs cost around 13 euros.To play two or three MMOs in a monthly basis means at least 30 euros.No family with f.e. 2 kids will be happy to pay that bill.So the kids stick to their most beloved game (that usually is WoW)and quit the others).The best and more risky idea that only Guild Wars adopted with success is the "no subscription" paying plan.Wich means that you have to wait for the (paid) expansion for new content.I am ok with that if you want my opinion

dekaneas

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

Foxstar Sixtail — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:47:15 MDT

@Ignatius:Thank you!

Foxstar Sixtail

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

Ignatius — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:36:17 MDT

@Foxstar Sixtail:

Auto Assault, Earth and Beyond, The Sims Online, Motor City Online, Asheron's Call II off the top of my head.

And another half dozen cancelled or in limbo (as far as we know)... Gods and Heroes, Marvel Universe Online, Huxley, Wiki, Shenmue Online, Star Trek Online...

And a lot more are slowly dying out. I wouldn't be surprised to see Planetside and Star Wars Galaxies join the growing dead.

Ignatius

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

Foxstar Sixtail — Sun, 18 May 2008 04:06:02 MDT

What MMO's have failed lately in the last..six years though? I haven't heard of any of them going bust save for NCsoft's Car based MMO and the EA killed Earth and Beyond.

Foxstar Sixtail

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

geves — Sun, 18 May 2008 01:20:15 MDT

Damn, I wish i got paid to come up with random numbers that were high and make a very low failure rate for wow.

what a great job. it would almost seem as i wasn't pulling it from my ass.

geves

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

jamosthefifth — Sun, 18 May 2008 01:11:19 MDT

@RPharazonius: Completely agreed.
It's the same with every new genre I would think. FPS, MMO, Myst clones... it's all been done before, and it always turns out just how you described it.

If you ask me, it's because people can sense an imitation right from the get-go, and would rather have the established, tried-and-true video game for their hard-earned money.

jamosthefifth

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

excaliburps — Sun, 18 May 2008 01:09:19 MDT

@OldManGaming:

Me too. Sure I get that raids are fun and all. What I don't understand from MMORPGS is, when will it end? I mean, Maybe it's just me but when I play an RPG or any game for that matter. I know what I'm playing is amounting to something. That something meaning I get to kill the insanely powerful end-game boss at the end. And hopefully get a spiffy end game cinematic or story out of it.

Be it for RPGs or Action-adventures or shooters. There's level-grinding for RPGs, for action-adventure there's the orbs or whatever that updates your skill and combos and etc.

OF course I do understand that if an MMORPG had a final boss that would end the game, it wouldn't make much financial sense from the publishers point of view.

I tried WoW before and I must say I didn't get hooked. What with all the level-grinding and all the time you have to invest.

Anyway, I do think that Gartner may have a point there. Here in Asia, MMORPGs or other Virtual,Online-Social worlds are a dime a dozen. A new one sprouting each month. At the end of the day, there's only so much of the gaming population that can invest their time and money to support all of them.

excaliburps

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

JojoTheSlayer — Sun, 18 May 2008 00:40:51 MDT

I want more MMOFPS. Planetside was great.
Shoot kill pvp is much better than shoot dice, maybe kill.

Problem most fps players wont pay a monthly sub and PS didnt have enough player advancement and customizations. Also, it didnt have any none Pvp content.

JojoTheSlayer

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

Xeros606 — Sat, 17 May 2008 22:47:57 MDT

@Ignatius:
how does that matter? most people dont start playing a games of a series until its popular. also i would have played the other warcraft games, but i dont like rts. wow piqued my interest, so thats the first warcraft game im playing. maybe if they make a warcraft platformer or something, people who play mostly platformers will get into warcraft.

Xeros606

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

InsolenceAndHeresy — Sat, 17 May 2008 22:28:36 MDT

I guess WoW was the Ten-Percenter.

InsolenceAndHeresy

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

Forkball — Sat, 17 May 2008 21:50:17 MDT

I blame global warming.

Forkball

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

EmeraldCockroach — Sat, 17 May 2008 21:13:33 MDT

i've played more mmos then i care to mention but i rarely see them die off, some crazed fan boy at least runs a private server to extend its lifespan by at least a year. i tend to disagree with this article

EmeraldCockroach

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

Ignatius — Sat, 17 May 2008 20:36:14 MDT

@RPharazonius:

Or the huge fanbase that started WoW up. What makes me made about most WoW players is that they've never even picked up one of the previous WarCraft games and played it.

I've been playing since Orcs and Humans and I'm sure half the bloody population that regularly subscribe to WoW can't even name half of the factions that were introduced in Tides of Darkness.

Ignatius

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

DaveKap — Sat, 17 May 2008 20:17:24 MDT

"By 2012, Gartner estimates that 70 per cent of organisations will have established their own private virtual worlds and predicts that these internal worlds will have greater success due to lower expectations, clearer objectives and better constraints."

I'll bet anyone here $20 that either this ends up being completely wrong or a majority of that 70% end up using Second Life's open sourced server software.

I think too many Kotakuites here automatically assume "virtual world" means MMORPG as I'm fairly sure Gartner was referring to MMO worlds that don't involve any RPG aspects. I especially believe this as MMORPGs are most definitely not cheap to start (art assets, goal development, writers, etc) whereas virtual world engines are and don't require the_same/as_many resources to start and maintain.

DaveKap

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

frankenfine — Sat, 17 May 2008 20:08:54 MDT

You can thank the WoW machine for that!

frankenfine

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

RPharazonius — Sat, 17 May 2008 19:15:50 MDT

It's 90% because of all the failing developers.

Most MMOs don't reach their second or even third year. Too many start-up developers make an ambitious MMO, but it fails in a year or two at best exactly because of that ambition.

In short, everyone's trying to make a MMO that's greater than WoW. They inevitably fail because they don't have the resources, let alone the programming skills, that Blizzard has.

In shorter form, most MMOs are made by developers who don't know what they're doing.

RPharazonius

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

edgarhuntly — Sat, 17 May 2008 18:45:12 MDT

@z0phi3l: hi, you're wrong...about AoC at least (barring horrendous bugs/server lag). It's different enough from WoW and good enough that it will succeed.

edgarhuntly

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

illiterati — Sat, 17 May 2008 18:17:33 MDT

And yet STILL a more promising endeavour than opening a restaurant.

illiterati

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

DukeOfPwn — Sat, 17 May 2008 18:14:52 MDT

Everyone needs to stop trying and play WoW. Seriously. I hate the game, but it's a much better MMO than any of the others I've tried (Guild Wars comes close, though)

DukeOfPwn

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

z0phi3l — Sat, 17 May 2008 17:46:21 MDT

It's all WoW's fault

All the new "next gen" MMO's are either trying to copy wow and failing or doing the opposite of WoW and failing too.

That is to include AoC and WAR in the soon to be failed MMOs (too much of a niche market for those two games)

z0phi3l

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

Penchinon — Sat, 17 May 2008 17:38:55 MDT

Everquest and Ultima need to return.

Penchinon

90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months

Chewbenator — Sat, 17 May 2008 17:25:28 MDT

Don't they require a lot of back end like servers and things? Also, to even think about being successful have years of planning and development? I don't know if I'm wrong but I don't think there is a low cost of entry.

Chewbenator